Just as the Father and Son are equal in deity and equal in all their
attributes, but different in role, the husband and wife are equal in per-
sonhood and value but different in the roles that God has given them.
Just as God the Son is eternally subject to the authority of God the
Father, so God has planned that wives would be subject to the author-
ity of their husbands.
Scripture frequently speaks of the Father-Son relationship within
the Trinity, a relationship in which the Father “gave” His only Son (John
3:16) and “sent” the Son into the world (John 3:17, 34; 4:34; 8:42; Gal.
4:4; and so on), a relationship in which the Father “predestined” us to
be conformed to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29; compare 1 Pet. 1:2)
and “chose us” in the Son “before the foundation of the world” (Eph.
1:4). The Son is obedient to the commands of the Father (John 12:49)
and says that He comes to do “the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34;
6:38). These relationships are never reversed. Never does Scripture say
that the Son sends the Father, or that the Holy Spirit sends the Father
or the Son, or that the Father obeys the commands of the Son or the
Holy Spirit. Never does Scripture say that the Son predestined us to be
conformed to the image of the Father. The role of planning, directing,
sending, and commanding the Son belongs to the Father only.
These relationships are eternal, for the Father predestined us in
the Son “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), requiring
that the Father has eternally been Father and that the Son has eternally
been Son. If the Father’s love is seen in that He “gave his only Son”
(John 3:16), then the Father had to be Father and the Son had to be
Son before the Son came into the world. The Father did not give
someone who was just another divine person in the Trinity. He gave
the one who was His only Son, one who eternally had been His Son.
It was also this way in the creation of the world, where the Father
initiated and commanded and created “through” the Son. The Son was
the powerful Word of God who carried out the commands of the
Father, for “all things were made through him” (John 1:3). The Son is
the one “through whom” God created the world (Heb. 1:2). All things
were created by the Father working through the Son, for “there is one
God, the Father, fromwhom are all things... and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
60 BUILDINGSTRONGFAMILIES