WE now enter upon the special earthly relations. The general exhortations we have had, which concern the saints of God as such—children of God, and members of Christ’s body. But now the Holy Spirit shows that He is not indifferent to the relations which these saints may sustain, either towards one another, or towards others upon the earth. There might be, for instance, husbands and wives, both of them Christians; or there might be only one in this relationship converted, the other being still a Jew or a heathen; and so with the relation of fathers and children, masters and servants. For the present we have only to do with that which pertains to the nearest tie upon earth, that of husband and wife. And we shall find that the Holy Spirit most amply provides for the wants of the children of God bound thus together; so that whatever may be their difficulties, they may find gracious instruction and grave exhortation, and not merely commands in reference to the circumstances in which they stand before God—for this is not strictly the form in which Christian regulation comes before us. Of course, there may be, and are, precepts and commandments throughout the New Testament. Indeed the one who brings out love most presses commandments most; for it is in the gospel and epistles of John, where the greatest stress is laid upon commandments; and yet we all know that there is no part of the Scripture which brings out God’s love to us more strikingly and constantly. It is therefore the greatest possible mistake to suppose that there is any inconsistency between God’s love, and the strictest injunction that His authority lays upon His children.
Still it is undeniable that as the general character of Christian instruction does not take the shape of commandments as under the law, so we are not set under the Mosaic commandments to form our present thoughts and feelings and course as Christians; nay, we have got nothing analogous to the law: for “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Commandments we have; but they suppose and regulate life, and are calculated to bring the obedience of Christ into exercise; and there is nothing more beautiful to the soul, nor more glorifying to God. Ordinarily the way in which instruction comes in the New Testament is thus: there is a relationship formed, and according to its character, amply unfolded and enforced in the word, we have to glorify God. As this is true in natural things, so the Spirit of God uses an every-day relationship as the occasion of bringing out the spiritual one that answers to it. And our hearts being occupied with the exceeding grace that has formed the new and eternal tie, we may find not only a motive, but a pattern and power to glorify God in the natural as well as the spiritual one. There is no place where this comes out more strikingly than in the first of these relationships on which the Holy Spirit here expands peculiarly. “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (vs. 22). The opening comparison which He uses, before entering into the spiritual relationship which is brought before us after the figure of marriage, the very first thought is to present the headship of the man, as having special force in married life. We all know that, apart from marriage, the man is the head of the woman. That is, if there were no such thing as marriage, man has a place which woman has not, which is entirely independent of character. We may find a man imbecile, and a woman with firmness and wisdom; but nothing can alter God’s order. We may find a child endowed with great prudence, and the parents unwise and weak. Still the relationship is altogether independent of the peculiar character, and state, and condition, of those either in the superior place, or in the subordinate. And it is of great importance that we should have the thing settled in our souls, that no circumstances whatever warrant a breach of the order of God. There are trying circumstances which make the difficulty immense in either relationship. But it is of great consequence to remember that the rights of God’s order always abide; that nothing ever justifies disobedience of His will. There may be cases where obedience of the natural order of God would be a sin: there are none where disobedience is a duty. You cannot be required to disobey, under any circumstances. But there are crises where you must obey God rather than man. It is an exceeding mercy that the times are few indeed, where obeying God involves an apparent breach of natural order and moral duty. But it may be so. You will find for instance, in the beginning of the Acts, Peter and John charged by the powers of that day that governed in Israel, not to teach in the name of Jesus. What could they do but fall back upon the authority of God? They could put it to these very rulers that their consciences were bound to God before men. Thus the first great principle remains and is plain, before we enter upon particulars, that obedience is always the part of the Christian.
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” (vs. 22). 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” (vs. 22). 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” (vs. 22). 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” (vs. 22). 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” (vs. 22). 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, “Wilt 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.
But we have most carefully to watch ourselves in this matter. Wherever there is the smallest tendency to slip out of the path of submission, we have to search and see, if we are wise according to God. Nature never likes to be subject. And wherever there is a danger of pleading the truth of God for any act that might seem to be a want of submission to the authority of another, I have need to watch myself with greater jealousy than in any other thing. Where we are found in a path where submission is the word, let us leave room to bring in the Lord. In order to give power and faith to our obedience, and a holy character to it, I should see that it is the Lord I am obeying, even while there is an earthly authority, one that I am subject to. The blessed truth that the Lord was about to introduce begins to open to us. “The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and He is the Saviour of the body” (vs. 23). There we have an allusion to the near relationship, which is intended to skew us how we ought to walk towards one another in this respect. Although He is the Saviour, it is not for the purpose of taking the Church or the saint out of the place of subjection.
“Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” Such is the general principle. But then you will observe there is always a measure and a guard in every such word of Scripture. It is not simply said, “Therefore, let the wives be subject in everything to their own husbands,” but “Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be” (vs. 24). There I find that Christ’s own blessed way of caring for the Church and dealing with the Church in its due subjection to the Lord, is brought in as the pattern of wives towards their own husbands. But it is when we come to the higher of the two relationships, that we have the Holy Spirit bringing out its character more clearly. “Husbands, love your wives” (vs. 25). There we find what the snare of the husband might be. First, the wife is to look to her temper, that she discipline her spirit in thorough submission to her husband., It is not said to her, to love her husband, but to submit herself to him. But Satan might take advantage, and they being in the relationship, the husband might be wanting in tender care and affection. There is the ruling and guiding the wife; but what he is exhorted to here, is that which his circumstances most need, and which would be most for his own soul’s good and the comfort of his wife. So that the word is, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it” (vs. 25). What a holy standard! What a most unselfish, considerate, pure, and heavenly Exemplar is brought before us, in order that a relationship which might be easily degraded, should have and keep its due elevation; and that even the poorest saints on earth, so bound together, might have the light and love of heaven shining upon them.
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it. That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (vss. 25-27). Thus we have the love of Christ to the Church set forth as the model according to which the Christian husband is to seek that his own love to his wife should be conformed. Look at its source and character: “Christ also loved the church” (vs. 25). All flows out of this. Need I, even as a man, say, that love, as it is what ought to precede a marriage, so is the only thing which, in nature, makes the marriage happy when it is formed? The love of Christ that is shown us here is taken in from first to last, as one unbroken whole. It is well to remember it in married life: the love that was true before the tie was formed, is a love that abides when it is formed, and that should grow and never end.
Certainly it was so perfectly in our Lord. He loved the Church. It is a question of a very special affection here on the part of Christ. It is not the general truth of God’s love, who loved the world even; but no relationship was formed with the world. The important thing to look at here is that, although it is a love that exists before the relationship, it finds its proper exercise in it, and ever continues its real strength and joy. And if we turn aside from looking at the earthly thing to that which is set forth by it, how great the grace, and how rich the blessing! Once it was a joy for our hearts to realize that God could love sinners, and so love as to spend His Son upon us, sinners as we were. But there is another kind of love that we know now. God has taken the relationship of a Father to us; at any rate He has brought us into that of children by Jesus Christ to Himself. We are “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26). Accordingly the Father loves us with a Father’s heart; it is not only that He loves the creature as God, but He loves us as a Father—yea, as the Father of our Lord Jesus loved, and not only in the measure in which a human parent regards his children. In such a circle there might be complacency and delight; and when we think what and who we are, to think that such an One as God the Father could delight in us now in this world, is most wondrous! that He should infinitely more love us than an earthly father does the child that he loves best, and that this love should extend towards the weakest and most needy of His family! There is also a conditional love towards those that are walking faithfully, and John brings that out in John 14-15. But now I am speaking of the absolute, personal love in the relationship in which God as Father to His children, as such, which does not only pity, but look with pleasure upon, and take delight in them now, spite of everything that is calculated to turn aside or weaken that love. Ought I not, as in Christ, to be as sure of that, as I am of my own existence as a man? yea, to have a better knowledge and certainty of what His love is towards me, than of anything that affects me as one living on the earth? I have that in me which is not proof against the deception of the world outside. But in the things of God, where faith is, it is not so. There is, there ought to be, divine certainty.
Where God clearly reveals Himself, the soul should receive it in humbleness of mind; and the more humble, the more sure, because the ground of the assurance is that God has revealed it to us. It is a question of Himself and not of us at all. If this be so, what a wonderful place it is to be in Christ! It is quite true that Christ loved me, but here it is the Church—“the assembly,” and Christ has a special love for His assembly, which I am entitled to appropriate and count on. This makes the union together of the children of God as the assembly to be so precious, and shows the all-importance of not reducing it to a voluntary society, small or great. The moment you bring in the will of man, you virtually and at once destroy the divine ground, which Scripture assumes. Whereas, if you see that God has formed a certain bond in the Holy Spirit for the glory of His Son among those who belong to Him on the earth now, and that Christ regards those who were within that bond with a perfect and most peculiar love; then it is the greatest possible joy that our own souls should enter into this love, and next that we should seek to act by His word upon the other members of the body of Christ, that they may believe and enjoy it also. It is not a part only, but He “loved the assembly” (vs. 25). The reason why I use the word “assembly” is that people often have a very vague notion about the Church. The word is usually and completely misapplied in the present day. It is said of a religious building, or of a particular party, in particular of such as are dominant anywhere; whereas, bring in “the assembly,” and understand by that the whole body of those that God calls out from this world, by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; and there you learn the special love that God has revealed in Christ, not merely to the soul, but to the assembly which is His body on earth: