`Should the bride say obey at the marriage service?'  Paul does not say `wives

obey' when he treats of the social fabric and its interrelation; he reserves the

word `obey' for children and slaves, with their correlatives `bring up' and

`forbear threatening', using the higher word `submit' of the wife.  This word

`submit' is wrongly translated `obedient to their husbands' in Titus 2:5.  The

only passage where wives are said to obey is 1 Peter 3:5,6 which grows out of

the submission of verses 1-5.  A wife who has submitted to the Divine

arrangement will of necessity obey when obedience is demanded, but it is the

result of a willing compliance with the Lord's will, a grateful seizing of the

opportunity to typify the church's relation to the Lord, a very different thing

from that obedience of the child, which is `right', and according to

`Wives submit ... ... as the church unto Christ'.

`Husbands love ...

... as Christ the church'.

It will be seen that we are upon higher ground than that of 1 Corinthians

11 and 14 and 1 Timothy 2.  There the apostle goes back to:

Nature and Creation.

`For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.  Neither was

the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man ... Doth not even

nature itself teach you' (1 Cor. 11:8-14).

`Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto

them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience (submissive),

as also saith the law' (1 Cor. 14:34).

Creation and Sin.

`For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the

woman being deceived has come to be in transgression' (1 Tim. 2:9-15

author's translation).

The apostle had all these courses open before him to enforce his point,

but he passes them all by for the greater and higher motive used in Ephesians 5.

To the wife Paul says, `The husband is the head of the wife', but to the husband

he says, `Love your wives'.  He feels under no necessity to say, `Husbands rule

your wives'.  To each is the word given tempered with much graciousness.

Because the husband is head, that does not mean ruthless rule and roughshod

methods.  The husband in Christ is `submitted' to an obligation that cannot be

computed.  He is to love his wife, `even as Christ also loved the church and

gave Himself for it'.

Perhaps when wives are loved with that kind of love, all argument as to

submission and obedience will become unnecessary.  The love of the husband

moreover is to be all in the direction of blessing, not for selfish ends:

`That he might sanctify ... cleanse ... present ... a glorious church (a

church of glory, literally) not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such