Week 4, Part A:

Week #4, A:

I figure that by this time—I’m trying to model an important discipline, thinking ahead—we will have accumulated some good material from our discussion questions and responses, so a good bit of our material this week will be drawn from that, so it will show up in the weekly email that I send you. 

By the end of this week you should have completed reading This Momentary Marriage, by John Piper.  Below are some questions related to chapters 6-8, Piper’s thoughts on roles in the family.  Copy and paste these questions to a document or email, insert your answers, and get it to me as soon as possible, but for sure before 11:59, 9/23.

1)  In the quotation from Bonhoeffer that Piper uses to introduce the chapter we find these powerful words, “. . . for him [the husband] it is supreme responsibility.”  (72)
From Piper’s chapters and from your knowledge of scripture, list the responsibilities of a husband.

Do you agree that this is “supreme responsibility”?  Why?

2)  Piper says, “. . . few things are more broken in our day than manhood and headship in relation to women and families. The price of this brokenness is enormous and touches almost every facet of life.”  (74)
Do you agree?  Offer evidence from your observation, from your family and/or those around you, to support your answer.

3)  Summarize what Piper has to say about the difference between how a wife and a husband carry out the command to submit to one another (Eph. 5:21).

4)  Does Piper see roles of husband-headship, and wife-submission as resulting from the original intent of creation, or from the consequences of the Fall?
What is the significance of this?

5)  What are Piper’s definitions of headship and submission?

6)  Comment on these paragraphs from p.80.
“Therefore, headship is not a right to control or to abuse or to neglect. (Christ’s sacrifice is the pattern.) Rather, it’s the responsibility to love like Christ in leading and protecting and providing for our wives and families. Submission is not slavish or coerced or cowering. That’s not the way Christ wants the church to respond to his leadership and protection and provision. He wants the submission of the church to be free and willing and glad and refining and strengthening.
In other words, Ephesians 5:21–33 does two things: It guards against the abuses of headship by telling husbands to love like Jesus, and it guards against the debasing of submission by telling wives to respond the way Christ calls the church to submit to him.”

7)  At the end of chapter 7, Piper lists several practical ways husbands should function as head of their family.  List these.  Do you agree?  Are there others you would add?  List them.

8)  What significance does Piper give the word “own” in this statement?  “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands” (1 Peter 3:1)
Do you see this concept being abused?  How?

9)  In Chapter 9, Piper tells what Biblical
submission is not.  Have you seen these
distortions of submission in action? 
Without using names or identifying the
persons involved give one example.

10) We’ll come back to this at the end of part B. 
Stay tuned.