Building up believers and the New Testament church

They Two Shall Be One

Submission - The Only Way to Fullness

Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:24, "Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." In the relationship of Christ and the church, we never see the church bringing Christ up to its desires, but always Christ bringing the church to its completeness. The church is being transformed into His image. To be brought to this place, the church must be subject in all things. The church can never become the head. So if the same life of God moving in the husband is going to bring the woman to a fullness in God's oneness, she must be subject in all things to her husband. Always remember, we never submit because of what we can gain, but because of love. Love is blind to self-interests.

We can always entrust ourselves to love, knowing that we will only find ourselves in God's highest purpose. We must know that love has no selfish motives. Love always gives. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:22 that the wife submits herself to her own husband as unto the Lord. She must have faith that works by love, for this cannot by done if there is any selfishness in the heart. It is only by faith that we overcome this world. Faith must move in love, for faith without love is nothing.

This relationship has great importance in God's plan. Paul states in verse 23, "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church: and He is the savior of the body." This order of oneness and submission can only bring an expression of His love. This relationship can only be fully enjoyed as we experience it. We must lose our individuality and allow His life to find expression in and through us.

For the husband to love his wife as himself, he must see his wife as his own flesh. She has become as his body. They are one flesh. Now the husband, in the life of God, must give himself, even as Christ gave Himself for the church and then allowed His life to have expression in a many-membered body. The wife must find fulfillment as the "body," with her husband as head. She must be cherished and nourished, because this is the expression of the life of God. Only the real life of God, love, can make the marriage relationship the expression of God's great plan.

"Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered" (1 Peter 3:7). Knowledge can only come as we walk in the life of God and know the outworking of His life within us. When God says, "Husbands, love your wives," we can see where He has put the responsibility for a lifting up to bring oneness in the relationship.

To sum it all up, the husband must shoulder the responsibility of his place of authority as the head of woman. The man must recognize the woman as the weaker member, but also that they together, in oneness, are heirs of the grace of life. Love manifested through the husband is what brings the wife up into oneness. Then, for love to be received by the wife, she must submit to that love which God has said must flow through the husband.