![]() ![]() Rather, he was affirming the Bible’s teaching, which is consistent throughout, that in a marriage husbands are to be the head, and in the church and the Lord’s work brothers are to take the lead (1 Cor. In context, he was speaking about none of those things. ![]() It is misleading to use a contemporary online dictionary definition of women’s liberation to accuse Brother Lee of supporting sexual discrimination and denial of full legal, economic, vocational, educational, and social rights and opportunities for women that are equal to those of men. That movement is against the Bible, for it is against God’s ordination in His creation with respect to male and female” (199). For example, in the aforementioned message Brother Lee said, “This kind of word is certainly contrary to the emphasis of the so-called women’s liberation movement. To supply extraneous definitions to others’ words distorts their meaning. ![]() The mutual submission that he describes between husband and wife as fellow heirs of the grace of life is a beautiful expression of the transforming work of the Spirit. Neglecting context and omitting this balancing word changes Witness Lee’s meaning and emphasis dramatically. Husbands must honor their wives, and, no doubt, the wives must also honor their husbands. As we have already pointed out, this is a word of balance. Honoring someone always implies a certain degree of submission. If you do not submit to a particular person, how can you honor that one? This would be impossible. If we see that a husband should honor his wife, we should realize that this implies some kind of submission to her. I believe that Peter intends this phrase to mean that not only are wives to be in subjection to their husbands, but also husbands to their wives… This phrase seems to indicate that as servants are subject to their masters, and wives to their husbands, so the husbands, in like manner, should be subject to their wives. Their failure to engage directly with what the Bible says obscures the actual problem-they disagree with the Bible and hence with God.įurthermore, in the very next message, Brother Lee gave a balancing word when he expounded 1 Peter 3:7, which says, “Husbands, in like manner dwell together with them according to knowledge, as with the weaker, female vessel, assigning honor to them as also to fellow heirs of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” Brother Lee noted that related to the husbands Peter used the same expression- in like manner: The omission of the scriptural basis of his speaking by the social media commenters obscures the fact that in the quoted sentence Witness Lee was not putting forth his personal opinion but was expounding the Bible with the Bible. ![]() Witness Lee’s exposition simply pointed out that in like manner refers back to 1 Peter 2:18, which speaks of household servants being subject to their masters. They omit his quotation of 1 Peter 3:1- “In like manner, wives, be subject to your own husbands, that even if any disobey the word, they will be gained without the word through the manner of life of their wives”-at the beginning of the paragraph. These sources begin with a sentence from the middle of a paragraph in his message that says, “Therefore, as a household servant submits himself to his master, so the wives should subject themselves to their own husbands” (199). Some on social media have used a short out-of-context excerpt from Witness Lee’s Life-study of First Peter, omitting both context and balance, to support a spurious claim that he denigrates women. ![]()
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