Part 6: Home and Family
The responsibilities of the wife in the home are well-defined in God's Word, the Holy Bible. From the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 5, Verses 22 through 24:
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
This passage from the Bible does not suggest that wives are inferior to their husbands. It outlines the position of leadership within the family as arranged by God. Neither does this specify a position of servitude. It certainly does not suggest a master-over-slave relationship. The wife should recognize God's intentions for the husband's leadership, his wisdom and tenderness. A husband should be as loving to his wife as Christ loved the church.
Hers is not at all a position of docility. The Lord has given the wife special privileges. Ephesians Chapter 5, Verse 25; tells us:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
Proverbs Chapter 31, Verse 28 praises the wife, saying:
Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.
In Titus, Chapter 2, Verse 4 through 8, we read about the responsibilities of older women:
. . . they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands.
As we have seen from these several scriptures, the husband and wife are to respect and love one another. The verses from First Corinthians, Chapter 7, Verse 4, previously mentioned, contain a thought that should be discussed more thoroughly in view of recent political thought and teachings. To repeat, in part:
The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife
Feminists argue in favor of abortion. They hold that a woman's body is exclusively hers and belongs to no one else. Her husband, they say, does not have the right to tell her if she might, or might not, have an abortion.
But, we are not discussing abortion here, we are stating what God's word tells about the ownership of the wife's body. It is not hers alone. The two are one flesh and each owns their own body as well as that of the other.
Many mothers are forced to work outside the home to increase family income. In these cases the mothers are anxious about the care that others give their children. Because some women are mentioned in the Bible as having work that might have been outside the home, we should not infer that God says that they must not work outside the home. Rather, we should feel that our children should have a higher priority and receive loving care at home if this is at all possible.
Let me call your attention to the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 31, Verses 10 through 31 where the writer, Solomon, describes a worthy woman. Please read these verses from your own Bible.