Wives Submit? Say What??!!! ***Theology from a Golf Cart***

I'm Keith Foskey, and this is Theology from a Golf Cart. Welcome back to Theology from a Golf Cart. Now, why am I doing Theology from a Golf Cart? Growing up, I enjoyed going on rides with my dad. And so over the last few weeks, I've been doing these videos from a golf cart, sort of reminiscent of that time with my dad, where I'm just going for a ride, having a conversation with you.

And today I brought along the beautiful and intrepid Mrs. Your Calvinist. And some of you may be wondering, why is she driving and I'm not? Well, this is her golf cart. And some of you have said, hey, you bought that golf cart for her and you're the one who's always driving it.

So I said, when we did our golf cart video today, she was gonna be driving it. And also, we're gonna be talking about the subject of submission in marriage.

And this is

He told me to drive the golf cart.

Yeah, she's doing what I told her to do. She is submitting to me. And I'm submitting to my own safety to her by allowing her to be the one in charge of the golf cart. So it was just sort of a reversal of roles, because normally when we go out for a golf cart ride, I'm driving, but today she's driving.

Why This Video Is About Submission in Marriage and a Viral Clip

And we're gonna be talking about this subject as we drive around our neighborhood. So the first thing we wanna do on this video is we wanna talk about what prompted this video. Recently, there was a video that went out on X and it was, I think the guy's a pastor.

I'm not really certain his name, who he is or anything like that. But in this video, he basically says that he does not expect his wife to submit to him and that ultimately in his relationship, they submit to one another.

And he goes through this sort of, I'm gonna let you watch the video. In fact, we'll watch the video with you and you'll have an idea of what it is we are talking about. The most telling part of this video is the very, very end where he says that part of the reason why he doesn't submit to his wife is because he would end up in his own words,.

In the dog box,.

Which apparently is his way of saying in the dog house. So let me pull this video up real quick.

I have always hated that religious, demonic reptilian seed lineage of a man saying to a woman, submit to me. I hate it. Why? Because I have no expectation for my wife to submit to me. I lead by example and we follow each other by example.

If she leads a better example, then I follow her example. If I lead a better example, she follows my example. Never once in my life have I said to my wife, honey, you need to submit to me because I know what will happen.

Dog box.

Biblical Headship and Wives Submitting to Their Husbands

So the Bible clearly teaches that we have positional authority in the marriage relationship, that the husband is to have a leadership role. His wife has to come alongside of him and submit to him in that leadership role.

And then you have guys like the guy in the video that we just watched who comes along and says, but wait a minute, he doesn't expect that his wife would submit to him, but rather he's gonna submit to her at sometimes and she's gonna submit to him at sometimes.

And even Jordan Peterson has a similar video where he and his wife are sitting on a stage and he says, well, I don't believe submission is unidirectional. And that's a very fancy word for basically saying it's not going one way, but that submission is to be sort of mutual.

And a lot of times people would base that on scriptures like Ephesians 5 .21, which says that we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And they'll say, submit to one another. See, it's not just one direction.

The problem is that's followed by Ephesians 5 .22, which says wives submit to your husband as unto the Lord. So it becomes an issue of, okay, even though we are to submit to one another in one sense, there's a structure that's given to the marriage relationship where the wife is to submit to the husband in a unique way.

She's not called to submit to all men. She's not called to submit to other husbands. She's called to submit to her husband in a unique way that she doesn't have to submit or isn't required to submit to other men.

And so that puts the man in a position of leadership.

In the home.

And there's several scriptures that I just wanted to, I have them on my phone here. I just wanted to mention these scriptures as we're talking about the subject, because it's not just like it's in one place.

And by the way, if you're gonna go to the comments and say, oh, that's just the apostle Paul, you're on the wrong channel, if you're gonna bring that up, just clearly. We believe the whole Bible, all scripture is God breathed.

And if the apostle Paul said it, that's coming from the Lord. And so, but we believe these things are consistent across scripture. This isn't just the commands of Paul. Yep, squirrel, squirrel, literally like, oh, squirrel.

But I just wanna give you a few passages to think about that are throughout the scripture. So we have, of course, the Ephesians five texts, but then we also have in Colossians three, almost the same thing.

Now you could say, well, the apostle Paul wrote this too, but it's just listen to the words of this one. It says, wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

This goes a step beyond just husbands love your wives, but it also says the way that we're to love our wives and Ephesians five does too. But this one specifically says, not in a way that's harsh, not in a way that's heavy handed.

Don't mistreat your wife. Don't allow your leadership to be a leadership that is heavy handed and unloving and ungodly. That's the wrong kind of leadership. And that's not what a man is supposed to do.

If you're given a position of authority by God as a man, you have to use that power that you're given with responsibility.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Spider-Man theology.

Yeah, Spider-Man theology. First Peter three says this. It says, likewise, wives be subject to your own husband so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

So this says that a wife, even if her husband is not being obedient to God at that time, that she's still to submit to him, that she's still to recognize his positional authority.

In the home.

Now, there can be some caveats to this. There can be lines where we have to say, okay, well, what if he's being abusive? Obviously that has to be dealt with. And I do think that sometimes that may mean that the church gets involved.

That may mean even the legal authorities get involved. If there's physical abuse that's happening, all of those things have to be taken into account.

Some people say, well, what do I submit to an unbelieving husband?

If you have an unbelieving husband, you submit to him as far as he is not calling you to not submit to Christ. But if it's simply living with an unbeliever, then the idea is, okay, you're still living in that positional authority, recognizing his authority, as long as he is not calling you to sin.

Why don't we go this way, honey? As long as he's not calling you to sin, then you would submit to him as you are submitting to Christ. Your submission to him is a picture of the submission to Christ. Another passage that I think is hugely important is in that same chapter is verse seven.

It says, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

I've actually taught in men's groups. I've said, okay, guys, do you live with your wives in an understanding way? Do you literally live with your wives understanding that you have a position of authority over them, but you're not to lord over them in such a way that you're ungodly in your leadership?

This is very important. And in doing so, if you're living with your wife in such a way that you're not living in an understanding way, you're not loving her as Christ loved the church, then in that moment, you may actually be in danger of having your prayers hindered according to this passage.

So there's some things to consider there. One last one is 1 Corinthians 11, verse three. It says, I want you to understand the head of every man is Christ, the head of the wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

So this speaks of headship. And this is where we would talk about the responsibility of the husband to be the head of the house. And so this is the scriptural command, is that there is to be submission in marriage, there is to be leadership from the husband to the wife, and it's to be loving and godly, and the wife's submission is to be voluntary, and it is to be joyful submission, not begrudging or angry submission, sort of like when we're called to give, we're called to give not begrudgingly or not under compulsion, God loves a cheerful giver.

I think we could also say that God loves cheerful submission, not angry or begrudging submission. You agree with me so far?

This is what I've been thinking about today in preparation for this, is I've been thinking about what am I supposed to do, like as a wife and a mother, my number one priority is to please God. And he's written in his word, which we have, which we hold to, I mean, it gives me details like how we should live.

And I should submit to my husband as I would submit unto the Lord. So practically how that works out is, I think it all comes down also to the fall, where my desire sometimes is to step in sinful ways, is to lord over him or to try to take control over him.

But that's not what God has called me to do. And when I do that, I'm in sin. And I've had to go and repent to him and apologize for when I tried to do that. But I should submit to him as to the Lord. And I show my love for my savior when I do that.

Manipulation, Trust, and the Difference Between Agreement and Submission

Yeah, and would you say that, because I wrote this down earlier, I said a lack of submission often comes in the form of manipulation. Not with the words, I don't submit to you, right? Like those words rarely come out, but words like, or attitudes like a sour disposition, a terribly, just an attitude of misery.

Or talking about it to someone else. Like, well, look at what my husband is making me do.

Or look at, yeah, look at how rough of a life I have going and running your husband down in a group of women or something.

Or here's one, online.

Yeah, oh yeah, go ahead. Anonymous Facebook posts is a real thing. And this is where I think a real conversation could be had about, okay, what does manipulation look like? And manipulation can go both ways.

Manipulation can come from the side of a man who lords over his wife and leads through fear, leads through anger every time she does something, or every time he comes home, he's knocking stuff off the table, or he's putting his fist through the wall.

That's ungodly and that's misbehavior. That's not lording, or that is not loving your family well. That's lording over your house in an ungodly way. But in the same way for a woman, the tactics may be having cold shoulders, sour disposition, a holding back of intimacy, an unwillingness to engage with any type of loving and positive interaction.

I will say this, and again, I'm not just saying this to put on a display of how great things are for us, because we don't have a perfect life or a perfect marriage, but I'm very grateful that you genuinely are happy when I come home, at least you seem to be.

Like I come through the door, you're happy to see me. You come to me, you hug me, you kiss me. You're thankful that I'm there and I'm thankful to be there. I think that's a huge step in not just submission, but showing affection in the relationship and how that is to work out.

One of the things we're gonna tell is the story. I talk about this story in my, when I'm doing premarital counseling and anytime I'm doing any type of counseling where the submission is an issue, I will tell the story.

So I'm gonna tell this story to you. You know the story about the man who goes to his father. And I want you to think about this story and I want you to think about your answer. And then I'm gonna give you my answer and tell you what the answer is as I see it.

So the story goes like this. There's a man who has a father who owns a business and the man works for his father in the business. And he goes to his father and his father says, okay, son, I want you to take a portion of, I'm getting older now.

I think I'm gonna be probably with the Lord soon. I want you to take a portion of my estate and I want you to set it aside for your mother so that if something happens to me, your mother has a nest egg that's gonna take care of her.

I want you to go ahead and do that for me. And the son says, I think that's a great idea, dad. I'll do what you say. And he goes and does what his father says. A couple of weeks later, the father calls his son back and he says, son, I really think my time is short.

I want you to take a portion of our stock. I want you to sell it. I want you to take that money, put it into a trust fund for your children so that your children are taken care of after something happens to me.

The son says, I'm thankful to do it. That sounds good, dad. I agree with you. I'll do what you say. And then a few weeks later, he calls him back. He says, son, you know that property that we own on the other side of town?

The son said, yes, I've been curating that property. I've been working on it. The father says, I think it's time to sell that property. It's at its highest value. I think right now we'd make the most money.

And the son says, oh, dad, I don't think we should do that. And the father said, well, it's mine. I've made this decision. I want you to go and sell that property. And the son goes and he doesn't sell the property.

He doesn't do what his father asked him to do. So question time, here's the question. How many times, there's three interactions, how many times was the son submissive to his father? I'm gonna give you a second to think about your answer and then bring you back.

A few moments later. All right, we're back.

Okay, how many times was the man submissive to his father? The answer is?

Zero.

Zero times. And here's how we come to that conclusion. The man is submissive zero times because he only did the things he already agreed to. He already wanted to do the things that the father asked of him.

And if he only did the things that he agreed to, that's not being submissive to the father. That's being submissive to his own wants and desires. So when I'm talking about submission into a marriage, submission is only really submission when it comes to issues that you don't necessarily agree with, but you have to trust the person that has been put in that position of authority over you.

That's the whole thing about submission in a relationship is it's a role of trust. You have in your relationship, the call for the wife to submit to the husband and the husband to love his wife. And part of submitting to the husband is to trust the husband.

And part of loving the wife is providing an atmosphere of leadership that encourages her trust. Another reason we wanted to talk about submission in marriage is in just a couple of weeks, our daughter is going to be getting married.

This is the first of our children to be married. And it's been an interesting experience because as we prepare our daughter for marriage, I'm the one who's going to be performing the service. And in our conversation with her, I'm the one who did the premarital counseling.

And in premarital counseling, I said to her the same thing I say to every couple that is in premarital counseling. I say, there is a responsibility, husband to wife and wife to husband. And there is a responsibility of the husband to lead the wife and a responsibility of the wife to submit to her husband.

And I base this on Ephesians chapter five, which is very clear. It says that wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord and husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church. In fact, we really in counseling, we exegete that passage.

We walk through every verse, talk about what it means. And it actually says that the wife is to submit to her husband in everything. And I said to my daughter, I said, listen, you're about to marry this man.

You want to marry this man. You've told me you wanted to marry this man. We've had many conversations. Are you ready to submit to him in every area? Are you ready to submit to him in everything? And really the way I explained that to her is I said,.

Do you trust him?

Are you ready to trust your husband? And that's really what the first step of submission is. It's a step of trust. Do I trust this person to lead well? Do I trust this person to lead me in the way that God would have him lead me?

That's the first step. And when we talk about the subject of submission, would you agree with that?

Yes. And when those things are out of order, when you have the husband not leading and the wife leading, and I mean, it just, we've probably all seen marriages like that or relationship dynamics like that.

And it's kind of cringy. I don't know. I mean, because it's not the design God, God has given us in his word these directions, but we think we know better. I mean, I think feminism often plays a role in that too.

Yeah, and it destroys marriages because it puts things out of order. It makes the wife feel like she has to have the authority and the husband has to submit to her authority or he'll be in the dog box, like that guy said, which is ridiculous that he would have to be afraid to exhibit any type of authority because he's gonna be the one in trouble.

He's gonna be the one on the couch. He's gonna be the one in the dog house. That whole model, which came about within the last hundred years with the rise of feminism and all those things, it puts men in a position of reaction rather than action and a position of submission rather than authority.

It really changes the dynamic in a home. And what we've seen is the destruction of the home as a result of that inversion of those positions. And that's the real interesting thing about this is it's not mutual submission.

What is often called for in a highly feminized world, what is often called for is not mutual submission, but rather the husband is to submit to the wife. If mama's not happy.

Ain't nobody happy.

That's the attitude, but guess what? That's an ungodly way of looking at it. That's an absolutely ungodly way of looking at it.

Think about this too. In most homes, I mean, you've got sons and daughters looking up. I mean, what kind of

That's right. You're teaching your daughters and your sons the wrong way that marriage is supposed to be. In fact, I would say the one thing I wanna do more than anything for my children and raising them outside of teaching them to love Jesus Christ and submit to him is I want to teach my sons to be godly leaders.

And I wanna teach my daughters what to look for in a man that they would look for a man that they can trust, a man that will take care of them, will provide for them, that will pastor their souls and will shepherd their homes.

And that's a man that can be trusted. Well, I have a few final thoughts. I just wanna give these to you as we close out today's video. Here's the final thoughts. If wives are commanded to submit, men are commanded to lead and lead well.

To be a trustworthy leader, to be a competent leader, to be a godly leader. That's what you're called to be. If you're a man, you're called to be a trustworthy leader, a competent leader, and a godly leader.

Think about 1 Corinthians 14. What does it say? It says, women are to be quiet in the church. And if they have a question, they're to ask their husbands. What does that mean? That means the husband's supposed to know the answer.

That means he is actually supposed to be competent in the word to where his wife can come and talk to him. And some guys say, well, my wife knows more about the Bible than I do. Guess what, big boy? That means you got some work to do.

That means you should go and actually commit yourself to learning the word. If she's been a Christian longer than you, guess what? She can help you, but at the same time, it's your responsibility to learn the word, not her responsibility to learn the word for you.

For a wife to submit as the Bible commands, it requires trust on her part. This is why when I ask a woman if she's ready to marry a man, I ask her if she trusts him. If a woman comes, she says, I want to marry this guy.

I say, do you trust him?

That's the number one question.

Because if you don't trust him, you can't submit to him. Also, for a husband to lead his wife as the Bible commands, it requires care and compassion on his part. And this is why when a man wants to marry a woman, I ask him, do you love her?

Do you really love her? Are you willing to put her before everyone else, rise above every other social commitment, save Jesus Christ alone? The only person that's more important to you than your wife is Jesus Christ, is God himself.

Other than that, your wife comes first. You don't look at other women. You don't spend your time lusting after other women. Your wife is where you find your joy, your happiness, your greatest blessing, and your greatest friendship is right here with this person.

So that's what it means to love your wife. And so if you come to me, you say, I think I want to marry this woman. Do you love her? Woman comes to me, I think I want to marry this man.

Do you trust him?

And I think this goes along with the scripture because interestingly in Ephesians five, it says, husbands love your wives and wives respect your husbands. How do you respect a man? You have to trust him.

How do you love your wife? You have to be willing to lay down your life for her. That's what it says. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So those were our thoughts as I've been submitting to my wife's driving on this.

But she did a great job today, driving and enjoying the drive. If you guys have something you want us to talk about on a future episode of Theology from a Golf Cart, please leave that in the comments.

I love to read your comments and I'd like to do a video on something that you guys want us to talk about. All right, guys, I want to thank you again for watching this episode of Theology from a Golf Cart.

If you enjoyed this video, please hit the thumbs up button. If you didn't hit the thumbs down button twice. All right, guys, we'll see you on our next ride.

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