A Man and His Wife | Doug Wilson

well it is good to have you all here from all over um james white was just telling me this morning about what the latest regime thing was this morning so the biden regime has announced restrictions on interstate travel so so good luck getting home [Laughter] yeah so monday's blog post lord willing is going to be the scouring of the american shire so you can look forward to that it's about time to just say no so [Applause] about saying no to tyrants out there means saying no to tyrants everywhere else it means saying no to tyrants uh in your own life and heart your heart idols have to go down before external idols do and one of the places where heart idols manifest themselves most readily is in the home in marriage and so i want to talk about that a man and his wife so i'm going to be addressing masculinity in marriage and how men are different from women we didn't used to have to go over this [Laughter] welcome oh nevermind i said if we get to it i'm i'm also going to touch on feminine on femininity and how women are different from men and my central concern here is not biology male and female or my desire for you to stop responding to questions about gender and have you say you mean sex what what sex are you a male female there's two options right but the broader question of masculinity and femininity which is mixed in with obedient questions of obedience questions of how whether you're listening to what god says about biological sex in first corinthians 11 3 it says but i would have you know that the head of every man is christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of christ is god just a side note that we're talking about the incarnate christ here so i would have you know the head of every man is the incarnate christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of the incarnate christ is god so you should know that the passage is talking about a covenantal hierarchy the father is the head of christ christ is the head of the man and the man is the head of the woman now this is an unpopular sentiment and possibly illegal where you're from but there it is right in the text we should also note that headship entails authority in the biblical sense headship entails authority it brings authority with it and this authority which takes responsibility sacrificially is the heart of masculinity so as i'm defining obedient masculinity is masculinity is this the glad embrace of sacrificial responsibility so that's what masculinity is the glad embrace of sacrificial responsibility now an a question should immediately occur to you well can't a woman gladly embrace sacrificial responsibility and the answer to that is yes and i want you to stay with me in the human race in the human race these categories of masculinity and femininity are incarnate in male and female but this is not the only place that they're incarnate masculinity and femininity are embedded by god generally in males and females and that's how the whole thing works but it's not the only place where masculinity and femininity can embed consider how this language of masculinity and femininity applies in various settings this is not a dualistic principle like some yin and yang thing but rather it's hierarchical layered and a trinitarian trinitarian reality someone can be masculine in one relationship and feminine in another someone could be masculine in one relationship and feminine in another uh obvious example would be uh half of the bride of christ is male right half of the bride of christ is male and we are to as the as the church we are the bride he is the bridegroom that's a masculine feminine image that's a masculine feminine image and we have to come to terms with how does that how does it work because masculinity is authority this is uh there are four things i want to mention here masculinity is authority sacrifice responsibility and initiative authority sacrifice responsibility and initiative and femininity is submission obedience gratitude and responsiveness submission obedience gratitude and responsiveness lord willing i'm going to get through all these categories all eight of these categories to the extent that someone is legitimately in authority sacrifices takes responsibility and initiative to that extent such a person is being masculine okay to the extent that someone submits obeys expresses gratitude and responds to initiative to that extent such a person is being feminine and scare quotes around everything masculine feminine we're not supposed to look deep inside to try to find masculine and feminine essences but rather we we are to accept our created natures as a given and then learn to see them obediently in various relations and relationships all right so god made us a certain way and you have certain things you want to do you've wanted to do them since you were a little boy and you've wanted to god has built men to provide and protect for example and little boys want to get a stick and turn it into a gun and they want to protect they want to guard they want to guard the perimeter they want to provide that's built in and so what we all what we need to do is understand how god created us what our created natures are what these impulses are and then submit them to the authority of the word of god to be disciplined honed uh corrected put back on the right path encouraged in the right path and so on all right so um because we live in a time of gender confusion gender anarchy people want to say it's all just a matter of what you feel what you want to do and uh and i'm i have to qualify what my use of masculine and feminine in this in this way is something that someone could grab and abuse in the way that our culture is abusing that abusing it which is why i want to put scare quotes around everything but at the same time i think that there's an important principle here so just remember that and if if you trip over anything have it make sure it goes in the into the q a session god the father is masculine god the father is masculine and i would argue that he's masculine in relationship to the incarnate christ right he so a father-son relationship is one of authority uh responsibility uh sacrifice and then there's responsiveness and gratitude remember that we're all taught that we're taught to call him father and god the son is described as being masculine toward us he's masculine toward us he we are the bride his church he's the bridegroom and we are the bride and remember here that a good half of the bride is made up of males in marriage the man is the head of the woman and so in this relation he's masculine and she's feminine because he's an authority he's the head and she is um she's responsive to him she's feminine but take this one step further imagine a godly christian mother facing down a defiant two-year-old son is there just maybe you read in the book somewhere all right and you've um you may have had this discussion with your two-year-old son son are you having trouble obeying your mom because she's a girl yeah that has something to do with it and you say well son i i want to work with you on this i want you to tell you to deal with it she's in charge of you whenever you're interacting with your mom i want you to see my shadow right behind her i want you to see my authority she's my executive in this and i want you to obey me by obeying her all right so he's she's female he's male but is that the end of the story no no now interesting rabbit trail if you want to take there's a good book by leon podlus called the church impotent which if i went back and read it now i'd probably be amazed at how prophetic it was it's some years old now but he argues that why why is the taunt against the christian church in the west that it's for women and children why is the christian faith not a masculine endeavor it's not because religion is not masculine because islam is very very masculine judaism is very masculine eastern orthodox is very masculine but in the west rome and protestantism have had a struggle for years with the feminization of the church and leon podlis who's a catholic writer argues that it's all bernard of clairvaux's fault and as much as i like to blame everything on rousseau i think we have to give bernard of clairvaux a hat tip here podless argues that what bernardo clairvoya did was he took the hymenail marital imagery of the church as the bride of christ and individualized it brought it down into your individual quiet quiet time so instead of the church corporately behaving like a bride he brought it down to the individual devotional level and then you had half of the church trying to compose themselves as a bride awaiting her wedding day now the if you do that to men one of two things is going to happen either they're going to not like it at all and leave the church or sit in the back row or they're they're going to do okay with it and then you have another problem so you don't want either one of those we have to think in terms of corporate realities and and biblically assign categories and not um not this ra the radical individualism so god the father is not male god the father is not male he has no body parts or passions as the as we're the god is the spirit and those who worship him must do so in spirit and truth this alone should show us that masculinity is not to be defined as being male and this is a spurious argument that feminists advance when they say well you think god is an old man in the sky as though we should derive theology from the sistine chapel roof um god god the father is not an old man he's not an old man with a beard he's not male he is not male but he is utterly infinitely masculine right he's father that's how he has revealed himself to us fatherhood is at the center of everything and this is why in our day when we have declared war on fatherhood everything's falling apart the center doesn't the center doesn't hold so masculinity is not to be defined as being male and yet the father god the father is ultimately masculine his fatherhood is the fatherhood from which all earthly fatherhood derives its reality ephesians 3 14 and 15. we do not call him father because we have projected our notions of fatherhood up into the heavens rather a dim reflection of his masculinity has been projected among other places onto human maleness so it's not we're male and we have fathers and so we imagine a god created after our image it's the other way around we were created in his image and his masculinity has been a small glimmering reflection of it has been bequeathed to us so according to the design of god when a man marries a woman he is commanded to enact the role of masculinity and he has been equipped by god to do so this enactment is in line with how god made him to the extent that he has difficulty doing this it should be understand as a function of sin and not a function of creaturely limits the our fundamental problem is moral and ethical not bounded it's not our finitude adam and eve before the fall were finite but there was not a problem there was not a problem being finite and it was not and adam could have said i'm only human and that would have been true but there's not a problem with being only human we're supposed to we're we have creaturely limits that's a feature not a not a bug and so consequently when we run ourselves into sin it's a question of disobedience not a question of ontology it's not a question of the fact that i have creaturely limits okay so men are different from women the following characteristics are not how men are to be in every relationship in which they find themselves for example um if you're in boot camp and you're taking initiative when the drill drill sergeant told you to do this and you decide to take initiative you're going to run into problems right because that's not the relationship you should be in in fact in some settings where men are call men are called to be submissive obedient grateful responsive they may learn to enact a quote-unquote scare quotes again feminine role in such a way as to make them sympathetic to their wives seeing as their wives are called to the same thing with regard to them okay in other words too many husbands expect submission and obedience from their wives without ever demonstrating to their wives how it is to be done okay i'm i may be an unreasonable husband but the bible says well how do you talk about your boss at the dinner table how do you talk about the the elder board to you around the kids how do you talk when you when you're called upon to submit how do how do you do you model submission and obedience if your wife said i'm the one who's i need to be taught and led by you show me how this is show me show me so for example when a man lives dutifully as an employee as a subordinate in the military as a church member or as a son this can all be used to make men understanding as they live with their wives first peter 3 7. peter says live with your wives though as the weaker vessel with understanding you need to understand what's going on and you can't understand what's going on unless you've gone through there are countless situations where men are called to be deaf to defer to obey to comply and if if you are if you're as you're protecting your daughters and you warn them about the 19 19 year old boy who is full of opinions of how everybody beneath him needs to hop to and how he doesn't have to listen to anybody above him he's got strong views of authority for everyone beneath him and anarchistic views of authority for everyone above him it is time for that your young daughter to run right stay away from people who stay away from men who have high views of authority one way and not high views of authority another way and of course this especially in in this day when so many authorities starting with our federal government are abusive and overreaching and overweening we do need to learn how to say no we but we need to learn how to say if i could jump tracks here for a minute the way trumpkin does in in prince caspian trumpkin uh basically says uh when they ask for volunteers to go to different places to meet the help that they're going to call for from the horn uh trumpkin volunteers to go because someone mouthed off at the at prince gaspi and and someone said uh trumpkin what are you volunteering to go i thought you didn't believe in the horn and he said no more i do your majesty but i know that if i i know the difference between giving advice and taking orders and you've had my advice and now is the time for orders that that's a high view of authority but at another place in prince gaspion um someone suggests that they team up with the hags and ogres and and someone says well we would forfeit aslan's help if we teamed up with the hags and ogres and trunkin says oh what matters much more is you wouldn't have me right in other words you do certain things i'm down the road i'm gone there there's there's there are limits to authority and the limits are specified in the word of god okay so men you're under authority you model for those that you want to be under your authority that you know what it's like in both relationships you know what it's like to submit and so you know what it's like to ask someone to submit to you so i said earlier that masculinity was authority sacrifice responsibility and initiative so let's consider each of these in turn and remember that we're talking about men in relation to their wives authority being masculine involves entails authority and rule and the right to make decisions that affect others okay but in rule and in making decisions it is paramount that husbands remember what authority is for second corinthians 10 8 for though i should boast somewhat more of our authority which the lord hath given us for edification and not for your destruction what's authority given to the apostles for it's for your edification not for your destruction we see the same kind of thing with regard to civil authority when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn that's proverbs 29 2. that is the necessary combination righteousness authority and consequent rejoicing righteousness authority and consequent rejoicing what's the morale like in your home are the kids cheerful are the kids happy are the kids what's the morale like righteousness authority and consequent rejoicing and when this is abused women are tempted to usurp authority of which which of course is not becoming first timothy 2 12. so the uh feminism basically feminism is a a bad heresy it's a it's a heretical movement and it was a heretical movement that abdicating men opened the door to we uh there was a sculpture-wide abdication and so consequently women like nature abhor a vacuum and men left a vacuum and the women filled it the women filled it second sacrifice the sacra the masculinity of christ is clearly set forth in his willingness to lay down his life not only did he do this at the climax of his life when he suffered on the cross but he also did this throughout the course of his perfect sacrificial life ephesians 5 25. it is impossible to die well without living well christ offered himself up as a perfect sacrifice but the only reason it was possible to offer himself up as a perfect sacrifice is because he had lived a perfect sinless life and in that incident over the checkbook or the garbage or the misplaced tool a man is telegraphing his willingness or unwillingness to die for his wife right masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility you need to take it take it on yourself responsibility christ did not just die instead of his bride he died on account of his bride he didn't just die instead of his bride and died on account of his bride now of course sinful husbands cannot reenact a substitutionary death the vicarious substitutionary death of christ on the cross is not something that a husband can reenact you can't duplicate it right but nevertheless all husbands are commanded to imitate a substitutionary death ephesians 5 27-28 you're commanded to imitate that which you cannot duplicate let me say that again you're commanded to imitate something you cannot duplicate this is the single most difficult thing for selfish husbands to learn until the holy spirit touches a man's heart this is not just an insurmountable height to climb with climbing well understood if you climb a ladder you know the concept of one rung after another is easy but if the ladder's tall enough it's very hard to do if the mountain is high enough the one step in front of another is hard simple conceptually but hard to accomplish all right but this kind of thing is an indecipherable mass of unintelligible symbols to many uh husbands and a brief illustration there's two there are two understandings of substitution and we believe in the substitutionary death of christ on the cross and if you if you go with one of the definitions you're going to get yourself in horrible trouble you've got to go with the other so there's a substitution you see in a basketball game where that clackson thing goes off and one player runs off and another player runs on so there was a substitution made one player went in for the other player that's one kind of substitution the other kind of substitution is where we vote for someone for congress we select someone to be our representative in congress and we vote for him he wins the election he goes to congress and when he votes we vote when he acquits himself well we're proud of him when he humiliates his office we're embarrassed he represents us okay he is a covenantal representative of this larger body too many christians think that christ died on the cross as a substitute in the first way he went to the cross so he was he died over there so that you over there didn't don't have to die but that's not how it works that's not how covenantal representation works christ did not die so that you might live christ died so that you might die christ was buried so that you might be buried christ was raised so that you might be raised christ ascended so that you might ascend so he's your representative he's your covenant head he's not uh doing something over there so that nothing is so that you are not touched at all no you die so you're a sinner sinners have to die you're that's the iron law sinners have to die god through the gospel did not devise a way wherein sinners don't have to die god in the gospel devised a way in which sinners upon dying might rise again that's what that's what's happening okay so christ's masculinity is the bridegroom is he's he's the one who laid down his life as a representative and everything he did he did on on account of his bride and he took it all on himself okay so that you're taking responsibility that way and this is the hard part for many husbands to understand let's say a lot of husbands come into marriage counseling say well i'm yeah i'm at fault and i'm a sinner and she's a sinner and let's divvy it up and maybe it's 60 40. or maybe it's a bad case since 90 10 or but let's divide it up but we have to learn how to think whether or not you're let's say your wife is the one who's guilty of drunkenness and running up the credit cards and all the sins are hers who's responsible the husband is responsible and he reacts when i say this he reacts as though i accused him of being guilty no he's not guilty he's responsible there's a difference you take the responsibility on yourself was christ guilty of having committed the sins that you and i commit no he wasn't personally guilty but he took the responsibility on the sin was imputed to him all right the sin was and husbands are commanded to imitate that husbands love your wives as christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that's what we imitate now how can i imitate what i cannot duplicate how does that work well fortunately you don't have to make it work you just have to imitate it that's you you do the imitating god does the efficacious work initiative in a wedding ceremony the bridegroom does not wait for the bride to come to him he goes and gets her so if this were a wedding the bride is escorted by her father down here and i instruct okay who gives us a woman to marry this man her mother and i and the groom was standing here and i nod to him and he goes and gets her he takes the initiative that's an emblem that's a symbol of what he's up to he takes the initiative he takes the initiative this is what jesus did for us this is what masculinity looks like it grasps the initiative it embraces the initiative christ came into the world christ came to get us so unless it's resting from a work that follows initiative um like on your sabbath rest sitting around squandering time is a functional denial of masculinity you should be taking initiative so to review quickly authority okay authority sacrifice responsibility and initiative authority sacrifice responsibility and initiative let's look very quickly at the other side of the coin the counterpart femininity is submission obedience gratitude and responsiveness but it's important for us to remember each of us not only what we're doing but in which direction we are doing it women are supposed to be feminine in relation to their own husbands but not in every direction generally there to be that defiant two-year-old son that she's not supposed to be responsive to his every whim older women for example older women are supposed to teach younger women titus two three and four women are supposed to issue commands to stubborn two-year-old boys ephesians 6 1. children women are not supposed to obey another woman's husband ephesians 5 22. it says wives be submissive to your own husbands you have to understand that submission to your own husband is a liberation from having to be submissive to about four billion other males it's liberating it's liberating grown men are supposed to remember the law of their mother proverbs 6 20 remember the law of your mother a queen is supposed to guide her husband the king into wisdom esther 5 2. and all of this means that if false notions of femininity are abroad in the christian community the most feminine wives will not necessarily be recognized as such femininity should not be defined as a frilly and frothy tee heeing that was not jail the wife of heber yeah chef's kiss what a woman now there's a related issue on this and that is effeminacy before addressing the meaning of femininity positively an additional set of definitions is necessary when a man is effeminate we mean by this that he's displaying feminine characteristics in an inappropriate way or in an inappropriate direction an abdicating man toward his wife for example is being effeminate right even if he has a deep voice even if he has a beard if you know even if he's a tough guy and everybody thinks that church he's a tough guy if he abdicates to his wife all the time and it doesn't matter if he calls it servant leadership he's being effeminate now an obedient foot soldier charging a hill in which he's got a 50 chance of dying is appropriately obedient but is not being effeminate right he's being he's being obedient if a man obeys his wife he's being effeminate if a soldier obeys his commanding officer and hits the beach he's not being he's being equally obedient but it's an appropriate relation it's an appropriate response in a similar way feminists are at war ironically with femininity and they try to adopt a masculine posture in inappropriate ways and directions but both kinds of sins put everything out of kilter men who are effeminate and women who are trying to do the the butch dyke thing but however sincere you are and however industrious it is not possible to thread a nut onto a bolt by turning it counterclockwise this is why the best description of abdicators husbands and usurpers wives is summed up in the word frustrated frustrated men who abdicate and women who usurp are frustrated this is not how it's supposed to be i'm not in line with my i'm not in line with how god created me to be so i'm going over this with an audience of men so i'm just going to touch on it and this is not so you might command your wife to be this way but rather so you might see the counterpart of your obedience in hers all right so it's the joke goes that ginger rogers did everything that fred astaire did only backwards and in heels so she's all right so that's impressive and you need to understand that this is a dance and you're to be the lead in it you're supposed to lead in it but when you lead you you need to have an awareness of what she's supposed to be doing so you can guide and protect and and help and not say here's the verse what's your problem so what can we learn about femininity toward husbands from the women of old how does the apostle peter apply it submission biblically speaking submission is the demeanor of adornment submission is adornment a craven wife is not a submissive wife a wife who flinches inside or out when her husband speaks is not a submissive wife what are the pearls on the necklace that god admires verse four in first peter three they are chastity reverence gentleness and quietness of spirit subjection to her own husband obedience and freedom from fear the word that comes to mind is lady the world's hatred of the word submission is actually the world of the world's hatred of loveliness in wives the world hates true adornment for women think of submission primarily as a disposition demeanor or a character trait not as though it consists simply of this action or that one it shows up in a submission that you know if you're deciding to move and the wife did not sure she wants to and husband says i think we need to it can come down to that point of decision but what we're talking about is the demeanor that suffuses the whole submission pervades a marriage acts of obedience might be few and far between okay but submission should be constant obedience nevertheless it says in first peter 3 that sarah obeyed abraham verse 6 obedience is born of submission and is one characteristic of it titus 2 5 says that wives are to be taught by the older women to be obedient to their own husbands close quote but though obedience to husbands is part of submission it should not be equated with submission an obedient surly wife is unsubmissive and a wife who makes a display of her conservative traditional traditional values submissiveness is often simply a holdover from the earlier forms of feminism and i've sometimes noted over the years that there's an inverse relationship between the size of the head covering and the amount of submission in the marriage many wives are wear head coverings because they're laid down the law to their husband i'm going to do that okay failure to grasp the concept nevertheless after all such necessary qualifications are made the christian world needs a book entitled obey your husband and other novel ideas and i would urge all those of you who are pastors when you do weddings obey needs to be in the vows all right obey needs to be there i can hear an angry mob gathering outside now so i can might as well finish the point no no human authority is absolute as i said earlier and this includes the authority of the husband but it is real nonetheless and most christian wives who disobey or disregard their husbands are not in the category of obeying god rather than men last two very quickly gratitude wives are to learn from the church how to be wives ephesians 5 24 and what is one of the central characteristics of the bride of christ it is gratitude wives obey your honor your husbands respect your husbands as the church does to christ well the centerpiece of our our attitude toward the lord is gratitude our worship services our eucharistic services services of thanksgiving thanksgiving is therefore at the center of femininity thank you for how thank you for how hard you work thank you for protecting us thank you for providing for us thank you gratitude is at the heart of femininity and it's lovely it's all together lovely moreover thanksgiving to a husband the kind who works provides protects and leads is closely related to respect which wives are also called to do then last responsiveness the relation between husband and wife is not static he does not sit here being masculine with her over there being feminine they do not radiate across the room at each other he initiates and she responds and this glorious dance should pervade every aspect of their lives he bows and she curtsies we love because he first loved us he takes the initiative he suggests he leads but he and he leads by providing in his provision his protection all of this last thing uh to over to encompass all of this i'm in search i've used the the the uh the terms masculinity and femininity to describe these different relations and i started doing this long before the era of our current gender confusion it's something that c.s lewis does also i think in mere christianity he he talks about that and i'm in i'm in search of better words to describe it because uh this maybe maybe i should coin some words to describe it because people track all kinds of assumptions in when if it's gender sex whatever so but remember the heart the heart of this the heart of it is that the universe is hierarchical the universe is hierarchical god the father is the head of the incarnate christ christ is the head of the man the man is the head of the woman that cannot be erased you can do a lot of damage by pretending that you did erase it and by punishing people who are not going along with your charade but it's it's inerratical it's part of it's woven into the the texture of the world and we have to cooperate with that we have to repent and return to our previous cooperation with that if we want to be blessed our father and god we thank you for our time here we thank you for this conference i pray that you would bless us as we go forward and we committed all to you in jesus name amen [Applause] you

Channel: Canon Press

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Keywords: canon press, canon press interview, pastor doug wilson, moscow idaho, christ church, christian worldview, theology, pastor, man, manhood, masculinity, wife, marriage, husband, a man and his wife, how to be a man, advice, marriage advice, tips, preacher, church, douglas wilson, doug wilson, moscow, christian, bible, masculinity crisis, christian marriage, relationship advice, reformed theology

Id: BxA05V0xpKs

Length: 38min 28sec (2308 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021