Taming the Shrew
“He that knows better how to tame a shrew,
Now let him speak: ‘tis charity to shew.”
Shakespeare never set out to preach the gospel, but in The Taming of the Shrew, he did exactly that—to me anyway. I’m told the message of this play is well-hated these days. I can see why, with its old-fashioned views of women. But I’m not talking about women’s issues, per se, I’m talking about the Church—the Bride of Christ—the Shrew.
Any person well acquainted with church history, and any Christian well acquainted with his or her own heart knows, Christ took a shrew for his bride. And like Petruchio in the play, he was under no illusions. He knew what he was getting into, but he would not be deterred. He undertook His task with wholehearted zeal and with perfect confidence in a successful outcome.
“Why came I hither but to that intent?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat . . .
And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to th’ear
As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?"
Katharina, the shrew, was hostile by nature, and when she heard of Petruchio’s interest she focused her ire on him. He became her particular enemy when he determined to make her his wife.
I was once God’s enemy. He knew how I distrusted him. He knew I did not want him as Lord over my life. Yet he determined to save me. It took years of loving care and severe kindness, of hardships that left me helpless with no one but himself left to cry to. And then, like Katharina, I succumbed.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-7).
Christ committed himself to the church, his bride, and paid for her with his blood. She is brash and filthy, so he cleanses her and covers her with His own righteousness, “ . . . so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5: 21). When God sees us draped in the perfect righteousness of Christ, he no longer sees the shrew, but the lovely and spotless bride.
After hearing the reports, and seeing her wretched nature with his own eyes, Petruchio imagined her as beautiful as she would be, and said to Katharina:
“Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar;
For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous;
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers:
Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,
Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will;
Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk . . .”
And under his nurture she became in truth every beautiful thing he had hoped for.
“. . . Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” Ephesians 5:25-27).
It’s true that while Christ’s bride remains in this world, she is not entirely tamed. Hints of her shrewishness remain. But as she looks “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,” she finds herself “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). And her heart overflows like Katharina’s:
“Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body . . .
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience,
Too little payment for so great a debt. . .
And Christ, the perfect and ultimate bridegroom, the fulfillment of the biblical type of the husband, will not relent until that great day when He sees his bride pure, entirely lovely, without spot or blemish, perfect in every way. “This mystery [marriage] is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” Eph 5:33.
