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The Adventist Home
is her Redeemer, and her submission to her husband is to be rendered
as God has directed—“as it is fit in the Lord.”
When husbands require the complete subjection of their wives,
declaring that women have no voice or will in the family, but must
render entire submission, they place their wives in a position contrary
to the Scripture. In interpreting the Scripture in this way, they do
violence to the design of the marriage institution. This interpretation
is made simply that they may exercise arbitrary rule, which is not their
prerogative. But we read on, “Husbands, love your wives, and be
not bitter against them.” Why should the husband be bitter against his
wife? If the husband has found her erring and full of faults, bitterness
of spirit will not remedy the evil
[117]
Wives Subject Only As Husbands Are Subject to Christ—The
Lord Jesus has not been correctly represented in His relation to the
church by many husbands in their relation to their wives, for they do
not keep the way of the Lord. They declare that their wives must be
subject to them in everything. But it was not the design of God that the
husband should have control, as head of the house, when he himself
does not submit to Christ. He must be under the rule of Christ that he
may represent the relation of Christ to the church. If he is a coarse,
rough, boisterous, egotistical, harsh, and overbearing man, let him
never utter the word that the husband is the head of the wife, and that
she must submit to him in everything; for he is not the Lord, he is not
the husband in the true significance of the term....
Husbands should study the pattern and seek to know what is meant
by the symbol presented in Ephesians, the relation Christ sustains to
the church. The husband is to be as a Saviour in his family. Will he
stand in his noble, God-given manhood, ever seeking to uplift his wife
and children? Will he breathe about him a pure, sweet atmosphere?
Will he not as assiduously cultivate the love of Jesus, making it an
abiding principle in his home, as he will assert his claims to authority?
Let every husband and father study to understand the words of
Christ, not in a one-sided manner, merely dwelling upon the subjection
of the wife to her husband, but in the light of the cross of Calvary,
study as to his own position in the family circle. “Husbands, love your
wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it;
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Letter 18, 1891