Just call me Mrs. Deadman

I once heard a certain husband say, “The only good wife is a dead wife!” Oh really! I thought, as I continued my argument with him – oh wait, strike that. We all know that “christian” husbands and wives don’t argue, right? Anyway, by now you may have deduced who I'm talking about. Yep, good old yours truly. But where do we go from here? As with most truths, sometimes God needs to “wring it out of us.” We get pushed into a corner, brought to wits end, and finally get it right. I am dead to sin. What do I have to defend?

"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?  ...  For he that is dead is freed from sin.  ...  Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." excerpts from Rom. 6

I am dead to sin. It is impossible to argue with a corpse!

In an interview I recently watched, Dion (the singer from Dion and the Belmonts) told a story about how before he was saved he would (subconsciously) start an argument with his wife so that he could then feel justified to storm out of the house and take drugs or drink alcohol. However his wife got to the point where she just wouldn’t argue with him. She would agree with him about her faults, then inform him that she needed to get a bottle for the baby or take care of the kids. Now whether or not this is the exact interpretation the interviewer or even Dion himself meant to put on this, I will now step into the role of "Decipherer." The wife was "dead", dead to defending her old sinful self, so instead of arguing (as I usually do) she agreed quickly with her husband and then joyfully went about her vocation of cleaning, cooking and child raising. I know that's a bit of a stretch in the interpretation line, but you get the point, right?

In case you, like me, think “O wretched woman that I am, who shall deliver me?” then I have good news for you.  “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Col 3:3

The good news is that you, like Dion’s wife, are dead. Have you ever seen a corpse rise up to defend its reputation? Instead of defending our sinful ways, we can agree and then go about our vocations. The laundry is piling up, our husband’s work shirts need ironed, and I’ll bet the children’s diapers are dirty. We have been relieved of proving to God what a good housewife we really are and now can focus on what’s right in front of us - that holiest of holy vocations of diapers, cooking and cleaning. There is such rest and peace in that.

“I will therefore give myself as Christ to my neighbor,  just as Christ offered himself to me.”  Tuomo Mannermaa Two Kinds of Love