Cheryl Schatz

Hi NN,
You said:

I don’t see how you can possibly construe this to support your idea of ‘Christ – our Bridegroom – being without authority.’

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to restate so that I can be clear on this. What I said was that as God, Jesus did not hold onto His rights but gave them all up for us. In a similar way if a man has any kind of male rights he is to give them up for his bride.

Now as far as taking authority back, whatever God gives to Him is rightfully taken by Christ because Christ is true GOD.

If the human husband is given authority from God he may take that authority but he is not compared to God with all rights and all authority.

Here is the question – where is the husband given authority over his wife? If there is a worldly authority as there is a male-rights authority that is promoted by the world, a godly Christian man is willing to give up that worldly “right” that he owns in order to sacrifice for his bride so that they may become one. The only authority that I can see from the Scripture that God has given the man, He has also given to the woman – as co-rulers of the world. It is a mistake for a man to believe that God has given him authority over his wife when this authority has never been delegated to him.

It is not a mistake for Jesus Christ who is our Lord and our God to take back His authority as God as He has specifically been given this authority by the Father. He not only is our “last Adam” husband of the Church, but He is our God.

There is a limit on comparing Jesus to a human husband. We can rightfully look to Jesus as our example when the Bible says so, but to take His Godly authority over humans and make this authority our own without permission from God goes beyond the Scriptures and keeps our marriages in the realm of the worldly way where men have usurped God’s authority in the area of a human being and made this authority their own.

All I ask is for those who believe that they have authority delegated from God to show that authority over their wives that was delegated by God. If they cannot do this perhaps they think that the worship that we do to Jesus Christ belongs to husbands too because Jesus is the husband of the church? It is risky business to take from Jesus and make everything of His as God to belong to males. Does this make sense?