Ephesians 5:1-33

Husbands and Wives

A number of years ago I read an interview with Bill Gates where he used the phrase “positive feedback spiral” to describe what had happened with his company Microsoft. Regardless of what you or I may think of Microsoft, their products and their practices, there is no denying that they were perhaps the most successful company of the last two decades of the 20^th century. We tend to think of a spiral as something that goes downward such as spiraling out of control down the drain. In fact a spiral is well suited to describe something once set in motion tends to feed off of itself. In the case of Microsoft success tended to breed success. In the case of marriage the same is true - if we follow the instructions given to us by the Bible.

“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...” Wow! Dose this fly in the face of modern Western thought or what? But consider the passage as a whole. 

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...” 

The wife is to submit to her husband (as to the Lord) and the husband is to lay down his life for the wife (as the Lord did for us). It’s pretty simple and it is ridiculously powerful. It also can create a positive feedback spiral in both of their lives.

Here are the points to consider:

• Being a wife and being a husband are not the same job. They each have different job description and as with pretty much everything else in life things go best when everyone is doing their job.
• Marriage is not a democracy. If everyone gets a vote and only two people are voting then there are going to be many tie votes. At that juncture you can either:
• Split up and go your own way.
• Keep score. (Pure poison when it comes to love.)
• Have a decision maker.
• God has declared a decision maker to make things easy.
• The husband is supposed to consider the needs and feelings of his wife above himself. When we say that Jesus laid down His life for us the cross was by no means the sole focus of such a statement. The life He lived among us was likely much harder than the cross.

Here is where the positive feedback spiral comes in. If the husband really does put his wife ahead of himself in his decisions then she is not going to have an issue submitting to his decisions.She is going to feel loved and cared for and she will absolutely flourish in such an arrangement. On the other side, if the wife will fully support her husbands decisions and he knows that he has her support come what may then he will become a secure man fully capable of making godly decisions to lead his family. The more each does their job the better the other becomes. 

Microsoft has kind of lost its mojo these days. But marriage, in spite of our best efforts to mess it up is still one of the most popular institutions on the earth after many thousands of years. Imagine hoe good it can be if we just follow the instructions.