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Clear practical teaching of basic, commonly ignored truth.
Excerpt- Hence, flowing out of the general call to submission, in the fear of Christ, (for Christ is the One brought before us with continual honor in this epistle,) the Spirit takes up this first appropriate place for a Christian woman, and lays down the word, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” Although that may appear extraordinarily strong language, when we remember what husbands are or may be, still it is a great thing to be always certain that God is right. To human prudence it may seem little guarded. Perhaps you have even to do with an unconverted husband! But only bring in the Lord, and at once you see the power that will make submission easy, and you learn the measure to which submission is to be carried. But more than that; you have the guard against the abuse of the principle: “Submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” The Lord is brought in, and this sets everything right. If it is a question of trial or suffering, still the word is, “Submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” The Lord may put us through great difficulties and dangers. What is the proper place of the Christian under such circumstances? Unqualified submission. Because I ought to be sure that whatever may be the breaking up and down which these trials may occasion to one’s spirit, yet whatever the Lord does is the best and happiest and most strengthening in the end to my soul, the Lord being incapable of any one thing for me that is not for enduring good to the praise of His own name.
In this epistle it is not merely God’s control that is brought out, but special relationship. Here it is the Lord loving His own, with a love that has sacrificed everything for their sake. How can I doubt the blessedness and value of submitting myself to the Lord? The Christian wife may have a husband; and it may be very painful and hard to bear all. Perhaps he makes nothing of you, and asks often what is unreasonable. But what will make it to be a light burden? “Submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” Let me only see the Lord in the matter, instead of his inconsiderateness and bad temper, and my path is plain. I am to submit unto my husband as unto the Lord. It is made a matter, not of mere duty, but of confidence in the Lord above everything—in His love, care, and government. This is what the Holy Spirit first starts with, and makes to be the basis of all the various instructions that He is about to bring forth. He begins with the grand truth that the Christian woman is entitled to submit to her husband as unto the Lord. So that it is not made a question simply of affection, which would be human. This is a most necessary thing as a natural element, but it would be true if a person were not a Christian at all. Neither is it a question of that which the husband expects, or of what I might think to be right. All these things belong to the region of proper feeling and morality. But the important thing is that God cannot be with a Christian woman who walks in the habitual slighting of His ground for her in her relationship as a wife. He will not allow a Christian to walk merely on moral conventional grounds. They may be right enough in their place. But if I am a Christian, I have a higher calling; and then, no matter what may be the difficulty—even if the one to whom I owe my subjection be not a Christian—here comes in the blessed guard, “Submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” He entitles me to see Himself behind the person of the husband; and I have got to follow Him, and submit myself to Him. In this thought there would be great comfort for the Christian wife who is ever so tried. But then the limit of the trial comes in—for there is a limit in every path—and it is this: that God never puts me in any circumstances where I am free to commit a sin. Therefore, supposing a husband were to command that which would be positively sinful, there at once I learn that I am not bound; because I am told to submit to my husband as unto the Lord. The Lord would never ask what is sinful. He may put me through the sieve, and I may not at first understand the goodness, or the need of it; but faith constantly finds its strength and guidance in the Lord’s wisdom; in trusting Him, and not my wisdom in understanding Him. And you will find that we grow in wisdom by being content to take the place of having none. If my confidence is in His wisdom, I shall gather wisdom and grow in it. Our Lord was perfectly man; and although always perfect in every condition of life, yet the great mark of His perfectness lay in this—He was ever the dependent One that looked up to God, and that could say, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” There was at once for man the lowest, but in truth, the highest place. He understood the secret of His own relationship to God the Father. And although that was true of Christ, as of none others, yet it is true of every believer in measure.