Summary of passage: Wives submit to your husbands for the husband is the head as Christ is the head of the church (his body) and Savior. The church submits to Christ so wives submit to husbands in everything.
Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and died for it and made it holy through the word and his blood. Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies (I’m not for sure this is a good analogy this day and age when many people detest their looks) and feed and care for it as Christ did the church. He will be united to his wife in one flesh. Husband love wife as self. Wife respect husband.
Children, obey your parents. Honor your father and mother. Fathers, bring your children up in the Lord. Slaves obey your earthly masters as you would obey Christ from the heart. Serve as if you were serving the Lord for you will be rewarded for the good you do.
Masters treat slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them for God is watching and He doesn’t play favorites.
Questions:
12) Personal Question. My answer: Our goal in life is to be Christ-like. Here, we learn Christ is the head of the Church so the Church must submit to him. Christ, the leader, gave himself up for the Church (he died for us). Christ fed and cared for the church (raised it essentially) and then sacrificed everything he had for it.
How we should live: not for ourselves but for others. Helping to raise up others in Christ and sacrificing for them. We must submit to the leadership as they guide us and care for us.
13) Personal Question. My answer: Respect is missing these days. We let pride get in the way, thinking we know it all, when we don’t. Respect hierarchy. If every act was out of love, peace would reign
Conclusions: I felt these two questions were vague. I think BSF didn’t want to offend anyone but I would have preferred more specifics. This is a hard passage to digest and I think we could have chewed on it more. I hope we do so in the lecture.
Like the word submit. When most people hear this word, they immediately rebel and turn the other way. Yet we submit our will every day. When the light turns red, we stop the car. When we apply for a driver’s license, we are submitting our will not to have one. When we submit our taxes, we are acknowledging the government’s authority over us.
Submit according to Webster’s Dictionary means, “to yield to governance or authority; to defer or consent to abide by the opinion or authority of another”.
We submit to God every day by recognizing his authority. Submitting DOES NOT MEAN inferiority. Just because we follow someone else’s authority, doesn’t mean they are better than us. We follow our bosses at work because they have been placed above us.
Next, we submit “to your husbands” not to every man in society. We unequivocally submit to God. However, we do not to others. We are honoring God when we submit to our husbands.
There is a defined role for the wife and a defined role for the husband. He is the head. In turn, he protects, shields, nourishes, cherishes, and loves us. Forever.
That’s my take anyways.
