What Is The Wife’s Role In A Marriage?
The wife’s role in a marriage simply cannot be understood Biblically without the use of that politically incorrect word “submission.” As I noted in my previous post, both the Old Testament and the New Testament teach that the husband should be the head of the home. Naturally, this means that the wife should voluntarily submit to his headship. The proof texts are Genesis 3:16, Ephesians 5:22-24, 1 Corinthians 11:3, Titus 2:3-5, and 1 Peter 3:1.
Of course, the wife’s submission should go to a lover not an ogre. Surely if more husbands obeyed the Bible’s command to “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25) more wives would think kindly toward the idea of submission. The same holds true for 1 Peter 3:7, which says: “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”
At no point, however, does the Bible say, “Wives, if your husbands aren’t all they should be, you don’t have to submit to them.” To the contrary, 1 Peter 3:1 specifically speaks of husbands who “do not obey the word.” Interestingly, the verse teaches that a wife’s best chance of creating a desired change in her husband is to do it through her conduct, not her rebellion against his headship.
There is, however, another aspect to the wife’s role in a marriage. And, again, it is one that seems very out of step with our times. According to the Bible, the wife is also to play the role of homemaker. Proverbs 31:10-31, a passage that offers a description of the ideal wife, clearly describes a homemaker. In 1 Timothy 5:14, Paul says, “Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.” In Titus 2:4-5, he encourages older women to teach younger women “to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” These passages certainly aren’t hard to interpret or understand.
I do want to point out, though, that the Proverbs 31 passage does allow some room for a wife to bring in an income. The passage speaks of the woman seeking wool and flax and working with a distaff and a spindle (v.13, v.19). She makes linen garments and sashes and sells them to merchants (v.24). From the money she earns as a seamstress, she purchases a field and plants a vineyard (v.16). You see, she does all of this in addition to being a great homemaker. So, it can be done. It isn’t easy, but it can be done.
Finally, Proverbs 31:23 offers us one other aspect of a wife’s role. It says: “Her husband is known in the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land.” In Bible times, a city’s business was conducted at its gates. Therefore, to be “known in the gates” or to sit “among the elders” was to be a very prominent man in the city. The teaching is that a wife should build up her husband socially, not tear him down. She should better his reputation, not hurt it. She should be willing to take a back seat career wise if it means helping him get ahead in his career.
Even as I write these words, I realize how foreign they seem to the “modern woman.” But just remember this: You can “come a long way, baby” but be traveling in the wrong direction. God understands how differently men and women are wired, and His word can be trusted to lead a wife into the kind of life that will make her the most contented and joyous.
What Is The Husband’s Role In A Marriage?
The Bible teaches consistently that the husband is to play the role of the head of the home. Ephesians 5:23 can’t be any clearer when it says: “For the husband is the head of the wife…” 1 Corinthians 11:3 backs that up by saying: “…the head of the woman is the man…” The husband wasn’t just granted this role in the middle ages either. In Genesis 3:16, God says to Eve, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
Now, whenever a preacher starts throwing around these verses, someone might say, “I think that women are just as good as men.” Well, the fact is, women are just as good as men. The issue of headship has absolutely nothing to do with superiority.
As proof of this, let me revisit 1 Corinthians 11:3, and this time I’ll quote all of the verse. Paul says to the Christians of Corinth: “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” Please notice that last part of the verse: “the head of Christ is God.” I ask you, is Christ (God the Son) inferior to God the Father? No, He isn’t. The two are coequal as two-thirds of the one holy Trinity that is God (John 10:30; John 14:7-11). But is Christ submitted to God the Father? Yes, He is (Matthew 26:39-44; John 4:34; John 9:4; John 17:4). So, clearly, submission does not imply inferiority.
And, husband, you should know that being the head of your home is about responsibilities, not rights. Here again we can trace the idea all the way back to Adam and Eve. After their sin in the garden of Eden, they heard the sound of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8). Immediately they hid themselves from Him (Genesis 3:8). They didn’t want Him to see that they had lost their sinless innocence and been forced to make and wear coverings of fig leaves. Of course, God already knew what had happened. But His reaction was interesting. Genesis 3:9 says: “Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”
Wait a minute. Wasn’t Eve the one who caused the trouble? Wasn’t she the one who first gave in to Satan’s temptation and ate of the forbidden fruit? So why didn’t God specifically call for her? If nothing else, why didn’t He call for them both together? Why did He single out Adam?
He did that because Adam, as the head of his home, had to bear the brunt of the responsibility for the mess his home had become. You see, being the head of the home is an incredibly serious thing in God’s eyes. When there is trouble in the home, the first person God comes looking for is the husband. Even if the wife or the kids are the primary troublemakers, everything kicks back on the husband to some degree. If a home goes down on a man’s watch, that man can’t just completely wash his hands of the whole situation and say, “It wasn’t my fault.” Maybe it wasn’t, but just as a coach or manager can’t disassociate himself from his team’s bad season, a husband has to answer for what happened under his headship.
I’ll leave you now with one of my favorite illustrations about headship. It involves a young man and some chickens. The young man was a farmer’s son and one day he announced to his father that he was ready to get married. The farmer said, “Son, why do you want to get married? Don’t you know that when you get married your wife will boss you around?” The young man said, “Oh, I don’t believe that.” The farmer said, “Okay, let me ask you to do something. Go round up a dozen chickens, tie their legs together, put them in the wagon, hitch up the two horses, and take the wagon into town. Stop at every house you come to. Wherever you find a husband who is the head of his home, give him a horse. Wherever you find a woman who is the head, give her a chicken.” Then the father concluded by saying, “I’ll bet you give away all your chickens and come back with the two horses.”
So, the young man did as he was told, and it didn’t take him long to realize that his daddy knew what he was talking about. The first eleven houses the young man visited, the woman was the head and the boy gave away a chicken.
He only had one chicken left, but he wanted to see things through. He knocked on the door of the twelfth house and watched as a husband and wife answered the door together. The young man said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to know which one of you is the head of this home.” The man said, “I am.” The young man looked at the wife and asked, “Is that true?” She said, “Yes, it is.” “Well then,” he said, “I have a real treat for you. I’m going to give you one of my horses. Which one would you like?” The husband said, “I’ll take the black one.” The wife said, “But I think the brown one is better.” The husband said, “Fine, I’ll take the brown one.” The young man said, “No, you’ll take a chicken!”
Does God Want Everyone To Get Married?
Is it God’s will for each person to get married? The Bible answer is, no. However, the reason the Bible names for remaining unmarried is an interesting one. It has to do with the single person being able to devote more time, energy, and resources to service to Christ.
The Bible passage on this is 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. In these verses, the apostle Paul presents the advantages of remaining, as he puts it, “without care.” He says of the man, “He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord – how he may please the Lord. But he who is married cares about the things of the world – how he may please his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:32-33). Then Paul applies this same thought to the woman, as he says, “The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she who is married cares about the things of the world – how she may please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:34).
We shouldn’t take these verses as an indictment against married people. Certainly God’s ordained way of propagating the human race is through marriage, and certainly one can be married and still serve the Lord. But Paul’s point is a good one. Anyone who has been married for one week knows that married life carries many responsibilities with it, and those responsibilities will eat away at time, energy, and resources that could be spent on matters that are more obviously spiritual.
I purposely use that word “obviously” because the fact is that every aspect of a Christian’s life is, in a very real sense, “spiritual.” This same Paul wrote in Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” He said basically the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Those two verses remind me of that little story about the woman standing at the sink, washing the dishes. A sign above the sink reads, “Divine service rendered here three times daily.” You see, even a marriage responsibility such as washing the dishes can become “divine service” when it is done to the glory of God.
But what Paul is saying in the 1 Corinthians chapter 7 passage is that single people can do certain things for the Lord that married people just can’t do. I was a pastor before I got married. Back in those days I could sit up all night working on sermons and not worry about bothering anybody else in the house because there wasn’t anybody else in the house! I could pray out loud while I laid in bed. I could plan my visitation schedule with no thought whatsoever to what was going on with my wife’s day. I didn’t have to concern myself with the cares of grocery shopping for more than myself, getting two boys to their ball practices, etc. I was, to use Paul’s words, “without care” except the care I put into serving Christ.
In Matthew 19:12, Jesus gives this same teaching. He says, “For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” With these words, Jesus describes three different kinds of eunuchs. First, the eunuchs who were born eunuchs would be those people who shouldn’t get married because of physical or mental problems from birth. Second, the eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men were men who were castrated in order to serve in royal service to a king. (In the East, it was common practice to castrate certain servants, particularly those who were placed in charge of kings’ harems.) Third, the eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake are those who have voluntarily committed themselves to celibacy and remaining unmarried in order that they might completely give themselves over to service to the Lord.
And so we see that there is nothing wrong with remaining single. But if you are going to go that route in life, you must ask yourself the question, “Why do I want to remain single?” Is it because you don’t want to be “tied down” to one person? Is it because you want to be free to “play the field”? Is it because you are far too self-absorbed and self-centered to ever think about sharing your life with someone else? Or is it because you want to keep yourself free to go more all out in service to Jesus?
If that last one is your motivation, then you are in the good company of Christians such as Paul, people who used themselves up in service to Christ. Remaining single is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. Just make sure that you take the time, energy, and resources that you would spend on a spouse and spend it on Jesus.
Who Should A Person Marry?
At the risk of sounding simplistic, a person should marry the one that is in God’s will and plan for his or her life. It’s crazy to think that God’s will and plan for an individual’s life wouldn’t make allowance for marriage. While it’s true that Adam didn’t have any other options but Eve, it’s also true that God “brought her” to him (Genesis 2:22). That’s the all-important idea.
Adam’s lust didn’t bring Eve to him (i.e., “I was in the heat of passion for her”). His loneliness didn’t bring her to him (i.e., “I was very lonely and she was there”). His need didn’t bring her to him (i.e. “I needed someone and she was convenient”). His circumstances didn’t bring her to him (i.e., “We were both living in the same area and just kind of came together”). His parents didn’t bring her to him (i.e. “Mom and dad thought we’d make a nice couple”). His friends didn’t bring her to him (i.e., “My friend hooked me up with her”). No, it was God who brought Eve to him.
I’m not saying that God won’t use loneliness, need, circumstances, parents, and friends to bring a man and a woman together in His will. For that matter, He can even use lust in that way (1st Corinthians 7:8-9). What I’m saying is that, ideally speaking, a spouse will be able to look at the other spouse and truthfully say, “I know that God brought you to me.” This means, “I know that you are the person that God willed for me to marry. I know it was Him who brought us together.”
Now, with this in mind, let me point out that there are a couple of major Biblical guidelines as to who a person should marry. Guideline #1 is: No man should marry another man, and no woman should marry another woman. The relevant Old Testament passages (Genesis 2:21-25; Genesis 19:1-29; Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13) are crystal clear. So are the New Testament passages (Matthew 19:1-6; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Timothy 1:8-10). As I once heard a preacher say, “If the Bible doesn’t teach that homosexuality is a sin, it doesn’t teach that anything is a sin.”
Guideline #2 is: A Christian should never marry someone who isn’t a Christian. The passage is 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. Those verses describe such a union as an “unequal yoke.”
A yoke is wooden bar or frame that sits across the shoulders of two animals and binds them together for working. Typically, an ox sits in each of the yoke’s two harnasses. This pairing creates a yoke of oxen.
But what if a farmer put an ox in one harness and a horse in the other? In such a case, the yoke wouldn’t work properly because an ox and a horse are different. Their shoulders aren’t the same height. Their walks are different. Their mannerisms aren’t the same. The yoke is unequal. Likewise, a Christian and a non-Christian are two completely different types of people. They don’t think alike. Their priorities aren’t the same. They don’t approach life in the same way. That’s why God says they shouldn’t get married.
It goes without saying that who a person marries will go a long, long way in determining the quality of that person’s marriage. That’s why it’s so important to marry in God’s will. God knows who we are compatible with, who we can grow with, who we can reach our fullest potential with. He doesn’t just see the here and now; He sees the future. Adam and Eve lived together for centuries as husband and wife and produced descendants that, to a large extent, served the Lord (Genesis 5:1-32). But how did it all start for them? It started with God bringing them together. That’s always the place to start with marriage. It’s just sad that so many marriages start in other ways.
Where Did The Idea Of Marriage Come From?
With this post I want to begin a series on the subject of marriage. With each of these posts I’ll answer a question that pertains to the subject. Question #1 is, “Where did the idea of marriage come from?”
The answer to the question is simple. God gave us the idea of marriage. Genesis 2:18 says: And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helper comparable to him.” That “helper” was Eve. The Bible first uses the word ”wife” in Genesis 2:24, which says: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
It is noteworthy that the only thing that wasn’t “good” about creation was the fact that Adam was alone. Seven times in Genesis chapter 1 we find some variation of the phrase, “And God saw that it was good.” But that all stops when we get to Genesis 2:18, which says that it was “not good that man should be alone.”
Following that we would naturally assume that the next verse, verse 19, would give us the account of God creating Eve. That isn’t the way the story reads, though. Instead, verse 19 talks about Adam naming every beast of the field and bird of the air. What’s up with that? Why didn’t God immediately launch into creating Eve?
He didn’t do that because even though He knew that Adam needed Eve, Adam hadn’t realized it yet. And so God started bringing land animals and birds to Adam to let him name them. When Adam was finished naming a creature, he would watch as that creature joined back up with its mate and ran or flew off. We know each of the creatures had a mate because God had previously said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Somewhere over the course of all that naming Adam had to think, “I don’t have one of those mates.” It was then that he was ready to get married, when he had seen his need of a wife.
Of course, the world’s first surgery had to be done before Adam could have a wife. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and while he was sleeping God removed one of his ribs. From that rib God fashioned Eve.
God was the presiding minister over Adam and Eve’s marriage ceremony. The only vows that were spoken came from Adam as he said of Eve, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:23). The Hebrew word that is translated in that verse as “Man” is Ish. The Hebrew word that is translated as “Woman” is Ishshah. The close relationship between the two is obvious. Eve was the shah to Adam’s Ish.
Now here’s what I want to leave you with about this whole story: Since God is the one who gave the human race the idea of marriage, He is the one who gets to set the ground rules for it. He decides who can get married and who can’t. He decides what constitutes a marriage and what doesn’t. He decides what role the husband should play and what role the wife should play.
Over the course of this series, we’ll be looking at all these issues as well as some others. In each instance, though, we will always come back to the foundation of God and His revealed word. He certainly hasn’t left us in the dark concerning an institution as important as marriage. We just need to let the light shine and walk in it.
Lunchroom Trays & Jesus
You remember those lunchroom trays from your childhood, don’t you? They were so compartmentalized, so sectioned off, so “a place for everything and everything in its place.” The cream corn wasn’t to spill over into the mashed potatoes. The apple sauce couldn’t get out of its banks and make the roll soggy. The peas and Salisbury steak were strictly prohibited from mixing and mingling.
Such trays are nice things to have around when you are feeding kids. Give a seven-year old a flat playing surface with his food groups and who knows what artistic endeavors you might get? I think about Randy in that classic movie A Christmas Story. He was Ralphy’s little brother, the one who wouldn’t eat, the one who worked his mashed potatoes into the shape of a volcano and threw his peas into the side of it, making an explosion noise each time he did it. That probably wouldn’t have happened if his mother had used a lunchroom tray.
But the problem with lunchroom trays is this: Those things become so engrained in our minds when we are kids that we carry the mental imagery of them the rest of our lives. We come to think of our lives as being sectioned off into the neat little compartments of work, home, family, leisure, and religion. We shouldn’t take our work home. That is a spilling over and it’s wrong. Our leisure has no place at our worksite. If the two run together, we’ll get fired for goofing off. Home is for making the beds, sweeping the floor, mowing the yard, and cleaning the basement. It can sometimes walk hand in hand with family, but when family requires a trip to ball practice, piano lessons, dance recital, or the orthodontist, home must be left to stand alone in its own compartment of the tray. Leisure can be neighborly to home as well, what with television, dvds, and internet sites. But leisure and home can never fully join up because leisure must frequently abandon home to travel to the golf course, the lake, the campsite, the beach, or the amusement park.
And what about religion? Well, for the average Christian, religion primarily means going to church. Make no mistake, church is a wonderful thing, that is until it becomes something we merely drive to and back from. If that’s the case, church isn’t much more than a confined building where we sit and check off the program that is printed on the bulletin they hand us when we walk through the door. Opening prayer: listened to that, check. Hymn of Praise: sang that, check. Announcements: sat through them, check. Offering: paid my dues, check. Special Music: heard that, check. Sermon: got through that, check. Invitation: not for me, check. Benedictory Prayer: listened to that, check. Mission accomplished, time to leave for another section of the tray.
Let me assure you, however, that “tray living” is not what God has in mind for the Christian. The apostle Paul said, “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:17). He also said, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Now, tell me, can you think of anything that isn’t a “whatever”? “Whatever” doesn’t just cover a lot of territory; it covers ALL territory. It is a Ziploc bag big enough to seal in your entire tray. The Christian must do his job, conduct himself at home, interact with his family, enjoy his leisure, and do his church attending all in the name of the Lord Jesus and to the glory of God. What a concept!
Can you imagine the implications of living in such a way? The Christian would be the best worker at his jobsite because he’d work as if Jesus was standing right there beside him. His home would be a well-kept place. It’s hard to have knee-high grass, filthy floors, and unmade beds to the glory of God. His treatment of his family would be exemplary, no spousal abuse, child abuse, or disfunction on his part. Sin wouldn’t enter into his leisure time either. No internet pornography, gambling addictions, alcoholism, or drug use. You just can’t engage in those things in the name of the Lord Jesus. Church attendance would be an awesome thing too. It would be vibrant, exciting, and uplifting, the kind of experience from which a person can launch out victoriously into the world.
You see, the point is that Jesus refuses to be compartmentalized. He wants everything the Christian says or does to come under His Lordship. If it is a “whatever,” He demands jurisdiction over it. He refuses to stay behind in His pew beside you at church and wait for you to rejoin Him there the next time you come. Instead, He stands up with you, listens to the benedictory prayer, and then has the gall to walk with you out the door and get in the car with you. As He climbs in, He asks, “Where are we off to?” When you protest by saying, “Wait a minute, Jesus, You’ve got to stay here at church while I go about my life,” He says, “No, I’m going wherever you’re going.”
By the way, in case you think I’m pushing things too far in depicting Jesus as being beside the Christian all the time, let me remind you that the Bible takes the idea even further than I have. Passages such as Romans 8:10, Ephesians 3:17, and Revelation 3:20 teach that Jesus, by way of the indwelling Holy Spirit, literally lives inside the Christian’s body. You can’t get any closer than that! What better Christians we would be if we would just get a hold of this idea. There you are, tempted to undermine your boss at work, play the slacker around the house, cut your spouse to shreds with cruel words, do something seedy and call it leisure, or daydream in church. Wait a minute, you wouldn’t do any of these things if Jesus was right there watching, would you? And it just dawned on you: He is!
That’s why, Christian, you should purge the concept of “tray living” from your mind. There are no sections, no compartments, no categories of your life. There is only Jesus, with you everywhere, all the time, expecting you to do everything in His name and to His glory. Yes, this is a radical way of living, but it’s a Biblical one. Live like this and your entire existence will be changed. Work won’t be the same place. Home will get an upgrade. Family will be taken to a higher level. Leisure will be good, clean fun. Religion will become something so much more than mere church attendance. Really, it won’t even be religion anymore. It will be a second-by-second relationship with Christ. Are you interested in that? Then turn in your tray and start living the way Jesus means for you to live.
A Word To Parents
A man was confined to a hospital bed because of a lingering illness. One day, as he looked upon his windowstill, he noticed a cocoon. He grew excited at the prospect of getting to watch a beautiful butterfly ultimately emerge from it. Sure enough, he didn’t have to wait too long before the butterfly began its struggle to free itself from that cocoon.
But what shocked the man was what a long, hard struggle it was for the butterfly to free itself. The creature worked for hours and hours, but made little progress. Finally, the man decided to help nature along. He took a pair of scissors and leaned over and made the cocoon’s opening larger. This allowed the butterfly to crawl right out.
And that’s all the butterfly ever did: crawl. You see, the intense pressure that is involved with a butterfly emerging from a cocoon is designed to push life-giving juices back into the butterfly’s wings. Without those juices the wings end up deformed and unusable. In the man’s attempt to help the butterfly, he actually ruined it and condemned it to a pitiful existence of crawling around on the ground.
Parent, hear me when I say that you can do this same kind of thing to your child. One of the surest ways to produce a weak, morally challenged, emotional cripple is to always come riding in and save that child’s day. If you are determined that your child will never know trials, troubles, sufferings, and hardships, you are virtually guaranteeing that your child will know such things. Show me a parent who doesn’t understand or agree with the concept of “tough love” and I’ll show you a child who’ll end up the worse for it.
Study the great characters of the Bible, men and women who were God’s choicest servants. Study their lives and you’ll find that their character was forged in excruciatingly difficult experiences, just the kind of experiences that you plan to see to it never befall your child. Just as that butterfly needed to finish that struggle to break free from that cocoon, your child needs those vitally important juices that only the pressures of life can produce. Don’t rob the child of those pressures by taking your scissors and saying, “I’m just going to help out a little.” That “little” can be the ruination of the child.
Let’s say that a son is constantly getting into trouble at school. How should his parents handle that? Let the little delinquent face the music for his transgressions. That will teach him that there are consequences to breaking rules. A few days’ suspension from school might very well save him decades of trouble when he gets older.
Here’s an older daughter who has the bad habit of spending more than she makes. Her bills are behind. Her creditors are clamoring. Her credit is on the brink of ruin. What does she do? She calls up mommy and daddy and asks them to give her the money to fix her mess. And what should they do? If they want to push some fluids back into her wings, they’ll let her reap the sad crop of her out-of-control spending. Such failure and humiliation can be the reality-check she needs to learn to live within her means. Such a lesson is worth the few years it will take for her credit to be restored.
Oh, I sound mean, don’t I? You’re probably thinking, “I’m glad that guy’s not my dad!” Well, I’m not mean, but I am an unabashed proponent of “tough love.” I fully understand the lesson behind that story of the man who tried to help out the butterfly by making its struggle easier. I know the value of letting a difficult season play itself out and accomplish its good. And right now I’m wondering, parent, do you?
Is There Life On Other Planets?
Each Sunday morning at Disciples Road Church I take about five minutes and answer any Bible question someone has. My folks really enjoy this part of our service, and they ask some good questions. Yesterday, the question was, Does the Bible say anything about life on other planets? (By the way, the person who asked it was very careful to say, “We’re talking about E.T. phone home here, not just a living organism.”)
The short answer to the question is, no, the Bible doesn’t say anything about life on other planets. Some people have tried to make the case that the four living creatures of Ezekiel chapter 1 are aliens. Clearly, however, they are angels. Other people read the stories of how Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:1-11) were taken up to heaven and say, “Maybe they were carried away by spaceships.” No way. Each story makes a point of saying that it was God who did the taking. A handful of others run wild with the fact that Jesus said, “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold” (John 10:16). But there’s absoutely no doubt that the “other sheep” were the Gentiles, not aliens on other planets.
Rather than hinting that there is life on other planets, the Bible lays out a pretty clear case that there isn’t. Let me give you a few thoughts to consider on this issue. Mull these over in your mind and just let the Bible say what it says.
First, Genesis 1:1 says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That word “heavens” covers all the other planets out there in space. This means, then, that all those other planets were created on the same day (day 1 of the creation week) as the earth. So much for aliens being more advanced than us because their planets have been around so much longer than our’s.
Second, Romans 8:22 says: “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.” This verse tells us that all of creation, not just the earth but also the other planets, was affected by Adam’s sin. Sin now had to be accounted for in God’s perfect creation. When God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground for your sake” (Genesis 3:17), evidently that curse extended to all creation. Therefore, it seems unlikely that there are any pristine planets out there that are even more life-sustaining than the earth. Along these same lines, a friend of mine once pointed out to me that in view of all creation being fallen, it wouldn’t have been fair for God to punish other intelligent life simply because Adam sinned.
Third, Jesus became a human and died in a human body. He arose from the dead in a resurrected, glorified human body. Even after that resurrection, He bore the marks of the death upon that body (John 20:24-29). Thus, Jesus is the eternal “God-man.” He is not the eternal “God-martian” or whatever. He has chosen to eternally align Himself with mankind by eternally existing in a glorified human body.
Fourth, the church, which consists of humans, is Christ’s eternal bride (Ephesians 5:22-32). If He has another bride, one that comes from some other planet, that makes Him a bigamist and an adulterer (Matthew 19:1-6). In light of this, if there are alien civilizations, are they without sin and without need of Christ’s redemption? To believe they are sinless is to believe that God gave them a better shot at remaining sinless than He gave Adam and Eve. Come on, do we really think that God played it that way?
You say, “But Russell, you just don’t know all the evidence for life on other planets.” Oh, yes, I do. You aren’t talking to a sci-fi novice here! I go all the way back to Leonard Nimoy’s “In Search Of” back in the 1970s. I know all about: Roswell, area 51, flying saucers, alien abductions, men in black, USOs (unidentified submerged objects), time travel, the loss of time, the Bermuda triangle, crop circles, and livestock mutilations. I’ve seen Star Trek, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The X Files, Stargate, etc. Yes, preachers are allowed to watch that kind of stuff.
But my problem is simple: I can’t honestly make all the talk about aliens match up with the Bible. I’ve read the Book, and aliens just aren’t in there. It disappoints a lot of people that they aren’t, but I can’t help that.
What I try to do is come up with reasonable explanations for all the sci-fi stories. For example, it’s absurd to think that every last one of the thousands of people who claim to have seen alien spaceships is lying. Many of them really did see something. But what did they see? While I don’t claim to have all the answers, I feel extremely confident in saying that we don’t know half of what our government’s military complex has in the works. I’m sure that secret, government aircraft can explain some of the “spaceships.”
As for the sightings of actual aliens, again I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I don’t discount the activity of demons, fallen angels. Ephesians 6:12 says: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Likewise, Ephesians 2:2 calls Satan “the prince of the power of the air.” Who knows what appearances fallen angels can take? Revelation 12:9 says that Satan “deceives the whole world.” Could demons appear as aliens and deceive people into thinking those demons come from another planet? I’m not saying they have, but I’m sure saying they could.
But what about all the stories from ancient cultures of how the gods came down from the sky and advanced their cultures? Every time I hear one of those stories my mind immediately races to Genesis 6:1-4. There we find the record of how a group of fallen angels (called “the sons of God”; see Job 1:6 and Job 2:1) once interacted with mankind, even to the point of taking wives for themselves and producing human offspring through them.
I’ll guarantee you those fallen angels didn’t show up on earth one day and say, “Hi, we are demons who have been banished from our place in heaven. We’re here to perpetrate all kinds of wickedness and evil upon you. Let’s get started.” No, those demons would have been more than happy to let those people believe the demons were either gods who came down from the sky or aliens who came from far across the galaxy.
At the end of the day, I guess I would sum up my feelings by saying that if irrefutable evidence of life on other planets was ever presented (an alien spaceship landing on the White House lawn, etc.) I would revise my thinking and say, “Okay, aliens do exist and God, for whatever reason, just didn’t want them mentioned in the Bible.” But I don’t think that’s going to happen. If it does, I promise that I’ll write a follow-up blog. If I were you, though, I wouldn’t be racing to the computer every morning to look for it. That’s a little too sci-fi for even me.
Brief Bio
My name is Russell McKinney. I am 43 years old and have served as an ordained pastor for the past sixteen years. I’ve been married to my wife, Tonya, for sixteen years. We have two great kids – our sons Ryan (13) and Royce (9).
What do I do? As a husband, I love my wife, empty the dishwasher, take the clothes out of the dryer, and remember our anniversary. As a father, I love my boys, help coach their ball teams, enforce the house rules, and splurge for a night at the movies every now and then. As a pastor, I love my church members, preach, counsel, and visit.
When I was a young man, I believed in Christ as my Savior and was “born again” (John 3:1-16). But I didn’t fully sell out to Him with all of my heart, mind, and body until I was in my early twenties. Since then I’ve sought to do His will in every area of my life. Sometimes I’ve failed Him, but He’s never let me stay down long.
I try to be ”salt and light” (Matthew 5:13-16) whatever the situation I’m in, and I try to do whatever I do “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17) and “to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). I don’t have all the answers, but I am willing to learn. I’m far from perfect, but I’m always striving to improve.
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