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HUSBAND AND WIFE
WORKING TOGETHER IN THE LORD
We live together in a society which
has ever greater social problems and it is inevitable that
they will affect us in our lives as brethren and sisters in
the Lord. The difficulties of bringing up children, of finding
secure work, of drug abuse and its consequences—these and
other problems are all greater than they were a generation ago
because the world is becoming a more godless place.
But we see these problems most clearly
within marriage. When fewer than 40% of weddings in the UK
take place in church and the divorce rate is over 50%, we know
that the solemnity and permanence of marriage is being debased
and that we shall not remain untouched by this within the
brotherhood. As we struggle with the practical issues raised,
then perhaps at times we have become preoccupied with coping
with failure rather than positively teaching our young
brethren and sisters the beauty of the divine ideals about
marriage in the Lord which are so wonderfully set out in
Scripture. We see these at the very beginning of the book of
Genesis.
The Primary Loyalty
We are told that it was on the 6th day when
the Lord made
both Adam and Eve. As Adam opened his eyes, the first being he
would see would be the Angel of the
Lord who had
breathed into him the breath of life. His first relationship
then was to be with the
Lord who had
made him, and nothing which followed should supersede that. So
also with Eve, Adam was deeply asleep whilst she was formed;
she too would see the Angel of the
Lord before
anyone else, would speak her first words to him, and would
recognise her responsibility to the God who formed her. How
simple these things are, yet they speak to us of the
fundamental principle of marriage: it is to be in the
Lord. When man
and woman came together in the beginning they each brought to
their new relationship a primary loyalty and responsibility to
God which they then shared with each other.
The Lord Jesus, in Matthew 19:5, tells us
that it was God who first said the words, “For this cause
shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his
wife: and they twain shall be one flesh”. God spoke those
words in the beginning when He brought Eve to Adam. This first
marriage was a formal affair; there was a solemnity about it
as God brought the bride to her husband and presented her to
him. The idea of just living together, as practised in the
world, has no Scriptural basis at all. We see also from the
New Testament what Eve’s reaction was to the occasion, when we
compare the following passages:
“And the rib, which
the
Lord God had
taken from man, made he a woman, and
brought her unto
the man.
And Adam said,
This is
now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called
Woman.”
(Genesis
2:22–23)
“He first findeth
his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the
Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.
And he brought him
to Jesus.
And when Jesus beheld him, he said,
Thou art
Simon the son of Jona:
thou shalt be
called
Cephas.”
(John
1:41–42)
We know that this passage in John is a
prophecy which was fulfilled later in the ministry of Jesus.
“He saith unto
them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And
Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon
Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,
but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee,
That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church”.
(Matthew
16:15–18)
It was when Peter confessed that Jesus was
the Son of God that the Lord changed his name. The rock was
not Peter himself but the faith he showed when he said these
words: in a sense in these two passages he represents the
faithfulness of all true disciples when they discern the Son
of God. When we then put these Scriptures together, perhaps we
see what Eve thought when she was brought to Adam: she saw him
as the Son of God, the one to whom she should look for
leadership and guidance in their relationship together. She
recognised him as the one who was to be her Lord, as the
ecclesia recognises Jesus.
We need now to think about the sequence of
events on this 6th day: we can put them together like this:
• Adam is
first formed.
• He is given
the commandment of chapter 2:17 which defines his position as
one who must obey the God who made him.
• All is not
yet very good, for he needs a help suitable for him. It is not
good that the man should be alone.
• Eve is made
and brought to Adam.
• God gives
them both the commandment to be fruitful and fill the earth
(1:28).
• The first
day of their life together begins that evening.
Faith and Worship First
This timing is of profound importance—their
coming together was on the very first Sabbath which commenced
at 6pm on the day of their marriage. Their life together began
with a day of worship and praise to the Almighty who had made
them; it did not begin with daily work but with the things of
the Lord. This
is why marriage in the Truth should be so different from that
in the world. Husband and wife each bring to marriage a
personal faith in the Almighty which is enriched by sharing it
together as we worship with each other and live the Truth
together. Our marriage becomes stronger and more healthy the
more we share together a common faith, the more we read the
Word of God together, the more we discuss it, meditate on it,
and pray about it together. One of the finest privileges we
have is to pass the bread and wine to our own husband or wife
on a Sunday, to share the unique intimacy of being at the
Lord’s table together: it helps, more than anything else we
do, to make us spiritually one as husband and wife.
But we also see from this timing the
different responsibilities of husband and wife in marriage.
That first commandment from the
Lord was made
to Adam; Eve was not yet formed. Who would tell her not to eat
of that tree? Who would explain why? Surely it was Adam’s
responsibility to do this. His failure to pass on God’s word
to his wife explains, in part, why the responsibility for sin
was his and not Eve’s. On the other hand, the fact that the
man is the head of the woman does not mean that husbands
should be domineering, non-listening heads of their
households, with the wife subservient in every way. It means
that the responsibility for ensuring that God’s word is read
and expounded in their home rests ultimately with the husband
as it did in the beginning. The teaching of the Apostle Paul
on this subject makes it quite clear that this responsibility
for leadership goes back before the fall to creation itself.
It should be a matter of concern to us when modern thinking
about the equality of the sexes influences us both at home and
in the ecclesia to lay aside this principle.
However, Adam needed help in his work; he
could not achieve these things alone. We know from a
comparison of Genesis 1 and Malachi 2 what this help was
needed for.
“Yet ye say,
Wherefore? Because the
Lord hath
been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against
whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion,
and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had
he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might
seek a godly seed.”
(Malachi
2:14–15)
“So God created man
in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said
unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish (fill) the
earth, and subdue it.”
(Genesis
1:27–28)
The work of man and woman was to have
children in their marriage and to bring them up in the nurture
and admonition of the
Lord. Their offspring were to be sons of God also, a
godly seed, brought up to honour and worship God in their
lives. Neither could do this alone; each provided what the
other could not supply; a single parent family by choice was
not the divine ideal. In turn these children were to leave the
Garden of Eden and spread out progressively until the whole
earth was filled with the praise and honor of God, and it
needed Adam’s spiritual leadership with Eve’s support and help
to achieve this.
So the whole emphasis on marriage in
Genesis 2 is on working and worshipping together in the
Lord. If we can
teach our youngsters this and they see us practicing it
ourselves, then the institution of marriage amongst us will
become far healthier. Conversely, if worship is simply an
add-on to the everyday things of life and marriage, then we
are impoverished in our relationships. Today there are more
ways than ever in which husbands and wives can work together:
• Sunday
School teaching
• Correspondence
work for the CBM or CIL
• Pastoral
work within the ecclesia or Homes
• Bible
reading and study (this writer benefits greatly as a speaker
from his wife’s input).
• Campaigns
or CBM visits.
—to name but a few.
Discipleship through Marriage
But above all we know that our relationship
in marriage speaks to us of the relationship of Christ and his
ecclesia. It is in marriage that we learn to practice the
things of Christ, to practice forgiveness and selflessness, to
learn the true depths of love, to put someone else first, to
subdue anger, to restrain a hasty word. If in our marriage we
cannot learn these things then where else can we practice
these qualities of discipleship? It is in the sharing of these
things, which help each of us to be Christ-like in our lives,
that we become truly one with our partner in our marriage.
The Lord Jesus himself alludes to these
things, and looks back to the divine principle given in the
beginning, in his great prayer in John 17:
“I have glorified
thee on the earth:
I have finished the
work
which thou gavest me to do.”
“For
I have given unto
them the words which thou gavest me;
and they have received them, and have known surely that I came
out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send
me.”
“That
they all may be one;
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent
me.”
Unlike the first Adam, the last Adam did
not neglect the work given to him by his Father, of sharing
the commandments of God with his bride. They were shared
perfectly, absolutely, given in total selflessness that the
bride may be one with the bridegroom.
This, then, is the divine ideal of
marriage, the principle we should share with all who
contemplate this life-long partnership, that their marriages
might be enriched and strengthened by worshipping and working
together in the Lord.
These are the positive things we need to concentrate on in
order to uphold and strengthen the principle of marriage which
is so much under attack from the world we live in.
Andrew E.
Walker
Source: The
Christadelphian : Volume 136. pp. 11-13.
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