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The Husband’s Call to Love Is A Call to Rule

I’m on the fence on this one (his final conclusion) right now due to what I’m learning on covenant breaking and ‘being cut off ‘ from Israel. I’m not at a point yet where I’ve reached my own conclusion yet so who knows where I’ll end up
 
So what’s the practical takeaway?
 
Pacman said:
Will be different for each husband I think...
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How's that? If someone wants to rewrite "love" to mean "rule", I'd expect there to be some information given re how that works in practice so I could apply that information. Otherwise, I'd rather stick with "love" means "love" and "rule" means "rule" and work with verses the way they're written.
 
The money quote, in speaking about the Christ-like Agape love a husband is to have

But what they fail to do is realize that God describes WHY Christ gave himself up. It was to wash the spiritual blemishes, spots and wrinkles of his wife, the Church, to make her holy, not happy.
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and

The husband is the head of the wife and the wife is to submit to him. It is both IMPLIED in the husband being the head of his wife and EXPLICIT in a husband’s call to love his wife as Christ loves his Church, to wash her with the Word of God and chasten her that he is called to rule her.
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andrew said:
How's that? If someone wants to rewrite "love" to mean "rule", I'd expect there to be some information given re how that works in practice so I could apply that information. Otherwise, I'd rather stick with "love" means "love" and "rule" means "rule" and work with verses the way they're written.
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I disagree here. No rewriting is being done. Only clearly explaining how a husband is to love his wife. And I truly believe that he is correct in his blog post.

My opinion about it being different for every husband is because everyone is different... What is important to me may not be important to you or another man... Also the strengths that one wife might have might be a weak area for another wife... Imo that's part of what 1Peter 3:7 is saying. You have to know your wife in order to know how best to love and rule her...
 
andrew said:
Wondering what Chris had in mind when he posted his question.
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Sometimes if you look at the question in a different context it will give you more insight into the original question. I was suggesting that the parent child relationship would be a useful context to take another different look at the question.

What you do is you answer the question in the different context and then go back and look at the original question and see if your answer is the same or different and see if it applies or does not apply and why.

Whether the two contexts are identical or miles apart is a different question, although also useful in looking at ones personal perspective.
 
Christ love us, but Christ rules over us. This is the example we're given to follow. We're to love our wives the way Christ loves the church. We may not like this but Christ has a pretty high standard for the church. He literally wrote a book about how she was supposed to treat Him and He prefers she be martyred than disobey it. Do we expect our wives to die rather than disobey our directives? That's the model Christ laid out.

I know He died for the church but that wasn't the end of the relationship, it was the beginning. And even during His earthly ministry He wasn't all hugs and cuddles and date night.
 
ZecAustin said:
Christ love us, but Christ rules over us. This is the example we're given to follow. We're to love our wives the way Christ loves the church. We may not like this but Christ has a pretty high standard for the church. He literally wrote a book about how she was supposed to treat Him and He prefers she be martyred than disobey it. Do we expect our wives to die rather than disobey our directives? That's the model Christ laid out.

I know He died for the church but that wasn't the end of the relationship, it was the beginning. And even during His earthly ministry He wasn't all hugs and cuddles and date night.
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I agree here. I began practicing this principle in my marriage about 5 years ago and my wife and I spoke about it recently. She said that she believes it saved our marriage. We both have our doubts if we would still be together had I not made those changes... Obviously we don't know every detail of all our friends lives and marriages but based on what we see and hear. I can honestly say now that we have the best marriage of anyone we know. Praise God for this. It was not me. I was the dumb dumb who wasn't doing it for the first 9 years of marriage...
 
You guys go on playing your word games, but for everybody else that comes along later, "love" means "love", not "rule". You'd be better off doing a word study on agape or meditating for 30 days in a row on what Eph 5 actually says than trying to make it say something else.

According to rockfox's "money quote", the call to "love" is now actually a call to "chasten". Mmm hmm.

Pacman said:
Only clearly explaining how a husband is to love his wife.
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I'll deal with this in a separate thread. Nothing "clear" about it.

cnystrom said:
Whether the two contexts are identical or miles apart is a different question, although also useful in looking at ones personal perspective.
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So you agree that wives are not children, and you were just asking a rhetorical question. Glad to know that.

Whatever other bible authors have to say about "rule" (let alone chastening) in the household, it's not mentioned in Paul's call to husbands to "love their wives". We could easily let separate passages stand on their own without trying to rewrite the ones we have problems with. What's the big deal trying to make Paul say something he didn't say? Why is that so important?

As a musician and producer, I would say that to really hear what the bible authors had to say about any subject, you have to have all the different parts mixed right. The theme of loving one's wife, taking care of her, treating her as a weaker vessel, nourishing and cherishing her, etc, is picked up by different instruments at different levels, while whatever is said in the bible about a husband's need to rule his household, or train his children, or whatever (nothing explicit about "ruling" one's wife, only analogies...), is carried by other instruments at other levels.

If you believe that God has "produced" the bible, arranging the parts the way he sees fit, saying things the way they are actually said, repeated or elaborated on as necessary, or said once if that was all that needed to be said, then why the big push to make the guitars sound more like the keyboards, or have the trombones blaring over the flutes, or rewriting the melody in the violins because you want it to match the cello part? Why is that necessary?
 
andrew said:
You guys go on playing your word games, but for everybody else that comes along later, "love" means "love", not "rule". You'd be better off doing a word study on agape or meditating for 30 days in a row on what Eph 5 actually says than trying to make it say something else.
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I agree love means love and rule means rule. No dispute there. The claim is that part of how a husband is to love his wife includes ruling. I'm not playing word games.
 
Your author wants to talk about Revelation prophecy, Chris wants to talk about children, rockfox and your author want to talk about chastising. Tell me, Pacman, do you beat your wife with a rod when she's out of line? After all, Revelation says Jesus chastises the church, Proverbs says we use a rod on our children, and Paul says a church leader should "rule" his household well. Clearly when Paul said we are to "love our wives the way Christ loved the church" we are to beat them as necessary, right?

That's what I meant by "word games". Paul said what he said. Don't put words in his mouth.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the music production analogy and why you appear to need to make this "call to love" into something else.

I'd also like to know why you're backpedaling now, from "a call to love is a call to rule" to "a call to love includes ruling". The original claim was in fact that they are the same thing, so let's not lose sight of that.
 
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