October 6

Oct 6 - Today from Proverbs 6 we look at verse 34
"For jealousy arouses a husband's fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge."

The context of this verse is the indelible shame of adultery and the inescapable consequences born of a betrayed husband to the intruder of his marriage. In Proverbs, the Teacher never warns the adulteress. She seems to be introduced only as an object of extreme temptation with devastating consequences. The Teacher constantly warns the student to avoid her at all costs. Biblically, the man carries first responsibility in a marriage relationship. Not just the man in the marriage, but all other men outside of the marriage. Even in this day of 'equality among the sexes', men are the first to be held responsible before God for fidelity in the marriage.
Modern man has attempted to 'neutralize' gender in the Bible because gender has become politically incorrect. They claim that gender was emphasized in accordance with the strong cultural trends of the day in which it was written. I think that we as 'students of the Word' must be more careful in our attempts to make God's Word fit our strong cultural trends. Perhaps our culture is headed down a very wrong path - a path that might be corrected if we sought to make our trends more in line with God's Word. Listen to Paul's exhortation in Ephesians 5:22-24; "Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." Wow! Talk about politically incorrect!
"In Paul's day the women were not socially liberated at all." Yet, Paul gave an illustration that is absolute sound doctrine; the analogy of Christ and His church. Culture will never change that relationship. Good hermeneutics should tell us that culture is to never change the relationship of the husband and the wife in the marriage. The key focus in Paul's statement, and in the marriage, is this; "The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church." Christ did not subjugate the church, He liberated her. Christ did not force the church into a submissive posture, He loved her in that He gave His life for her and thus gave her the confidence to totally submit to Him. Christ never demanded that the church make herself presentable to Him, He accepted her unconditionally and He gave His all to make her presentable unto Himself. It is very clear who is the more responsible in this relationship - the Lord Jesus. He is responsible first to be worthy of the wife's submission. Her responsibility is then to reciprocate and submit out of trust and honor.
The man did not appoint himself as head of the marriage relationship - God appointed him. Man did not decide he would be the head of the marriage relationship, God gave him the responsibility. That responsibility means that he is to commit himself to one woman for life. That responsibility means he will commit himself to be the kind of man his wife would desire to submit to. That commitment means that he will spend the rest of his life keeping her, nourishing her, giving her freedom, and making himself worth 'being under'. If a man cannot make such a commitment, then he has no business getting married. And worse, he has no business involving himself in another man's marriage! It does not matter what the issues are in that marriage, man is responsible to STAY OUT! It is men who have the strongest tendencies to act pagan. It is our modern culture that is influencing men to become even more pagan. It is men who are more responsible for the moral decline in our culture - because our culture has 'neutralized' gender and taken moral responsibility away from the men. God never did.