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LIKING JUST PART OF THE MARRIAGE VOW

It’s one of the more casual marriages ever recorded on film. If you saw Shadowlands, you remember how the famed Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, agreed to lend his name through marriage to a divorced woman named Joy Gresham. She was in England with two boys, Douglas and David, and the government was threatening to send her back to America. But “Jack,” by now a family friend of several years, and a scholar who enjoyed matching wits with the very clever woman from “the colonies,” stood before a justice of the peace with her on April 23, 1956, and they became, “in name only,” man and wife. According to Lewis, it was “a pure matter of friendship and expediency.” In the Richard Attenborough film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, the snobby Oxford don is particularly brusque with his new “wife.” There’s a driving rain outside the judge’s office, and he says, very abruptly, “Well, must go. See you later.” And he exits to go catch a train or something. It’s left to Jack’s brother, Warnie, to take his new “sister-in-law” out for a little celebration.

Then Joy is struck down with bone cancer just six months later. And this callous man who has only played the role of husband according to the letter of the law, realizes how desperately he would miss her. “No one can mark,” he confesses later, “the exact moment at which friendship becomes love.” But now he talks to his brother about marrying Joy for real. And he says, with a quiver in his voice, “It means I would have to love her, Warnie. Really love her. I would have to care more for her than I do for myself.”

He once had written a poem which confessed his own selfishness.

“I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through: I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.”

All that would now change. He would have to unwrap his heart and hand it to this beautiful, dying woman with the luminous eyes. And on March 21 of the following year, in a bedside service not sanctioned by the Church of England, Jack Lewis promised to give Joy not just a name, but also his love, his emotions, his estate, his entire life. She would now be his partner and his bride, not simply his charity project. “There was a terrible poignancy about the exchange of vows,” writes biographer Brian Sibley, as Jack promised to love and cherish Joy “till death do us part.”

Then, almost miraculously, there was remission. For three years the cancer hid in the shadowlands, and Joy was treated as the queen of all England’s vast territories. C. S. Lewis loved her with incredible passion: physically, emotionally, spiritually. They enjoyed a home there at The Kilns; they went on trips together, enjoying their first air flight, then taking a brief second honeymoon to Greece. Finally, July 13, 1960, she passed away with Jack at her side.

Well, friend, that’s a famous, Hollywood story . . . and I know that all over the world, there are Christian men, unheralded, ordinary people who choose a wife and treat her with equal elegance and devotion. And this is really the final conclusion we want to draw from this often misunderstood and sadly aggravating passage of Scripture in Ephesians 5 where it says, in rather sterile King James English:

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

But then you go on and you read the entire passage. And you come to a realization that what we have here is a beautiful, almost mythical package . . . and friend, you can only take this elegant blueprint as a whole. You can’t just pull out a piece of it, turn to your wife, and demand: “Kneel! Bow! Obey! Be subservient!” A Christian man must devote himself to his wife, give himself for her, sacrifice his interests for hers, protect her with his wallet and his wisdom and his blood, sweat, and tears. He must defend her against all enemies, all attackers, all suitors, all hurts, all pains, all fears and tears. And if he does all of that — IF he does all of that — then he has earned the biblical right to be a leader in the home and have the grateful, protected wife say to him: “You lead; I will follow. You defend and dream; I will support.”

In the Tyndale New Testament Commentary, Francis Foulkes shares a wonderful snippet of truth from the ancient philosopher, Chrysostom. Here it is:

“‘Hast thou seen the measure of obedience? hear ALSO the measure of love. Wouldst thou that thy wife should obey thee as the Church doth Christ? have care thyself for her, as Christ for the Church.’” Then Dr. Foulkes adds: “The quality of the love the husbands are required to give to their wives is first shown by the word that is used for love. Two other words might have been used in Greek for the love of husband for wife, and classical writers would more naturally have used them. There was the word erao that expressed the deep sexual passion of man for woman, and the word phileo that was used for affection within the family. Neither of those is used here; instead Paul chooses the typically Christian word agapao, love that is totally unselfish, that seeks not its own satisfaction, nor even affection answering affection, but that strives for the highest good of the one loved. This love has as its standard and model the love of Christ for His Church. It has already been taught as the duty of every Christian in all his relationships. Now it is used to remind husbands that they must not think of what they expect as due to them from their wives, but of what they owe in self-giving and devotion.”

After the passage on “submitting,” Paul now tells the men in the church this:

“Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church — a love marked by giving, not getting.”

Earlier we remembered a New Testament story where a bunch of men were ready to throw stones at a woman who had been caught in bed with a man. And they were excitedly waving a rulebook around. “Look at what it says here! It says we can stone her! So let’s get it on!” And Jesus quietly nodded. “It does say that,” He agreed. “The codebook says she should be stoned. And if any of you here aren’t sinners — ‘cause the rulebook says that too, by the way — then you just go ahead and get started with the execution.” In other words, if the book applies, the WHOLE book applies. And friend, here the same thing is so wonderfully true. First of all, the word “submit” expresses a glorious, mature, Christian, heaven-honoring agreement between two equal people. Second, it is part of a larger view, a relationship full of mutual love, where a man protects and defends and uplifts the queen of his life. Paul goes on to write:

“Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Again slipping into 21st-century English with the Message paraphrase: “Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything He does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness.”

The Adventist commentary, a choice, well-written study resource, adds this:

“[A true husband’s love] will find expression in a variety of ways. It will be given in words of understanding and affection. The husband will properly provide for the wife’s temporal support; he will do everything possible to assure her happiness; he will give her every honor. . . . The supreme test of love is whether it is prepared to forgo happiness in order that the other might have it. In this respect the husband is to imitate Christ, giving up personal pleasures and comforts to obtain his wife’s happiness, standing by her side in the hour of sickness. Christ gave Himself for the church because she was in desperate need; He did it to save her. Likewise the husband will give himself for the salvation of his wife, ministering to her spiritual needs, and she to his, in a spirit of mutual love.”

Let’s never forget that the Church is a model for our marriages, and our marriages are a model for the Church. Jesus submitted to His Father, and the Church must always submit to Him. And we learn that. As Christ defends His church and dies for her, a Christian husband must always defend his wife — always: publicly, privately, everywhere he goes — and yes, be willing to die for her. A Christian man must lay down his life for his wife at any time and any place . . . and not just in terms of being willing to die for her, but to LIVE for her. Putting her interests and needs before his own. As Jack Lewis did at that bedside, realizing that instead of lecturing and writing books and showing off his intellect and meeting with J. R. R. Tolkien and his other friends for a pint at the Lamb and Flag, he now had to LIVE for Joy Gresham Lewis.

Jack Lewis, the bachelor, would probably have joined Paul, the bachelor, in writing — verse 32:

“This is a great mystery.”

But, as with most great writers, it’s wonderful how some mysteries work out in the end.