Copyright
© 2007 Ron Schwartz
All rights reserved.
Spiritual Authority
Part
2. The Application Of Spiritual Authority
May
19, 2007
From Ron and Karen Schwartz
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Husbands,
Wives, and Synergy
(Note:
Portions taken from a previous note entitled, “Spiritual Synergy.”)
Genesis
2:18 KJV
And
the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him
an help meet for him.
This
verse follows on the heels of the creation account found in chapter 1.
Each thing God did was “good;”
that is, until He made man. We find
here the first thing God did that was NOT good.
He made man alone. This
word “good” is an adjective used in
the widest possible sense. It means “favorable, beautiful, bountiful, cheerful,”
etc. In short, man could not find
goodness as long as he was alone.
Far
too often, the significance of this event is overlooked, seen instead as simply
Adam’s need for companionship. We
typically read this passage, nod our heads in agreement, and then go on without
really giving it much thought. But
there is far more here to consider than simply the fact that Adam was lonely.
When God made woman, He made a being that was much more than simply a
companion. With Eve, Adam had the
potential to become good.
We
learn here that God created Eve to be a “help
meet.” The word “help
(Hebrew: help, aid, or succor)”
means just as it would seem: “to aid or
assist.” Interestingly enough, the word “meet”
means “a part opposite, specifically a counterpart, or mate.
It has the idea of something being set against (as in opposition)
something else.” Eve could help
him become better by providing balance through an opposing viewpoint.
Their collaboration and cooperation is known as “synergy.”
It is the friction between these two opposites who work together for a
solution that creates synergy.
We
have all heard of the word “synergy.”
At its most basic, it means “unity [cooperation, working together].”
But it goes way beyond unity. It
carries with it the idea is that the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts.
The dictionary defines “synergy” as:
·
“The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that the combined
effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
·
Cooperative interaction among groups, especially among the acquired
subsidiaries or merged parts of a corporation, that creates an enhanced combined
effect.”
Synergy
comes from the Greek words “sunergiā,”
which means “cooperation,” and sunergos
[Strong’s 4904], which means, “working together.”
The idea is that when things work together effectively, one and one can
equal three. It means that
combining forces produces a better product than that which could be produced
separately.
The
union of a husband and wife is the best example of synergy.
Together, they can excel at work, raise a family, mind the affairs of a
home, and do the work of the Lord. Their
co-laboring allows them to be vastly more effective than if each were to attempt
it on his own. But there is still
more to the synergy that is produced by this union than mutual cooperation. Because they are opposites, they see and do things in their
own way, so they bring into the union their own distinctiveness and differing
points of view.
Just
like the husband and wife relationship, Christians are not meant to be mere
clones of one another, each working independently of the others.
We are designed to be different. Imagine
two people with conflicting opinions. One
wants to eat Chinese and the other Mexican.
But they only have one car and time is limited.
They are both strong-willed and insist on meeting their own individual
needs. In order for either of them to be fed, they must come up with
a creative solution. This is where
synergy begins: not with unity or agreement, but with the problem, the
disagreement, diversity, or opposite. Synergy
ends with unity. Synergy is also
lost when a strong-willed individual insists on his own way or assumes control.
Spiritual
authority
in the husband and wife relationship should take the form of synergy.
A husband is a fool when he ignores the benefits he can receive because
of some misguided need to have control over his wife.
When God created Eve from Adam’s side, He demonstrated that she was his
equal. In making Eve his opposite
(i.e., “help meet” or “help through
opposition”), God demonstrated that she was to be his balance.
A wife is by her very nature a unique individual who is different and
opposite in many respects. But she
is also equal and therefore clearly able to provide balance for her husband.
God did NOT make woman to simply provide companionship, an obedient
slave, or to experience forced conformity to man’s will.
He made her to make her husband good.
In this type of relationship, one and one equals three. They are able to do much more together than they could ever
accomplish apart.
On
the other hand, a woman must learn to respect and submit herself to her husband. Keep in mind that submission is not a spiritual act but
demonstration of respect for the natural order God established.
Submission is especially difficult because most women grow up in a
male-dominant environment. They learn early in life that getting their way requires
force, manipulation, and sometimes even seduction.
Though these tactics may be effective in the “real world,” they can
be (and usually are) devastating to a marriage.
Communication is key. Probably
your greatest challenge is to learn how to communicate rationally instead of
through anger.
The
ultimate objective of every husband is not to have his wife in subjection to him
but that she would be in subjection to the authority of the Holy Spirit. This is true spiritual authority.
John
The Baptist And Raising Children
Families
are a mixture of both spiritual and natural authority.
Paul recognized this when he wrote in 1 Timothy 3:2-5 that “a
bishop [is] one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in
subjection with all gravity (For if a man know not how to rule his own house,
how shall he take care of the church of God?).”
Natural authority is easy to achieve.
Most parents struggle with spiritual authority in the home.
Spiritual authority is NOT simply disciplining children into
subjection but helping them to find and achieve the rule of the Holy Spirit in
their own lives.
At
this point, we will revisit a subject we covered last year in our newsletter
entitled, “What Children Wish Their Parents Knew.”
To
gain understanding into how we as parents should exercise spiritual authority,
let’s look to the example of John the Baptist.
Matthew
3:1-3 KJV
1
In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
2
And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
3
For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight.
John
1:29 KJV
The
next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world.
John
the Baptist understood that his purpose was 1) to prepare the way of the Lord
and 2) to introduce people to Christ. As
Christian parents, this must also be our goal.
The preparation of our children should not be to make them look good but
to prepare them for God. Also,
it is our job to introduce them to Jesus. And
there’s more.
John
1:20 KJV
And
he [John the Baptist] confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the
Christ.
Far
too often, some parents forget this important fact: they are not God. Instead of preparing their children for Christ, they take the
place of Christ. Except the Christ
they model seems more like the taskmasters of Egypt than the Savior who gave
Himself for us. Whether their
parents created such an environment intentionally or unintentionally, children
who grow up in such an environment often grow into adults who blame, and
therefore hate, God. At the very
least, they often decide He is not the kind of God they want to continue serving
on their own.
John
3:30 KJV
He
[Jesus] must increase, but I [John the Baptist] must decrease.
As
Jesus’ authority begins to grow in our children’s lives and they begin to
submit to Him, there must be a corresponding and proportional diminishing of our
spiritual authority and control. Children
must see that our spiritual authority as parents does not supercede the
authority of the Lord in their lives. As
they grow older and more mature, they must be allowed to trust God and to fail
just like we do. This will build
spiritual confidence and maturity in them.
Too
often, children are not allowed to make even small choices, much less the more
important ones. Their environment
sometimes resembles a military academy or, worse yet, prison, where parents work
to control and manipulate their children right up until the time they leave
home. Then they wonder why their
children cast aside their values as though they were chains.
Such children have never learned what serving Christ is all about, or
even who He really is, all because their (possibly well-meaning) parents placed
their own laws above teaching their children how to develop a relationship with
the Lord.
Many
parents continually force their children to “do” right instead of helping
them to “be” right. They force
them to follow parental convictions and then wonder why they grow up to be
shallow and phony.
Sometimes
Christian parents get lost in rituals. They
become overly preoccupied with what their children are doing.
Are they reading the right materials?
Are they dressed right? Are
they watching TV, playing video games, listening to foul music, and talking with
bad friends? As parents, we SHOULD
be concerned with such things. But
if that is the extent of our concern, then perhaps we are missing the most
important things: namely, how our children are developing spiritually, socially,
and emotionally. These things
CANNOT be mandated to a child. They
can only be suppressed. In other
words, you cannot MAKE your child spiritual or socially balanced or emotionally
mature.
Parents can, by their actions, suppress these areas of their children’s
lives from developing.
Revelation
2:1-5 KJV
1
Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that
holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven
golden candlesticks;
2
I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear
them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and
are not, and hast found them liars:
3
And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and
hast not fainted.
4
Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first
love.
5
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first
works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick
out of his place, except thou repent.
Here
we find the danger of teaching our children structure rather than relationship.
This church began out of a love relationship with Christ.
They were His bride, and they loved Him.
But somewhere along the way, they came to believe that it was what they
did that pleased Him. Jesus
commends them for all that they have done, but He tells them that they have
“fallen” and are in need of repentance.
We
face the real danger of creating children who are like the church of Ephesus.
They do everything right but they have no love and passion for God.
They misconstrue their “rightness” as relationship and then wonder
why God is not active in their lives. They
grow up to become pastors and leaders who create more churches like Ephesus,
churches that do everything right but lack the power of God.
It is our fault. When we
create children in our own image (instead of God’s), they will, in turn,
create churches after the manner in which they were raised. And we sit wondering where we went wrong.
Judges
16:18-21 KJV
18 And when
Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the
lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he hath shewed me all
his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought money
in their hand.
19 And she made
him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave
off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength
went from him.
20 And she said,
The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I
will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the
LORD was departed from him.
21 But the
Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and
bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.
Samson
lost the things of God he possessed because he placed so little value on them.
Many children who are raised in godly homes eventually cast aside the
ways of their parents when they grow into adults. This happens because they have never come to see their
parents’ ways as anything more than routines.
Some
children look forward to leaving home so they can escape the pressures of how
they were raised. They want to
escape the emptiness they feel as they go through the motions of family
devotions and prayer. They want to
escape the knowledge that they feel nothing in their hearts.
But what they fail to realize is that when they leave home, they take
their hearts with them. They may be
able to escape the routines of their parents, but they cannot escape the
emptiness in their hearts.
Galatians 4:19 KJV
My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.
Children
must come to see all the attributes of Christ in us that we want in them.
In other words, they must be able to obtain forgiveness and second
chances. We must demonstrate the
ability to forgive seventy times seven because our Lord is kind, forgiving, and
full of love. It is through love
and forgiveness that they learn to see the Lord we serve. We must treat our children with the same grace and mercy that
we have found. Far too often, this
is not the case. Far too often, we
act as though the Lord we serve is a taskmaster: he cannot be pleased and is
never satisfied with our best. As a
result, we must reflect in our relationship with them the relationship they
have, or one day will have, with the Lord.
The
ultimate objective of parents is not to have children in subjection to them, but
that their children would come to know and live in subjection to the authority
of the Holy Spirit. This is true spiritual
authority.
What
About Submission
1
Peter 3:1 KJV
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
Ephesians
5:22 KJV
Wives,
submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
1
Peter 5:5 KJV
Likewise,
ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to
another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth
grace to the humble.
Demonstrating
subjection and submission is showing respect to the natural authority God
has established. But submission is
NOT a spiritual act. If it
were, then a woman whose unsaved husband wanted her to sacrifice her salvation
because of his selfish nature would be in sin if she disobeyed.
But since her spiritual authority is found in the authority of the
Holy Spirit, she does not violate her spiritual authority by obeying God.
Let’s be clear about this: an unsaved man does not exercise spiritual
authority over his saved wife. His
authority is a natural authority. Consequently,
it is not uncommon to find the saved wives of unsaved men wrestling with the
inner conflict of how to submit to their husbands, which they know God wants of
them, while still serving God.
We
must be careful not turn submission into a spiritual act.
When we do that it becomes law, and women will submit, not out of love
but out of some sense of duty or threat of sin.
This tends to diminish a wife’s effectiveness as his help
meet.
Christian wives submit to their husbands because that is the natural
order that God established, and it is therefore pleasing to Him.
But to make submission exclusively a wife’s role is wrong.
We are “all
[to]
be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the
proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
Consequently, it should not be hard for a woman to submit to her husband
and he to her. Submission should be
our lifestyle.
Remember,
example is the best teacher. Husbands
teach their wives and children humility and submission by demonstrating it to
them, and so does the wife. True
submission and humility is not a result of a person with spiritual authority
lording over us but because the nature of the Holy Spirit is at work in our
lives causing us to be “subject
one to another, and… clothed with humility.”
As
for children, Paul writes, “Children,
obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.
Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with
promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
(Ephesians 6:1-3).”
The phase “in
the Lord” once again
establishes that true spiritual authority comes from God.
However, unlike other forms of submission, this form comes with a promise
(i.e., “that it
may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth”).
It is interesting that failure to submit does not come with a threat of
sin but a loss of promise. This is
because submission is not a spiritual act but simply following the natural order
God established.
By
nature, children will obey their parents. It
is a very natural thing. It does
not require spirituality but discipline. In
much our society, natural order has eroded into chaos.
As a result, children do not obey their parents, mothers abort their
children, and men abuse their families. Paul
described this when he wrote that “in
the last days perilous times shall come. For
men shall be without natural affection… (2 Timothy 3:1-3).”
Christian
men do not need to demand submission from their wives or subjection from their
children. They foster the natural
affection that is born in them. They
do this through love and example. This
does not mean that we do not discipline our children. It simply means that discipline must be combined with a
demonstration from the parents of what they expect. Parents must demonstrate to their children what they will
someday need to show to their own children.
What
about submission to Christian leaders? Christian
leaders often quote scriptures like the following:
Hebrews
13:7 KJV
Remember
them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God:
whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.
Christian
leaders who demand or require submission are fools. People will freely submit to someone whom they respect.
Paul writes that a true leader’s “faith”
will follow, and their “conversation
(or manner of living)” draws respect. Christian
leaders who feel the need to protect their authority are bullies, not leaders
established by the Lord.
Quite
often, Christian leaders will point to scripture concerning the apostles to
explain the respect and submission they want to receive.
So let’s consider the scripture:
Acts
2:43 KJV
And
fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
Acts
5:11-15 KJV
11
And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.
12
And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the
people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch.
13
And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified
them.
14
And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and
women.)
15
Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on
beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might
overshadow some of them.
It
is quite clear throughout the scripture that people submitted and respected the
apostles not because of a spiritual obligation but because of the quality of
their lives. They did not submit
because it was required of them. They
submitted because of the God they saw in these men. This is the truest example of spiritual authority in
Christian leaders.
Finally,
a discussion on submission would not be complete without addressing wives
unequally yoked with unbelievers. Wife,
if your husband is unsaved, you must take whatever steps the Spirit of God
instructs you to see that your children are raised in the fear of God. This may at times require you to go against your husband’s
wishes. If it comes to this, do so
with the utmost humility and respect. Let
him know how difficult it is for you to disobey his wishes.
But don’t forget that, just like your children, your husband needs
God’s love and salvation. He too
has a soul. It would be much better for you to serve God with him rather
than without him. Regardless of
what people tell you, the answers for your questions can only be found in the
leading of the Holy Spirit, but you can be sure that everyone around you will
second-guess what you do.
The
wife of a saved but lukewarm husband may have just as many challenges.
Many women have found that by quitting their institutional churches and
then starting or attending a house church, their husbands are forced to become
the spiritual leaders God intended them to be.
You must come to grips with this. Your
husband will face many challenges to become a spiritual leader as long as you
submit to the spiritual leadership of a pastor and you both attend a church that
already has a spiritual leader (the pastor).
Most men become lukewarm because they are unable to do that which God has
called them to do (i.e., be the spiritual leader their own homes). Their wives have already made their choice of which
leadership they are going to follow (i.e., the pastor), so why expect from the
husbands something they can never be while in an institutional church?
Wives, you must decide which is more important: the comfort and enjoyment
you get from submitting to your pastor or your husband’s spiritual life.
Remember, your union with your pastor is not a holy bond, but that which
you have with your husband is. “What
therefore God hath joined together, let not man [or
his wife] put
asunder (Matthew 19:6).”
The
ultimate objective of every wife is not that she would be serving God in the
church of her choice but that her husband would be in subjection to the
authority of the Holy Spirit. This
is true spiritual authority.
Amen.
kmsrjs@triton.net (use the same address for MSN Messenger)
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