Why should a woman be under someone's protection in issues regarding marriage?

[GospelS]

A marriage is not a “personal issue.” Marriage is communal. We seem to have forgotten this. People thought of themselves in relation to the people around them: as someone’s daughter, sister, wife, mother, church member, etc. It’s a recent shift in thinking to refer to oneself primarily apart from other people, and it’s a pervasive one.

In this context, I understand why what I said sounds offensive, but I don’t agree that it is offensive. Certainly we must never follow anyone into sin, but in general, the design God put in place was that children learn to obey Him by first learning to obey their parents. Your parents are God’s agents; they have rightful authority over you. If you have parents who’ve divorced, who’ve failed to obey God’s design for a permanent, till-death, one-flesh union, I can understand why you’d bristle at my insistence that parents be involved in the process of dating and getting married.

When parents aren’t available or are unwilling to help, it should be sought out in the body of Christ. When a father asks a man who is pursuing his daughter for marriage about his intentions (and his character, his finances, his spiritual habits, his church membership and more) he is not meddling, far from it. You’re right that submission to father is different from submission to husband, but it flows from the same heart posture and inclination. A woman who honors her father is more likely to be equipped to submit to her husband. God establishes authority to help us. Paul Tripp explains it this way in his book Age of Opportunity,

If a person fears God, he will be submissive to the authorities that God has placed in his life. A person who disregards, argues against, or seeks to skirt the authorities in his life is not taking advantage of God’s help in fighting the spiritual battle. God placed authority in our lives to restrain sin. A person who is aware of his sinfulness and who wants to live a godly life will not chafe against authority. He will appreciate it and submit to it.

It is the rebellion against proper authority that leads to trouble. Only when Christ submits to the will of the Father “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8) are things made right again. When we function as we were intended to, life is harmonious. It is honoring when a woman seeks her father’s blessing over her dating and marriage decisions. It’s not always possible to get that blessing, but she should try. Study the life of Christ, the grown man who did nothing apart from the Father’s will, who said of himself, “I honor my Father”. Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Seminary, describes Jesus’ submission to the Father this way,

Marvel at the eternal submission of the Son to the Father. Here, then, is a stunning principle: It is as God-like to submit with joy and gladness to rightful authority, as it is God-like to exert wise and beneficial rightful authority. Understand that God has purposed to exhibit something of Himself in our human relationships that involve authority and submission.

The danger in cutting your parents (or where that’s not an option, pastor or Christian mentor) out of the dating/courtship decision making process is that you cut yourself off from help in choosing wisely. It is God’s good design that places us in families on our way to forming families; that He gives us dads — men — to shepherd us in our journey to marrying a man. I realize that many dads, shockingly many, have failed in their responsibilities to their children in this area. To suggest that these all-important conversations and decisions are supposed to take place between the man, the woman and God — and no one else — is to suggest that they can already act married, before they are or know if they should be. We live east of Eden, post sin, where men and women both bring their fallen nature to the process. That is why it’s essential to have wise counsel in the process.

Why should a woman be under someone's protection in issues regarding marriage?

 

[Sabertooth]

Much of that is written with contemporary cultural models in mind (which are lost on all of us, today).

I believe that if a Christian woman reads woman-specific Scriptures and lets the Holy Spirit make them clear to her, that she will be headed in the proper direction before God. Men, including her husband, do not have the grace to receive them in their intended context, let alone impart them. Leading women do, however.

I believe the same holds true for Christian men and man-specific Scriptures.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

“People didn’t used to think of themselves primarily as individuals. Prior to the enlightenment, they thought of themselves in relation to the people around them: as someone’s daughter, sister, wife, mother, church member, etc. It’s a recent shift in thinking to refer to oneself primarily apart from other people, and it’s a pervasive one.”

Some of us prefer to think of women as individuals. If you want to be submissive invididual that’s up to you.

I understand women had a long history of being a chattel in an extended power plays of families in patriarchal societies but things change.

Gender equality is probably one of those things that will stick around.

 

[GospelS]

If you want to be submissive invididual that’s up to you.

It's not a choice. God asked children to be submissive to parents and wives to be submissive to their husbands.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

It's not a choice. God asked children to be submissive to parents and wives to be submissive to their husbands.

No Paul asked that a pattern be established to represent in the physical what the church is to Christ in the spiritual. By your estimations the slave trade should still be in effect also.

Most protection needs come from the one over another that needs protection from.

Why should a woman be under someone's protection in issues regarding marriage?

 

[GospelS]

No Paul asked that a pattern be established to represent in the physical what the church is to Christ in the spiritual. By your estimations the slave trade should still be in effect also.

That is still the pattern we were asked to follow. That's all i meant to say. I don't understand how you made assumptions about my estimations.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

That is still the pattern we were asked to follow. That's all i meant to say. I don't understand how you made assumptions about my estimations.

Who asks you to follow that? Your culture? Your culture says a widow should be burned with her husband’s funeral procession.

 

[solid_core]

By your estimations the slave trade should still be in effect also.

Paul said that slaves should obey their masters. It does not apply today, because slavery is illegal. Marriage is still legal so rules Paul set for the marriage still apply.

 

[GospelS]

Who asks you to follow that? Your culture? Your culture says a widow should be burned with her husband’s funeral procession.

That is a dangerous thing to say about your fellow sister in Christ. All Children of God have one culture and that is a heavenly godly culture. Paul was lead by the Holy Spirit and who said that we should follow the same pattern in physical as in spiritual. You yourself have agreed to this. I did not even speak anything related to the culture of this world. I only said that in the scriptures "we were asked that children to be submissive to parents and wives to be submissive to their husbands". And you are speaking against that.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

The Bible is a book of relationships. It begins with a Trinitarian God — three in one — who creates man and woman for relationship with Him and with one another. A married couple then relates to the children who are born as the fruit of their marriage.

Show me where in the trinity that any are in submission to the other and you will see the pattern of Christ and the church. If i still is unclear to you what that represents then your welcome to the second hand actions that are but a symbol to those who are not following shadows and instead represent the substance.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

That is a dangerous thing to say about your fellow sister in Christ. All Children of God have one culture and that is a heavenly godly culture. Paul was lead by the Holy Spirit and who said that we should follow the same pattern in physical as in spiritual. You yourself have agreed to this. I did not even speak anything related to the culture of this world. I only said that in the scriptures "we were asked children to be submissive to parents and wives to be submissive to their husbands". And you are speaking against that.

Why is that a dangerous thing to say?

 

[solid_core]

Show me where in the trinity that any are in submission to the other

Son is submitted to Father.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

Son is submitted to Father.

As the woman is to the husband? That makes the man God representing instead of Christ representing. The church is submissive to God.

 

[solid_core]

As the woman is to the husband? That makes the man God representing instead of Christ representing. The church is submissive to God.

I do not think marriage applies to Trinity, metaphorically.

But submission is in both of them.

 

[GospelS]

Why is that a dangerous thing to say?

You are saying that the worldly culture is my culture, your fellow sister-in-Christ. Worldly culture is not my culture and it is dangerous to say that about your fellow sister-in-Christ.

 

[GospelS]

Who asks you to follow that?

Here's you answer to who asked to follow that:
QUOTE "Cassia, No Paul asked that a pattern be established to represent in the physical what the church is to Christ in the spiritual".

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

You are saying that the worldly culture is my culture, your fellow sister-in-Christ. Worldly culture is not my culture and it is dangerous to say that about your fellow sister-in-Christ.

God does not hold me or you accountable to culture. His culture says that the first marriage represented was Isaac bringing rebecca into his mother’s tent. Further back from that a man is to cleave to his wife.

I just see this going in the way of the legal spirit to put women under rule of men that is only stated in the bible in the book of Esther where a Persian king made that binding by legal decree where before there was no law.

Do you honestly think that the Easter bunny would rule forever.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

Here's you answer to who asked to follow that:
QUOTE "Cassia, No Paul asked that a pattern be established to represent in the physical what the church is to Christ in the spiritual".

A pattern of anything is not the reality.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

“People didn’t used to think of themselves primarily as individuals. Prior to the enlightenment, they thought of themselves in relation to the people around them: as someone’s daughter, sister, wife, mother, church member, etc. It’s a recent shift in thinking to refer to oneself primarily apart from other people, and it’s a pervasive one.”

Some of us prefer to think of women as individuals. If you want to be submissive invididual that’s up to you.

I understand women had a long history of being a chattel in an extended power plays of families in patriarchal societies but things change.

Gender equality is probably one of those things that will stick around.

I agree that gender equality will probably stick around yet there are those who want to impose legalities on others.

 

[GospelS]

The submission between The Father and Son in my OP is talking about children submitting to their earthly father's. No where did i say this is referring to husband and wife.