Mark

HI Cheryl,

I was just re-reading through your son Ryan’s comment and had a few questions. I realise you are not him, but i assume you know his train of thought.

He said “In other words, because the husband is the source of the wife (just like Christ is the source of the church) and therefore she his equal, they should be mutually submitting to one another in love. (The church is also treated as the equal of Christ in the sense that the new person will have a new body and will no longer sin).

I’m not even going to get into the ‘source’ debate, but i wonder what he means. In what way is the husband the source of his wife? What does that mean from the context? Then in what way does that parallel the Church and Christ?

Ryan saids the Church is ‘equal’ in the sense that we have a new body and don’t sin. Is Ryan here talking about now or in the new heavens and earth? What in the context makes it futuristic like that? If he saids the Church/Christ paradigm is in the future, then it be necessary for the comparison to say that the husband/wife paradigm is for the future. It therefore does not apply today, but even worse goes against the teaching that in heaven there is no marriage? This doesn’t make sense.

I wonder how Ryan thinks that the Church here is described as being equal to Christ when the church is told to submit! Christ is described as the head, the church His body, the saviour, and the church is told to submit to Christ and Ryan looks at all this and draws the conclusion that the church is ‘equal of Christ in the sense that the new person will have a new body and will no longer sin’…hah…did i miss something here? Talk about an importation of ideas into the passage.

Hope you can answer some of these for me. Thanks