The NXR Podcast - QUESTIONS - Does a Husband Have Authority to Tell His Wife What Clothes to Wear？

00:00:00.000 wait wait wait wait wait hold it big announcement a scary announcement a threat but also a promise

00:00:06.860 the price of our conference the post-millennial and theonomy conference it's going up it's going

00:00:12.920 up right after reformation day we are going to hold the price at a hundred dollars which is super

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00:00:51.140 it's going to be 130. So go to rightresponseconference.com, rightresponseconference.com

00:00:58.560 and register today. Thanks. All right. Lauren Schmidt, where does a husband's jurisdiction

00:01:07.520 end? Is it permissible for a wife to disobey commands from a husband when they fall outside 0.99

00:01:14.220 of his jurisdiction or should all neutral commands be obeyed? This is a great question. Let me look

00:01:20.860 at just a couple of verses. I'm going to be brief on this one, but it's important. It's really

00:01:25.200 important. All right, this is Romans 13. Have you ever heard of that chapter of the Bible,

00:01:32.760 Romans 13? Anybody preached on that in the last two years? So Romans 13, verse one,

00:01:38.980 what it says is, let every person, make note of that, every person, be subject to the governing

00:01:46.020 authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by

00:01:51.160 God. I'm just going to stop there. That's Romans 13 verse 1. Now look at Ephesians. Ephesians 5

00:01:59.800 verse 22, 23, and 24. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the 0.57

00:02:08.220 head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 0.88

00:02:13.440 Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 0.82

00:02:21.680 What's the point that I'm drawing out? 0.56

00:02:23.320 The correlation between these two texts.

00:02:25.460 One is speaking about the submission of citizens

00:02:28.500 to civil magistrates, civil authority.

00:02:31.860 And the other is speaking of the submission of wives

00:02:34.040 to their familial authority, their head in their home,

00:02:38.680 namely their husband.

00:02:40.200 So on one level, you have citizens

00:02:41.620 submitting to civil authorities, 0.73

00:02:43.620 wives submitting to husbands. 0.55

00:02:45.340 And notice, this is just one big difference

00:02:47.160 that I wanna draw out.

00:02:48.040 When it talks about citizens of a sovereign nation submitting to their civil authorities,

00:02:54.500 it's every person.

00:02:57.220 When it's wives, it's submit in everything. 0.87

00:03:02.500 I'll say that again. 0.97

00:03:03.700 When the Bible speaks of the obligation, the moral duty of citizens and what they're called

00:03:10.140 to submit to towards civil magistrates, civil authorities, it's that every person should submit.

00:03:20.500 But then it doesn't get specific about submit to every single whim of the civil magistrate,

00:03:26.500 every single thing he says. But when the Bible shifts from the sphere, the sovereign sphere of

00:03:32.800 the state, the civil sphere, to the familial sphere, to the home, and talks about the submission

00:03:39.620 of a wife to her husband, it's not everyone should submit to a husband. No, it's this one

00:03:45.620 particular wife should submit to this one particular man, but in everything. That's 0.70

00:03:52.340 Ephesians chapter five, verse 24. So the point is this, three sovereign spheres, right? The home,

00:03:58.560 the church, and the state. This is just a general answer to your question, okay? There's much more

00:04:03.820 that could be said, much more caveats, much more disclaimers, much more specificity,

00:04:07.960 but as a general rule of thumb, in these three spheres, the home, the church, and the state,

00:04:14.080 in the civil realm, the state has authority over the largest amount of people, but their authority

00:04:22.160 is about this much. They have the smallest amount. What I'm saying is in the civil realm,

00:04:29.400 civil authorities have the smallest amount of authority, but over the largest group of people.

00:04:35.260 In the ecclesiastical realm, the church, elders, and to a lesser degree deacons, but primarily

00:04:43.500 elders, ecclesiastical authority, they have a fair amount of authority over a fair amount of people.

00:04:53.700 In the home, the head of a home has virtually, and notice that caveat, that disclaimer,

00:05:00.960 virtually, has virtually total authority over a very finite, narrow amount of people.

00:05:10.160 So when it comes to the state, the civil realm, authorities, civil authorities, very little

00:05:15.920 authority over everybody.

00:05:18.120 Let everyone be subject to the civil authorities.

00:05:20.900 Very little authority, but over everyone.

00:05:24.080 In the church, some authority over some people.

00:05:28.040 in the home, lots of authority over just a few amount of people. Husbands and, by proxy, 0.90

00:05:39.620 wives, or I should say fathers and mothers, have virtually absolute authority over children. I'll 0.74

00:05:47.700 start there, parents, children, and then I'll talk husband, wife. But parents and children,

00:05:51.700 to think about this. Parents dictate the diet of their children. Parents determine what their 0.89

00:06:01.500 children eat, when their children eat, when their children should go to the bathroom.

00:06:07.420 I command my three-year-old, I do it lovingly, I do it gently, but I command, it's actually an

00:06:13.820 order. It is an authoritative command. I tell my three-year-old, it's time to go potty right now.

00:06:20.060 now if my three-year-old literally can't go potty then she's not disciplined for it but she has to 0.84

00:06:25.820 go to the potty and try to go potty right now as i've given the command now joe biden is a heck

00:06:34.260 of a tyrant i mean i have to tip my hat to the guy i mean i i don't think we've ever seen tyranny 0.91

00:06:38.840 in this nation quite like he does it i mean he's he is a professional he is fantastic at tyrannizing

00:06:45.700 people. And yet even Joe Biden, as tyrannical as that man is, he at least yet, not yet, has he

00:06:54.960 told me when to go to the bathroom. I'm sure he wants to, and he's probably just figuring out a

00:07:00.580 way with Congress to make that happen. But still, the point remains, as of now, in the civil realm,

00:07:07.040 Joe Biden doesn't tell me when to go to the bathroom. And that's a tyrant. And yet that

00:07:12.780 tyrant still has less authority over his civil subjects in the civil realm than I have as a

00:07:19.300 non-tyrant, as someone who is in submission to Jesus Christ and seeking to use authority in

00:07:24.140 God-honoring ways, I still have far more authority over my toddler than this tyrannical man has in

00:07:31.780 the civil realm over his subjects, which we're not subjects, but he thinks we are. We're free

00:07:38.620 citizens. So the point is, as a general rule of thumb, I think Ephesians 5 verse 24, Romans 13

00:07:46.740 verse 1, I think it's interesting, the comparing and contrasting. With Romans 13 verse 1 talking

00:07:55.040 about the civil realm, the word every is in relation to not every commandment from the

00:08:02.880 civil magistrate do we submit to, but rather it's everyone should be subject. So the big inclusive

00:08:10.780 word is used to describe the scope, not of authority, but the scope of people who are

00:08:17.760 under that authority. It's everyone, everyone, when it comes to the civil realm. When it comes

00:08:23.660 to the familial realm, the home, it's everything. The wife, not everyone, is in submission to this

00:08:31.680 man, this husband, but she is, and it's the scope of his authority. It's not the scope of how many

00:08:37.580 people are in submission to him, but it's the scope of what degree of authority does he have.

00:08:43.040 She should be subject in submission to everything. So, that being said, we live in an egalitarian,

00:08:51.700 feministic age, and that has seeped into the church like nobody's business. And so,

00:08:57.880 you will not hear this from the vast majority of so-called complementarian pastors. But this is

00:09:04.760 the reality. Sarah called Abraham her Lord. Not Lord like her God, but lowercase l, Lord, like

00:09:12.440 sir. She is responding to her husband, engaging her husband, even in the title that she uses to

00:09:20.720 address him in a very respectful and submissive way. First Peter chapter three. Then Peter goes

00:09:27.320 on to say, and you are her children, speaking to women who are wives, you are her children,

00:09:32.640 if you do as she did and do not fear anything that is frightening. If you too submit to your

00:09:38.560 husbands in everything. So what we don't do is we never submit to any human authority, whether it's

00:09:47.640 in the civil sphere or the home or the church, whether it's a citizen in a nation or a child

00:09:55.360 even in a home or a wife with her husband or a church member with a pastor. We never submit

00:10:02.920 when authority tells us to do something that God forbids or when authority tells us not to do

00:10:09.540 something that God commands. And that applies in all three spheres, in every single area of

00:10:16.760 submission, every kind of submission. So if the husband tells the wife to sin, the wife respectfully

00:10:25.280 says, no. She says, no, I'm sorry. But the question that I received is what about the

00:10:33.200 neutral things? Well, see over here in the civil sphere, if Nebuchadnezzar says, bow down to this

00:10:40.580 golden statue and commit idolatry, you say no, right? But even if Joe Biden says,

00:10:48.480 get this vaccine, you can also say no. If Joe Biden says, worship another God,

00:10:58.740 you must say no. If Joe Biden says, to use Todd Friel's example, because Todd Friel was dead wrong,

00:11:04.020 but wear a pinwheel on the side of your head. Todd Friel, his point was to say, well,

00:11:10.960 this is something that's neutral. God doesn't say in scripture, he doesn't forbid us from

00:11:15.600 wearing pinwheels on the side of our head. So we can wear a pinwheel on the side of our head

00:11:18.680 without being disobedient to God. Therefore, if the governing authorities tell us to wear a pinwheel

00:11:23.020 on the side of our head, we should do it. And I would say, no, no, you can do it. But you also,

00:11:29.700 you also, in the spirit of holiness and being completely obedient to scripture and pleasing

00:11:36.240 to the Lord, you can tell the civil magistrate, I'm not going to wear a pinwheel on the side of

00:11:40.180 my head. You are being a tyrant. And it's actually, and I can make a strong case for that being loving 0.86

00:11:45.360 to neighbor. Because part of the reason why our neighbor was so crushed over the last two years

00:11:50.520 by the civil magistrate is because so much of the nation, the citizens, were compliant.

00:11:57.080 The more we complied, the more power, the more momentum the civil magistrate got to shut down

00:12:02.940 businesses and to crush this and to crush that. And so by resisting tyranny upstream, before it

00:12:09.260 gets downstream, before it becomes the gulags and the coliseum, to resist tyranny at the

00:12:15.340 pinwheel moment actually helps to stave off the potential of the Colosseum moment. So I can

00:12:24.160 actually make a strong biblical argument. However, the Bible does allow for Christian liberty that

00:12:31.120 one Christian may say, I think that we should wear the pinwheel. Now, the reason why Todd Friel was 0.97

00:12:35.100 wrong is he wasn't saying you're free to wear the pinwheel and you're free not to. He was saying we

00:12:38.960 should wear the pinwheel. And he's wrong. In the civil realm, we are not commanded to submit

00:12:44.760 in everything. Romans 13 goes on to say, would you have no fear of the one who rules over you,

00:12:50.160 the one who does not bear the sword in vain, but is God's avenger? Would you have no fear of him?

00:12:54.160 Then this is what you should do. Do what he says. No, that's not what Romans 13 teaches.

00:12:59.660 It says, would you have no fear of him? Then do what is good. And here's the question,

00:13:03.840 who decides what is good? Who sets the standard for goodness?

00:13:09.080 Paul says in Romans 13 would you have no fear of the civil magistrate then do what is good

00:13:14.760 do you think Paul meant then do what is good according to Nero

00:13:19.400 even if he says it's good to practice idolatry no Paul's saying would you have no fear of the

00:13:27.220 one who rules over you the civil magistrate then do what is good aka do what God requires

00:13:32.120 do what is eternally good what is truly good according to a transcendent universal standard

00:13:37.980 of goodness set by God himself. Do that. And you might say, well, but there are lots of governments

00:13:44.920 where if you do what is good, it would actually hurt you. And Paul says, if you would have no

00:13:49.360 fear of the one, yeah, Paul's talking about an ideal government. Paul's not saying this is a

00:13:54.640 principle that will work in every single government. If you do what God requires,

00:13:58.200 the civil magistrate will always love you. Now, Paul's just saying, this is the purpose. It's not

00:14:03.720 a descriptive text of every single, an example of every single civil magistrate in all places

00:14:10.440 throughout all human history. No, Paul's saying this is simply, it's a principle text. He's saying

00:14:15.040 this is God's purpose for government. This is how it's supposed to function. This is what

00:14:20.420 government is supposed to be for. Paul knew better than anyone that government overrides

00:14:25.700 its jurisdiction and government perverts God's purposes for government. But he's simply saying

00:14:30.400 government is, as perverse as it might be, government is actually divinely instituted by

00:14:36.340 God. And it has a very clear purpose. What is it? To provide state schools? Nope. To punish those

00:14:42.460 who do evil and reward those who do right. And when government is functioning properly,

00:14:47.660 here's how you ensure that you're on government's good side. Well, if government is righteous,

00:14:53.800 then you being righteous would cause you to have nothing to fear from a righteous government.

00:14:58.420 and that's the ideal. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's what Paul's saying

00:15:02.760 in Romans chapter 13. He's not saying that we submit in everything to those who are in civil

00:15:10.880 authority. However, Paul does say that to wives in relation to their submission to their husbands

00:15:17.220 in the home. Paul does not say that to citizens in the civil realm, submit in everything. No,

00:15:24.120 he says, everyone submit, everyone submit in the civil realm, but in the home realm,

00:15:31.860 wife submit in everything, everything. And again, the caveat, because we have to have a whole

00:15:38.480 biblical theology and not be biblicist and just look at one verse and read it literally a whole

00:15:43.260 biblical theology. We know that in any realm, home church or state, if authority commands us to do

00:15:48.900 something that God forbids or forbids us from doing something that God commands, we must

00:15:53.500 disobey that human authority. Better to obey God rather than men. Okay, that's clear. And that

00:16:00.840 applies to the children with the parent or the wife to the husband or the citizen to the civil

00:16:04.960 magistrate or the church member to the pastor in every way, every realm. However, what about the

00:16:10.260 neutral commands? Well, I would say that Todd Friel, ironically, his neutral example of the

00:16:17.280 pinwheel. I still have some problems with it, but that actually would be far closer to being a

00:16:25.540 legitimate biblical argument if he said it about husbands and wives. But nobody will say it about

00:16:31.660 husbands and wives. Have you noticed that? I just, I want to end with this. Have you noticed

00:16:35.800 the hypocrisy? The same gospel coalition, Acts 29, all the soft complementarians, the guys who

00:16:44.620 are actually functionally egalitarian, the feminists who pretend to hold to biblical

00:16:48.560 views, you know, roles between men and women. Have you noticed that all of them over the last 1.00

00:16:53.640 two years, whether it be the vaccine or whether it be the lockdowns or church, you know, all of

00:16:57.700 them guys, guys criticized Jonathan Lehman, nine marks. They criticized John MacArthur for opening

00:17:04.280 his church back up and, and, and his article, Christ, not Caesar's head of the church, because

00:17:10.400 John MacArthur didn't just make a personal decision to open his church. He was saying

00:17:13.760 other churches should do this too. And that's what Jonathan Lehman and Nine Marks took issue

00:17:17.640 to. How dare you make us feel like we're being cowards for not doing this thing that would

00:17:23.660 actually be faithful and courageous? Well, I'm sorry. If the shoe fits, wear it. You're being

00:17:28.080 cowards. You are being cowards. But my point is this. Guys criticized anyone who wanted to resist 1.00

00:17:34.780 the civil magistrate's tyranny. And those same guys happen to be the soft complementarians

00:17:40.440 who are always punching the other direction,

00:17:44.820 turning the gun the other direction

00:17:45.960 when it comes to the sphere of the home.

00:17:47.780 So the guys who over here in the civil realm say,

00:17:50.780 you need to submit to the government

00:17:52.260 in everything, Christian, and set a good example.

00:17:54.620 And don't be a problem causer. 0.74

00:17:57.080 Don't be a troubler of Israel. 1.00

00:17:59.960 Just submit. 0.99

00:18:01.460 Don't be a culture warrior.

00:18:03.780 Don't be a rebel.

00:18:05.680 In the civil realm, that's what they say.

00:18:08.000 Submit, submit, submit. 0.91

00:18:11.400 And in the home realm, if a wife doesn't want to submit to her husband, even in things that 0.59

00:18:17.700 are clear in scripture that she should, what do they say over here in this realm? 0.78

00:18:22.260 A husband, stop being domineering. 1.00

00:18:25.880 Stop being domineering.

00:18:26.780 You need to be more loving.

00:18:28.740 Servant leadership.

00:18:30.060 And servant leadership means that you lead by serving.

00:18:32.940 Not that your service is your leadership.

00:18:35.920 Not that leading is your service to your family, to your wife and children.

00:18:39.720 I serve my family by leading them with courage and fidelity.

00:18:44.880 No, no, no, no, no, that's not what servant leadership means.

00:18:47.900 It means not that your service is your leadership, but it means that you lead by serving.

00:18:55.000 So you should be washing the dishes, you should be cleaning the house, you should be doing

00:18:58.960 all these things, because by the way, I mean, yeah, you work out of the home 50 hours a 0.97

00:19:02.840 week, husband, but you're a joke, and men are a joke, and masculine work is a joke,

00:19:08.340 and your work outside of the home is a joke. 1.00

00:19:10.920 And she works, she's the only one who really works.

00:19:14.200 This work is way more hard.

00:19:15.900 And so when you get home,

00:19:16.840 even though you've been working all day,

00:19:18.720 you should, happy wife, happy life. 0.84

00:19:21.300 And you sit her down, 0.98

00:19:22.500 you put her feet up on the ottoman 0.97

00:19:23.620 and you massage those feet and you clean the house

00:19:25.600 and you do this and you do that. 1.00

00:19:27.260 And really she wears the pants. 0.78

00:19:29.300 She's in charge.

00:19:30.500 And because you're, yeah, you're a leader,

00:19:32.560 but really that just means you're a servant.

00:19:34.560 Servant leadership, the emphasis falls on servant

00:19:36.720 and leadership is kind of the, the leadership is silent, right? Like the word gnat, the in is

00:19:42.020 silent. You know, servant leadership, the leadership is silent, really just servant.

00:19:47.460 Do you see the hypocrisy? So in the civil realm, submit. And then in marriage,

00:19:54.820 oh yeah, that husband's being tyrannical. That husband's being abusive. He's being domineering.

00:19:59.500 You shouldn't have to submit to that. That's the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible

00:20:05.700 teaches that the husband has far more authority over his wife than a president has over the 0.78

00:20:13.600 citizens in his nation. Civil authority, everyone. Far more people, far less authority. In the home,

00:20:22.060 far less people, far more authority. So with a neutral command, like for instance, I'm just

00:20:27.460 going to use this and be done, but this as an example, dressing. Pinwheel, I'm not using pinwheel

00:20:32.940 because there's just no reason to have a pin, but dress code. If a husband says to his wife,

00:20:39.480 I don't want you to wear that skirt. It's too short. Please do not wear that. I think it's 0.79

00:20:46.840 inappropriate. And she disagrees. What should she do? I think the Bible is abundantly clear.

00:20:57.140 she should change she should change clothes and say yes sir or if she wants to be extra

00:21:04.620 biblical like sarah she can say yes lord and she should change and even if the husband's wrong

00:21:11.720 then he'll have to stand before god one day and he shouldn't say it harshly he shouldn't be

00:21:17.340 domineering he shouldn't be having to give commands 15 commands every single day i give

00:21:22.700 dozens of commands every day to my three-year-old, not to my wife. Do you know why? Because I don't

00:21:29.660 have authority over her? No, I do have authority over her, a great deal of authority. But my wife

00:21:34.840 fears the Lord, and she's an honorable woman. I can't even remember the last time I gave my wife

00:21:41.400 a command. And from time to time, I do. But she's a grown woman. And she's not just a grown woman,

00:21:50.860 she's a grown godly woman, but it's not that I don't have authority over her. It's just that

00:21:57.020 my wife needs less supervision. She needs less direction. She still needs some direction. I'm 1.00

00:22:04.140 washing her in the word. I'm discipling her. I'm leading her, but she needs less practical daily

00:22:09.280 direction than my children do because they're small. They're still in formation. They're young.

00:22:15.140 They're immature, right? So I don't think that a husband should be given commands all the time

00:22:20.380 because ideally a wife doesn't need commands all the time.

00:22:23.700 If it's a man who fears the Lord

00:22:25.080 and a woman who fears the Lord, 0.96

00:22:26.600 then it's not gonna be like three different commands 1.00

00:22:30.260 about dress codes per afternoon.

00:22:33.560 But if that situation does come up in a marriage, 1.00

00:22:37.020 a husband and wife disagree over the length of a skirt, 0.97

00:22:41.100 then yeah, at the end of the day, 1.00

00:22:43.780 the wife needs to change the skirt 1.00

00:22:45.680 and submit to the husband. 0.98

00:22:47.420 And if not, what does his authority mean?

00:22:51.420 We say we're complementarian.

00:22:53.360 We say he's the head of, it just, it doesn't mean anything.

00:22:56.240 Let's just be honest and say, he's not a leader.

00:23:00.560 He's just a servant.

00:23:03.160 We don't actually believe in male headship.

00:23:05.940 We don't actually believe in male leadership.

00:23:09.000 We hate patriarchy.

00:23:11.260 And let's stop calling it complementarianism.

00:23:13.780 Let's just say we hate patriarchy.

00:23:15.540 We are feminist. 1.00

00:23:17.420 feminist that's the vast majority of the church anyways that's the vast majority of the sbc

00:23:22.660 that's why they have to decide what is a pastor matt walsh is doing what is a woman the sbc needs

00:23:27.660 to do a documentary called what is a pastor because apparently it means nothing because

00:23:32.820 women can do it and a large section of the sbc thinks that why because they're feminist

00:23:38.780 they're feminist they don't believe the bible and all i'm asking at the end of this episode

00:23:45.640 all I'm asking guys, just do poor old Joel a favor. He's losing his mind. Do me a favor. 0.73

00:23:51.240 I'm not even saying you have to hold a biblical patriarchy. I'm just saying, just, just stop

00:23:55.460 lying to my face. Just say you're a feminist. You know, you are, I know you are. Everyone knows you 1.00

00:24:03.360 are. Just say you're a feminist. Stop calling it complimentarian, soft complimentarian. Stop, 1.00

00:24:09.220 stop using Amy Byrd language and Beth Moore language. Like just, just be honest and say,

00:24:13.780 we hate the Bible. We hate God's standard. We hate men. We're raging feminists. Just say it

00:24:20.880 and we can all move on. So there's my answer to the question. And there's a little, little

00:24:27.840 traditional Pastor Joel rant with a little bit of fiery attitude at the end. Hope you guys enjoyed

00:24:34.860 this week's live Q&A with Pastor Joel. And I hope to see you again next week.

00:24:39.780 Thanks so much for listening. But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor, take a moment and leave us a five star review. If you enjoyed the show, this is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - September 29, 2022

QUESTIONS - Does a Husband Have Authority to Tell His Wife What Clothes to Wear？

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