A testimony by Regula Rebiai

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As a young Christian and self-assured teacher, I had given little thought to the subject of marriage and being a man or a woman. After all the years of study, I loved my newly-won independence, my own kingdom in the school, and the opportunities to combine my hobbies with my profession. I am not naturally ascetic and (even today) like to have a pleasant and diversified life. Thus I had decided to make myself useful, but in a way which pleased me.

Do I need a head?!

During this time Marcel and I began a friendship, after a long period of hesitation on my part. This was also when I began thinking through topics which had previously had no great meaning for me. You just happened to be either a man or a woman. When I came upon such Bible texts as Ephesians 5, I used to just skip over the problematic statements. Now they suddenly hit me very personally and of course, like so many other women, I was annoyed by the principle of submission presented here, and by the thought that I needed a head. I felt set back and made dependent. I found it unjust, humiliating and besides, simply not modern!
There were few marriages around us which could have served as examples for us, and still fewer married couples who would have been willing to formulate for us their life as a married couple, to reflect on it and to let us look behind the scenes. Marriage and family were seldom a topic in the congregation. So in view of a marriage, we began to think through for ourselves God‘s order for marriage, as well as the concepts we had brought with us. In numerous conversations and discussions we attempted to grasp God‘s central thoughts in order to apply them to our life.

Women in second place?!

I had the deep desire for my marriage to be according to God‘s thoughts, even if they were incomprehensible and far removed from me. I simply didn‘t understand why God, whom I had known to be a just God, could set up such an unjust order in which the woman should be the man‘s subordinate! Why was God not interested in partnership, in equal rights and equal value?! Why did He simply give the women the second place?! I tried in all possible ways to explain God‘s thoughts, to relativize and interpret His word and to excuse Him. But this immoveable word stood there: «As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.» – «In everything» – that too!

Does God mean well with me?

The question of God‘s order for marriage became my very personal controversy with Him. I was confronted with the basic question whether I wanted to believe and trust God‘s word in everything – or would I orient myself more by general contemporary values. And if I wanted to believe His word, could I still trust Him that He meant well with me, even with me as a woman, although at that time I did not understand Him on this decisive point?
A further basic question regarding my relationship to God crept into these thoughts: When I turned to Him, it was always to God the Father or to Jesus, also a man. Wasn‘t there any orientation or identification figure whom I could turn to as a woman? Does God address primarily men?

My concept of men

In all the questions I asked God and in the discussions with my future husband, I also became increasingly aware of the concept of men, on which I had based my study of man and woman living together. I was deeply convinced that men are selfish, egotistical, and much too concerned with themselves  to truly be capable of bothering about women‘s needs. Every time a man was obliging, even if it was mere politeness, I viewed this suspisciously as another attempt to buy me. Therefore it never occured to me to truly apply the comparison «as Christ is the head of the church» to men. It seemed to me unrealistic and wide of the mark.
Nor was I willing to lay all my cards on the table in my conversations with Marcel. Inwardly I was often on the watch, ready to defend my rights and my territory. It required great effort and a large portion of trust for me to formulate myself completely openly before Marcel. In my relationship to him and my experience of him as a man relating to me, a new image of men gradually grew inside me. I saw how Marcel often stood by me even when it cost him an effort. For example, when we had differences of opinion, I experienced that he did not react disapprovingly, but tried with many further questions to really understand me. He did not distance himself from me.

Decision to trust

Thus I could whole-heartedly enter into our agreement to be completely honest in our relationship to each other, not to make any pretences before each other, and not to withdraw from the other. Of course, this noble decision was not enough in itself. Again and again we had to remind each other of this promise and take steps towards the other. But this agreement made all further conversation a great deal easier.
Therefore we formulated this point of mutual trust quite explicitly in our marriage promise. Even if we did not yet understand God‘s thoughts about marriage in context (at least, so it seemed to me), we were nevertheless determined to simply put into practice what had become clear to us – even though it could not yet be the whole thing. For me this was the expression of my trust in God and respect for His word.
For by now I had comprehended that for God, submission could never mean subordination or oppression! And even if I didn‘t understand everything, I wanted to hold fast to the fact that His word is correct and valid through all times and cultures. For me this first step was also a conscious renunciation of my own ideas and concepts of my life. It was a step of dedication to God, away from all self-realization.
It was not always easy for me to hold onto this decision. I moved in a society where exactly this point of man and woman‘s relationship was indecisive, and even explicitly different from God‘s opinion. I had to admit to myself that I was no longer up-to-date, but that could no longer be my standard.

God is my personal lawyer

I gave my marriage promise quite consciously in God‘s presence, knowing that only He as the inventor of marriage can guarantee this covenant‘s life-long existence. He is the lawyer of my marriage and especially of me as a woman. I knew that it mattered to him how Marcel treated me. On the other hand, I was also responsible to God for the way I treated Marcel. This awareness of having a lawyer, and not being at the mercy of a man‘s whims, helped me especially during times when we were not in unity.

Trust makes recognition possible

I still had the question of what God intended with His instructions. I carried this question with me in my heart, thought about it often, read God‘s word and waited for His answer. Besides this, Marcel and I attempted in many conversations to make ourselves understood to each other, to make ourselves known, to communicate without putting up protective barriers, to open up to each other. Thus a deep understanding and mutual trust was able to grow. (And we still keep this up with daily, short conversations and especially in our weekly marriage evenings, which are totally dedicated to personal sharing).
This openness required and still requires much courage, discipline and dedication to one another. It is not always so easy to formulate the thoughts and feelings which move me. But in order to build up a marriage, it is an existential necessity to bring the truth to the light in the other‘s presence. Otherwise Marcel has no way to react to my conjectures and a relationship begins developing which has less and less to do with reality. One encouters the other only through a veil of suspicions, suppositions (that‘s just what I thought…!) and misunderstandings. We have experienced this, too. It begins in a small and harmless way and grows quickly like a tumor. This openness made it possible for me to recognize more and more who Marcel is – as a man, but also as a personality.

Is God a man?

My conversations with God and my growing understanding for my husband helped me understand essential points which basically changed my whole concept of marriage, of being a man or a woman, of God‘s intentions with each one. While searching for an answer, I had repeatedly read the report of Creation and the subsequent Fall.
«So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them» (Gen. 1:27).
God created both – man and woman – according to His image. So God cannot be only masculine, if I as a woman am also created in His image. His character is mirrored only partly in the man and only partly in the woman. Only man and woman together result in a picture of God‘s being which is to some extent complete. Thus He must be masculine as well as feminine.
I began searching the Scriptures for statements about God‘s feminine features. Although I found some here and there, it was not until years later that I discovered that the person of the Holy Spirit presents the fulness of God‘s feminine side.

Does Adam need a friend?

«So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found» (Gen. 2:20).
As an answer to the first person‘s realization that something was lacking, that he received no real help from the animals, God did not create another man. Obviously what Adam was lacking was not just a friend, but a real supplement, which God gave him in Eve.
I understood from this that God explicitly created the woman different from the man. Otherwise she would not have been a supplement. And I understood that as a woman I bear and mirror God‘s being just like the man does. The woman is thus in no way a second-rate creature, she is created in God‘s image just like the man. That set my understanding of myself as a woman on a new foundation.

The curse of suppression

«To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing, with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.‘» (Gen. 3:16).
As a consequence of the disobedience, God actually did lay on the woman the curse of being suppressed by the man. And when I looked around in the world, I had to say: The consequences of the Fall are getting stronger all the time. Pregnancy is difficult, birth is painful, and all over the world women are suppressed, taken advantage of and humiliated by men. None of this can be eradicated by any emancipatory movement. Women continue to suffer under this servitude  wherever God‘s Kingdom has not begun to be manifested in relationships, families, society, places of work, various cultures… Jesus was the first to retract this humiliation of the woman and return her value as an equal creation. But outside God‘s Kingdom nothing has changed.

God values the women

Apart from this restoration, it touched me deeply that God let His son, the Saviour of the world, come into the world explicitly through a woman. Jesus could have appeared as an angel… But even before God spoke the curse over the woman, he promised her that through her the one would come who would crush the snake‘s head. Some of the prophets have taken up these thoughts again and even Paul, who is decried as a woman-hater (which he isn‘t at all!) says explicitly in the letter to the Galatians, «But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.»
Even if women have second place in this world, in His Kingdom it is different. A woman was the first to hear what the people Israel had already been waiting for centuries when the angel appeared to Mary and announced the birth of the Saviour. When He was risen from the dead, Jesus met the women first and made Himself known to them. For me these are just examples of how God values and cares about women.

Enormous demands on the man

This newly-won self-understanding as a valued daughter of God finally freed me to think about man‘s place in marriage also. Today I cannot explain to myself why I was always stuck on this first point about submission and never went on to the enormous demand made on the man to love his wife as Christ loves the church!
«Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church» (Eph. 5:25.29).
What an enormous task! What a comparison with Christ! What a responsibility which the man must bear before God! He is responsible for the well-being, even more – for the development, growth and sanctification of his wife. In his dedication to her, he is compared to Jesus. When I discovered what that must mean for a man, I was grateful to be a woman and not have to stand before God in this responsibility! Compared to God‘s demands on a man, I found the demand to submit quite easy to fulfil!

Submit from the heart

«As Christ the church» – this comparison greatly helped me giving Marcel this place in my heart as head over me, and also voluntarily and gladly submit to him as my head. It is quite obvious that Jesus is the head of us as a church. No church member would want to claim this place for himself. We quite obviously and gladly place ourselves under His protection, ask Him for counsel, obey Him, take shelter in Him – always in full confidence that He wants only the best – a fulfilled life – for us, for me. If a man loves me as Jesus loves the church, then submission couldn‘t be anything so difficult. No, submission would even become a desire.
And if my husband doesn‘t love me as Jesus loves the church? Even then the place God assigns me is the one where I would experience God‘s blessing. The woman who was not loved by her husband would suffer in any case.

Losing my life

At this point, the battle for my place and my rights came to a stop. So after the first four years of marriage we were then able to formulate what we had actually wanted at the beginning: not to continually compete with each other, but to genuinely help each other grow to be the man and the woman who God, our Creator, had in mind. This was and is a great challenge because one has to completely look away from one‘s own self and concepts and allow himself to be given God‘s view of the other. It is the principle of the kernel of wheat, which is valid in God‘s Kingdom: Whoever wants to keep his life will lose it, and whoever gives it will win it, with much fruit besides.

I experience protection, counsel and life

In this awareness that my husband‘s place and commission is completely different from the woman‘s, and that I would not want to exchange, it became easier and easier for me to submit to my husband - as «to the Lord». After all, it was not difficult for me with Jesus, either, except when I had a completely different opinion from His! And when I had a different oppinion from Marcel‘s? Then I could still ask, attempt to understand, express my viewpoint, and finally trust that my husband also wants the best for me, that he is not «selfish, egotistical, and much too concerned with himself to be truly capable of bothering about my needs as a woman» – but rather that he gives his life for me. Once I had arrived there, it was not difficult either to sometimes simply obey. Not that Marcel was flawless, but I often experienced Jesus in him. Jesus met me in him. In him I experience what the church experiences in Jesus: protection, counsel and fulfilled life.

Jesus encounters me in Marcel

I experienced this in the most concentrated way when I was ill, as I have already written:
«God helped me especially through Marcel.  I experienced  that  through him Jesus came near me, talked to me, encouraged and reminded me again and again.
In this time of weakness and great tension it was relaxing and comforting to be sheltered and fully covered under Marcels spiritual authority. I could tell him all my questions, attacks and doubts. To him it was never too much, even when again and again I fell into the same doubts. I could fully confide in him and didn‘t have to hide my weakness and bareness. Whenever I lost courage and sight, he helped me to settle my thoughts and turn toward God.
I was very much encouraged by Marcel‘s unconditional affirmation for me. Whatever I had to offer him was gone. Now I was nothing, neither as his wife nor as mother of our children. I no longer was his helpmate but rather an additional burden. In spite of this, Marcel‘s love for me was left unaltered and became even deeper visible. Again and again I experienced: He loves me and not the work I had done for him, the burden I had taken for him or anything else I could have offered him. He not only let me feel his undivided love but told me of it continually. The intensity of love which is based not only on emotions became a vital experience for me.»
I know that these qualities are not simply Marcel‘s natural gifts. In his own struggle to fulfil his whole responsibility as a man, plus the fact that he will have to give account to God, Jesus has increasingly taken on form – how else could a person answer to these demands!

God‘s feminine characteristics

Up to that point, God had answered many of my questions. But I still wondered why God‘s feminine side is so little known. I was convinced from the creation story that it must be there. And suddenly, again while reading His word, I discovered God‘s feminine characteristics in the person of the Holy Spirit. I was again impressed by the place of the Holy Spirit and of the Father right at the beginning of Creation:
«In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters»
(Gen. 1:1-2)
The Spirit was simply there, waiting, expecting, ready. Those are unequivocally feminine traits, like a pregnant woman, in contrast to God the Father: He created something new, divided, commanded. Even His word had great consequences!

The Holy Spirit‘s commission and being

The person of the Holy Spirit is described directly in just a few places in God‘s word. We know best how the Holy Spirit acts, about His gifts and His fruits. He is the helper and the comforter, He reminds, He comes to us, He is always with us, He creates relationship and fellowship, etc. But His personality is quite in the background and can be recognized only when we look a second time. This is in contrast to the personality of the Father, who is obviously the mighty, strong God, whose word is like the roar of the waters, the Lord of hosts. He has the plan, He gives the orders and commands.
The Holy Spirit is the one who carries them out. At creation He entered us human beings, He came upon Mary, He is poured out in our hearts, He testifies to our spirit that we are God‘s children, etc. He always comes on the commission and in the name of the Father, never on His own, never in His own name. In Isaiah 63:10 the Father‘s relationship to the Holy Spirit shines out: «Yet they (God‘s people) rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he (God) became their enemy and he himself fought against them».
The Father gives the Holy Spirit His personal protection. He personally (in other places He often sends out His armies and His angels) and vehemently (He even turns Himself into an enemy!) looks after His well-being. The Holy Spirit is apparently easily hurt, He is sensitive. He needs the Father‘s protection and affection. When the Holy Spirit is hurt, it is worse for the Father than if He Himself had been offended.

The woman is similar to the Holy Spirit

All of this made it clearer to me how God really intended the relationship between man and woman: The man should have plans and a vision for his wife, children, work, the future… He gives the instructions. My place as a woman is different: Like the Holy Spirit, I should first of all just be there, available, ready. Like Him, I am under an authority (the man is my head) and do not act in my own name. My husband will be called to account before God for what I do and the way I do it. Far-reaching decisions must be made by him, even if they affect my life. This requires my husband to concern himself with my affairs and to form an opinion. Like the Holy Spirit, I am especially dependent on protection, love, and affection. Evil can strike and trample me as a woman much more easily than a man.

Marriage and Trinity

It became totally clear to me that marriage, which was invented and set up by God, simply mirrors the relationship also found in the Trinity. They are founded on absolute trust and respect which the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit have for each other – if that can be expressed in such human words… With my whole being I could now joyfully take the place God had intended for me. With the clear commission to relate to my husband as the Holy Sprit relates to the Father, I wanted to make myself available for all the different tasks and plans of my husband: to be there , comfort, encourage, help. I also began much more consciously and actively claiming Marcel‘s protection and seeking his counsel.

Set free to rule

Saying Yes to my place as a woman set me free to completely fill the area God had given me to rule over.
It freed me to become like the woman described in Proverbs 31: a goal-oriented, wise woman who knows her field of action and totally fulfils her responsibility there. In everything she does she strives to free her husband and her sons for their tasks. She gives her life for that. Nothing she does serves merely her self-presentation and self-realization. Like a queen she directs her «Department of the Interior», distributing, assigning tasks, setting accents, giving counsel, and enlarging her property. Her dominion is hidden to most outsiders, but that does not bother her, for «her children arise and call her blessed: her husband also, and he praises her. ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all‘» (Prov. 31: 28-29).
What greater recognition can a woman receive than this!

I need a head

Today I must say of God‘s order: He made it very well! He granted the woman the place which he also created and equipped her to fulfil. He does not require too much. The same is true of the man: He equipped him to fulfil the task he gave him (even if many men today do not want to fulfil this responsibility).
As a testimony to God‘s blessing I can say that I experience respect and recognition from my husband and my children. I experience protection from Marcel when the children are insolent and disobedient toward me. And I experience Marcel‘s counsel and concern in the myriad things which occupy me. Under his protection, my kingdom has become large and rich.

Still underway

We keep turning to each other in order to keep our relationship genuine. We neither want to pretend anything nor withdraw from each other. Thus we have been able to grow into a mutual and complementary relationship in which each one receives from the other‘s riches.
Our marriage has become a place of security for us. We can completely let go before each other. This creates for our children and even for our co-workers a protected space. For marriage is not just a place of personal happiness. It should much rather become a place from which streams of living water flow out into this world.
We are grateful that we can look back on years in which the riches of our relationship has grown continually. We always consider it a miracle that God can bring two such different people into unity!

God answers!

This is my path and our path with God in these questions. He has led me, and met me in His word and in the countless conversations with Marcel. And he has answered me. I want to encourage you to ask God and your husbands concrete questions and not just keep covering up feelings which are deeply buried. God will answer you, for it is promised, «Everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened» (Matt.7:8).

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