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1 Corinthians 11:3
The apostle Paul states an order of authority established by God that we need to understand. By means of the parallel between deity and mankind in God's order, Paul shows that a wife's submission to her husband in marriage does not imply her inferiority. How? In the parallel, Christ is not inferior to God the Father. All that God's order defines in this case is subordination. As the Father and Son are equally divine, the husband and wife are equally human. Even as the Father and Son have different roles in their relationship, so do the husband and wife in God's purposes for the family. In terms of government, there is a distinctive and deliberate similarity between the two organizations. Government is merely a system of operation, a means of directing and controlling so that the purposes of an organization are achieved. Though the Son is one with the Father, being of the same substance, power, and glory, He nonetheless voluntarily submits to the Father. In human marriage, husband and wife, like the Father and Son, are also essentially the same. In marriage, the submission of a woman to her husband is also intended to be voluntary. It is at this juncture that Satan, using men he controls through subtle deceits, has dealt a devastating blow to our culture. “Humanist” is a descriptor given to those who have abandoned a belief in God and religion. Some people refer to such people as “secularists.” Most of them claim atheism. Many of them are university-educated and earn salaries that place them in upper-middle-class income brackets. They also tend to be in positions of authority in government, business, education, and entertainment. Their reputations in the community often carry a great deal of influence. However, having abandoned God, their true spirituality and morality are terribly skewed, making their influence anti-God. Satan, using the humanists' influence, has convinced a large percentage of the public that sex and love are the same, a major departure from what was once generally believed in American culture. Sex and love are not equivalent. Love is so much greater in importance than sex that there is no adequate comparison. Humanists have also managed to convince many that everything is morally irrelevant. This, too, is untrue, but many fail to think it through. In reality, moral irrelevance actually drives marriages apart. In God's standard of morality, He is quite specific. For example, within marriage, sex is totally, completely, and absolutely limited to one's legal partner in that specific marriage. There are no exceptions. We find another restriction in I Corinthians 7:3-4: Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Even before marriage, both the man's and the woman's body belongs to their future spouses. Their bodies are not theirs to “just play around with.” This teaches us that fornication contributes to weakening a marriage that has not even occurred yet! Each partner in a marriage belongs to the other even before the marriage takes place. It is therefore each person's responsibility to preserve the body's sexual purity for the one he or she will marry.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Six)
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