#13. More on Marriage: Motherhood as Helping
We talked recently about the instruction for women to love their husbands, love their children and be busy at home. These are the particular “goods” a woman who is married with children is to mature in. Eagerly. Devotedly*. We’re looking at some of the Bible’s backdrop to understand how this might be more profound than it seems.
It’s common for us to mother ‘despite’ our husbands, tolerating their involvement, while we wish for more of it. In the worse cases, it’s mothering ‘to spite’ him. Instead of being antagonists, rivals and competitors, the responsibilities of fathers and mothers are woven into oneness in marriage (we’ll look at fathers more next week). We have some different responsibilities, but we’re designed to have a mutual purpose and interdependence in hefting our loads. The Bible uses the words helper and submission to describe the wife’s part in that pro-active oneness.
Motherhood isn’t only about meeting children’s needs. The duties of raising kids are part of our duties towards a husband. God-ordered, God-defined mothering is an outworking of God-ordered, God-defined marriage. Invested, well-considered, deliberate mothering is the way a wife helps her husband raise children for God. A husband has a responsibility before the Lord and he needs his wife to help him do it (which is not the same as doing it for him). If we cut corners on this responsibility, we’re eroding God’s good design for all of us. Less good gets done.
Marriage isn’t meant to be a perpetual golden hour of frolicking on the beach, gazing into each other’s eyes; a montage of magical moments backed with a cinematic soundtrack. Marriage is given so we can get things done for God’s glory in God’s world. A marriage is meant to add value to the world. It’s not an explosive impact, but the steady force exerted through thousands of faithful, forgettable days. Delighting in each other (as we should), that comfort overflows in good gifts to the world.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Genesis 1:26-28
As the only creatures which bear the divine image, we have been entrusted with a benevolent dominion over the rest of creation. We are meant to be mini-pictures of God’s generous rule over his world. This generous, productive dominion requires interdependent relationships. Eve and Adam could not fulfill their shared call to fill and subdue the earth independently from each other. Men and women need each other if we are to get this good job done. Marriage provides the long-term relational, logistical, economic and spiritual stability which enables us to move from mere survival to culture building.
Marriage impacts, and hopefully blesses, the world through the children welcomed and raised in it. Neither man nor woman can fill the world with children alone. More than conceiving the children, we can’t actually raise them to godly maturity apart from each other. Don’t hear me saying that the children of single parents can’t grow to godly maturity ( I was one of those)—in the absence of the usual pattern, God graciously uses other means. But where there is a marriage and children, it’s meant to have a certain shape.
Raising godly offspring, who know how to live as God’s people in his world, is the central part of the “filling and ruling the earth” we were created and redeemed for. There is no benevolent rule of humankind without children being born and raised to bear God’s image in his world. Investing in this work, if he has given us a marriage and children is the defining task of our lives. It won’t be the only thing we do, but nothing else will match the length and breadth of it.
Well-ordered marriage creates the stable infrastructure for long-term goodness to grow. Genesis 2:18 shows us:
‘The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”’
Creation commissions a husband to lead the way. In Genesis 2, the man had been commissioned to cultivate the garden before the woman was made. He was given the instruction to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before he received his helper. He had responsibilities before she existed. But he could not do them completely without her. The woman is his uniquely fit helper for the task and Adam was delighted when God brought Eve to him (At last! he said). Their difference was brought into oneness and that meant they could finally do what they had been made for.
A wife was created to be her husband’s helper. This predates the distortions which came with sin. Sin makes helping more complicated and it has taught us to despise help, both giving and receiving it; but a wife as a uniquely necessary helper to her husband was a feature of the un-Fallen world.
The leading-and-helping dynamic became hostile in the Fall. One could say that the Fall was preceded by the breakdown of both Adam’s leadership and Eve’s helping. Instead of leading into the obedience which God had made plain (don’t eat from that one tree), Adam stood by passively. Instead of helping Adam in the work of doing what God had told them, Eve led him into rebellion. They both led badly and death came to us all.
The curses brought into marriage are told in Genesis 3. There is now a struggle for dominance between a man and woman. Instead of labouring side by side, doing satisfying work, they are antagonists. She wants to rule him in the same way sin wants to master us (compare Genesis 3:16 with Genesis 4:7). He rules badly. The children they fill the earth with are birthed and raised with pain. The earth to be cultivated fights back, until those who were meant to rule it are buried in it.
The work given in creation is still good. But there is now a hostile environment and hostile co-workers and a hostile end. The work of helping is not lost, but our inclination to do it is warped and the way it’s received is distorted.
Fast forward to forgiven people given new hearts by Jesus. Jesus has done the fantastical work of undoing the curse. The future physical resurrection of our bodies is anticipated in our spiritual resurrection now. And our spiritual resurrection now changes what we do in our bodies now. It changes how we do marriage and mothering now. Jesus makes us alive to who we were meant to be. We are saved to bear the image of our Creator once again, restored to the work we were made for back in the Beginning. Jesus changes husbands into men who lead well and he changes wives into women who help divinely. Helping is not a role we’re rescued from, along with our sin. It’s a role we’re redeemed to mature into.
When the New Testament writers talk about marriage, headship and submission, they are calling to mind the way marriage was in the beginning, before sin. Ephesians 5 submission is Genesis 1 and 2 helping. A woman is called to submit to her own husband, not to all men in general, because she is a helper to her own husband, not all men in general. Healthy submission is not a passive role, but a proactively invested helper who is at one with the person being helped. The help is directed toward a particular goal. The godly marriage gets things done that couldn’t be done otherwise. This was true before the Fall and is true now. When either party walks away from their part, marriage and its fruit end up bruised. And often, it bruises the world it was made to bless.
A submissive wife—a helping wife—is a woman who is using every power and resource she’s got to work with her husband as he takes responsibility for leading their family into the good works Jesus redeemed them to do.
Helping is not a lowly, subservient role. It is a role even God takes for himself:
Read the Psalms and note all the times God himself is exalted as the Helper of his people.
God helps his people, ultimately to the point of Jesus’ death in their place.
God’s Holy Spirit comes to dwell in his people, as their Helper (Romans 8:26).
If God does it, helping is a glorious thing. If it’s good enough for the triune God, then it’s not too low for us. As her husband’s helper, a wife reflects some of the divine image of the ultimate Helper. Loving husband and children and being busy at home? That’s shorthand for helping in that original, ongoing task given to God’s image-bearers.
^^^
*If you are only just joining us now, you might find it useful to go back to the first article and follow the thread from there. If you click on the “articles” tab above, then scroll to the very bottom of the page, you can start from the ground up. There is an audio version of each article available (or soon to be). You can listen directly from each article page (up to #9. to date). Or you can find the articles on the Light Duties podcast on your preferred app.
