In church you might have heard passages that say men should honor and love their wives. These passages are true, and right. You may have even heard verses that tell women they should submit to their husbands. But these three passages are rarely if ever taught:

“For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands; just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord…”

I Peter 3: 5-6 (HCSB)

“A man, in fact, should not cover his head, because he is God’s image and glory, but woman is man’s glory…”

I Corinthians 11:7 (HCSB)

“Man was not created for woman, but woman for man.”

I Corinthians 11:9 (HCSB)

The reason these passages are not taught in our churches, is because they emphasize three concepts about man and woman, and marriage that are VERY politically incorrect in our modern American culture:

The mastery of the husband over the wife (marriage seen as a master-servant relationship)

Men and women are not equal, man is the image and glory God, woman is the glory of man

Man was not created for woman, but woman was created for man

These passages spit in the face of our modern American ideals of equality and fairness. How can anyone be master of over anyone else? No one could have been made for anyone else. This is by definition slavery, and we won’t have any part of it. So these passages have to go, because they don’t match up with our romantic ideals about marriage.

The Scriptures warn of times like these:

“Proclaim the message; persist in it whether convenient or not; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

I Timothy 4:2-4 (HCSB)

 

You men just want this so you can control women and make your lives better!

Many Christians will either try and explain away these passages, or say they were for a different time. They will attack the very foundations of Scripture if they must, in order to take away the power and meaning of these passages.

Those few who still stand for God’s Word, and his design and purpose for man and woman are accused of wanting to control women for their own selfish gains. But the truth of God is this – when a man leads, provides and protects his woman, and his family, when he honors his wife and loves her, and when she submits to and serves his needs, and the needs of the her family – this is when we will have peace, God’s peace, and this is when we will have order, as opposed to chaos in marriages and families we find today.

Our new romantic based, feeling based, equality based marriages have not fared so well in modern times. Marriage rates have declined, and of those who do get married, more than 50 percent divorce. When will we realize that role based marriage, as God designed it, is right not only for us as individuals, but for us as a culture and as a nation?

We must rid feminism and egalitarianism from our marriages, our families, our churches and our nation, one marriage at a time.