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Well the unmarried man is going to give some advice on women? Iol
I hasten to point out a couple things:
  • The personal married/single status of any poster is irrelevant. Such comments may be seen as ad hominem (I can't see them any other way).
  • Also, Jesus was unmarried, espoused yes, but unmarried.
 
I hasten to point out a couple things:
  • The personal married/single status of any poster is irrelevant. Such comments may be seen as ad hominem (I can't see them any other way).
  • Also, Jesus was unmarried, espoused yes, but unmarried.

Sparrowhawke, I dont not claim to me mighty in anything but what wisdom God has given to me through His Great Grace.
I am very weak in many aspects of the English and proper grammer and such. In alot of ways I see myself as just a country boy who kinda cheated his way through the education system. This "ad hominem" you speak of, is this a violation of some standard that you are trying to enforce? Did I break a rule, for you seemed to be judging this simple comment? As it relates to my abilty to comment on the relationship between a man and a woman. Which is why I made the statement, to notify that I spoke with some level of ignorance upon the issue being debated.
 
Sparrowhawke, I dont not claim to me mighty in anything but what wisdom God has given to me through His Great Grace.
I am very weak in many aspects of the English and proper grammer and such. In alot of ways I see myself as just a country boy who kinda cheated his way through the education system. This "ad hominem" you speak of, is this a violation of some standard that you are trying to enforce? Did I break a rule, for you seemed to be judging this simple comment as to my abilty to comment on the relationship between a man and a woman. Which is why I made the statement, to notify that I spoke with some level of ignorance upon the issue being debated.
That is not how it read to me, and your choice of "lol", meaning "laughing out loud" suggests that you were at least amused to point to the person speaking instead of addressing the subject being discussed.

There is no need for me to teach the use of English for this to be understood. All Members will do well to address the subject and refrain from personal comments that may be seen as irrelevant to the discussion.
 
That is not how it read to me, and your choice of "lol", meaning "laughing out loud" suggests that you were at least amused to point to the person speaking instead of addressing the subject being discussed.

There is no need for me to teach the use of English for this to be understood. All Members will do well to address the subject and refrain from personal comments that may be seen as irrelevant to the discussion.

Well I was laughing at myself. and the fact a unmarried man, is speaking on the issue is relevant. and a bit funny to those who would consider its humor.
 
Oh no! Did I totally misunderstand you? You were speaking in 3rd person about yourself?
I thought that you were laughing at somebody else, please do pardon my mistake.
 
First let me say President that my post is not directed at you but I used your post because spoke to my thoughts. :)

I would say that because a wife "shows" respect for husband does not mean she "has" respect for him. It could be that she has very little respect for him but respects God so she "shows" respect.

A husband could "show" love to his wife and that doesn't mean he "has" love for his wife it could be he is simply obeying God.

Is this a Godly marriage? Most certainly, IMO. Can people live this way til death do us apart? Yes and do.
But many times their joy in living on this earth is found in their children or other interests. Their personal relationship with their spouse may be joyless.

All I'm saying is that we, husband or wife, need to be careful that we do not get puffed up in thinking that our spouse thinks we are so wonderful. That we should actually take the time to find out and take their "feelings" into consideration that the marriage is actually joyful for both people.

The Lord says we are to be Joyful in the Lord, in our relationship with Him and He gives us many reason to be joyful in Him. I think that He ideally wants our marriages to be the same.

Deborah13:

Good post; and a key to what you describe is communication and a lot of mutual patience and affection; better to be patient and affectionate than 'right', eh? ('eh' is a good Canadian word.)

(Some two cents.')

Blessings.
 
Oh wow! I just got what hawk was upset about? He thought I was making fun towards edward? Oh no! I would never cause that sort of pain to such a humble man, or any man that has gone through such things.
Glad that got straitened out! I was really confused on that one.
 
This is a good post, but how many marriages are like this? Mine wasn't (only one) and no one I know has even anything approaching a Godly marriage. Most women want to be first, and in control, and most men are either yes men or domineering. Even when one partner in the marriage has faith, most times (it seems) the other does not, or is of a different faith. Neither facilitates a Godly marriage. It is soo hard to find a good partner nowadays. Prayer is the best way to find a good partner.
(FWIW, I didn't read Mitspas post to be ad hominem in the least. I thought it was obvious that he was lol'ing at himself)

I don't necessarily see it as so much the problem of the people themselves. A marriage is a contract and if you're going to sign a contract that's for life you'd better know what the contract includes. By this I mean really know yourself (be honest about what you desire in a wife and what you expect from her) and then make sure you know what she expects.
Too often we start out by physical attraction and that's just natural and OK. Then we think about all the good things during dating and find out the other person has some of the same interests. Then we find that they want to have children too just like we do. They want to own a home rather than rent. (Frankly a lot of people don't even get this far before they jump in.)
BUT, did you discuss when you wanted to have children. What percentage of the income should be set aside each month to buy that home.
What I'm saying is you may have the same goals but the problems can arise in the how to get to the goal.
I'm getting synical in my older age. I almost think that there should be something in writing. This is what I expect and you expect. This is our goals and this is how we will get there. DETAILED. There's no "you said, no I didn't or that's not what I meant". I think people would be a lot more serious in signing the contract for life.
You might sign a contract with the bank for a small loan without reading the fine print but are you going to sign one for a loan that will take your whole life to pay off? I don't think so.

Don't think you are going to change someone. Look at who they are and consider that they may never change no matter what you do.

In a nutshell don't marry anyone without KNOWING them.
 
Oh wow! I just got what hawk was upset about? He thought I was making fun towards edward? Oh no! I would never cause that sort of pain to such a humble man, or any man that has gone through such things.
Glad that got straitened out! I was really confused on that one.
It was clearly my mistake. Benefit of the doubt should have been applied. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, pardon me, please.
 
It was clearly my mistake. Benefit of the doubt should have been applied. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, pardon me, please.
No worries ,no harm. If someone had been making fun of anothers painful situation? Its good to know you will be there to defend them. Amen.
 
I don't necessarily see it as so much the problem of the people themselves. A marriage is a contract and if you're going to sign a contract that's for life you'd better know what the contract includes. By this I mean really know yourself (be honest about what you desire in a wife and what you expect from her) and then make sure you know what she expects.
Too often we start out by physical attraction and that's just natural and OK. Then we think about all the good things during dating and find out the other person has some of the same interests. Then we find that they want to have children too just like we do. They want to own a home rather than rent. (Frankly a lot of people don't even get this far before they jump in.)
BUT, did you discuss when you wanted to have children. What percentage of the income should be set aside each month to buy that home.
What I'm saying is you may have the same goals but the problems can arise in the how to get to the goal.
I'm getting synical in my older age. I almost think that there should be something in writing. This is what I expect and you expect. This is our goals and this is how we will get there. DETAILED. There's no "you said, no I didn't or that's not what I meant". I think people would be a lot more serious in signing the contract for life.
You might sign a contract with the bank for a small loan without reading the fine print but are you going to sign one for a loan that will take your whole life to pay off? I don't think so.

Don't think you are going to change someone. Look at who they are and consider that they may never change no matter what you do.

In a nutshell don't marry anyone without KNOWING them.

Some contracts are standard forms where many of the terms are already known and expected. Some duties of certain relationships are mandated by law or just expected because of cultural-cognitive institutions, unwritten rules nearly everyone agrees on.

When it comes to Christian marriage, certain things are to be expected. If a man marries a woman who says at a young age that she doesn't have children, he should realize that the possibility of children is part of the marriage deal (be fruitful and multiply, and the part about there being a godly seed in Malachi for example). His wife might changer her mind down the road.

Part of the 'contract' for Christians is that the wife submits to her husband. That's a pretty big contractual clause there to consider. It's a lot bigger than details like what percentage of the money to invest. It means knowing if she can trust the man and trust the Lord to submit to him. If a man wants his marriage to reflect the relationship between Christ and the church, he also needs to consider whether his wife will submit to him and respect him, and also whether he can love and honor this woman as he should.

Both need to consider whether their partner will be faithful. We usually think of not committing adultery when we think of 'faithful' spouses. That's a pretty big consideration. But faithfulness also means the spouse will continue through hard times and not try to bail out and get a divorce over a bit of difficulty or personality conflict. It is a very big decision, especially nowadays since society in general and even churches don't provide a lot of 'social pressure' to encourage people to be faithful in marriage in these other ways.



I suppose owning versus renting might be a big deal for some people. It means little to me. As Christians we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth and we shouldn't be here for earthly possessions. If you believe in strong markets, it doesn't matter if you buy or own from a financial perspective, as long as you invest the extra money you save from renting (e.g. the money not spent on home ownership costs like repairs and insurance.)
 
OK, I've been out of this discussion for a few days because I needed to do some backstopping to what I had said earlier. There are a few of you on here who are not going to like what I'm going to say, because it doesn't fit with what you believe you know about the Ephesians 5 passages. Let me say, I'm a strongly conservative Christian, happen to be Southern Baptist but there are other denominations I could be comfortable in as a member, and this reflects current SBC faith and message. It is also what my Greek studies taught me years ago, and what I've refreshed in my mind the last couple days.

The section 5:21–6:9 addresses what are called "household codes." In Paul's day, many Romans were troubled by the spread of “religions from the East” (e.g., Isis worship, Judaism and Christianity), which they thought would undermine traditional Roman family values. Members of these minority religions often tried to show their support for those values by using a standard form of exhortations developed by philosophers from Aristotle on. These exhortations about how the head of a household should deal with members of his family usually break down into discussions of husband-wife, father-child and master-slave relationships. Paul borrows this form of discussion straight from standard Greco-Roman moral writing. But unlike most ancient writers, Paul undermines the basic premise of these codes: He speaks against absolute authority of the male head of the house.

Commentators note that the verb "submit" is not actually in the text. If you look at a good interlinear Bible which shows direct English translation, verbatim and in Greek sentence structure, you will see the word hupotasso is not in v. 22, the word translated "submit" or "be subject to" in v. 21. That contradicts what I said the other day, but I retract that statement here. The Greek sentence structure does not repeat the word. It has to be supplied from the preceding verse (v. 21) enjoining all Christians to "submit" to other another -- a radical break from the standard patriarchal marriages and household codes of the day. And this basically enjoins the "submitting" of all Christians one to another (as I'd said a couple days ago: husbands, wives, children, masters, servants, etc.). The further implication is that whatever "submission" a wife is called to, her husband (as a Christian) is called to the same thing.

The final expression of being filled with the Spirit is "submitting to one another" because Christ is one's Lord. All the household codes Paul proposes are based on this idea. But although it was customary to call on wives, children and slaves to submit in various ways, to call all members of a group (including the male head of the household) to submit to one another was unprecedented. The participle of Ephesians 5:21 is the last of a series of four, and clearly belongs to what precedes it. This verse also supplies the verb “to submit” for this hard saying, without which Ephesians 5:22 would be grammatically incomplete and without meaning.

The verse in Greek reads literally: "Wives, to your husbands as to the Lord." The verb to "submit" is absent and can only be read into the sentence because of the intimate connection between the two verses. Ephesians 5:21 is therefore transitional, both belonging to what precedes and setting the agenda for what follows. Thus the kind of radical self-submission to one another which evidences the fullness of the Spirit is now explored in terms of its implications for husbands and wives. That is, what does this self-submission, modeled in Jesus, look like in marriage?

First, Paul begins this three-part structure in a very unusual way. As the climax of his exhortations describing a Spirit-filled life (Eph 5:18–21), Paul calls on all believers to submit to one another(again, in Ephesians 5:21). It is true that the following context delineates different ways to submit according to differing societal roles. We have to admit, the very idea of "mutual submission" strained the common sense of the term "submission." Householders were sometimes called to be sensitive to their wives, children and slaves, but they were never told to submit to them. That Paul envisions the same sort of mutual submission to cover the slave and master relationship is clear from his exhortation in Ephesians 6:9. After explaining how and why slaves should submit (Ephesians 6:5–8), he calls on masters to "do the same things to them," an idea which again, if pressed literally, goes beyond virtually all other extant writers from antiquity.

Paul has clearly shown throughout the epistle that Christians are a new social order created to express the fullness of Christ in the midst of the old, fallen order. What he is saying in Ephesians 5:21 is that the Spirit empowers Christians to exist in relationship with each other in a radical, culturally transforming way, namely, through mutual self-submission. The ground for this radically new approach to human relationships is "out of reverence for Christ." The reason for that reverence (or, perhaps better, awe) is the radical nature of Christ's earthly life, the total, free submission of Himself as God's suffering servant on the cross, climaxed in His self-giving on the cross (Ephesians 5:2, 25). It is reverence and awe toward that self-giving love that is to motivate our mutual self-submission to each other. It is Christ's servanthood and Christ's sacrifice that is to be displayed in each of us toward others, particularly our families. It is not His unquestioned authority to that is to be displayed, because quite frankly, we don't own that authority. It belongs to Christ alone.

The submission of the wife to the husband is to be “as to the Lord.” Her submission is to be freely chosen, being there for her partner “as to the Lord,” that is, as a disciple of the Lord, as one who followed in his servant footsteps, motivated by self-giving love. This kind of submission is not a reinforcement of the traditional norms. It is rather a fundamental challenge to them. The duties are listed as reciprocal duties. Whereas most household codes simply addressed the head of the household, instructing him how to govern other members of his household, Paul first addresses wives, children and slaves. Far from instructing the husband/father in how to govern his wife, children and slaves, Paul omits any injunction to govern and merely calls on him to love his wife, which was undoubtedly a common practice, but rarely one that was rarely prescribed, it being assumed -- and as we see even today, occasionally erroneously so. Paul exhorts the man to be restrained in disciplining his children and to regard slaves as equals before God. This is hardly the language of the common household code, although some ancient philosophers also exhorted moderation and fair treatment of subordinates. The wife, children and slaves are to regulate their own submission voluntarily.

Does that interpretation negate the husband/father's responsibility for the spiritual direction of the family, and the individual members' growth? Absolutely not! For if we are to be to our wives as the Lord is to the Church, then it is understood, without equivocation, that entails the responsibility for spiritual guidance and direction coming from him, as spiritual guidance and direction for the church comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what this passage says in the context of the Greek language, the sociopoliticoeconomic dynamics of the day, and in the rest of the Bible. If this is not what it says, then it is not agreement with Christ's teachings. With that, blessing are prayed upon you, and I am, again, done here.
 
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Some contracts are standard forms where many of the terms are already known and expected. Some duties of certain relationships are mandated by law or just expected because of cultural-cognitive institutions, unwritten rules nearly everyone agrees on.

When it comes to Christian marriage, certain things are to be expected. If a man marries a woman who says at a young age that she doesn't have children, he should realize that the possibility of children is part of the marriage deal (be fruitful and multiply, and the part about there being a godly seed in Malachi for example). His wife might changer her mind down the road.

Part of the 'contract' for Christians is that the wife submits to her husband. That's a pretty big contractual clause there to consider. It's a lot bigger than details like what percentage of the money to invest. It means knowing if she can trust the man and trust the Lord to submit to him. If a man wants his marriage to reflect the relationship between Christ and the church, he also needs to consider whether his wife will submit to him and respect him, and also whether he can love and honor this woman as he should.

Both need to consider whether their partner will be faithful. We usually think of not committing adultery when we think of 'faithful' spouses. That's a pretty big consideration. But faithfulness also means the spouse will continue through hard times and not try to bail out and get a divorce over a bit of difficulty or personality conflict. It is a very big decision, especially nowadays since society in general and even churches don't provide a lot of 'social pressure' to encourage people to be faithful in marriage in these other ways.



I suppose owning versus renting might be a big deal for some people. It means little to me. As Christians we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth and we shouldn't be here for earthly possessions. If you believe in strong markets, it doesn't matter if you buy or own from a financial perspective, as long as you invest the extra money you save from renting (e.g. the money not spent on home ownership costs like repairs and insurance.)

Please note that my response was to what Edward was saying about finding a wife and I was saying that some of the problems that arise in selecting a partner for life is that we don't know each other well enougn. I was not describing a Godly marriage and what to expect from a Godly union only the selection of a partner before entering into a Godly marriage.
 
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