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Fitting in the Lord

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The Epistle of Paul to the Colossians is in many ways parallel to his letter to the church at Ephesus, so it should not come as a surprise that Paul offers similar instruction to husbands and wives in both letters. In Colossians 3 we read:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.

Colossians 3:18-19

While the basic principle Paul is teaching here is the same as that found in Ephesians 5:22-33, there are two distinct emphases in this letter. First, Paul says that the wife’s submission to her husband is “fitting in the Lord.” In the previous passage, he told wives to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord,” describing what Eadie calls the spirit of obedience. He says that in this verse Paul is describing the becomingness of that submissive spirit. There is something appealing and attractive about a wife’s submission to her husband, and even the secular world understands the impropriety of a domineering wive (although that is becoming less and less true every day).

The second difference is found in Paul’s instruction to husbands to love their wives. Where his Ephesian letter illustrated this love in a positive way using the example of Jesus Christ, this verse points out one typical way that men fail to love their wives as their own bodies: they become bitter toward them. When a husband makes himself bitter toward his wife, he will look at her with scorn and disapproval rather than with tender affection and generosity. He will not give her the benefit of the doubt, but will chide her or rebuke her or belittle her for every one of her shortcomings. This will often result in a wife submitting to her husband, but it is only in order to avoid his surly temper, not out of a desire to please God, and it certainly does not display real, biblical love. God’s intention is for husbands to demonstrate consistent love for their wives. And just as it is fitting in the Lord for a believing wife to submit to her husband and unseemly if she refuses, so it is fitting for a Christian husband to love his wife and a sad and sinful display when he cultivates bitterness toward her.

Consider this passage from the early church Father Tertullian in a letter he wrote to his wife regarding the blessedness of marriage between Christians:

How can we find words to express the happiness of that marriage which the church effects, and the oblation confirms, and the blessing seals, and angels report, and the Father ratifies. What a union of two believers, with one hope, one discipline, one service, one spirit, and one flesh! Together they pray, together they prostrate themselves, and together keep their fasts, teaching and exhorting one another, and sustaining one another. They are together at the church and at the Lord’s supper; they are together in straits, in persecutions, and refreshments. Neither conceals anything from the other; neither avoids the other; neither is a burden to the other; freely the sick are visited, and the needy relieved; alms without torture; sacrifices without scruple; daily diligence without hindrance; no using of the sign by stealth; no hurried salutation; no silent benediction; psalms and hymns resound between the two, and they vie with each other which shall sing their best to God. Christ rejoices on hearing and beholding such things; to such persons He sends His peace. Where the two are, He is Himself; and where He is, there the Evil One is not.

A marriage between two believers ought to be characterized by harmony, genuine affection, and steady trust, as the wife willingly acquiesces to her husband’s desires, and the husband loves her without any hint of bitterness. Not only does this kind of relationship put Christ’s love for the church on display to the world, it also demonstrates the nobility and holiness of marriage as God originally intended.

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