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I want to begin tonight with a reflection on a relationship I read about this fall, in a book titled A Severe Mercy. In this book Sheldon Vanauken wrote about his marriage, beginning with the years in which he met and married a young woman nicknamed Davy. They met a few years before America entered WWII and fell fast and hard into love. As they determined that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, they began to devote themselves to preserving what they knew was a special relationship. They were rather extraordinary in their devotion to one another. They worked admirably to preserve their “US” by sharing every thought with the other, learning to value everything that the other person valued, and keeping out any person or thing that threatened to invade their love and togetherness.
Sheldon and Davy were not Christians at this time, but they did tap into some ideas about love that were biblical. They were very aware of the destructiveness of not being patient and kind to each other. They were rarely rude and apologized quickly if a hint of irritability invaded their interactions. They were fiercely determined not to be selfish and demanding of their own ways. And in the end they bore all things, they believed all things, hoped all things, and endured all things heroically…even as Davy’s health deteriorated throughout her late 30’s. And especially when Sheldon cared for her as she suffered and died of liver disease at age 40.
By the time Davy’s health condition was serious she had become a Christian. And Sheldon had also, in large part due to his friendship with C.S. Lewis, whom he had met in the years after the war when he attended Oxford University. Davy had come to the Lord with a full awareness of her need for Him to forgive her sins and to save her by His grace. She quickly reoriented herself toward learning to understand the Lord’s ways and His call to HIs people.
However, Sheldon was slower to accept that as the Lord’s redeemed child, his life would change. He would indicate later that he resented the Lord’s invasion into the love relationship that he and Davy had built. He still wanted his and Davy’s life together to be devoted to “US,” not to “US AND GOD,” and certainly not to “GOD AND US,” (C.S. Lewis’ terms, Vanauken, pp. 209-210).
It actually took Davy’s death and his correspondence with Lewis afterwards to awaken him to his misconceptions about what life with Christ is. He began to see that he had not been living as a child of God – not hungering for knowledge of God’s will and ways, not growing in submission of his will to God’s. And he became aware of the misconceptions he had had about marriage. He had held onto marriage as his personal prize possession; he had not seen that marriage was God’s idea. He failed to see that while tending to their marital love would likely bring him and Davy great happiness, its ultimate design and purpose were bigger than that.
For marriage is God’s. God created it and designed it (Gen. 2). Part of its purpose is for the good of people, adults, children and society. But ultimately, it is mysterious; it refers to Christ and the church (Eph. 5); and it is for the glory of God. When we try to make it work based on our own ideas, or on the ideas of the society around us, we make a profound mistake. While we may hit on some things that mirror biblical ideas, and while we may even achieve some level of success with our methods, we will not be experiencing the fullness of what God has designed. We will miss out on bringing God glory through our marriage. Which means that we will also deprive ourselves of the richness and depth of good that God desires.
In the years after Davy’s death, this became much clearer to Sheldon. We will come back to their story at the end of this teaching…
My assignment tonight is to talk about two of the six topics in Titus 2:4-5, that Paul wants taught to younger women. The first is the category of love, specifically of one’s husband and children. And the second is the last in Paul’s list of topics, submission to one’s husband.
We will start with love. But before we do, let’s pray…
Please open your Bible back up to Titus chapter 2 and follow along as I read aloud vv. 1-5:
“But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” (Titus 2:1–5)
We will focus first on verse 4 which says: Train the young women to love their husbands and children.
One thing that is noteworthy here is that Paul has taken special care when choosing which Greek words he uses to communicate his point. He chooses the words philandros and philoteknos, words that communicate a specific kind of love.
Definitions
These two Greek works are actually not used anywhere else in our New Testament. Paul’s usage of them here is unique. The first word, philandros, istranslated today as “husband-lover.” And the second one, philoteknos, is translated “children-lover.” They are both connected to the word phileo, one of several words in Greek for “love.”
Agape love is by far the most common Greek word used for love in New Testament. In fact, in my old hardback Strong’s Concordance, when I looked up the English word “love,” I found that agape-related Greek words were used for “love” in the New Testament 152 times.
In contrast, phileo-related Greek words were used just 19 times in the New Testament according to Strong’s. That’s a big difference…makes you think that Paul’s use of phileo was not an accident.
So let’s spend a few minutes talking about the difference in meaning of these two words.
One important lexicon, Louw and Nida, defines phileō as "to have love or affection for someone or something based on association." So, phileō seems to imply some sort of closeness by association or a pre-existing relationship (like a mother with her children, a wife with her husband). "Affection" is part of the definition, though, where it is absent in their definition of agapē.
They define agapē as "to have love for someone or something, based on sincere appreciation and high regard." "High regard" here is different than "because of a deep connection" or "personal affection." You might highly regard someone out of Christian conviction, leading to self-sacrifice.
Aside: I have to say that when I read this definition, I immediately thought of the scene in the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility (1995) movie when Elinor describes her feelings for Edward Ferrars. She says, “I do not attempt to deny that I think very highly of him, that I greatly esteem him.” and Marianne comes back at her with “Use those insipid words again and I shall leave the room this instant!” Marianne is off in a lot of her assessments of what love should look like, but she does have a sense that love for a future husband must be more personal than “esteem”!
So, while we know that agape love is essential in family relationships, that’s not the kind of love we are going to focus on today. Instead, we will think about Paul’s instructions here to extend phileo love within families, and to husbands and children in particular.
Affection for husbands:
Most people start off marriage with a good deal of affection for their spouse. Likely when we were first getting to know each other we had some “You, too?” moments when we realized that we often see the world in similar ways. Those magical moments were part of what propelled us toward each other. But their relevance can fade if we don’t remember and strengthen these bonds. We can’t count on our affections remaining strong through the ins and outs of life without deliberate fanning of these flames. The cares of this world and the challenges of life will diminish affection if we are not working hard to maintain it.
Here are some thoughts and ideas about helping the magical moments continue…
Appreciate who your husband is:
Let him continue to know that I’m still so happy that he asked and that I said yes!
Be generous in thoughts, words and actions:
Prioritize living life together:
There are certain seasons when this last one takes some real strategy!
I have lots of memories of Daniel and I driving to kids sporting events, either separately because we came from different places or together. We would drop the kids off for their pre-game practice and sit in the car talking about our days until the game began. Then we would sit close and cheer for our child together, and drive home in the dark for a late dinner before bed. It was exhausting, but doing it together when possible reminded us that it was all a part of our shared vision for building a family. So it was worth the effort and could be used to bring us together, not push us apart.
Affection for children:
When C.S. Lewis talks about “affection,” in this book The Four Loves, he uses the love between parents and their offspring as his most basic and central example. In speaking of affection he says, “The image we must start with is that of a mother nursing a baby, a [dog] or a cat with a basketful of puppies or kittens; all in a squeaking, nuzzling heap together; purrings, lickings, baby-talk, milk, warmth, the smell of young life.”
This image acknowledges that in many ways, our affectionate love for our children is the most natural and expected thing in the world. And yet, we also know that it is not always easy to do this well. And so we must take some time to consider ways in which we might grow in this area.
To do so, let’s consider three aspects of parenting, mothering in particular:
Responding to our children:
Enjoying our children
And since we’ve mentioned the topic, I have one small note for all of us who are adult children:
As older children and adults, we play a part in expressing affectionate love and in making home and relationships happy. As an adult child, we want to do all we can to continue to cultivate relationship with our parents and in-laws. Please don’t take the bad advice of distancing yourself from your parents. Although the parent-child relationship shifts as children become adults, it is still an essential relationship that continues to grow and can be a great blessing to all. As long as your parents are alive, honor and love them affectionately and warmly. They are unique in your life… love them well!
Finally,
Leading our children:
We have to allow ourselves to view our family relationships not just through the smudged lens of daily life, but also from a birds eye view of where they’ve been and where they are going. We need God to give us grace for affection during relational process and growth. We need His help to remain affectionate even while asking for faith and grace in hard times. “Lord, I believe [you are at work here and I desire to remain loving and affectionate, even through the hard times.] Help my unbelief.” Give me your eyes and heart for these dear ones.
Remember, we strive to love our children based on our status as redeemed children of God. “We love because He first loved us.”
To summarize our first point tonight,, Paul encourages wives to cultivate affection for our husbands and children. He wants us to feel personal attachment to them, to grow in enjoying them, and to express kind sentiments to them. He wants us to demonstrate affectionate love in our daily interactions.
In this next section we will be looking at verse 5 of Titus 2. At the end of this verse, Paul says to teach younger women to be “submissive to their own husbands.” With this phrase we see more of the picture of marriage that God paints for us. We are not only instructed to love our husbands affectionately, but are also instructed to submit to them.
John Piper defines submission within marriage as “A Godward disposition to honor a husband’s leadership.” This definition includes the idea that submission within marriage is first and foremost our response to God.
Where does this idea come from? How do Paul’s instructions here fit into the Bible’s comprehensive description of marriage? And in what way is submission within marriage a response to God? Let’s review a little bit of the Bible’s storyline to get some perspective:
Creation to Titus to Us
First, in Genesis 2 we have the pre-fall picture of Eve being created for Adam. This is a beautiful picture of woman being like man, even made from his rib! And yet also being made different from him. Made to complement him and to help him.
In the 1976 movie Rocky I, Rocky Balboa is asked by his brother-in-law why he is attracted to his soon-to-be-wife Adrian. Rocky says that it’s to fill gaps:
“I dunno. She’s got gaps, I got gaps. Together we fill gaps.”
That’s a pretty good description of the creation moment in Genesis 2 when Eve is made for Adam. There’s no shame in her being created as Adam’s helper. It’s a thing of wonder and beauty for the two of them to be made perfectly fit for the other. Fit to fill the other’s gaps
The book of Song of Solomon describes a marriage relationship basically in these same pre-fall terms. The book gives us a lovely idea of what marriage is supposed to be. Here we also see a man and a woman reveling in the beauty of their complementarity. In the wife’s refrain “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song 2:16), we hear only of mutual delight.
But aside from these two descriptions of marital perfection, the marriages described in the Bible demonstrate that the effects of the fall have been real and that even God-fearers who have good marriages have to work hard at them and are affected by sin and weakness. Abraham and Sarah are some of our greatest examples of faith-filled saints, and they had a long marriage with many obvious moments of love and devotion to one another. But also, Abraham had some very low leadership moments and Sarah schemed and manipulated when she was at her worst. Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel followed suit with both high and low marriage moments described. We read also of Hannah and Elkanah, Noami and Elimelech, Ruth and Boaz, David and Michael, Abigail and Nabal, Jezebel and Ahab and on and on and get a broad picture of the highs and lows of marriage after the fall.
Yet, despite humankind’s sin failures, God’s original design for married couples has never shifted. God still intends that man and woman come together, equal in value, different in design and function within the marriage. When Jesus comes to earth in the New Testament, He reiterates the creation story to the Pharisees:
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? (Matthew 19:4-5, referencing Gen. 2)
At the end of the gospels Jesus returns to heaven and then in Acts the church is established. At that time the church begins to get specific instructions on how God intends for Christians to live out what He designed so perfectly at the beginning of time. Sin has entered the world and impacted marriage; but God has sent Jesus to redeem His people from slavery to sin and He has sent His Spirit to empower us to walk in His ways within marriage. And so He remains committed to His original perfect design. He says to us in Ephesians 5:25-33…
“Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her….In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
This passage doesn’t mince words, does it? It’s clear to us here that God does intend for us in our post-fall marriages to still embrace God’s original design for husbands to lead in marriage and for wives to help our husbands and to submit to their leadership.
But what’s different in New Testament instruction is that we now have a perfect model of a leader, Christ. In His love for the church, Christ models perfectly for us how a husband is to deeply and self-sacrificially love his wife. How did Christ love the church? He gave himself up for her. Literally, and completely. And it is in that same way that husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies.
As Kathleen Nielson points out in her book Women and God:
“The only thing harder than to submit to a head might be to be the head. How can a man ever live out the unfailing love of God for his people? Here’s where the grace comes in.” (146).
And that’s what marriage on this side of the cross is all about. It includes a high call for the woman (respect and submission to her husband); and a high, and at times more difficult call for the man (Christ-like love). The need of God’s grace in all of marriage is profoundly evident.
The New Testament continues this pattern of calling wives to respect and submit to their husbands and for husbands to love their wives. If we are reading straight through the epistles, we eventually we find ourselves in Titus 2. If we are familiar with all that comes before this little book, we are not surprised to see submission to our husbands in the list of what older women are to teach to younger women.
As people of the Word, we take these repeated New Testament instructions to heart. As we read it is likely that we are thinking, “Wow. That’s a tall order on our best days.” Where do we go from here?
And the answer to that question is the same gospel truth that we depend on every day and in every area of life. It’s the gospel that Paul preaches just a few paragraphs further down in Titus chapter 2 : “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us….” to day by day, little by little, grow in the good works that He has saved us for, and that He will give us power for.
Let me end this section with a few practical thoughts about submission in marriage.
Let me start with another definition of submission, this one by Melissa Kruger in her book Growing Together:
“Submission is not merely passive obedience to authority. It is an active and thoughtful obedience first to God and then to the authorities he has placed over us,” (p. 176).
My first practical thought is that Our submission is active.
Activeis a helpful part of Melissa’s definition because it reminds us that submission to our husband’s leadership means that we will do things. Submission is an attitude of the heart, but it is more than that…it will show up in real life activity.
This idea enters into my life in the way that I schedule. I like to make a plan for my days, and typically want to get as much accomplished as possible. Early in my marriage to Daniel, I realized that prior to marriage, I was used to working on my to-do list pretty much right up until bedtime. And I brought that expectation into married life. After dinner together, I was still expecting to get a couple more things checked off my list. I soon realized that me plowing through my to-do list during all waking hours is not the way married-life works. Daniel was for me getting done what I needed to get done. But I was not helping him by expecting to work on my things all the time. I needed to make changes. I began to orient my plans toward his patterns and preferences and as I did, it made a huge difference in our life together. Submission of my will to his preferences resulted in me doing things differently than I would have done them if I wasn’t married to Daniel.
In my case, submission needed to result in action. And I think that is often the case. We have to be willing to do things that will help our husband.
My second practical thought about submission is also illustrated by my above example.
You may have noticed that my submission here was not a response to a command that Daniel gave. He didn’t give one. The submission of my will to his came from noticing that what I was doing wasn’t working well and wasn’t allowing him to thrive. The two of us talked. And then I made some changes.
And I just want to mention that because I think in most mature marriages, this is often the way that things end up working out. In their book Gospel Shaped Marriage, Chad and Emily Van Dixhoorn address this idea in the following way:
Scripture calls wives to “submit in everything to their husbands” (which is not the same as saying that all women are to submit to all men). A Christian wife will want to give and serve because Scripture says so, but also because she knows that a self-giving spirit will make her husband’s task to love her that much easier. In fact it is only this love for God and husband that will give her joy in this calling.
Mind you, this is a two-way street. Although Paul calls wives to submission in every area, a wise husband should learn –quickly–how seldom he should ask for submission in every area, explicitly or even implicitly. This is God’s grace at work in him: if submitting is her responsibility, he will seek to make this as easy for her as possible.
As we’ve said, ideally husbands and wives should be able to do the majority of their work without having to arm wrestle their way to a conclusion.”
This doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes encounter situations in marriage that take a lot of effort to come to agreement on. We do hit those sometimes. And it is also true that when we are first married, we are often not very smooth at the whole thing. There is a learning curve to learning how to live together in an understanding way.
But it is also true that believing in submission does not mean that your marriage should be characterized by commands being given. Instead, it is about loving and giving and caring for one another. And helping each other to live out your God-given places in the marriage. We want to make our husband’s task as easy as possible; and he should want to do the same for us.
My third and fourth practical thoughts are based on the idea that Our submission is first to God.
We’ve seen two definitions of submission now, one from John Piper and one from Melissa Kruger. And both emphasize that our first submission is to God. We submit to our husbands as part of our submission to God. There are implications that come from this.
Knowing that our submission is first to God clarifies that we should never do something out of submission to our husband that is contrary to what God wants us to do. God is our first and last authority. We submit to our husband in response to Him. So we never disobey God at our husband’s request. If you have questions about something your husband wants you to do, come to a mature, God-fearing person for help.
Knowing that our submission is first to God also clarifies that we should not live our single or married lives in isolation. Instead we should live our lives connected to the Christian community of our local church. The church is where we grow in knowing and understanding the Bible…in knowing what it is that God wants us to do, and what is contrary to His revealed will. This does not mean that we are not reading and studying our Bible on our own. We should absolutely be doing that. But the added help of our pastors teaching us week in and week out and of discussing God’s Word and the application of it in small groups is a huge additional help in growing in our knowledge and understanding of it.
And church is where we see how godly and mature married people relate to one another. It provides contexts where people can lovingly support us as we and our husbands seek to grow. I encourage you early in your marriage to cultivate friendships with people that you and your husband can talk to and get biblical perspective and encouragement from. Include some friendships with people who are ahead of you in life. And take the long view of growing these friendships. Life together takes years and perseverance. But it is well worth the patient effort.
Isolation is not our friend. Fellowship within the body of Christ is. It can make all the difference for your marriage and family.
Sheldon Vanauken spent his first years as a grieving widower reflecting and writing…about Davy, about love and their attempts to create a perfect and perfectly protected love relationship. He reflected on their pre-Christ determination of what marriage should be, and on God’s invasion of their carefully cultivated relationship. He considered his resistance to God as the Creator and determiner of man, woman, and how they would live as one together.
He put many of these thoughts into letters to Davy after she had died. He says of this writing, “In my letters were the insights that came to me from our past, seen in the light of all that was to be. I saw where we had made mistakes and where we seemed sometimes to have chosen so rightly that it was as though we had some dim inkling from the God we were yet to discover.”
Near the end of the book he says…
“ One insight from the past, which I might have closed my mind to but for Christianity, [was] that the man is head of the wife as Christ is head of the Church. Although we should fiercely have denied it, except perhaps for Davy in that last year, I saw that I had exercised a sort of headship – in the sense of the initiatory or leadership role – that was accepted, even desired, by Davy without either of us being aware of it. It had been loving and gentle, all decisions were discussed,there was never a hint of command, and yet, despite mutual tenderness and deference, it was, I now saw, there: that veiled and loving headship. We had eschewed [or shunned] husbandly authority from the first, Davy was combative and intelligent, we believed everything a modern feminist would have urged: yet something of headship had all along been there. Having known one woman deeply, having myself made every effort to see with a woman’s eyes, I could not now believe that my subtle headship or Davy’s acceptance of it was merely conditioning. Now I wrote to her about it, wondering without decision whether, despite all feminist denial, such a relationship were not inbuilt… and [if, when it is effectively denied…it is done so] only at heavy cost to love.”
Sheldon realizes at this point that despite working vehemently to resist relating in a way that made either one of them a leader in their relationship, he and Davy had unintentionally lived out God’s idea of order in marriage. There were aspects of their marriage in which he had stumbled into functioning as the loving head and she into lovingly submitting to his leadership. For most of their marriage, they were philosophically opposed to this idea. But in the end, they could not love deeply and avoid living out this dynamic. Sheldon admits that some couples are successful at denying male headship any place in their marriage. However, he says that to the extent that they live in denial of God’s idea of marital order, they live “only at heavy cost to love.” The love of these couples suffers because of it.
Chad Van Dixhoorn says: “We are to trust the Bible, for we need God’s help.” (p. 55).
We started this session considering affectionate love for our husbands and children; we ended talking about submitting to the loving leadership of our husbands. These are high calls. They require intentionality, self-control, and growth. They require continued study of all of God’s Word and at times help from others in knowing how to apply them in our specific situation.
But at no point do we ever need to stop trusting God’s Word. He is the Creator of the mystery of marriage. He knows you and all aspects of your situation. He has sent the Holy Spirit to help you. He has surrounded you with His church. He is your Redeemer and Friend.
So continue on, sisters, zealous for the gospel, confident that your Savior will give you all that you need to do His good works.
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