Pastoral Marriage Killers

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. (1Corinthians 11:3)

Today I want us to look at one seemingly innocent but powerful weapon the evil one has crafted to kill the marriage institution among believers.

At the root of them is the confusion in the roles and accountability systems in it.

And I will ask us to consider Numbers 30 to appreciate how grave the situation is. Read it.

Numbers 30 deals with vows to God, or simply, someone’s offering of themself to the service of the divine.

Do you realise that a married woman must get her husbands approval for her offering to be acceptable to God?

Why does God give the husband veto powers over his wife’s devotion?

Do you also realise that the husband is accountable to God if he allows his wife to serve and later rescinds his acceptance? Why is his wife innocent for that open breach?

Do you also know that a wife’s sin is attributed to her husband even when he was unaware of the same?

A case in point is Ahab.

He is the one who was charged with the murder of Naboth though he probably didn’t know what had gone on for him to acquire the vineyard.

Bathsheba was the one who left her matrimonial bed to sleep with David yet is nowhere when David is charged with and judged for the sin.

It is therefore important for us to appreciate that God’s way of doing things is different from the error we have been promoting over the years, however innocently we have been doing it.

I will throw a few other verses in the mix for someone who thinks that this is Old Testament theology.

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, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. (1Corinthians 14: 34, 35)

How different is this from what we read in Numbers 30?

Do we not realise that this was written in the context of a church overflowing with gifts and their manifestations.

It is therefore not wrong to assume that the confusion and reigning sin in the church may have been attributable to that breach of the spiritual order.

Simply saying, the spiritual wife is subject to her husband, however unspiritual he happens to be.

It is in her submission that the husband can see God’s grace at work in her life.

Simple observations will make this clear.

It takes no effort between the time a husband believes and when the wife and children follow suit. Yet it always takes decades for the husband to believe if it was the wife who believed first.

That is also clear in the Bible.

A husband believed with his whole family.

Joshua 24:15 is as valid today as it was when Joshua made that proclamation.

From observation, it is easier for the man of the house to believe if it is the children who believe than it is when a wife believes.

That is the error I want us to tackle today.

We have polluted the divine order.

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. (1Peter 3: 1, 2)

The evangelistic tool God has given to a woman is that uncompromising submission to her husband.

For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement. (1Peter 3: 5, 6)

That is offensive to the modern woman, basically because the church has developed a different doctrine and theology concerning her position and role.

According to Biblical revelation, it is wicked for a woman to discuss spiritual issues with anybody other than her husband.

Now we even have women holding spiritual positions over men, even their husbands.

But let me not get that far as it may get me off topic.

What do I mean that pastors are breaking marriages and not through physical adultery?

It happens when a woman develops a spiritual relationship outside her husband’s domain.

That in itself is spiritual adultery.

When a pastor offers a married woman a position of service in church outside or without consulting her husband, he has directly trashed the husband’s authority and in effect killed that marriage at the spiritual level.

He has introduced a different spiritual structure that he heads and that treats the divine order as irrelevant or impractical.

Of course, the wife will stop being subject to that husband because she has transferred her submission to another ‘husband’, albeit in the spiritual sense. She will believe that she has become more spiritual to her husband.

But she will continue living in this idiot’s house and feeding off him. She will even pretend to be married to him.

But her heart has shifted.

This husband then becomes spiritual baggage to the point of being called a demon when he seeks to assert authority in his dominion.

He will then start being reported to the new authority for interfering with the new ‘marriage’.

But neither she or her new husband acknowledge the new reality though they are walking in it.

No wonder physical adultery will many times result in such situations.

The woman transferred her submission from her husband to a new husband in the spiritual where marriages exist.

Her lawful husband ceased from existing and became a problem to be prayed against.

Estrangement does not happen because the husband is unreasonable. It happens because his wife has acquired a new husband through her involvement in ministry outside her husband’s authority.

I am using strong words because that reality must be grasped.

I have been part of that error and feel very sorry for my stupidity.

But I didn’t know better because that is what I was taught and saw. But I have repented and am learning to agree and walk in God’s order of things.

You see, having Jesus as a ‘personal saviour’ makes the spiritual relationship personal.

Nobody needs nobody else to function. No structures exist for someone with such a personal relationship not to be and do whatever they want in that personal relationship.

But Jesus can never be personal since He owns everyone and everything.

He also has structures that He has created for the proper functioning of what He has created, structures He has revealed in His word, the Bible.

The personal nature of our salvation is therefore subject to the functioning of the whole created order.

And that order is the reason God ordered that the woman is subject to her husband in all things

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. (Ephesians 5: 22 – 24)

A woman is not submitted to Christ if she is not submitted to her husband completely.

It is important to note that children are commanded to submit to their fathers in the Lord whereas the wife is commanded to submit to the same man in everything.

As usual, I know there are some who are already too infuriated with me at this point that they can barely see through their tears to continue reading.

But I am writing what the Bible teaches.

I do not have to like it but I also do not have the luxury of disregarding it.

There are too many wrecked Christian marriages to afford me the luxury of keeping quiet.

Are you speaking to a married woman without her husband’s express permission?

Then you are the reason her marriage is breaking. You are therefore seeking to mend a breach you have created and are enlarging by your involvement.

Are you counselling someone’s wife without his permission?

You are basically doing the same thing.

Do you minister with or to a married woman without her husband’s express permission?

Are you praying for a woman without her husband’s presence?

Do you smile at a woman when her husband cannot see?

Do you visit a married woman in the absence of her husband? (Even if you go with all the elders)

In the spiritual, you are committing adultery and killing a marriage.

And God holds you accountable for the breakage of that marriage.

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Mark 10:9)

You are asundering what God has put together.

And you can be sure God not only holds you accountable for that sin, He will certainly judge you for it.

I know there are unreasonable men out there. There are sons of Belial out there.

But I have never seen an exception to God’s revelation when I read the scriptures.

In any case, even when we have exceptions, which we don’t have, they are exceptions because they are very rare.

Let us therefore deal with the common before arguing for the exception.

But allow me to repeat that there is judgment for any breach of the spiritual order.

And I do not want you to be judged.