Premarin fedex no prescription
Heath Lambert
I was a senior in college when I met my wife.
I was in the middle of a very intense game of Catch
Phrase when I looked up and saw a beautiful bru-
nette with blue eyes whom I had never seen before.
She was wearing a red sweater, drinking a Diet
Coke, and as I stared at her agape she ended the
awkwardness by saying, “Hi. I’m Lauren.” Within
two months of that greeting I knew I wanted to
take care of her for the rest of my life. Not long
after that, we were married, and two years after
that we had our first child. At this point, the Lord
has blessed our home with two sons and a precious
daughter. All of that time I have been serving vari-
ous churches in some pastoral capacity.
I mention that because, as a husband, father,
and pastor, I resonate with much of what Steven
Tracy says in “What Does ‘Submit in Everything’
Really Mean? The Nature and Scope of Marital
Submission.”1 In his article, Tracy seeks to encour-
age Christians (especially complementarian ones)
to think critically about the issue of abuse against
women, the limits of a husband’s authority in mar-
riage, and the issue of practical guidance for a
woman who is being mistreated by her husband
or else being asked to submit in an area where she
feels uncomfortable.
I resonate with Tracy’s concerns because as
a husband I have never harmed my wife, and the
thought of hurting her—or of anyone else hurt-
ing her—is sickening to me. Likewise I have never
abused my children and am committed to rearing
my boys in a way that teaches them to care for and
protect women. We are also working to rear our
daughter so that, by God’s grace, she will be drawn
to a godly man who will love her and care for her
the way I do. As a pastor, I have spent many hours
sitting in rooms with abused women (and men!)
trying to minister the gospel of grace to people
who are spiritually and physically broken by the
sinful aggression of violent persons.
I hate abuse. I can feel my heart breaking
whenever I read the kind of information presented
by Tracy that, “One-fourth to one-third of North
American women will be assaulted by an inti-
mate partner in their lifetime” (287). Those aren’t
just statistics. Those numbers stand for real people
with real lives experiencing real pain and danger
from people with whom they are closest (Ps 55:12-
15). Biblical complementarians must never allow
themselves to be desensitized to such information.
Biblical complementarians can stand with Tracy as
we work and pray towards an end to victimization
against the weak. In this regard, Tracy gets a num-
ber of things correct in his article.
First, Tracy obviously cares about women and
wants to protect them. Such caring concern for
women and the weak is something Tracy learned
from Jesus (Luke 8:1-2; 10:38-42; 13:10-16), and
we complementarians need always to be sure that
we are learning the lesson as well. The command
to love God and neighbor means we not only love,
teach, and proclaim God’s good structure for mar-
riage, but that we love and care for the individual
parties in that structure. We need to be certain that
we clearly articulate that part of the goodness of
complementarian marriage is the biblical care it
entails for persons in those marriages.
Second, Tracy wants to think practically about
how to help hurting people. Biblical love is not a
pipe dream. It is not a wished-for commodity. James
speaks well of the lifeless faith that wishes some-
one the best while doing nothing to actually help
them ( Jas 2:15-17). True love will always translate
into practical and specific care, and complementar-
ians resonate with Tracy in this regard. We honor
Christ when we ensure that our call for wives to
avoid harm and flee danger is matched with care-
ful, thoughtful, loving, and specific action plans for
women who are in trouble.
Third, Tracy wants complementarians to think
carefully about the misuse of their position. Tracy’s
comments about the abuse and misapplication of
Scripture by evil persons who would victimize the
innocent are well taken (for example, 285-86). We
complementarians have done a very good job of
defending against the secular assault on author-
ity in marriage. We do well also to heed Tracy’s
reminder to defend against unbiblical abuses of
biblical authority.
Fourth, Tracy rightly reminds that the authority
of Christ limits the authority of husbands. Writers in
the complementarian movement have done an able
job of articulating this, but it is always good to be
stirred up by way of reminder (cf. 2 Pet 3:1).2 Com-
plementarians should always remember—especially
we husbands—that just as our wives are called to
submit to our headship (Eph 5:23-24), we are called
to submit to the headship of Christ (1 Cor 11:3).
So there is much to be thankful for in Tra-
cy’s article. As good as the contributions are, how-
ever, there are also some areas of concern. In fact,
as helpful as Tracy’s principles for the love and
care of women are, his articulation of what sub-
mission really means is not as helpful as it could
have been. Christians should be concerned that
Tracy’s attempts to help us think through this
important issue may actually lead many women
astray.3 The following are several concerns I have
about Tracy’s proposals.
First, Tracy does not make clear that the fail-
ure of a wife to submit is just as sinful as the fail-
ure of a husband to be a loving head. There are a
few times when Tracy gestures in the direction of
the biblical principle of headship but he never calls
women to radical, Christ-centered submission. I
understand (and am experiencing!) the constraints
of a short article but this omission is unfortunate
because it overlooks what the Apostle Paul clearly
says. Our (good and right) motivation to protect
women does not make it necessary to remove the
force of clear passages of Scripture. Paul does say,
“Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives
should submit in everything to their husbands”
(Eph 5:24). The Bible does articulate exceptions to
this clear rule that Tracy rightly notes.4 But Tracy
should also be careful to note that the emphasis of
Ephesians 5 is on comprehensive submission, and
exceptions to this are what prove the rule. The con-
cern here is that Tracy’s zeal to protect women will
create a situation where women are safe from all
forms of wrong submission to their husbands but
incur the displeasure of God because they hardly
ever submit at all. Our concern for women will not
count for much if we fail to protect them from sin
and its consequences.
Second, Tracy does not make clear that the
authority of Christ not only limits but also sup-
ports and strengthens a husband’s authority. Tracy
rightly notes, “Christ alone is the ultimate Lord
of life, and Lord of the household. This concept
in and of itself governs a husband’s authority over
the family” (299). Tracy is correct that the Lord-
ship of Christ limits the husband’s authority, but
he misses the corollary truth that it is the Lord-
ship of Christ that gives force to the command for
wives to submit in Ephesians 5. Wives are called to
examine the headship of Christ and then submit to
their husbands in an analogous way. Quite frankly,
it is unclear and unhelpful for Tracy to say that
“husbands are not being identified with Christ [in
Ephesians 5]” (304) since the clear purpose of Paul’s
analogy is to vividly link the headship of Christ to
the headship of a husband in marriage. The concern
is, again, that well-intentioned but misplaced zeal
not keep us from seeing and submitting to the clear
teaching of Scripture.
Third, in helping women seek to understand
where they are not called to submit, Tracy uses
imprecise categories. One example of this is when
Tracy defines a violation of conscience as some-
thing that is “internally objectionable” (308). But,
with that definition, few of us would ever submit to
any authority. There are times when I find directives
from the civil authorities, my superiors at work, and
even God himself to be “internally objectionable,”
but I submit anyway. In all honesty, there are times
when I find prayer, Bible reading, and considering
the interests of others “internally objectionable,”
but I do it because I know it pleases Christ. Read-
ing Tracy’s article, I could not help thinking that
most wives would hardly ever submit if they had to
overcome every internal objection. Tracy needs to
be more clear that, in the context of Romans 14, a
person violates her conscience when she does some-
thing that she believes to be sin. It is correct that
husbands cannot ask their wives to violate their
consciences and do something that they (rightly or
wrongly) believe to be sin, but Tracy is incorrect that
a wife should not submit if she has “internal objec-
tions.”5 Sometimes that is the essence of submission.
A second example of Tracy using imprecise
language is when he places limits on a husband’s
spiritual authority. Tracy says, “A husband has no
right to dictate his wife’s relationship with Christ”
(307). He defines what this means by saying, “A
wife should not obey her husband if he tells her not
to go to church or to a Bible study, forbids her from
going to a counselor, pastor, or Christian advisor,
or forbids her from spending time with a trusted
friend” (308). As is his tendency in his article, his
attempt to protect against abuses of the teaching
of Ephesians 5 amounts to ignoring what the text
actually says. In fact, spiritual authority is one of
the main emphases of the Pauline teaching, “Hus-
bands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify
her, having cleansed her by the washing of water
with the word, so that he might present the church
to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or
any such thing, that she might be holy and without
blemish” (Eph 5:25–27). Here Paul clearly teaches
that one of the main ways that husbands are to
reflect the love of Christ is in loving their wives
in a sanctifying way. This truth means that hus-
bands must provide leadership in their wife’s spiri-
tual life. Husbands are given the responsibility to
lead in the spiritual realm so that their wives might
look more like Jesus because they are married to
them than they otherwise would. This will mean
that husbands have a responsibility to encourage
as well as control certain spiritual activities. A hus-
band may not tell his wife that she cannot go to
church since this would be asking her to sin (Heb
10:25), but he may tell her that she cannot go to
a specific church that he believes to be spiritually
harmful because of heretical teaching, unbiblical
practice, or poor leadership—as well as other fac-
tors that we can imagine. A husband exerting wise,
spiritual leadership could (and should!) limit his
wife’s involvement with unbiblical Christian coun-
selors and unwise and reckless Christian friends.6
Again, Tracy’s treatment here lets Christians down
by being unbalanced, and therefore less helpful
than it should be.
A third example of imprecision is when Tracy
states, “A wife must not submit to her husband when
obedience to him would compromise the care, nur-
ture, and protection of her children” (308).Let me be
very clear: I am not saying that husbands have the
authority to harm their children. They absolutely
do not. There are two problems with this statement
though. First, it tends to assume the best of motives
regarding a mother’s relationship with her children
and the worst of motives regarding a father’s rela-
tionship with his children.7 Second, Tracy avoids the
balanced truth that, though husbands may not sin
against their children, childrearing is also included
in a husband’s responsibilities to be a godly leader.
Christians should be concerned that the combina-
tion of these two problems will encourage women
to carve out their responsibility to their children as
a unique area where their concern can trump their
husband’s and eliminate headship.
Each of these imprecise categories has one
thing in common: a lack of balance. Tracy’s inten-
tions are commendable. He agrees with comple-
mentarians that wives must not sin in order to be
submissive to their husbands, and so he tries to
carve out six specific examples where this is true.
The problem is that in the examples listed here, he
does not provide the biblical balance to the issues
he addresses. His attempts at specificity often end
up disconnecting exceptions from the larger con-
text of a husband’s authority. The biblical truth is
the balanced expression that husbands do possess
authority over their wives and so wives should sub-
mit to their husbands in everything except when
doing so would be sinful because her supreme head
is found in Christ. This truth means that husbands
may not ask their wives to sin. Wives may not sin
against Christ, against their husbands, against their
children, against their own consciences, or in any
other way. When a husband asks her to sin in any
of these ways, she should respectfully decline and
express a desire to submit to him whenever her
submission to Christ allows her to do so. Biblical
complementarians have done a better job of hold-
ing these two truths together than Tracy does in
his article.
Christians who read Tracy’s article should
strive to have his heart for the protection of women
and the weak. As true as that is, they should also
work to articulate the biblical position of submis-
sion to authority more carefully than Tracy does.
Doing so will allow Christians to be more equipped
to protect women, to honor God, and to picture the
gospel in marriage.
ENDNOTES
1Steven R. Tracy, “What Does ‘Submit in Everything’ Really Mean?
The Nature and Scope of Marital Submission,” Trinity Journal 29,
no. 2 (2008): 285–312.
2Examples could be multiplied, but a few are Wayne Grudem,
“Wives Like Sarah, and the Husbands Who Honor Them: 1 Peter
3:1–7,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem; Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 194–208; Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More than 100 Disputed Questions (Sister, OR: Multnomah, 2004), 490–99; Stuart Scott, The Exemplary Husband: A Biblical Perspective (Bemidji, MN: Focus, 2002), 75–83, 261–71; Russell D. Moore, “O. J. Simpson is Not a Complementarian: Male Headship and Violence Against Women,” The Journal of Biblical Manhood and
Womanhood, 12, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 2–6.
3At the end of his article Tracy gives six parameters for female
submission (306–12). These six principles are the practical implica-
tions of what he discusses in the article and are what I am chiefly
concerned to respond to here.
4Tracy is correct that “The Lordship of Christ in the Life of the Believer” mitigates any human authority (Ibid., 297–301).
5I believe this Premarin fedex no prescription is fundamentally the same point that Tracy makes in
his first principle that, “A wife must not submit to her husband
when obedience to him would violate a biblical principle (not just
a direct biblical statement).” See Ibid., 306. This statement is also
less clear than the Bible’s own teaching in Rom 14:23, “Whatever
does not proceed from faith is sin.” A husband may not ask his wife
to submit when to do so would violate her conscience.
6I once counseled a couple where the wife was spending time with
her younger, divorced best friend. This friend was encouraging the
man’s wife to commit adultery and to pursue divorce so she could
be “more free.” Her husband would have been a poor spiritual
leader indeed if he had failed to put his foot down about his wife
spending time with such a one.
7Even when Premarin fedex no prescription we consider the sobering abuse statistics cited by Tracy ,it is Premarin fedex no prescription important to note that most fathers will care for and not abuse their children.
