Freedom is the key to Understanding The Bible’s Instruction on Marriage

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mat 11:29-30)

The Apostles’ instruction on marriage – husbands and wives and how they are to relate to one another – is a topic we tend to steer clear of. Why? Well, first of all, the pertinent passages are so often misused to keep abusers in power and the abused enslaved. But I think there is a second reason as well. We simply are not clear on how this husbands and wives thing is supposed to work according to Scripture. It is not an easy subject and yet, for those of us who believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, there these passages are.

Jesus’ words quoted above about taking His yoke upon ourselves goes a long way in helping us understand these passages such as Ephesians 5 (I quote this at length because it all ties together) –

Eph 5:22-33 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. (23) For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. (24) Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (25) Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, (26) that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, (27) so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

(28) In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (29) For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, (30) because we are members of his body. (31) “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (32) This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (33) However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

I conclude that this passage actually teaches freedom for both husband and wife, and I will explain why. When Jesus said that we should take His yoke upon ourselves and that we would find that it is easy and light, not burdensome but restful even for our souls, He is telling us what true freedom is. Freedom is willingly being under the rule of a benevolent, loving head whose law insures the freedom of His subjects. Freedom, in other words, is not to be found in lawless anarchy or autonomy (law unto oneself).

Now, when God’s Word gives these instructions about marriage, it very clearly (and repeatedly) tells the husband he must love his wife. He is to give himself for her. This is God’s Law. Submission to a loving ruler whose law is written for the good of those under the ruler, is freedom.

When a husband rules according to his own law, for his own selfish purposes and glory, then the marriage becomes bondage, not freedom. That kind of ruler is what we call a tyrant whose yoke is heavy and oppressive. This kind is not one which the Lord calls wives to respect and submit to. The whole design is broken you see. It doesn’t function correctly. To submit to a tyrant (sometimes by the way the wife is the tyrant)…to submit to a tyrant has similarities to what Paul rebuked the Galatians for:

Gal 5:1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Submit to Christ’s yoke, not to a yoke of slavery. That instruction, I maintain, captures what Paul’s words in Ephesians 5 teach.