Trust... and Obey
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way…” sounds the old hymn. And you have to be a pretty unorthodox Christian to start talking about how one shouldn’t trust God. That’s full blown heathen territory.
When we speak of ‘trust’ in marriage, however, things get iffy really quickly. The implication of most feminist thinking in the church nowadays is, like, “Well, yes, God said for wives to submit to their husbands. But he obviously didn’t have my husband in mind when he said it.” And the more conservative part of the church has a tendency to preach sermons which basically say, “Well, yes, the Scriptures speak of wives submitting to their husbands. But what that means is that husbands need to be so humble, so Christlike, so quiet, shy, and mollycoddle that their wives will naturally want to obey the commands that they hardly ever give.”
Introduction
OK, so maybe I went a bit overboard in that last one. They don’t actually say that. They merely… imply that. That if a husband were Christ-like enough the wives wouldn’t have to worry about obeying them. They would trust them enough to obey them.
Or, what is worse, they would ‘agree’ enough to obey them. The common statement of wifely obedience adds the ‘unless they ask them to sin’ exception at the end. A statement Paul seems to have forgotten. But this exception, kind of like the ‘life of the mother’ exception for child-murder leads, in a large number of cases, to an ‘anything goes’ attitude.
The logic goes like this:
In order for something not to be sin, it has to be done in wisdom.
With my wisdom I have decided that this thing that my husband has asked me to do is not wise.
It is, therefore, a sin.
Now I want to say, right at the outset, that that logic is absolutely correct. When you make a decision, if you decide to do something that you know isn’t wise, then it is a sin for you to make that decision. Which is why we need to not talk about ‘sin’ but ‘jurisdiction’.
Not Yet Convinced
I can see I haven’t yet convinced my audience. So let me trot out some more logic:
The Scriptures tell wives to obey their husbands.
Therefore disobeying your husband is a sin.
There’s logic for you. So now you are left with what the real issue is:
The Scriptures say that I am to obey my husband.
I think my husband is wrong.
Now what do I do??
We have to see that every time a wife is tempted to disobey her husband, she is faced with an actual command to obey him. And that every time she reasons her way out of it, she has to face the very real possibility that disobeying him is disobeying God.
Jurisdictions
Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
Romans 13:7
And this happens in all of life. Think of how many times that Daniel carried out the orders of unGodly kings… and how few times he disobeyed. The answer cannot be that Daniel never thought that any of the king’s judgments were unwise, that none of his commands went against God’s law.
I believe the answer has to lie in the word ‘jurisdction’. That kings, like husbands, have ‘jurisdictions’. That they have things that are in their area of responsibility. When the king sent Daniel to get Lydia to sleep with that night, Daniel might have thought that it should have been Argonia’s turn. But Daniel went (or sent a Eunuch) to get Lydia.
…. And Obey
So lets get back to that word ‘obey’. I’m writing this article in response to Ross Byrd’s article ‘Wives Submit?’. (Catchy title, eh? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.) We got to chatting on notes, and he suggested we do an exchange starting there. Toward the close of the article he writes:
Both sexes must trust and both must be trustworthy if we are to be and become Christ’s body in the world.
Which is all very well and good, if a bit vague, fuzzy, and psychobabbleish. But I want to add ‘and obey’. Like the old hymn, we can’t just ‘trust’ we have to ‘obey’.
[NB: The author of the above post responded that the quote above was taken out of context, and mischaracterises his views. I wish to state, clearly, that I am not attempting to characterise his views, and that I posted the link in order to encourage all of my readers to read his entire post, and thus the quote in context.]
And we have to obey hard things. We have to obey when we don’t understand. We have to obey. We are called to trust God, we are told that He is trustworthy, we are told of the great things He has done and will do. And we still find ourselves faced with being called to obey him in hard things. Confusing things.
When Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac we, who have the blessing of at least partial hindsight, get to sit back and say, “Ah, so it will be a metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ, he won’t really have to kill him,” and eat our popcorn. (Or hotdog. I don’t like popcorn. Although I do like caramel corn.)
But Abraham did not! When Abraham said, “God will provide a lamb,” for all he knew that lamb was Isaac! That Sarah would have another son, or Isaac would be resurrected, or… something! But he had to go through with it not knowing, just trusting. He had to have faith… and he had to obey. Paul. James.
So when we tell men that they have to be trustworthy… we also need to tell them they need to lead anyway. Even before they are trustworthy. Even before they have proven themselves. Even when they have failed!
And when we are talking to women. When the older women sit down with some young thing and give her counsel. They will need to say that the younger woman will need to obey even the untrustworthy husband. The unbelieving husband.
Because the person they need to ultimately trust is not the husband, it is God.
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
Links
From the Beginning
Marriage Discussion
I write a lot on the subject of marriage, and one of the most important threads has been a letter exchange with
. Our question in that thread was ‘What Is Marriage?”.Ryan Shortalso contributed.
I have no idea where people find the Meek Christ. Jesus was anything but meek. He healed the sick, preached to the people nobody wanted to be around, argued with the Rabbinical authority, and took a whip to the moneylenders at the temple.
He said to sell your purse and buy a sword, and he faced Satan down for 40 days in the desert and won.
He was whipped, had thorns pushed into his brow, had nails hammered through his forearms and feet, and hung on the cross for almost 24 hours before dying.
He was placed in a tomb and went to hell to once again face the devil, win, and come back to life.
He wasn't meek. He was outspoken and in your face.