Dear COA Family,
As you all know, recently my wife and I have been conducting the Marriage Preparation Course for six couples in a serious relationship with each other. Four of those couples are couples that are not from our church. They are attending our course because they have heard about its usefulness and effectiveness for their marriages ahead – praise God for that!
One of the topics that I have to teach in the course is ‘The Role of Husbands and Wives in Marriage’. Husbands are called to love and lead their wives (and their families) while wives are to love and submit to their husbands. Both are to do so within the love of Christ and in accordance to Christ’s commands. This is the beauty of the harmony and goodwill that God has purposed for marriages from the beginning of creation – for marriages to survive and thrive (See Genesis 1-2).
However, this is not a popular teaching to communicate in our society today. Many people hate the idea of submission. To submit means to be subservient to others and this deeply offends the idea of personal freedom and rights that many hold on to firmly today. In addition, feminism in today’s society advocates for gender equality in every respect, even to the extent of blurring the distinctions of what it means to be male and female, all in the name of creating a more just and equitable world. At its core, women should never ever have to submit to men in any respect because that demeans a woman value and worth and leads to the sure abuse of women.
I firmly believe that a right understanding of God’s purposes of the roles of men and women in the family will address the concerns and fears of people in society about female discrimination and abuse. In fact, God’s directions for our marriages will lead to much healthier marriages and families. That is why my wife and I do not shy away from teaching this doctrine to the couples.
However, what I am more concerned about is that churches today are also subscribing to the gender equality concept spouted by the wider society. Instead of sharing God’s truth to the world, many are capitulating to modern culture by saying that the separate and distinct roles of men and women are outdated. They even try to reinterpret Scripture according to their own understanding and experiences to support their view.
An example is a certain Singaporean mega-church quoting social theologian Douglas Petersen in espousing its egalitarian view of men and women roles:
“men and women have interchangeable roles and adhere to mutual submission toward each other in the home and in the church.” As such, leadership is not based on gender but on the gifting by the Spirit… (italics mine)
This is erroneous teaching. While it is true that leadership is also based on the gifting of the Holy Spirit, the divinely ordained roles and hierarchy of authority of men and women within a marriage should not be discarded (see 1 Corinthians 11:3). To do so is to violate God’s will to our detriment!
What am I trying to say?
I am not so much dwelling on the teaching of the roles of men and women (which is a major topic for another day) but on the need for us as Christians to understand and stay true to the word of God. We need to maintain our Christian witness to God’s truths or else we will lose our relevance to the world.
Our Lord Jesus puts it this way, “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.” (Luke 14:34-35)
Once we capitulate to the teachings of the world and to our own fanciful interpretations of God’s word based on our own experiences, we run the risk of losing our identity as the light and representatives of Christ. We risk losing our collective witness as the church of God bringing healing to a broken world. We risk losing our understanding of who we are.
So let’s never be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord but hold fast to his word always and be willing even to suffer for it! (2 Timothy 1:8)
Blessings,
Revd Ian