Equipping Eve: The Submissive Wife (Part 2)

The Need to Equip Christian Women With Truth

Is the Church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

Well, hello ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve, a show that seeks to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word so that we can stand strong and firm on that truth, that foundation that the Lord has been good to give us in the 66 books of the Bible.

We can stand strong against an age filled with deception. There's no shortage of crazy people out there who are saying bizarre, dangerous things in the name of the Lord. And so we need to know the truth so that we can recognize the error.

I am your host, Erin Benzinger, and if you were with us last time, you know that I went long on a topic and did not even come close to finishing what I wanted to talk about. And that's okay. There is always another show, and so that is what we are going to do today.

Tara Furman, Submissive Wives, and Misusing Scripture

We're going to dive right into our topic. So what we were talking about was this show that aired a few weeks back on TLC, the Learning Channel Network. I think that's what it stands for, the Learning Channel.

I don't really know what you're supposed to learn on that show, on that channel, because there are weird shows, weird reality shows that do not depict reality by any stretch of the imagination. However, the show was called Submissive Wives, and it featured a Bible teacher whose name is Tara Furman.

She is based in North Carolina, and we learned a little about her in the last show. She likes to hear from God, and she is apparently trained in misusing scripture, using scripture out of context. We saw that in her blog post from May 12, 2015, entitled, The First Time I Heard God Speaks to Everyday People.

We saw how she misused Deuteronomy 1 .6 there, and so that is enough to make us a little suspect of the things that she is saying, and of her understanding of scripture, because she was misusing that verse out of context after spending 12 years in a Bible study.

These are the things that we need to be on the lookout for, and so what we were talking about in the last show was this idea of submission. What is biblical submission? We were reading from Ephesians 5, and from Colossians 3, and seeing that wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, as is fitting to the Lord, and what we were trying to emphasize is that biblical submission does not come apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Biblical submission to your husbands, ladies, does not come apart from the gospel, and that was what concerned me the most about this show. Here we have a family who professes to be Christian, and that was not necessarily hidden from the show, and so anybody watching this show who is not a believer would think that this show is depicting the biblical definition of submission, but was it?

What I saw in this show was an idea of submission that was completely misused and misrepresented from the scriptures, and was completely devoid of the gospel. What I saw in this show was a misunderstanding of biblical submission by people who profess to be Christians, and so we're going to continue talking about that today.

What I said last time was something that greatly concerned me about the show was hearing how this woman says that she changed her marriage when she started being a submissive wife, and she started doing all the stuff, and this other woman on the show was going to enter into the submissive marriage thing, and so she needed to start doing all the stuff so she could save her marriage.

It's not about you. You can't save your marriage not long-term. God does that, and if you are a Christian, you should know that, and if you are a Christian and you're trying to portray biblical submission, you need to do it with the proclamation of the gospel.

Now I can hear someone saying, but it was on TV, and maybe they cut that out. Perhaps. Maybe. However, as a Christian, if you agree to go on a secular network and portray your life and represent Christ, you need to be willing to stand up if they are going to cut out the most important thing, which would be the gospel and the explanation that your life of biblical submission to your husband does not happen apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

That did not come across in that show, and if it was on tape but cut and left on the cutting room floor, I'm sorry, then you say this show doesn't air. You don't take the money. You don't let it happen.

That's just the way it is, because now the church, the body of Christ, and the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, has been misrepresented to the world on national television by Tara Furman and her family, and this is not, I'm not trying to make this about this particular woman or this particular family, but I believe that what was portrayed is probably representative of the way many people who supposedly live these submissive marriages, the way they understand it to be.

Submission Is Not a Checklist

Now, what was one of the problems that I saw in this show? What was depicted as a submissive marriage was so disturbing. It was depicted as a checklist. Well, the Bible gives us ladies a job description, and we need to follow it, and no real verses were given.

It was just, you know, wives, submit to your husbands. Will wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, Ephesians 5 .22. And that goes on. The husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body, but as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands and everything.

This all goes back to Christ, because marriage is a picture of the relationship that the church has with Christ, the bridegroom. And when we depict just marriage, and when we depict submission in marriage as a checklist and just a list of do's and don'ts, we've taken Christ out of the picture.

And we are doing it all on our own, and we can reach around our shoulder and pat ourselves on the back because we saved our marriage by being submissive wives. I saved my marriage by getting up and making breakfast for my husband every morning.

That's the idea that was coming across. I've spoken about this danger of checklists before. As women, so often we are given this checklist, this Proverbs 31 checklist, you know, this is what you do to be a godly wife and mother.

Do this. And that is all we get from the Scripture, from so many Bible teachers and so many teachings. Here's a checklist to be a godly wife and a godly mother. Number one, we end up leaving out a large segment of Christian women who are not wives or mothers.

Number two, we have now placed such an emphasis on just a couple of verses in the whole of Scripture, and that's all women focus on. But ladies, if you do not know the whole counsel of Scripture, you cannot be a godly wife, you cannot be a godly mother, you cannot be just a godly Christian woman because you do not have the whole counsel of Scripture.

You cannot raise your children in the ways and knowledge of the Lord if you don't have the full knowledge of the Lord yourself. I know I'm getting a little heated, I apologize, but this is one of the deceptions that is inside the church, ladies.

And don't fall prey to this, because there are 66 books of the Bible, you are to read them all. I don't care if it is Paul's letter to Timothy, and that's a pastoral epistle, and you think, well, I'm never going to be a pastor, guess what?

Maybe you are raising someone who will be a pastor, a little boy who will be a pastor someday. Hey, do you have a pastor? You need to read 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, you need to read Titus, so that you know what the Lord says to those men who he has called to preach and proclaim his word and shepherd his flock.

You need the entirety of Scripture. You don't just need Ephesians 5 .22, you don't just need Proverbs 31, you don't just need Colossians 3 .18, you need the entirety of Scripture. And you do not need a checklist.

I'm going to go down and do this, this, this, this, and this, and if I do all of this by 9 o 'clock every morning, and I do this by 5 o 'clock before my husband gets home at night, and I do this before we go to bed at 10 o 'clock at night, then I have been a godly and submissive wife.

That's not how it works. It may work for a while, it will not work long term. Because if you are not doing this in the strength of Christ, if you are not submitting to your husband as unto the Lord, you eventually will fail.

Marriage Is More Than a Routine or a Rulebook

I fear what we have in professing Christendom these days, especially for ladies, is kind of our own Mishnah for women, you know, Mishnah for wives. The Mishnah was the text that the rabbis used to kind of elaborate on the Torah, and it was their list of rules, and I feel as though we have this unofficial rulebook for Christian wives, and it contains weird things like a godly wife makes breakfast every morning, a godly wife dresses in her little dress and apron and has a cake waiting when Ward Cleaver gets home from work, a godly wife vacuums and heals, a godly wife this, that, or the other thing, and I know I probably, some of you think I am a closet feminist.

Let me tell you, ladies, no one is a bigger champion of complementarianism than I am. No one is more in favor of a biblically submissive marriage than I am. No one wants to see Christ honored and glorified through women fulfilling their God-ordained role more than I do.

But let's think about this rationally. Will you getting up and making bacon and eggs every single day for your husband make your marriage better? Ultimately, is that what is going to make your marriage better, or is it going to be you and your husband growing together in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ through study of his word, through prayer together, and through serving him together?

Now maybe that is something that you do and that you enjoy doing and that your husband appreciates, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. I'm not here to tell you you shouldn't do that or you should do that.

What I am saying is when we are told unambiguously that we need to do A, B, C, and D to be submissive wives, things that are not in the Bible, then we are in danger. We've added to scripture, we've added these rules that are not in there, things that are going to be different for every marriage and every relationship, and that's the danger because now our eyes are taken off of Christ.

Our eyes are taken off of the idea of submitting to our husbands as unto the Lord, and they're put on us. What can I do to be a better wife? What can I do when it's about Christ? Biblical submission is about Christ.

And one of the most disturbing things about this show was the great emphasis that I saw on sexual relations within marriage. I agree. There needs to be an understanding in the church of how God has ordained that act between a married man and woman.

I'm not against that. If your pastor is preaching through a text and he comes to 1 Corinthians 7, look, I am not against the proper biblical teaching on this being taught in the church. Does this need to go across the airwaves pulled out of scripture with an odd focus and emphasis?

No. And that is something I saw on the show. I was embarrassed for this woman, for her husband, for her children. As she talked about, you'll forgive me because I do find this to be crass, but this Christian women's ministry leader apparently did not think it was too crass for national television.

She talked about filling up the love tank. She was very graphic about some things, and it was very uncomfortable to watch. And as I said, I was very embarrassed for her. And it seems she may have actually received a little bit of pushback after the show aired.

She wrote a blog post at terraferman .blogspot .com, and the post is entitled, The Most Important Thing to a Man. She talks about how she and her husband were watching the show, and her phone was ringing with texts and whatnot.

She writes, she says that, well, there were other scenes that they didn't air. They dealt with forgiveness, communicating respect, food being ministry. I don't know. Anyway, the importance of taking care of yourself for your man, how to maintain the power for a lifestyle change, not just a seasonal change.

Hey, maybe that was where they talked about the gospel. Maybe the network cut it out. But again, I say, then you need to push back as a Christian, because if the gospel was in there and the network isn't airing it, you agreed to go on this show.

You are representing Christ, and you need to push back. But I don't know what was in that cut footage. But she writes, in the end, sex sells. Sex was the hook the casting company wanted to use in hopes of creating buzz for a potential series.

And you agreed to it? She writes, I realize this topic ruffled feathers in the church and out, but here's the deal. Someone in America needs to be advocating for healthy sex within the boundaries of marriage.

Okay, but marriage is more than that, is it not? Is it not? And if you make marriage only about that, your marriage is going to have problems. But she goes on. She quotes 1 Corinthians 7, 1 through 5, because she wants to talk about how we should not deprive each other in marriage, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time.

So you may devote yourselves to prayer, writes Paul. And then she writes, sex is one of the many tools God has gifted to women to help us keep our marriages strong and unified. Ask 95 of the male population what the most important thing in the world is to him.

If he's honest, sex is at the top of his list. So if this is the case, shouldn't we as married women make this one of priorities in marriage? Three question marks, adds Tara Furman. And then she says, bottom line, when we attend to the one thing, all caps, that's important to our men, they will begin attending to the many things that are important to us.

I and many others I know are living proof that the Bible works. Do you see what she has done here? Do you see she is waving the Bible around like a magic wand? Do you see when we attend to the one thing, she writes, that's important to our men, they will begin attending to the many things that are important to us.

So she, when she sat on the show and said, hey, you should not deprive your husband as a manipulation tool, right here, she is using it as a manipulation tool, the other direction. Hey, if you drop everything, give your man what he wants, whenever he wants it, he'll do whatever you want.

Really? Is that a biblical marriage? Because that is not what I see in the scriptures, Ms. Furman. And I think you've misrepresented God's word. Is marriage based solely on sex? It better not be. It better be a mutual submission between a husband and wife.

Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body. Verse 25, husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

Christ, the Church, and the Gospel in Marriage

What has she done? What has been done in evangelicalism, this mindset that sex is going to fix everything? And it was such a heavy emphasis in this show, she admits, hey, sex sells and that's what the network wanted.

I'm sorry, but a Christian should not agree to such a gross misrepresentation of what is supposedly a biblically submissive marriage. Because a marriage is more than just the physical aspect. A marriage is respect.

A marriage is a relationship. It's conversation. It's growing in the Lord together. It's raising your children in the fear and the knowledge of the Lord together. It's more than having a five-course dinner waiting for your husband every night when he comes home from work.

Hey, he might just want pizza some nights and that's okay. It is about respecting and loving one another and respecting his leadership role and respecting his decisions and respecting how he leads and what that looks like within the confines of the Bible.

As S. Lewis Johnson says in his exposition of Ephesians 5, that the wife's obedience to the husband is within the confines of the Gospels, within the confines of Scripture. And what she has done on the show, and again, I'm not trying to just pick on her.

It's just that now this woman, Tara Furman, has put herself in the public spotlight. I fear that she represents a great deal, a great many Christians who have these same ideas. And what has happened now is we have seen marriage relegated to just being dependent on this one physical act.

And what I saw on that show and what I see in this blog post that I just quoted from her, I see a degradation of men. If I were her husband, I would be highly offended because she's saying, hey, that's all it takes to make them happy.

Hey, it's at the top of his list. Well, I am here to tell you, a Christian man, at the top of his list, the most important thing in the world to him, should be serving the Lord Jesus Christ. And then serving and loving his wife the way Christ loves the Church.

And then raising his children to be godly children. Those are the things that should be at the top of his list. You want to take a poll of the male population. Well, the male population lives in the world.

Yeah, they have one thing at the top of their list. And I'm not saying, again, that, you know, I'm not asking everybody to become eunuchs for the kingdom here. This is not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is marriage is more than one physical act.

It was embarrassing for her. As I'm watching this, I was embarrassed for her. I was embarrassed for her husband. I was embarrassed for her family. And I believe that women and men, Christian women and men, single or married, should be offended by what was portrayed on that show.

And most of all, the Lord Jesus Christ should be offended. Because his word and his design for marriage has been distorted and has been presented on national television in that distorted manner. One would think from watching that show that you were going to pick up the Bible and all you're going to read about marriage is sex.

But there's more than that. I mean, we know that God has ordained that the woman is subordinate to the man. We know, we've seen what biblical submission looks like as God ordained it in the garden. We saw how that was overturned when Eve usurped the role of headship and when Adam abdicated his role as the head.

Biblical Submission Depends on the Gospel

The bottom line is, ladies, biblical submission, I've said it again and again over these past couple of episodes, it cannot happen apart from the gospel. It may work for a while for you to check off the list of do's and don'ts.

It may work for a while for you to do whatever Terry Furman tells you to do. It may work for a while to, as Terry Furman says, attend to the one thing that's important to our man so that he attends to the many things that are important to us, is this honoring God.

What is your motivation, number one, to submit to your husband? Because your motivation needs to be as unto the Lord. Submit to your own husband as unto the Lord. Submit to your own husband as is fitting to the Lord.

That needs to be your motivation. Your strength and your ability and your enablement to live the way that Christ calls us to live in a marriage, in the way that God has ordained from the beginning of time for men and women to live, that the fall has overturned and so goes against our sinful nature.

In order for us to go against our sinful nature and live the godly marriage that God describes in his word, we cannot do that if we have not been saved. We cannot do that without the light of the gospel.

And when it is presented to us as a list of do's and don'ts and do this and everything's going to be wonderful and he'll start doing this for you, Christ is misrepresented. Christ is insulted because it's not about a list of do's and don'ts.

It's about loving the Lord Jesus Christ and obeying him. It's about being saved by him and being changed in your inner man, your inner person. Your desires are changed and that role that has been overturned is righted inside your heart and inside your mind and you serve Christ by living in obedience to him, ultimately to him.

That means you submit to your husbands in a biblical way. And so shows like this and teachers like this and teachings, let me put it that way, teachings like this are so dangerous to the church and dangerous to us ladies because our focus is taken off of Christ and put on ourselves.

You can't do it alone. You can't obey Christ without the power of the Holy Spirit. And when it's presented in a way that you can, it's all about you and you can save your marriage if you do this. What have we done?

Fine. You can have your television show and you can write your blog posts and you can teach that all you want, but do not do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ because you have ripped him from the context of your teaching.

And so ladies, yes, I am all for biblical submission. Absolutely. Don't take me for a feminist. Do not. Do not seek to live in such a way that you dethrone Christ, that you elevate your husband to a position of worship or that you elevate yourself because you've done such a good job of being a submissive life.

Where's your focus? Where's your motivation? Ladies, that has to be Jesus Christ. It has to be. He is the one who saves us. He is the one who we answer to. He's our Lord. He's our Savior. He is the one who brought us to repentance.

He's the one who lived the life we cannot, kept the law perfectly, bore the sins, bore the wrath of God for the sins of all who would be saved, died as an atoning sacrifice whose sacrifice was accepted and he was raised three days later, who sits at the right hand of God the Father, who will come again.

That, Lord, is your motivation to live in obedience to his word, never apart from him, never apart from his word, and always by the enablement of the Holy Spirit. Don't get caught up in what you can do on your own.

It's about Christ. It has to be. And we have to remember, ladies, that marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. That is why we obey, and that is why we submit to him. So when we see these teachings that are devoid of the gospel, when we see these teachings that are misusing Scripture, we need to flee.

We need to know what Scripture says so that we can explain why these teachings are a problem. That's what we're trying to do here at Equipping Eve, and that's why you need to be in a local church under the leadership of godly elders, teaching the word, the proclamation of the word.

And I hope you have found that. I hope that God has provided that for you. I hope you are seeking to study his word on your own, read his word daily, not just Proverbs 31, not just Ephesians 522, all of it.

It's good stuff. And I know most of my listeners totally agree with that. I know you do, ladies, but let me just encourage you to stay in the word. You know, when we are in the word, life isn't perfect.

We don't become sinless. We are continually being sanctified, though. The word sanctifies us because we are reading the word of God. We are learning the mind of Christ. This is God's revealed word to us.

This is how he revealed Christ to us. This is how he reveals his character and his nature to us. It's in this word. This is the God we serve. The God who has graciously given us this word, the whole of Scripture.

Don't neglect that. Do not neglect that just because someone says that you need to focus on the submission passages. A godly wife, a submissive wife, serves the Lord first and foremost. She's in his word desiring to be conformed to the image of Christ.

And in that, a natural outflow will be submission, biblical submission to her husband if she is married. That's the beauty of how God has transformed us when he saved us. We serve an amazing God. We serve a good God, a merciful God, a gracious God, a loving God, a forgiving God.

We serve a holy God. We serve a transcendent God. We serve a God who is to be highly exalted. And when we misrepresent his teachings and when we relegate them to a position of silliness, which was done on this show, the submissive wife, we insult the God of the universe.

How dare we? We may be on TV. We may be a sensation in this life. But what have we told the world about Christ? What have we told the world about Christ? Ladies, if you're in your Bibles, you can tell the world about Christ, about his work, his person, his forgiveness, his mercy, and his judgment for those who don't repent and turn to him.

And that's ultimate, isn't it? Ladies, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, get in your Bibles, get on your knees, and get equipped.

Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no-compromise radio production. If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of our two websites, donotbesurprised .com or equippingeve .org.

Thanks for listening.