Many sincere Christian Bible readers and church attendees, along with those who’ve never set their fingers on a Bible, have a warped, immature or agenda-ized “understanding” of the Biblical, and thus, Godly Husband.
Many who have never read the Bible, much less have a desire to do so, will perpetuate their negative assumption about the Bible’s revealed Word on the role and purpose of the Husband in order to justify their animosity towards Christians, and faith itself.
Others, who claim to be followers of Christ and the Bible, go along with a pastor or denomination’s teaching on the Husband and err in not testing what the pastor or denomination is teaching against what the Bible actually says and teaches (Test everything: 1 Thessalonians 5:21).
So, in order to help set the record straight, I quote John R.W. Stott, who has written what my intensive study not only of the Bible, but of this specific issue, would affirm as the best exposition I have yet to read on what, exactly, the Bible is saying regarding the husband:
“…we must be very careful how we interpret the husband’s ‘authority.’ The word is by no means a synonym for authoritarianism. Nor can it be taken to express any ‘superiority’ of the male or ‘inferiority’ of the female. For—centuries in advance of his time—Paul emphatically declared that in Christ ‘there is neither…male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28). He also drew a profound analogy between the relationship of husband and wife in marriage and the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Godhead (1 Cor. 11:3). This suggests that the husband’s ‘headship’ is not incompatible with their equality, any more than is the Father’s ‘headship’ over Christ. Perhaps the husband’s authority should be understood in terms rather of responsibility than of autocracy, the responsibility of a loving care.” (emphases mine)
John R.W. Stott
No comments:
Post a Comment