#12. Responsibility: Men, Women and Marriage
In the last article, we paused at Titus 2, where Paul says the local church elders need to teach the older women to teach the younger women to love their husbands, love their children and to be busy at home—all while being pure, self-controlled and kind. It sounds small, petty and inconsequential. It triggers our current patriarchal sensitivities.
When we connect the dots with other things the Bible says about men, women, marriage, raising children and the home, we find Paul’s words are dense with good sense. There’s more to gain or lose than we imagine. Tomes have been written about such things and I don’t intend to drown writing another. But to understand the duties we’re responsible for, we need to give some space to marriage, manhood and womanhood. It will take a couple of articles to do that.
Why do men and women get different instructions in texts like Titus 2? Let’s think about the architecture which leads to these differences.
Male/female is not the only way God draws lines, but they are significant lines when they are drawn. Jesus doesn’t dissolve gender. Men and women equally, but differently, bear the image of their Creator. Men and women equally, though differently, distort that divine image. Jesus gives men and women equal reconciliation to the Father through his death. But in saving people, Jesus doesn’t neuter a woman’s womanhood or a man’s manhood. He restores, matures and glorifies both. Men and women stay different. Jesus saves people to be more truly human, and in that, he makes men better men and women better women. Jesus grows men and women to do the good they owe to whom they owe it. Before Jesus’ throne, we will give an account for ourselves not merely as humans, but as men and women who were entrusted with definite responsibilities. While we wait for Jesus’ return, we’re to be devoted to doing what is good as men and women, not sexless beings.
All of us—male and female—are called to abide in Jesus, his word and his people (John 14-15). A Christian is someone who says “yes” to that trunk of the tree. We’re all—male and female—called to holiness in whatever we do. Holiness is in every cell of the tree. But further up the branches, obedience narrows into more focussed applications, as men and women who have been given responsibility and authority in particular tasks and relationships.
Not all men are responsible for the same things as all other men. Not all women are responsible for the same things as every other woman. Our duties are not copied and pasted. Wives with children are given some particular instructions because they have some particular responsibilities which are not interchangeable with their husband’s, or even with a single woman’s or a widow’s responsibilities. We are responsible in a special way for making the kind of homes where a whole lot of love materialises; first to our husband and children. Whatever else we do, it can’t be at the expense of these good duties.
Living under the generous authority of Jesus will mean noticing (and responding to) the spheres of responsibility and authority he has trusted us with. My husband is responsible for some things I am not: he’s responsible for a wife, he’s a father, an employer, a worker, a son, a fit healthy male who uses his body to serve in ways mine can’t. He’s responsible for some things that many other people are not (like being a faithful business owner, so his employees and his customers are given the good they are due). Other people are responsible for some things that he is not (like lawmakers, church elders/pastors, law enforcers, doctors). There will be an article about fathers in a few weeks.
God makes distinctions in responsibilities, and the authority to fulfil those duties, in all spheres of human society. When we ignore, neglect and misuse the authority and responsibilities which we’ve got, things go badly. On the last day, all people will be held accountable for the responsibilities they were entrusted with. My husband will not be judged on how good a paramedic he was, because he isn’t one. He will be called to account for what kind of husband, father, worker and boss he was (to list a few). Because of Jesus, he won’t be condemned or justified by his performance in any of those areas, but he will still be accountable for them.
Jesus has given me responsibilities, and a way of meeting them, which are not the same as my husband’s. There are things I am accountable for as a wife and mother, which no one else can do in my place. If I leave these acts of love to my husband and children undone, I am putting a stumbling block in their way. Their maturity into all that’s good is harder when I don’t do what I’m meant to be doing.
Many of Scripture’s specific instructions to wives aren’t so much about merely being female, but about being a woman who has entered into a covenant with a particular man (marriage). Hence why Paul says “wives, submit to your own husband as to the Lord” not “to submit to all husbands everywhere” (Eph 5). To consent to marriage is to say “yes” to a whole lot of duties which go with marriage. It’s choosing to live a life of oneness with a particular man, who has taken particular responsibility for you before God. That means living in the same home and enjoying sex only with each other, learning to help him well as, in oneness, you serve God (more on that next week). There are responsibilities to each other which are bigger and better than mere cohabitation. We aren't just flatmates.
As I mentioned in the last article, loving a husband and children can’t be done remotely; you can’t do a faithful job of marriage if your life is not centred in the same physical space. Why would Paul put “love their husbands” in the same sentence with being “busy at home”? Because you need to be breathing the same air, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed, serving Jesus side by side, if you are to fully express what God intends in marriage. Why are children thrown into the same sentence? Because they are the usual outcome of that oneness. God naturally brings children about in that space because that is the best place for their care. It is a significant part of what marriage is for. If he didn’t intend for a father and mother to take responsibility for their children, he would have arranged a different means for their arrival. Storks, perhaps. One of the duties of marriage is to welcome children as the Lord brings them. We have already signed up to the duties of raising these children for the Lord—whether we knew it or not—when we got married*.
None of us is interchangeable. We can draw on the help of other people to meet some of these responsibilities (like getting help with the house cleaning), but there are a few privileged duties which must not be done by someone else. For example, a husband and wife may not “outsource” any of their sexual intimacy. Neither can parents hand over the nurture and discipline of their children to someone else. These things are built into the exclusive covenant of marriage and home is the primary space where these duties are fulfilled. Being busy at home is giving our whole-bodied, best effort, time-consuming attention to loving the people who depend on our home.
If we aren’t giving much thought to the duties of marriage and mothering, if we don’t have a well-considered perspective on our home, then our marriage, mothering and home will be stunted. It will cost us, our husbands, our children, Jesus’ church. We will withhold from the world much of the good we could be giving.
What if we love Jesus, but realise he is telling us we’re responsible for things we don’t want to do? How we view our marriage, motherhood and home is ultimately about Jesus’ Lordship. If we belong to Jesus, then we’ll be all in for anything he gives and asks for. Sanctification is all about learning to like (and do) new things, because Jesus makes us new people. I pray for myself and you, that the Lord will give us hearts willing to consider and do anything he says is good. I’m also optimistic that he provides splendidly: new inclination, new wisdom, new capability, new strength and new joy in doing it.
“Married For God”, by Christopher Ash is a favourite book of mine on marriage.
