Real Submission Vs Real Love (Marriage Chronicles)

Courtsey: happymarriages.com

Jambo! Jambo! Heeeeeeee it’s been a while since I was here. Truth is I missed you. This woman has been super busy and a lot has grown and is glowing inside her soul.

I will share with you soon (winking to myself)

I know you all are doing just fine please chose to grow daily. 

Moving on. A couple a weeks ago together with a girlfriend we visited a pastor friend of ours we had not seen in a while. In the discussions my friends lamented that men want women to submit and yet they themselves never love women or even appreciate them for all they do for them or the families. She further went on to ask between love and submission which came first. Her argument being that for her to submit to her husband he must love her first.

 I’m not married yet but this conversation was very interesting and the arguments around it I had a good laugh. But there were some pretty good insights I got from this discussion.In most normal if not all marriages the husband provides while the wife takes care. This is the same even in courtships. Its culture and everyone says it’s normal and okay and a man who doesn’t provide has a problem justifying his man-ness to  even his fellow men. In the course of the discussions Ephesians 5: 25-33 came up.

Also read:  Love and Lust (Valentine Edition) 

 I have heard of the Ephesians 5 man before and every lady especially those in churches are looking for this man(yeah rolling eyes 😉😉*). But the pastor’s thoughts on the whole Ephesians 5 and teachings on marriage was very different. 

Do all those who are in marriages or courtships know what real love or real submission is? As Christians could it be that we have placed our cultural gender roles on a spiritual concept. 

Ephesians 5: 21 submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22. Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do the Lord. 23. For the husband is the head if the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior. 24. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also the wives submit to their husbands in everything. 25. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. 27. In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 

 

The verses above teach us that, there is so much mutual respect, mutual love and even submission that have to exist in a relationship in order for submission and Love to really work. Be it in a marriage or courtship.  True biblical submission is never one sided. Christ pours into us as we pour into one another, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. How beautiful is that?   

Imagine what would happen if we as a culture focused less on the term ‘submission’ and more on learning and practicing it through our actions , our habits, our communication styles, our finances, our sex lives and even our emotional intimacy?  Imagine what our courtships and marriages would look like if we learned to love and submit and not forcing ourselves into it with high expectations of some form of payment.  

Courtesy: lifetime.org

Ephesians 5: 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

I don’t know about you but I’m all for that model of biblical marriage. May love influence our relationships, our marriages, our families and even our world.  

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