Hasten To The Word of God

PRIDE AND ALLOWING OURSELVES TO BE BESTED

 

 

Prov. 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

Prov. 26:18 ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.19 I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.20 And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.

 

Pride is something I’ve pretty much always avoided talking about. It’s not that I think I am so proud and dare not discuss it. Rather I know that I am like most humans and have a natural tendency toward pride from time to time. We generally do some small bit of exulting when we do well, because really we know we are not all that great. We feel good when we accomplish something. The real problem comes when it gets out of balance and we don’t exult in others when they do well or when we don’t give space for them to do well. And that is the point I wish to discuss today.

Leviticus is kind of scary on this subject. God must always be first. God is love and when we keep Him first we love well. When God is not first we love poorly and slip into different kinds of destruction, one being pride. When we walk in God’s Love as we should, God’s Holy Spirit rains on us and we produce the fruit of the Spirit and the anointing of the Spirit flows through us upon others. The peace of God falls upon us, we praise and honor God and rejoice in Him.

When we get off track and give ourselves the credit justly due to God, Leviticus says God will break the pride of our power and life gets hard around us. We know that life around us can be hard anyway. So, the idea that God would make life harder when we take honor upon ourselves is just scary. But the truth is that we humans do it to some degree all the time.

One area I am thinking of this morning is that of churches and leadership. The world teaches us that leaders are supposed to be better than others. Certainly, leaders need to be accomplished to some degree in order to be able to lead others somewhere. Too often I have seen this taken to the point of control. If we control who serves around us and only allow ministry to those who won’t in our opinion do better than us, then we can maintain our position of leadership. If we just don't give opportunities to others to grow, we can prevent them from possibly doing better than us. This is an issue of pride and fear. Keeping this attitude will make life hard around us. It will also make life difficult for those seeking to mature and gain experience in their Spiritual giftings. And that doesn’t please God who loves us all and wants all of us to be released into the fullness of our callings.

Speaking practically, men do this to women, and then women do it to each other. Men and women who believe that only men are to be leaders and teachers or preachers often become inwardly furious when they see women besting them in some area of church leadership. So, they begin to work to prevent and control these women. Pastors and church leaders will do this when they watch someone preaching a better sermon or teaching better. They feel that their position of superiority is being challenged. So, they simply will refuse to honor or encourage that person in those things giving them fewer opportunities. This is the ugly side of pride. And we will sense the heavens becoming like a wall of iron and the earth like a wall of bronze in being immovable. We will be stuck and either go backwards or simply not move forward.

One of the errors in this is thinking that in order to serve well leaders must do better than those around them. In general they should have a certain degree of competency. Men who think men must be leaders, think they must know more than women. Really men just need to give their strengths, whatever they are, to serving those around them. Being concerned over who is doing better than whom is not an option. In this way anointed leaders can allow themselves to be ministered to by whomever God sends. The best leader releases those around them into ministry and service so much so that eventually he or she will be surpassed in excellence from time to time. This has the potential to blossom into amazing Spiritual ministry and growth.

But pride will stop it all, pitting one against another, shutting down the wind of God’s Spirit. Let us instead concentrate on opening doors for others to do well and rejoicing with them when they do.  So, if you suddenly get a lot of bananas, share some.   :)

 

 

Metaphorical use of "head" in Ephesians 5

One of the several mistakes that gender hierarchalists today make in reading about marriage is to assume a 21st century understanding of the use of ‘head’. The facts are that Paul and Christ spoke to correct the very Aristotelianism that had pervaded Judeo-Islamic philosophical and theological thinking in the middle ages before Christ. Such views still pervade our churches today, simply because men in general like power. While Aristotle viewed it important that the wife be happy, he thought it was the husband’s job to govern the accomplishment of such and that women needed governing as the weaker element. In Aristotle’s view only men were made suitable to govern. In Aristotle's thinking the very frame of women showed that they were only suitable to bear and raise children. All his teachings were pretty much based on those two paradigms.

Within a more contextual reading of Ephesians 5, there is the fact that in Eph. 5:1-2 ALL believers are told to love sacrificially as Christ did toward us. Add the closing admonition to this section in Eph. 5:21 where ALL believers are admonished to submit to one another in the fear of God and we have mutuality by both men and women. Then stepping into the relationship of marriage wives are admonished to carry that mutuality toward their husbands. For wives that was a step up and away from obedience that the culture taught. And that mutuality was to be in everything.

Husbands are then reminded that the sacrificial love spoken of in Eph. 5:1-2 is to be extended toward their wives. Nothing is said about leading the wives, or disciplining,or discipling, teaching or any such thing. Rather the husband is told that like Christ he is to nurture and cherish (provide and protect) his wife.

Eph.5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and GAVE himself for it;”


The Greek word translated GAVE is PARADIDOMI, defined by the Blue Letter Bible dictionary as: ‘to give into the hands (of another)’
‘to give over into (one’s) power or use’
‘to deliver to another something to keep, use, take care of, manage’, also give oneself up, present oneself. Just as Christ gave Himself completely up for the salvation benefit of those who would believe on Him, so husbands are to lay down their lives for the benefit, the welfare, the promotion of the life of their wives.

Add in that Paul painted an interestingly profound picture of deep attachment to one another by telling the wife (not the husband) to view the husband as her physical head (nothing to do with leadership). Then Paul tells the husband (not the wife) to view the wife as his physical body (not a slave or servant). I say “view” because each has their own head and body. The metaphorical purpose I see in Eph. 5:21-33
is to show them they are to come together as one flesh, as perfectly united in deep harmonious attachment so that they are like one unit. The head needs the body to live and the body needs the head to live. Life, true spiritual life together is what is being promoted. This is found in submissive mutuality, honor, and deep love.

The popular ideas of gender hierarchy that applaud men as superior, in control, and such cannot promote the end result that Paul paints a picture of in Ephesians 5. And the ending in verse 31 points us back to Genesis where we see that this harmonious unity is supposed to produce one whole unit, two become as one. And this is the profound unity that Christ prayed the Father for (John 17:6-19) when He said that everything He had belongs to the Father and everything that the Father has belongs to Him, indicating those believers who would believe in Him. He prayed the Father to keep them safe so that they may be one just as He and the Father are one. This is the mystery of Christ and the church. This is the mystery and glory of our relationship with God, we in Him and Him in us. And this only happens when we present our bodies as a living sacrifice to Him, as He has already done so for eternity for us. Then, and only then are we able to do the same for one another, including within the blessings of marriage.

 

Kevin Giles review of a recent Equal and Complementary seminar

The following link is to a google article by well known scholar Kevin Giles who calls himself a non-hierarchical complementarian (I consider myself the same).  In this article Giles is critiquing the teachings of some hierarchical complementarians who claim an interpretation of Scripture that is gender biased toward male dominance in church and home.  I find Giles review of their seminar very informative.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B58yzgL3ovUUZmFiNTMyMjktOTg2MS00YWRlLTljOTktYjE4YjgxM2M5YTFm&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

I will be interested in any questions and comments regarding what Giles has to say on this.