22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Eph 5: 22-24

¹Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, ²when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. ³Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. ⁴Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. ⁵For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, ⁶like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. 1 Pet 3:1-6

After writing about headship, I must write about its counterpart – submission. They really are two sides of the same coin. The above text reads that wife is to submit to their husband, the same way the Church is to submit to the Christ. This incidentally sets the pattern for the submission of wife. How extensive is this submission? In everything. How powerful is the submission of a wife? As powerful as converting the soul of a rebellious husband! (1 Pet3:1). It is really the silent gospel!

In the same way that headship of a husband is not an option, submission of a wife is also not an option as well. A wife cannot make submission disappear by just being disobedient. If she is not in submission to her husband, she will then be submissive to  others, who may not have her interest at heart.

The world frowns upon this word and regards the idea of wife submitting to their husband as archaic, repressive and obnoxious. But the question to ask is; how does God view submission? Well, firstly it is beautiful (1 Pet 3:3) and secondly, it is of great worth and value. (1 Pet 3:4)

²³For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.²⁴Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Eph 5:23-24

Following on from my earlier post on the headship of man, I want to focus on what the shape of headship look like.

If you are one of those who think that being the head naturally confer on you the rights to come home to your family slouched in front of the goggle box justifying that it is a hard day’s work without lifting a hand to help your equally weary wife who is busy minding the noisy kids, I am afraid you are in the same category as those who are described by the title of this post. If you are those who thinks that it is the head’s immutable perogative to keep your date with your computer game while your poor wife is slogging away in the kitchen or laundry room, it just shows how little you understand biblical headship.

Among the many things regarding this headship, I would like to focus on 2.

1)  Biblical headship is authoritative.

What kind of authority is it? It is that kind with the word ‘Loving Sacrifice’ written boldly across it. And authority always assumes responsibility.  And that means that every husband is responsible for his household before God. He is responsible for his family’s provision, he is responsible for his family’s spiritual state, whether his wife is progressing in her holiness, whether the children are growing up in the training and admonistion of the Lord. In other words, on judgment day, every husband can rest assured that God will ask him, the same way He looked for Adam after their fall, how he has been leading the family that was entrusted to him by God, whether leading them towards God or away from Him. What a sheer responsibilty and weight upon our shoulder! And God, knowing that we are not able to perform all this by ourselves,  in his mercy has provided a help-meet to assist us. And she is no other than flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones.

2) Biblical headship is sacrificial

Husband headship over his wife ought to be patterned after Christ headship over the church. And what kind of Head is Christ? He is known as the Saviour of the church  in the text above. In other words, He gives himself for her. In the same way, husband is to give himself for their wife. Husband, do we give ourselves for our wife or do we give material substitutes (whatever it may be) to her in place of us? Is our love, prayer, time, resources, strength, etc spent for the benefit of her physically and spiritually? And how does that translate into every day application?I leave that for us to ponder and perhaps to share.

Recently I encountered 2 of the most difficult questions in my life from a young mind with the faculty of wonder.

My son was not able to do the maths regarding why is it possible for God to exist in three Persons and yet remain as One God. In fact, he was rather frustrated by this mathematical impossibility.

I was trying to explain to him using the three stages of water – ice, water and water vapour. Nevertheless, I think I fail miserably.

Not long after hearing Pastor Yuk Yee preached from Prov 1:7 “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’, he asked us in his words , ‘why after being afraid of God, you will begin to love Him’

I was stumped.

Firstly, he actually distills the essence of the sermon. Which means that every parent should not be too discouraged if you think that your children are cruising through the sermons. God’s Spirit is working mightily! Keep praying.

Secondly, how to explain the concept of love and fear to a five year plus boy. Aren’t they suppose to be mutually exclusive?
I tried to explain using the situation of a boy meeting the Prime Minister, the sense of awe and respect that is overwhelming. I think I too fail miserably.
Anyone have a better analogy?

For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Eph 5:23-24

I now come to a topic that may ruffle a few feministic feathers and may seem to be pandering to MCPism (Male Chauvinistic  Pig).

But our doctrine should not originate from man but from God’s words.

And what does it say?

Our text above says that man is the head in the marriage. Note that it does not say that man ought to be the head. In other words, every man is the head of his wife (as Christ is the head of the church) regardless he is behaving like one. Obedience or disobedience on the part of the husband does not make him a head or not a head. He is one regardless- he is either an obedient head or a disobedient head. He can be an obedient head who tells the truth about Chirst in His sacrificial love or he can be a head that lies about Him through selfishness but silence is not an option.

And since he is the head of his wife the same way Christ is the head of the Church, we can learn about our marriage by looking to the marriage between Christ and the Church.

More on this…..

³¹“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”^{[c] 32}This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.³³However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Eph 5:31-33

The bible describes the union of a man and a woman as a great, profound mystery. In what sense is it a great mystery? In the sense that every marriage is imaging the relationship between Christ and the Church.

What am I saying?

In Scritpture, Christ is known as the Groom and the Church the Bride. The great marriage feast shall be on the day when Christ will return for His Bride. The relationship between this Groom and Bride is one of love and respect. (Eph 5:22-29)

Since our marriage is a tiny picture of that great Relationship, the thing to ask of us is what kind of message is it conveying? Depending on how we treat our wive and how our wive respond to us;

1) It can proclaim the truth about Christ and the Church rightly as stated above if there is love and submission

or

2) It can speak the lies  of that Relationship if we treat each other shabbily

The only option our marriage does not have is to maintain silence.

Genesis 2:24:  “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

The closest relationship between two humans must certainly be that between husband and wife as imaged by the ‘one flesh’ reality. Mature Christian parents should be training their sons and daughters up for it and not to ‘take ransom’ of their children’s emotion as some parents tend to behave. Parents should be training up their son to leave them and set up his own family under God and if the child is a daughter, to train her to be given away to be cleaved to her husband.

Immature parents tend to behave otherwise. They insist on emphasizing on the relationship of parent/child over that of the husband/wife. Especially when the age old conflicts arise between the mother–in-law (MIL) and daughter-in-law (DIL), who does the poor husband side with? The issue is not less helped when the husband is the elder son or the only son.

One scriptural way in looking at this is not to confuse honour for our parent with love for our spouse. Some parents insist that their married child love them and honour their spouse. But this is not the biblical mandate. Having state this, it does not give passport for the married children to ignore everything their parent says from now and listen only to the spouse. But what it does is to change the direction of the child’s orientation. Before marriage, the child orientation is to the parents. After marriage, his/her orientation must be to the spouse. Married couple first priority must be to each other followed by other duties such as filial, sibling or parental duty, etc. Children added to the married couples later can often blur that distinction. Nevertheless, this principle must be ever held up before both husband and wife.

Does this mean that we can’t stay over with our parents after marriage? What if we have yet to save enough for that new house? What if our parents are medically unfit and require constant care and therefore would like to move in with us? What if no one looks after our children while we work? And the permutation can go on and on.

The issue at stake is not so much with sharing the same roof. The real issue is whose headship is reigning. Before marriage, we are under our father’s headship and therefore submission is appropriately rendered. But if the newly wed is to move in with the guy’s parents, this creates 2 issues, 1) the husband is not exercising his headship as he is not the head of the household, 2) which headship should the wife submit to now, her father-in-law or her husband?

The situation is different if the married couple were to invite their parent to stay with them for all the valid reasons. In this case, the husband is the head of the family and the parents understand that they are under the son’s headship. What is the difference then, you may ask, are they not all living together in either of the above cases?

The difference is in the word ‘maturity’. The husband needs to grow up to maturity. Part of that involves exercising his headship in his new family. That means instituting new and godly culture and habits in his family under God. All members within the household should submit to the culture and elderly parents who live with them ought to recognize and respect it. When that happens, there will be a lot less problems with important issues like MIL/ DIL relationship, grandchildren discipline and so on.

“You have heard the law that says, ‘A man can divorce his wife by merely giving her a written notice of divorce.’^[a] 32 But I say that a man who divorces his wife, unless she has been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman also commits adultery. ” Matt 5:31-32

“The Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence.” Mal. 2:16

Someone once describes wedding as a wonderful doorway to a grand mansion which we call marriage. Some couples spent so much money creating the most grandeur doorway but ended up with a really dilapidated mansion. On the other end, some couples have a less than decent doorway but the mansion in which the doorway lead to is strong and beautiful.

Regardless of the price tag of the doorway, once you enter this mansion, you find that there are virtually no exits!

So we would do well if we bear the following words,” Before marriage, we need to keep our eyes open. After marriage, we need to keep them shut.”

As one puritan says,” First we choose our love, then we love our choice.”

Not once but twice,  was I told my blog is a little heavy by some well meaning friend and relative. As I was pondering how best to spruce up my blog, I thought maybe good to introduce to you the ZEST of our life: my junior! I would not hesitate to say that he has inherited my wife brain, but I  do hope that he has not inherited my idiosyncracies……

My wife was up in Malaysia last week and I started listening to the church camp sermon in the car. I am usually hooked on the radio for traffic alert so that I can try to avert the ‘disastrous’ route in order to send her to her work place on time. However, this week afforded me some luxury.

The sermon was on ‘Do not accumulate” and I played it again and again until I have lost count how many times I have played it. Pastor David Cook is certainly one who has been well schooled to bring us such solemn warning and solid biblical teaching. It certainly came as a fitting reminder to myself, especially in this climate of seeming affluence and plenty. What with the bull running all over the markets,  rosy economy statistics, red hot real estate activity, enviable graduate job entry level pay….Our MM says that we are entering into a period of golden age.

For those who has missed out or has forgotten, I strongly encourage you to tune in to the church website www.arpc.net for a nice awakening set amidst this era of hard core consumerism and materialism.

The phrase that keeps replaying in my head is” Money is a good servant but a rotten Master, convert earthly wealth into heavenly currencies!”

For those who knew me better, it has always been my desire to be an entrepreneur.  How to balance this teaching against the entrepreneurial code of self absorption and exertion in building up the venture, much wisdom and prayerful seeking are required. My brethren, pray with me that this earthly endearvour shall not obstruct my heavenly vision.

In an era of dazzling wealth, profounce affluence and breathtaking working and family pace, we as christians can often be blinded and numbed to spiritual realities and our christian duties.

Let our prayers ever be as with Jonathan Edwards, the greatest christian philosopher who ever walked in New England “O Lord, Stamp Eternity on my eyeballs!”

I was recently reading on Deuteronomy in preparation for what I thought was the next series to be studied in our church sermon series. I think I was mistaken. Nevertheless, the book of Deuteronomy is a book rich in God’s teaching and I must say I am greatly encouraged by the sharing of Pastor Wilson in his blog blog and mablog exposition. As he aptly commented that oftentimes we may have forgotten who are the enemies that God wants the Israelites to chase out of the land of Canaan, no thanks to the children bible stories book portrayal.

The land of Canaan is really a land full of giants as he wrote in his blog. Pore through the entire chapter 2. See the various Giants with different names and dwellings. Note the way scripture narrates how Israel cousins such as the  Edomites. Ammonites and the Moabites drove some of these Giants out of the land in order to occupy the land God gave them.

Observe especially Israel unbelief with her God’s help and command in contrast to her cousin victories over the Giants. If these people whose God is not their Lord can do it, why is Israel doubting Jehovah who possesses the world and all its fulness?

This also brought into particular focus later battles with giants such as the story of puny David overcoming a 2.4m tall giant named Goliath and  the greatest Battle of them all: “the binding of the strong man by Jesus our Lord at the cross”.

My brethren, the world in which God called us to live in may also be one full of Giants. Perhaps it may not be in the physical sense. It can be those problems or challenges that we think are too strong for us. Take heart and be encouraged!

Unbelief will say the giants are too strong for us as the Israelites did in Deuteronomy. Faith will  say that the giants are too big to be missed (in the words of Pastor Wilson)

Our God is a God who delights in fighting giants and makes a spectator of them. Trust your God and Be Thou do likewise! Amen