Watermark: an illustration
In the previous post, we wrapped things up by concluding:
In other words, let’s not explain away God’s unique plan for women. Instead, let’s consider and uphold it as a a watermark of his perfect wisdom…the wisdom that, in fact, is foolishness to the world.
Illustrations of this watermark abound. Here is one in 1 Peter.
First Peter is one of the go-to books of the Bible for learning God’s plan women, aka “biblical womanhood”. Here wives are told: “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands….”
And truly, this verse itself, when isolated and unpacked, holds much that is clear.
But as you zoom out and read through 1 Peter from start to finish, this verse becomes part of God’s clearly visible watermark. Check this out….
In 1 Peter, Peter begins by describing the believer’s inheritance, its eternal value and nature, with the backdrop of the current season of trials and temptations.
Next, Peter exhorts the believers to gird up the loins of their minds, pursing holiness, and reminding them that the glory of this world is soon fading.
Next, Peter exhorts personal holiness further, through greatly desiring the Word of the Lord.
Then, Peter lays out the way in which the practiced holiness of believers not only builds up the church, but is a light to the lost.
Then, he teaches that godly submission to worldly authority (when permissible) will ultimately cause even the unsaved to glorify God! Woot.
And then, while describing the mysterious and God-glorifying submission of the Lord Jesus Christ, he proceeds with exhortations to servants, wives and husbands as to how they are to conduct themselves.
In chapter 4, great edification is laid for believers for our perspective and mindset as we live out our sojourn here. And chapter 5 contains more exhortations mingled with eternal perspective.
A watermark is embedded into the fibers of paper. It is different from a seal. Seals are used for similar purposes, to mark a document as officially from a person. However, a watermark is unique in that it testifies of being official through what can be seen through the words on the page, without a separate substance.
We want to “study to show ourselves approved”, and that is good. But we need to understand what “study” means. Is it an academic dissection of scripture, categorizing and isolating certain verses as on an examination table? We know that in physical science, much value has been gained in dissection, examining components of living systems: mice, earthworms, etc. However, such dissection is limited in potential, as it necessarily prevents observation while these components are functioning in symphony, as they are designed to do.
In the same way, when topics such as creation, salvation, eschatology or “biblical womanhood” are pursued as an independent thing (through isolating verses, proof-texting, etc), there is the potential of missing out on valuable perspective. It is possible, in seeking verses to establish the “tenets of biblical womanhood”, that fragments of God’s word are seemingly laid bare, like specimens on a dissection table, separated from the surrounding and necessary “tissue” of other aspects of God’s intention for mankind (in fact, the rest of God’s Word!). And so, we can and do often minimize the importance of “every jot and title”. This would be like a young man reassembling his first car after attempting a major repair, who confidently puts the thing back together without using all the parts with which he started.
It is interesting: it would have been so simple for God to have given us instructions in bullet lists, like a job description that you can read before taking a job. But we are hard-pressed to see any comprehensive lists of tasks or standards given. Instead, we are often given, throughout the pages of scripture, a backdrop in which instruction and other revelation, is woven.
Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples:
and they are written for our admonition,
upon whom the ends of the world are come.
1 Corinthians 10:11
We could think of this as the difference between studying a cheetah’s physiology on a dissection table versus watching the cheetah chase its prey through the grassy plain. While it runs, though you can’t see the cheetah’s marvelous spleen or its high-tech salivary glands as well, you can certainly see the way all those squishy slimy parts work perfection together and point us to our awesome Creator.
Returning to a thought from the beginning of this discussion: a watermark is unique in that it can be seen through the words on the page, without a separate substance. The intent is to mark the entire document as official, and for the document to be dealt with as a whole. Not coincidentally, when the tempter came to Jesus and enticed him to utilize his eternal power in a way that would have separated it from his perfect submission to his Father, Luke 4:4 reads:
For women studying scripture to find our place and purpose in God’s plan, we cannot escape the necessity of zooming out and seeing God’s design for us a woven into a big picture. God wills to use our obedience to glorify him in a context outside our own little “women’s world”. Scripture is not given to us because we are on a pursuit of finding out what is permissible. Our pursuit is knowing and doing the word of the Lord— the same pursuit as belongs to any follower of Christ.
We can learn much from the example of a humble young woman, with no credentials or distinguishing accomplishments, who upon receiving an unprecedented, dangerous and despised calling from the Lord, responded from her heart:
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