Giving My Wife A Bath?

[Guest]

Hi all. I'd like to get your thoughts (especially the ladies') on this passage in Ephesians: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" Ephesians 5:25-27

Typically, this is a springboard verse for preachers, who go on on to say that men should read the Bible to their wives. At least, this is the way I have heard it presented most often.

Is this a correct application?

How could this have applied to countless Christians, who did not possess the writings?

Would oral traditions have sufficed (a discussion of Christ and His teachings, akin to families speaking the word of God along the way, a la Deut. 6:6-7 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.")

I'm not advocating not spending time in the word with our spouses, but ladies, do you think the guys should read the Bible to you? Is it a bit condescending? Just want to know the woman's perspective, especially as so many women know Scripture as much, and better than men.

Isn't it also the responsibilty of women to read and study Scripture on their own?

I hope these aren't fuzzy questions.

Thanks,
JD

[Guest]

Hi JD, I'll give it a go. However, since I'm neither married nor divorced, I feel like I don't really belong in this forum.

I dont remember hearing this passage used to say that men should read the Bible to their wives; it could be that I wasn't paying attention if it was.
That seems like a pretty simplistic application to me. To me the passage is showing how much Christ was willing to do for the Church as an example of how much a man is to love his wife.

I agree with you that it would have been a pretty difficult thing to do if a man didn't possess the scriptures, or if he was illiterate. I guess oral tradition would have sufficed, if we're assuming that the application you mentioned is an important thing to do.

"Is it a bit condescending?" Well, I guess so if the man is sure that I wouldn't read the Bible on my own, or that I couldn't possibly understand without his interpretation to follow. Or if he kept pestering me with that proverb about living in the corner of the housetop...

Actually, I really love to listen to people read aloud, especially if they are good at it. I find it really soothing, so I would enjoy being read the scriptures. I just don't think that it would be a "cleansing by the washing with wather through the word" like it seems you are saying that some preachers are advocating. I'm lazy enough to wish it would be, but I doubt that it is.

Since I'm not married, I guess I'll just have to keep reading for myself anyway.

Michelle

[Guest]

Hi JD

My former husband used to read the word to me on various occasions. When he was honestly doing it in a loving way and to support maybe a struggle I was having at the time or something I asked him about, or even sciptures from the "songs" it was great.

But there were times when he felt as my "head" he needed to discipline me some how in something he felt I was doing, if his attitude was off , it wasn't received by me very favorably. I didn't feel it was his place to discipline me if he "felt" I was off, with out really hearing me out first..I was a wife who walked side by side with him.I read scripture deeply myself and showed in my walk it was very important to me seperatly so I was always searching to better myself

.I think some men get a little lost in wanting to be a womans head and try to force stuff on a woman( being harsh) and it ends up being a neg. not a positive outcome. I think most men honesly due it with a good motivation , they just are not in synch with the real way to do it yet ( bring help in discipline). It takes us all time to understand another and see them as an individual, and know how to approach them and fill their needs under God

. In our neg. circumstances after we would actually talk about whatever he was reading in me personally , he found he was seeing or interpruting what I was doing as wrong. It was alot better if we talked the problem or whatever out first hand and then if a problem was obvious etc. scripture really was great and uplifting. And it was also soothing to hear scriptures that supported us working the problem out as 2 Christians too.

I quess I would add, I think in reading scripture to your wife has alot to do with your motivation behind it and true honesty why you are doing it.When it is done in peace its very soothing and I think the idea of being washed by it is a really good way to describe it .

Kind of brings fresh air to your soul after a good rain.! glow

[Guest]

Nowhere in the Bible does "the word" or "the word of God" refer to the Bible itself. This idea developed in Protestantism after the Bible was considered to have been either dictated to the writers by God, or verbally, completely, and exclusively inspired by God.

In the Old Testament, "the word of God" referred to just that --- a revelation of what God spoke. For example, "The word of God came to Isaiah." Then Isaiah or some other prophet would speak what he heard or experienced in the revelation, and would frequently begin with "Thus says Yahweh..."

Jesus was the chief revelation of God to man, and so He is called "The Word of God" in John 1.

In the book of Acts, "the word of God" refers to the gospel in every instance in which the expression occurs.

As I see it, in the expression "cleansing her by the washing with water through the word", "the word" means one of the following:

1. The revelation the husband receives from God specifically in reference to his wife's needs. He then conveys this revelation to his wife, and if she responds appropriately she is cleansed.

or

2. The gospel. The gospel requirement is to repent and submit to Christ, to die to self, and thus be saved from sin. This requirement needs to be continually repeated in the life of a disciple. Paul said, "I die daily." If the husband leads his wife in the gospel truth, and she responds appropriately, she will be cleansed from sin.

3. The Living Word ---- Jesus Himself. The husband in some way leads his wife to trust in Jesus in such a way that He cleanses her.

[Guest]

Paidion, so are widows like Glow and me out of luck?

Edited to add:
I thought about it some more and realized the opposite would be true. That single women would have the advantage of recieving revelation directly, not having to wait for her husband to speak.

Also:
(inadvertent humor) when you said this:

...and if she responds appropriately she is cleansed.

It put me in mind of the game show Jeopardy when the contestants don't get credit if the response is inappropriate because it's not in the form of a question.

[Guest]

Here is a sermon I prepared for fathers day just gone on this very passage.

Hope it is helpful. God bless, David.

Sermon Fathers Day

Being fathers day today, I did think about doing something light and fluffy. Then I thought “the heck with it, I'm no good at light and fluffy anyway”. But this is about fatherhood – in a round-about way.

So I decided to find the hardest passage I could possibly find that relates in some way to being a father, and jump in head first.

Then about half way through the prep, I asked myself “Dave why do you do this to yourself?” But by then it was too late, and there was no time to change my mind. So here we go...

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 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.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to 26 make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to 28 love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 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." 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

I think that this is one of the most misunderstood, and misapplied passages of scripture in the New Testament. It has been used to encourage behaviour that is precisely the opposite of what it truly preaches.

I have heard stories of abusive husbands where the husband [who claims to be a Christian] has had elders of a church come around because of the kefuffle, and tell the woman that there's nothing they can do because the man is the head of the household and she ought to submit to him.

I generally have a high opinion of John Wesley and his brother, but it would seem he was strongly influenced by his time and his culture. I don't really blame him too much. I'm influenced by my my time and culture too. But this is what his commentary had to say:

John Wesley's Commentary Says:
In the following directions concerning relative duties, the inferiors are all along placed before the superiors, because the general proposition is concerning submission; and inferiors ought to do their duty, whatever their superiors do. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands - Unless where God forbids. Otherwise, in all indifferent things, the will of the husband is a law to the wife. As unto the Lord - The obedience a wife pays to her husband is at the same time paid to Christ himself; he being head of the wife, as Christ is head of the church.

As I have said, I generally have a lot of time for John Wesley, but on this matter, I think he is flat out wrong. He is wrong on several counts – for a start he talks of people as being inferiors and superiors – which I understand was a common way of thinking in 18th century England, but it is entirely foreign to the Jesus described in the Bible.

Furthermore, he seems to emphasise that the weaker party in this particular relationship [for in the 18th century women were very definitely the weaker party both legally and socially], should busy themselves about their duty to submit regardless of what the stronger party should be doing.

I note that on verse 21 which says we should submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, Wesley's commentary says precisely nothing.

Furthermore he makes no comment that the duty of husbands should be to love their wives regardless of whether their wives submit to them which I think he ought to say if he wanted [at least] to be consistent, is that men must sacrificially love their wives regardless of whether or not they submit to them.

To be fair to Wesley he does say this:

Even as Christ loved the church - Here is the true model of conjugal affection. With this kind of affection, with this degree of it, and to this end, should husbands love their wives.

Further on he says:

As their own bodies - That is, as themselves. He that loveth his wife loveth himself - Which is not a sin, but an indisputable duty.

But again he makes no such comment that it is the duty of husbands to love regardless of whether their wives do what he perceives to be their duty as he is so explicit in doing for the duty of the wife. In doing this, he fails to put this passage in the context and instead reads his own cultural bias into the text.

While these days generally speaking we aren't as explicit as this in the 21st century Western church, nonetheless there has been a strong movement amongst Christian circles to emphasise the part that says wives should submit, but a fairly cursory treatment of the part that says that husbands must love. Indeed, I have heard it preached in the past that the way a man should “love” his wife is by being her boss.

The NIV headings puts the “Husbands and wives” heading AFTER verse 21 – as though verse 21 were unrelated to what comes after it.

The passage however has a very explicit and very different idea of how the husband should love his wife.

The passage says:
love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

The way that this passage has been mishandled is to emphasise the bit that says wives are to submit to their husbands, without either explaining or trying to explain the context in which that is said, or indeed WHY it is said. Indeed, Paul spends far more time talking about what the guy is supposed to do than what the woman is supposed to do. Men submit by loving sacrificially – by giving themselves up – by putting aside their own needs to care for and look after their wife.

Now I wanted to go over why I think Paul wrote this passage. Why on earth would Paul tell women to submit to their husbands? Think about it – women in the first century were not generally given the option to not submit to their husbands. Indeed they were essentially their husbands property. And prior to being their husbands property, they were their father's property – to give away or not as the father saw fit.

The need for a woman's consent in marriage was actually something brought in by the influence of Christianity centuries later. It was certainly not common or the default arrangement in the 1st century.

Why then was Paul even having to say this in his Epistle to the Ephesians?

I am convinced that the reason that he wrote that is based on the other teaching in this passage – that of a man loving his wife, “as Christ loved the church”. And he didn't give the men the option of choosing the way in which they sought to emulate Christ. For example, a man might say, I will emulate Christ by being the boss of my wife, as Christ is the boss of the church. No, Paul was very specific about what aspect of Christ's relationship to the church he wanted them to emulate in their relationship to their wives.

Verse 25 says: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”.

The aspect of Christ's relationship to the Church to that Paul was commanding the men to emulate was that aspect of Christ that was self-sacrificial – putting her needs ahead of his own.

He didn't say Submit to your wives because the men were already doing it – indeed that part was already implied by the opening remarks that we should submit to one another out of reverence for Christ – and their wives were being tempted to treat them as weak men – and despising them as a result. To those women he exhorted them to respect their husband – as he says in his summing up. The man must love his wife and the woman must respect her husband.

Why should he exhort them to respect their husbands except that in a husband loving his wife “as Christ loved the church” she might be tempted to disrespect him – that is, to think of him as a weak man because of perhaps what she has been brought up with. A woman used to arrogant men ordering her about, being suddenly presented with a man who loves like Jesus might be tempted to think him weak and therefore despise him. Therefore, it is not to say that she ought to “respect his authority” so much as respect him as a man even though his behaviour – that of sacrificial love that tends towards slavish devotion to her - might tempt you not to do so.

Jesus himself though in every sense God incarnate, and worthy of worship, and it being our duty to obey him – said of himself that he came “not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many”. Therefore it is the duty of the husband to love his wife by serving her.

Helping her to grow. If self-esteem is her problem – and without wanting to make it into a generalisation, it is my personal observation that self-esteem issues seem to be very common amongst women – then the husband's job is to do whatever he can to help her overcome that problem. She is greatly esteemed by God, therefore it is healthy and right for her to esteem herself.

This is not however, cause for men to wrap up their wives in cotton wool. Maturity and adulthood is about being strong within yourself, therefore if a man is to help his wife by

...cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless

By saying “washing with water through the word” the idea is that the building up of the wife is through the truth – the truth about who she is before God. That is, a greatly esteemed valuable person for whom Jesus gave his life as a demonstration of the depth of his profound understanding of her worth.

Then the aim is that the woman become mature. Note that the passage describes how the work of Jesus in the church is that the church be radiant, without stain, wrinkle or blemish but holy and blameless. We are not there yet, but the implication seems to be that we be like that in and of ourselves. Not forever needing continual washing but to get to a point where we are in and of ourselves holy and blameless.

As it relates to wives and husbands then, I read it as saying that the aim should be that the woman be self-confident, self-capable – not in a position of having to forever rely on her husband to fill some need but to be mature and strong in her own right.

Remember, Paul was writing this to a fundamentally misogynistic society – probably not unlike the society that the Taliban created and continues to work towards - which is generally not conducive to a woman gaining a healthy sense of herself and her own ability as an adult. In that context, Paul is instructing husbands to build up their wives so that they are mature, and strong, without weaknesses and hangup – no stains or blemishes on her personality that build up from a lifetime in a society that does not consider her as worthwhile as a man.

To drive home my point, I will point out that Paul goes on to say that men are to treat their wives with the same love and respect that they would treat themselves.

In this same way, husbands ought to 28 love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body.

So what he is saying in effect is that you should give up on hating women and your wives in particular [as was the culture] - instead you should love your wife like your own body - that is – the same as you would a man. Men don't hate their own body, therefore don't hate your wife! He is attacking the essentially misogynistic world-view of the 1st century Don't hate wives, love wives. Love wives, like Jesus loves the church. Giving himself up for her.

So then, the man must love sacrificially putting his wife's interests before his own, and likewise the woman must also respect, and esteem and submit to her husband.

This only works well if BOTH partners play their role.

If you have a man loving sacrificially, and the woman treating him with contempt and manipulating him, the relationship gets really unhealthy really quickly. If you have a woman submitting and being devoted to her husband while the husband orders her about and acts like he is her boss, then again, the relationship looks really ugly really fast.

If you have a man devoted in love to his wife, adoring her, building her up, thinking of her best interests, laying down his interests for her, and a wife who respects her husband and adores him and is concerned also for his interests, and greatly esteeming him, it looks beautiful.

Now it is father's day, so here is what this has to do with being a father.

The kind of husband you are is the single most important aspect of what kind of father you are. How a man treats his wife has more impact on your children than any other single thing. Therefore if you want to be a good father, start by being a good husband and love your wife by giving yourself up for her sake. Putting her interests above your own.

And your children will be forever blessed with an emotional stability and strength that they would never otherwise have. They will understand God better, they will understand love better, they will see abusive relationships and recoil in horror rather than thinking that abuse is normal.

Happy fathers day, and may God bless you in your relationships with love.

[Guest]

Dbuddrige,

Thanks for sharing that with us!