Partnership Dynamics

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. (Romans 15:1)

I have intentionally chosen the ‘wrong’ verse to communicate a Biblical truth.

Why wrong? I know someone is asking.

I am writing about the relationship between a man and his wife.

I will start by taking us to farming, since as anyone who has interacted with the Bible consistently knows that the book leans on agriculture than it does business. God deals with His people as a farmer as opposed to as a businessman as many nowadays teach.

With very few exceptions, all the parables in the Bible and in Christ’s teachings were also agricultural in scope.

With Jesus, the parable of the talents is the one that is plainly business oriented though it also easily fits an agricultural perspective.

Let me get to my message.

Many a farmer with a yoke of oxen must know the respective strengths of each of his bulls. He must know the weaknesses or peculiarities of each bull to be able to work them properly.

Allow me to explain using the farm.

When the farmer is ploughing with that yoke of oxen, it is extremely important that he knows how each of the bulls can pull.

Then he will be able to plan his compensational tactics. Otherwise, he will end up with a farm that is shoddily ploughed.

It is the same with the ones used to pull carts. The driver must know his oxen well. Otherwise, he will end up crashing into fences and rockfaces and harming those oxen in the process.

Or do you not remember God commanding His people not to be yoking a donkey and an ox together?

That is the primary reason. Though there might also be religious reasons as was with planting two different plants and wearing two different fabrics.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. (1Peter 3:7)

That is the dynamic I want us to examine today.

What happens when two oxen of different strengths are yoked together is similar to what Peter is saying here.

The husband and wife are yoked together in marriage, no wonder they are called one flesh.

However, one is stronger than the other, the husband.

The implications of that are that there would be disaster if they are treated as equal in their yoking since they will be pulling very differently, or using very different strengths. They could very easily be moving in circles since the stronger partner cannot move straight as he will be being pulled back by the weaker one, ending up forgetting the straight and narrow.

There must be some compensational mechanisms in place if the team is to accomplish its intended purpose.

What am I talking about?

The stronger partner must intentionally handle more weight for the work to be done smoothly. It is as the stronger partner takes in more weight that the team will move in tandem as the weaker one is relieved from handling the weight she would have handled if the burden was shared equally.

As every Christian confesses, marriage was God’s idea. This implies that He is the One who came out with the blueprint for the same.

He therefore is the One who came up with those compensatory mechanisms I am talking about.

The good thing is that He has released them through His word. Sadly, our generation seems hell bent on trashing those guidelines.

Let me quote the most blatant of it because it is happening in the holy place.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. (1Timothy 2:12)

Was God stupid to allow that verse in the holy writ?

Yet it is not the only verse teaching that. You will be hard pressed to argue for the trashing of that instruction.

Let me give another passage

If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth; And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand. But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the LORD shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her. And if she had at all an husband, when she vowed, or uttered ought out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul; And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the day that he heard it: then her vows shall stand, and her bonds wherewith she bound her soul shall stand. But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none effect: and the LORD shall forgive her. (Numbers 30: 3 – 8)

Allow me to also add two other verses from the same passage

Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void. But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity. (Numbers 30: 13, 15)

That for me is the strength God meant.

It is illogical to hold someone answerable for another person’s vows (commitment to God) if they are equal partners. Two people cannot be equal if one is held accountable for the actions of the other.

Like you will notice when you read the Bible, God always holds the husband accountable even for the sins of his wife. And Ahab is the prime example. He was judged for doing something he probably had no idea how it happened. And that is repeated wherever else you look in the Bible.

A weaker stronger partner or a stronger weaker partner is therefore a disaster wherever you look for that reason. A partner who allows the weaker partner to make their decisions is abominable in God’s eyes. For the simple reason that all those decisions will be attributable to him. A partner whose spirituality is guided by his wife is an ignoramus because he is the actual spiritual head in that structure and is thus accountable to God for the direction that spirituality takes them.

David committed adultery yet the woman was nowhere mentioned in the judgment though I highly suspect she is the one who set up the king. And you will see this everywhere you look at in the Bible.

For example, do you know that even Mary who carried Jesus was completely overlooked once Joseph took over the responsibility of taking her as his wife. Why was someone who was so highly spoken of completely shunted when decisions concerning her were being made?

I know this is a hard teaching. This is the reason I am trying to go slowly because I could easily (I know I have already done to some) antagonize the bulk of my readers based on the teachings they have been receiving and examples they have been following.

It is plain when you read the Bible that the spiritual weight of any family is on the man. That is why Paul said that he is the head of the wife, and not the family as many people teach. It is the two that will head the family unit as yokefellows.

Allow me to add another aspect to this topic.

In the verse above, the word vessel is used.

Why vessel? I think it is primarily because she is handling some treasure.

Second is that she is delicate. That is why prayer is mentioned.

This directly makes the man a carrier of that vessel, a carrier who must handle it with care to enable her to carry her treasure and present it to her Lord, Jesus Christ.

The man not only handles proportionately more weight than his wife, he is called upon to carry her and do it very carefully so that she can fulfil her responsibilities, the weight God has placed on her.

That is why he is judged for the sins of that wife.

What are the implications for the man?

He must guard his relationship with God jealously since that is what will give him the right direction in handling this new vessel that God has entrusted to him.

He must be essentially the spiritual power house in that structure as anything else is against God’s blueprint.

It is sad that in many homes it is the wife who guides the prayer (and everything spiritual) dimension therein. Yet is that even scriptural?

I commented on a series of prayer books directed at everybody else, except the men who are the only ones scripturally ordered to pray.

Or do you not remember that only all the men were instructed to go to the designated place three times a year? Do you think it was oversight on God’s side? Or did not God create women with a spiritual dimension?

The truth is that women are more spiritually leaning than men.

That is why they can very easily bring men down spiritually as we see everywhere we look at in the scriptures.

That is the problem because that spirituality is multidimensional; meaning she can easily connect to spirituality from any direction. Incidentally that is why they boast of being able to multitask since that is easily apparent in the spiritual dimension.

That is what we see with Eve.

Whereas Adam was focused on the assignment God had given him, Eve’s spirituality drew her to renegotiate God’s orders with the wrong spiritual dimension leading to sin.

Adam sinned because he defended her misdirected spirituality. That is why God judged him for listening to his wife. In short Adam was judged for giving his wife as the authority of an equal partner.

That is what the Bible plainly teaches.

I will address other aspects of this message if/ when God allows me to.