British blogger Adrian Warnock has issued a Bible challenge for bloggers. He lists these verses: Is 66:2, Phil 2:3-10, Mt 23:11-12, 1 Cor 11:3, Col 3:18-24, 1 Tim 2:11-14, Titus 2:3-4, 2 Tim 1:5, Acts 18:26, Gen 1:27, Gen 2:18, 20-21, 23, 3:1, 9, 16, 17.
And writes:
Taken together, these verses together form a convincing picture. Your task is to paint it. I am not after bold statements of doctrine, certainly not throughout the post. But, given this string of verses and tackling them in this order, what does the bible have to say about issues of authority and submission and how that impacts on family church and work life?
Depending on Adrian’s deadline, I plan to participate. I hope Christian readers will participate as well.
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Okay. Nothing like the Holy Spirit hunting me down on the internet. I’ll spend some of my kid free time today doing this. Thanks. Really.
This looks like a job for… Andy and Raf.
In general, the common theme is of submission to order, and purpose through service and sacrifice. I took it to mean that although mens wives were to submit to their ‘leadership’ that leadership also requires the greatest servanthood. Meaning that submission and leadership/service are the opposite sides of the same coin.
Christ demonstrates his leadership and sovereignity through his ultimate sacrifice and service to us. Men should model this example of leadership through service to their submitting wife.
We should demonstrate our submission to Christ’s sovereignity through the service and submission in and out of leadership positions to each other.
Leadership requires humility, submission requires humility, and we should all humbly submit to one anothers needs modeling Christ who ‘though it not robbery to be equal to God…yet made himself a little lower than the angels’.
Thanks for passing this info.
I’m in
In a nutshell, pop theology is at odds with God’s master plan, ie ordaining women to leadership positions, gay marriage. Although there is a order of submission, every player has a critical role to play, absent which our relationship with God becomes dysfunctional.
To try and paint a picture per se is beyond my non-artist capabilities.
However, when I think about the orderliness in the greater scheme of things, I’m drawn to a photo spread that I saw back in ‘92 by Geo (German magazine like National Geography).
This spread was a sequence that started with the cosmos at extreme zoom, backed off to our solar system, then a satelite’s view of earth and zooming in on NYC, man on the street and ended up with a black-field extreme magnification of the (IIRC) atomic structure of the human cell which looked almost identical to the 1st picture. The picture I came away with was God’s nature coming full circle.
Time permitting, I may work on participate, however it doesn’t look likely.
I’m not a blogger, so I’m not able to participate, but I don’t get why those verses would be controversial to anyone who is serious about walking with Christ. In our nature we are against God and the idea of wives humbly obeying our husbands and finding great joy in the noble calling of motherhood, well, it offends our flesh. We proudly think that we deserve a life of ease & pleasure here and the joy of heaven later instead of the reality that we deserve the Lord’s wrath both now and for eternity. As Christians, however, we have a new nature that should delight in servanthood, at least in the Word of God that tells us of His mercy toward us. Why wouldn’t we want to respond to that in humility?
I have to admit that reading over those verses humbled me as I considered the times recently I have resented the service required of my by my role as wife and mom. I see how impatient and proud I have been at heart. Hardly Christlike in humility and gentleness! May the Lord bless you as well who chose to study those words of His.
Hi Jenney – I wrote: I hope Christian readers will participate as well.
Readers are welcome to join in whether they have a blog or not.
Well, he says your entry should be posted “on your blog” so I didn’t think I could, not having a blog!
I know.
I’m encouraging blog-less readers to use the comment section to “blog” about it. He’ll be judging bloggers only, of course, but I wanted commenters to feel part of the Bible challenge.
Jenney
Sounds like you SHOULD have a blog- your comments sound so inciteful. You could always start one just for this process- I will be “judging” commentators only, although obviously cannot award a Warnie to a non-blogger!
Adrian, you are gracious.
I tried to start a blog. Twice. I just don’t have a lot of time! Bloggers are always talking about how much time it takes to keep up and I can’t imagine being able to. I don’t know how you all do it!
I’m a pregnant, nursing, mother of five girls 10 and under. I make their clothes and bake our bread. I homeschool the oldest three. And, the most time consuming job, nurture their hearts and train to think from a Biblical perspective and obey God. To do my best as a Christian homemaker it seemed necessary to spare the world the bulk of my opinions, at least for this season of my life!
The less I say, the more insightful I sound. Even a fool seems wise when he is silent!
LaShawn, I read Dell Gines’s comments…agree wholeheartedly. I did my own research & came up with same solution. A part of it is also: this is part of God’s order of things, specifically for marriage relationships. God is a God of order; this is simply an application of that.
Love your blog. Recommendation: Ted Dekker, Ring Trilogy; 3 books entitled Black, Red & White. You will LOVE them.
Cheers
In Him
russ smith
Jenny,
First let me say I respect your words and the service to your family. Instead of re-writing, I’ll just say post #3 gets really close to summing up my thoughts on the issue. As a brother in Christ, it might just be semantics, but when you say “wives humbly obeying our husbands”, I had to comment.
Before my wife and I entered into the covenant of marriage, we researched the Bible for God’s instruction for what our marriage relationship should look like. We did not find a single passage instructing her to “obey” me. The only referrence to “obey” other than for all of us to obey God, was for children to “obey” their parents and for slaves to “obey” their master.
Since the original post was for discussion purposes and to get some thoughts going, I thought I would mention this since I view the difference between “obey” and submit” to be significant, I should add, so does my wife.
In Him,
Dan
Good point Dan, and an important one.
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