Dating & Marriage

This is the subject we've been studying in my Sunday School class the past couple of weeks. We were looking at what the Bible says about love/dating/marriage vs. what society says about them. 

One of the passages we focused on was Ephesians 5: 22-33. That is the passage about wives submitting to their husbands and husbands loving their wives.

Submission. Our society has painted a picture where submission = inferiority. To submit makes you worth less somehow, or weak. This is not true. The wife's role in marriage is submission as the helpmeet to her husband. Your role DOES NOT equal your value. A good analogy my dad told us was how companies call their employees their greatest asset. Yes, the supervisor or boss has a higher role in the company, but they don't have any greater importance or value than the people they supervise.  The employees have the same value to the company as the supervisors, they just have different roles and levels of authority.

Submission = giving authority to someone else.

Going back to the company analogy, when you get a job, you willingly place yourself under the authority of your boss and the directives of the company. For women, when we marry, we are willingly putting ourselves under the authority of our husbands. This is another big reason that women need to be very careful who they marry. You are committing yourself to being submissive to that man for the rest of your life. That is a big deal. 

The Ephesians passage talks a lot to husbands about loving their wives. One part in particular says, " In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." (v. 28). We were discussing what that means and what it looks like. I really like how one person in my class put it. He said that you want to take good care of your body; do what is best for it. So if you love your wife like you love yourself, you will want what is the very best for her, to the point of putting her before yourself. 

This brings to mind another definition of submission I heard - submission is putting another person above yourself. 

Submission is a big deal and it's not easy. We as humans tend to be very prideful and want our own way. We want independence; to be in control of ourselves. Submission is counter-intuitive to our sinful nature. But I wonder if that is exactly why God tells us women to do it. I'm not married, but I do have trouble with submission. Everyone has to submit to someone throughout their entire life. Parents, husband, employer, government, God. Right now, I have to submit to my parents, and in the case of putting others above myself, I submit (try to) to my brothers. It can be really hard (especially the brother part :), but

"We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength." 

Philippians 4:13