But she doesn’t just need fellowship, she, like all believers, is commanded not to forsake the gathered assembly to worship. To forsake the assembly is sin. To command her to do so is to command her to sin.
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Even during the short period of time public health laws promulgated by public health authorities limited public gatherings and required masks and social distancing, the normal conflict between elders, husbands, and their wives over worship attendance was unrelated to Covid, but rather, everyday sins which corrupt Christian fellowship, generally. This normal conflict should be the context of our debate and development of the application of the Biblical doctrine of authority and submission.
Exceptions make bad law. Men with true authority delegated by God who are practiced in the exercise of that authority know this. It’s almost instinctive with us. My first advice then is to avoid discussions of authority in the context of Covid. Or, if that isn’t possible, subvert them by immediately turning the discussion to the same question in a non-Covid, normal context.
Let’s do so here, starting with the statement that the normal and ever present occurrence of elders, husbands, and wives needing to decide whether a wife should submit to her husband in the matter of church attendance flows out of church discipline that is rejected by a husband who then requires his wife to leave the church with him. The questions above will be clarified if this normal occurrence is the context of the discussion. Love,
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Yes, I should not have included the COVID context of the original discussion. It does confuse things. However, the context you provide, though worth considering, is not the context I was envisioning.
Where a husband is under church discipline and requiring his wife to leave the church with him, I would think 2 Corinthians 10:6 comes into play. Previously “complete” obedience is now incomplete and to be punished. My immediate thoughts are that the wife is not necessarily included in this punishment, nor should she participate in his rebellion, though there may be practical considerations to work through.
The context I am envisioning is a non-christian husband who does not want his wife to attend church. That is why I am appealing to 1 Peter 3:1-2 and suggesting she should submit to her husbamd’s wishes.
Maybe I’m being inconsistent.
I don’t know if you’re being inconsistent, but I would disagree with you on this precise question you have posed. The Body of Christ and Her preaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer are not electives in the Christian life. They were the devotions of the first church in Jerusalem and remain the devotions of all true Christians to this day.
There are countless ways a Christian wife married to a husband who is “disobedient to the word” can demonstrate her submissiveness to him each and every day of their lives without demonstrating it by forsaking the assembling of the people of God. That she must not do, except maybe a few times per year for very special reasons—say, for instance, if her husband is presiding over the scattering of the ashes of a work buddy after his sudden death and the scattering has been scheduled by his buddy’s family for Sunday morning.
It would be my judgment that a husband who is disobedient to the word, whether claiming faith or not (note the Greek would allow both interpretations), would never make a habit of obstructing his wife’s religious practice unless he wanted to subvert her faith. Thus, both from godly obedience to the Word in being devoted to the church’s visible life of worship, fellowship, and prayer, to not allowing one’s husband to exercise any power play to destroy one’s faith, it would be wrong for a wife to apply 1Peter 3:1-2 to her marriage by obeying her husband’s efforts to turn her away from her church’s worship. Love,
PS: Let me add that I don’t know if I’ve ever had a husband who was disobedient to the word and freely acknowledged his own unbelief of the Gospel who made a practice of regularly obstructing, let alone demanding his wife’s non-attendance of the weekly worship of her church. Rather, the husbands who do so are men who claim Christian faith and are disobedient to the word.
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I’d tell her she should attend church and be sure she is willing to accept the consequences that may follow from the decision to disobey her husband’s commands. As with our governing authorities, it may be that we must disobey one of their orders—but then we have to accept that that disobedience may lead to sanctions, imprisonment, or worse. In the case of the woman, her disobedience may provoke the husband to get violent with her or divorce her. But what she (or we) mustn’t do is disobey and then incessantly whine about the response of the authority. She must accept the consequences of her obedience to God and consider it a blessing that she had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name (Acts 5:40-41). [And I’m not saying she should accept violence from her husband without appealing for the intercession of civil and ecclesiastical authorities.]
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Yeah, the verses I keep thinking of today in relation to this are:
And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.
— 1 Corinthians 7:13-15
It might seem a bit off topic, but it’s clear that a believing wife’s actions of faith have the possibility to irritate an unbelieving husband enough to cause him to abandon her. There’s a difference between being submissive to an unbelieving husband and allowing him to prevent your reception of spiritual food. A man forbidding physical food or spiritual to his wife ought to have similar responses of refusal.
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You may be surprised to learn that I have not seen weekly gatherings as essential to Christian discipleship, Hebrews 10:24-25 notwithstanding. Good, preferred, to be attended if at all possible, but not essential. Still ringing through my mind is the testimony of a wife who became a Christian, was forbidden by her husband to attend church, was advised to obey him by the church, and then saw her husband come to Christ.
With all that, I found your comment below the most convincing for some reason:
That has me leaning toward your position. I appreciate the patient discussion with everyone.
It’s not so much essential to Christian discipleship as it is essential to Christian life itself. Without the Church, we die. I go into this at some length in the Intro and Chapter 1 of Church Reformed. You should read it because it would explain why so many think and speak as you do. It’s the norm today. Love,
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