If you really want to lead die! If you really want to die serve! If you don’t want to serve you don’t want to die, if you don’t want to die you don’t want to lead, at least not biblically. Dying to ourselves is the epitome of the Christian journey! Jesus gives many references to death, the most outstanding is the paradox of “picking up your cross and die daily”. It is quoted often in scripture but I think the communal aspect is missing in it. Jesus died for a community not individuals. Jesus purchased the Church with His blood, not individuals. A collective unit of predestined, foreknew, elect individuals that would make up the whole. Jesus purchased in bulk. So when we see the picking up our cross, we may need to look at it in a more communal aspect. But this is for a later post.
I want to focus on dying or as Paul says “the giving up of one’s self”. Here in Ephesians is where it is at:
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
We all know this verse and we quote the three before it with great ease. For the most part we can all quote this one. But what is the practical outworking of this? Here comes another confession. When I started to deal heavily in theology man I wanted my wife to join with me. As a matter of fact I couldn’t understand why she was not excited about my new found truth. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to read Desiring God, The Holiness of God, and The Five Points of Calvinism, Future Grace, and The Gospel According to Jesus, The Mortification of Sin, The Christian’s Great Interest, and definitely Dr. Grudem’s ST! I was starting the handle the word with a great precision. Got me a couple of good Concordances, Lexicons, Dictionaries, started to read a little work on Greek. And for the most part Charity wasn’t interested.
I started challenging her with the scripture, quizzing her with my knowledge, trying to engage her. Yeah I loved her! I was washing her with the word wasn’t I? I was faithful, I didn’t yell as much (unless we disagreed about a theological position). Sure I loved her. So then I jumped up a few verses and started reading those to her. “Wives submit”. Now I never realized until quite recently that as this letter was being read for the first time, whoever had the responsibility to read it would have looked over to the WIVES not the husbands. This verse doesn’t say “Husbands command your wives to submit to you as on to the Lord”. Never, ever, ever does Paul tell husbands to tell their wives to submit? This is key
You see Paul is speaking to the women about submitting, not husbands about wives submitting. It wasn’t my job to bring this to my wives attention; it is the Holy Spirits’. If I coerce, this isn’t voluntary it is under compulsion. So what I am to do? Paul says it quite clearly “model Christ”! Whatever Christ does for His bride I am to do for mine.
Practically this looks like a servant ministry. My job is to lead my wife by example. Not just any example the example of the Lord Jesus who said “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many”. Jesus the Christ takes the INITIATIVE in serving. Jesus always gets the party started. Jesus pursues service! This is key so don’t miss me. He pursues the role of servant recklessly. He clothes himself in human flesh, lives a life of submission to His creation (His mother and father), lives to heal and minister to others, washes stinky feet, and then pursues the cross as the writer of Hebrews says “for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross”.
Husbands do you have the mind of Christ? Let me ask, when was the last time you decided to recklessly pursue a role of a servant to your wife? When was the last time you told her to go get her a pedicure while you took care of the kids? When was the last time you argued with her to put the broom and mop down and watch some Lifetime while you scrubbed the stool, swept and mopped the floors, vacuumed the carpet, dust and polish the furniture? When was the last time you told her to go hang with her girls while you grocery shop? Sent her on a trip and you take days off work to keep the kids? Offered her to sit down first while you feed the kids and bring her, her plate and cleaned the kids up and put them in the bath, after washing the dishes?
You see this is the leadership Jesus talks about. Leadership that is an emptying of one’s self for the benefit of the other, with no, and I do mean no, expectation of reciprocity. Jesus pursues us and serves us for our benefit, never for His. Jesus is no less glorious, Jesus is no less God, if He decided to stay in perfect union with the Father and let this world go to hell in a hand basket. He loses not one iota of glory. But He says this “no greater love has then this that a man lay down his life for his friends”. Jesus didn’t have to tell the disciple to submit, they saw Him model perfect submission to the Father and unconditional servant-like love towards them.
If you want to love your wife, pick up the mop and the broom. Take some time to relieve her of some of her duties. Put her feet in your hand as Jesus did His disciples! “Don’t look out for your own interests”. Pursue servant-hood recklessly! This is the leadership that Jesus the only begotten of the Father showed during His earthly ministry. Not a domineering, know it all! Not one who boasted about His leadership but one who boasted about serving. So to are we His friends if “we do what He says”. Lets love our wives by giving up ourselves. To be at their service, lets even “outdo each other in doing good”.
A Better Covenant 