In my previous article, I suggested that we should be cautious about attempting to be over prescriptive about what it means to practically apply Ephesians 5:21-32. I’m convinced that rather than looking at each aspect individually to see if wives are submitting, husbands are being good heads etc that we do best to look at… Continue reading Marriage health-check (applying Ephesians 5)
Tag: marriage
Marriage, mutual submission and headship: what does it look like in practice?
In Ephesians 5:22-32 Paul instructs: Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord … Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” In a previous article, I argued that this was a fleshing out of 5:21 and the instruction to “submit to one another.” … Continue reading Marriage, mutual submission and headship: what does it look like in practice?
Is marriage the State’s business?
My friend Steve Kneale has written here about marriage arguing that churches should not be conducting marriage ceremonies, but if they do, they should only do so for church members. Well, personally I sit loosely on whether or not you should have a church wedding and whether or not churches should perform them. I don’t… Continue reading Is marriage the State’s business?
The doctrine of God and a marriage on the rocks
Now we return to Tom, Gladys and Ethel. Tom had been giving Ethel lifts to home group whilst his wife Gladys stayed at home. When we first met their situation, we talked about a gut instinct that things were wrong and that we weren’t getting to hear the whole story. Tom had admitted that his… Continue reading The doctrine of God and a marriage on the rocks
Divorce and Re-marriage
One of the big questions I’ve been asked frequently is what the Bible teaches about divorce and what the implications are for divorced believers. This paper surveys the different approaches taken and offers some practical advice.
The pastoral dynamite of genuinely mutual submission
I’ve been arguing for some time that when Paul says “submit to one another” in Ephesians 5, that this means mutual submission, husbands and wives are both to submit to each other. This is controversial in some quarters but actually there is some heavy-weight historical support behind it including from the likes of John Calvin.… Continue reading The pastoral dynamite of genuinely mutual submission
The aloneness of Adam revisited
In Genesis 2:18, God says: “It’s not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Often “alone” gets read as “lonely.” The two words though related are not the same and the result is that we can have a distorted understanding of what the issue was. I’ve been… Continue reading The aloneness of Adam revisited
The Anti-Christ and The Anti-Church
In Ephesians 5:21-32, Paul paints a picture of the church as the bride of Christ. Jesus is the loving, faithful, self-giving husband who pours his life out for her, he seeks her beauty and her good. She is faithful, honouring and submitting to him and so, the church, the bride he has won is the… Continue reading The Anti-Christ and The Anti-Church
A Biblical Theology of Marriage, Sex and Relationships
Note: You will probably have read most of this material over the past week as it pulls together some of my recent articles in response to the book “Beautiful Union”. However, I wanted to gather it together as it will form one of the chapters of the E-Book/ teaching sessions I’m putting together on the… Continue reading A Biblical Theology of Marriage, Sex and Relationships
What the Old Testament teaches us about marriage, sex and relationships
This is part two, following on from my attempt to set out the framework of Biblical and Systematic Theology. I said in that post, that to talk properly and pastorally about marriage, sex and relationships that we would need to dig into a little more detail. So, here goes, an attempt at a summary of… Continue reading What the Old Testament teaches us about marriage, sex and relationships
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