Chapter 40: The Restraint of Power
THE RESTRAINT OF POWER
ONE of God’s purposes in arranging things as He has is the restrain of power. Both men and women are given special kinds of power, and each kind needs to be specially restrained. Husbands, who are to initiate, command, and dominate, are specifically commanded to love their wives. It is no ordinary kind of love that is meant here. They are to love them in two ways —first, “as Christ loved the Church,” which means self-giving. No man who sets this as the first principle will initiate, command, and dominate in a self-aggrandizing way. His acceptance of the authority God has given him is his obedience to God. His acceptance of the way that authority is to be exercised will prove his love for the woman.
Second, he is to love his wife “as his own body,” which means he is to nourish and cherish her. This, too, is like Christ. The Church is His Body. Christ’s love for the Church is a nourishing and cherishing love, a love that takes responsibility for the care of her.
Did you ever think of the rules of courtesy and chivalry as being, in their essence, founded on this Christian principle? Your fiancé, in his consciousness of greater physical strength and his obligation to care for you, opens doors for you, walks on the outside of the sidewalk, helps you with your coat, stands when you enter a room. You, allowing him to cherish you, accept these courtesies with graciousness, seeing in them far more than the purely social gesture which, in our own day, is frequently scorned as a foolish making of distinctions which ought not to be made between people.
As man’s power over woman is restrained by love, woman’s power over man is restrained by the command to submit. Any woman knows that she has ways of getting her own way. It is not physical strength that is most powerful. It is not the ability to deal with high-level abstractions. She may be as intelligent as or more intelligent than her husband, she may be more gifted than he is. Whether this is the case or not, she also has “wiles,” emotional power, and she has sexual power. These must be restrained. The kind of restraint God asks of her is submission.
John Calvin wrote,
God is the source of both sexes and hence both of them ought with humility to accept and maintain the condition which the Lord has assigned to them. Let the man exercise his authority with moderation. . . . Let the woman be satisfied with her state of subjection. . . . Otherwise both of them throw off the yoke of God who has not without good reason appointed this distinction of ranks.[15]
Paul also reminded us that we are to submit to one another. Surely there are times when the Christian husband, in loving his wife as Christ loved the Church, submits to her wishes. It is impossible for love not to give, and that giving often means giving over one’s own preferences. The husband is not in such a case acknowledging his wife’s authority. He is laying down his life.