Our real failure is that we do not follow God’s directions for marriage. This is what Paul is concerned with in Ephesians, as he gives instructions first to the wife and then to the husband. To the wives he says, "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" (vv. 22-24).
I have called this study of Ephesians 5:22-33 "Loving Husbands, Happy Wives" because of Paul's clear instructions and desire in the passage. But I admit, as I begin, that this or any other title commending marriage is a bit of an embarrassment in our day. It is because many of today’s marriages are in dreadful shape, and anything other than pessimistic comments makes many people uneasy and even hostile when the subject comes up.
I think of the story where the man with the withered hand was confronted by Christ and was told to stretch it forth. Humanly speaking, he couldn’t stretch forth his hand. That was his problem. His hand was withered. But when Jesus said, "Stretch it forth," he stretched it forth. He obeyed the command. And in obedience came the healing that he needs. Don’t say, "I believe it. It’s true, but I can’t do it." You never know what you can do until you step out in obedience to God.
If this battle is to be won, it is going to have to be done by a change in attitude as we see ourselves as Christians, not here primarily to satisfy ourselves or be happy or fulfilled, but rather to be obedient servants of Jesus Christ. Fortunately, in our time there are a number of evangelical writers who are being raised up by God to oppose this trend. And I mention them for you...
Pat Williams, who was the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball team, and who has written a marvelous book on the revitalization of his own marriage, called Rekindled, said to me on one occasion, "Jim, what is happening? Every week, it seems to me, I hear of another prominent marriage breaking up." He said that to me in a week in which a popular and very influential woman evangelical writer and lecturer had left her husband to go off with a man who had worked for a Christian publisher. It’s a good question: what is happening? What is happening is that marriage is in trouble as it has been in no previous time, at least in American history.
