Wives, submit to your own husbands Part 1

Ephesians 5:21-33 “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as 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. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
People may say that this passage would have been applicable to Paul’s day, time, and audience, but it is not for us. However, we come to it as Christians who have a very different agenda, which is to listen carefully and apply the word of God out of reverence to Christ, knowing that God’s holy design in marriage is good for us.
Submission is a godly requirement for all of us. God set up the world with various levels of authority and submission. Human beings were to rule and have dominion over nature. At the other end of the spectrum, the eternal Son would come in the flesh and be submissive to the Father, even as He sought to redeem the world. So we need to approach this matter with the knowledge that God has ordered this world with various layers of submission. All of the tension in this passage is around the word SUBMIT.
Let’s step back and understand the Biblical context and worldview on which this passage rests. The Biblical context will give us the right lens to look at this Ephesians-5 passage. Modern feminism is a wrong lens, which will get it wrong and decide that it degrades and frustrates woman. Modern chauvinism is also a wrong lens, which can give men license to be abusive and controlling.
Consider the following three lenses that we may look through to study this passage. If we look through these lenses, this passage becomes a healing medicine and a joy.
#1 THE LENS OF CREATION
The prevalent assumption that those who submit are somehow of less value and dignity. But the creation account debunks this assumption. Gen 1:26 “Then God said, “Let us make man (human beings) in our image, after our likeness. And let THEM have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” There is nothing in this passage that says that one of the genders is less than the other. Notice the “them” in Vs 26. As far as this verse is concerned, it is egalitarian. This is the very first thing that is said of men and women in scripture. We have to reclaim the word egalitarian, which means “the same”. According to this verse, man and woman are the same in terms of dignity, value, importance, and also in regards to the mandate that they would have dominion over the earth, which is something that men and women need to pursue together. And this truth is carried through in the rest of scripture. The word egalitarian in Christian circles is usually used to describe people who do not believe that men and women have different and complementary roles. So we would not usually apply the word egalitarian to ourselves, but we need to reclaim the word, because men and women are the same in so many senses. We are not complementarian when we think of the value and dignity of men and women. Both man and woman are EQUALLY made in image of God, EQUALLY sinful in the eyes of God, EQUALLY in need of grace and salvation, EQUALLY adopted into the family of God, EQUALLY clothed in righteousness of Christ, and are EQUALLY looking forward to a heavenly inheritance.
Gal 3:26-28 “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
While it is true that men and women are the same in terms of dignity, value, and importance, they are NOT the same in terms of role or authority. This is where we are complementary and not egalitarian. A difference of role and authority does not mean that value and dignity is not equal. From Gal 3:26, it is plain, that while the various groups are one in Christ, they all do not have the same role or authority. For example, slaves did not have the same authority as free men. But in Christ they were of equal value and importance. Or take the distinction between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews played a very significant and particular role in God’s plan of redemption, but in Christ, there is only one people of God, and not two peoples of God. The one people of God are those who are in Christ, equally saved, whether Jew or Gentile. So too men and women are equal in value and dignity and yet have different roles and authority.
Although we know that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, we know from the passage in Gen 2:15-25 that they were not made in the same way or for the same purpose. Eve was made AFTER ADAM, FROM ADAM, and FOR ADAM. And this forms the basis for the role of men and women in marriage. When Paul argues for distinction in gender roles, as he does in 1 Cor 11 and in 1 Tim 2, he argues on this basis—alluding to the creation of human beings. This is also the reason why we cannot brush away this subject of different roles for men and women by saying that Paul was saying these things based on the cultural differences of his day and that they do not apply to our modern times. Paul does not say that or sound like he is saying that, when he alludes to creation in his arguments.
None of these things detract from Eve’s dignity or her value. In fact in a strange and wonderful way, they actually enhance dignity and value.
EVE MADE AFTER ADAM: One reason why Eve was made after Adam was for him to know that he was incomplete and insufficient without her. How strange Adam must have felt to be the only the creature to not have any other human being to share life with. The animals had partners and formed communities together. But not Adam. In God’s wisdom, God had a plan that Adam would yearn in his own heart for a partner. What a joy it must have been when his wife was brought to him. That process of Adam being alone and Eve coming second does not devalue Eve but lifts her value for Adam, so that Adam does not take her for granted as someone to be used and abused but rather considers her a joy and delight and as someone who fills up what is lacking in him. This is how every man is meant to look at his wife.
EVE MADE FROM ADAM: This does not undermine her dignity whatsoever either. In fact she is Adam’s delight and he exclaims, “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Paul aptly tells husbands to love their wives as they love their own body, and in a sense, the woman is made from man’s body.
EVE MADE FOR ADAM: Her dignity is not lessened because she was made as a helper for him. The very reason for this was that Adam was inadequate without her. He would not be able to fulfill his roles—procreation, cultural development and community—without her. He would cherish her even more, because she finally enables him to do what he was designed to do. It adds to her value.
What would Eve’s perspective have been? Would she have felt hard done by that she was made second and not first? Would she have been asking, why Adam had not been made from her side instead, or why he was not her helper instead of her being his? Absolutely not. 1. She would not have felt that way because, this is how God designed her to be—to play a complementary role in their marriage. God did not design Eve to hate the fact that she was Adam’s helper. 2. Another reason why she would not have been disgruntled was because, only after sin would she have thought in those terms. Any disgruntlement came after the curse.
Let’s say Eve was created first and named all the animals, looking for a partner among the animals. Unlike Adam who had looked for someone to partner with him and help him with his role, she would have been looking for a partner to be a helper to , to submit to and be cherished by. That was the design and imprint that God had put on her heart. We can be sure of this because, none of the negative thoughts would have been possible as they come because of sin and through the curse and because of the fall.
#2 THE LENS OF THE CURSE
The passage to read is Gen 3:1-19. Notice that in Vs 9. God addresses Adam; the ‘you’ is in the singular. Adam was to lead his wife, and God questioned him first. “But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are YOU?’” It is only in Vs 13, that God addresses the woman for the first time, “saying, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” And then in Vs 15b, we see the gospel spelled out for the first time in the Bible. “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Adam who was to lead Eve as her husband had failed to do so, and Eve who was to take her instructions from Adam took it from another source. God cursed them both in relation to their roles and place of work. A woman can work outside the home, whereas the husband must work outside the home, as it is part of his God-given role. The curse on the man undermined his work life, and the curse on the woman undermined her home life.
Going forward, there would be three components to frustrate her life within the family. Having children will now include pain and suffering. Submitting to her husband will now be marked with a rebellious spirit in her wanting to dominate her husband. Her desire to be loved and cherished will now be replaced with her husband ruling over her with an iron fist. Interestingly, the wording in, “. . . Your desire shall be contrary to your husband . . .” in Gen 3:16 is the same as in “. . . sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” in Gen 4:7. The idea is that a sinful power is trying to overcome Cain and that he should rule over that power so that he does not succumb to it. In the case of the man and the woman, the woman will try to dominate and control the man, and as a result, the man in trying to hold on to his authority, would push back by being domineering and controlling.
Thus it can be seen that the passage in Eph 5:21-24 is not a curse but rather, it is a blessing and an attempt to undo the curse or at least to limit the curse. So, we should not read this passage according to secular wisdom but through the lens of the creation and the curse. When Paul talks of the roles of men and women, he goes to these lenses.
#3 THE LENS OF REVERENCE FOR CHRIST
Eph 5:21 concludes with the phrase, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Grammatically, this belongs to the previous paragraph, but in the mind of Paul, it forms the foundation that he wants to launch off from when he discusses various kinds of submission—the submission of wives to husbands, love of husbands for their wives, obedience of children to parents, and parents preferring children’s needs over their own.
Theologically speaking, the platform for women submitting to husbands is that we all need to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. The greatest submitter was the Son to the Father.
John 3:13 “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
John 5:19 “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’”
John 6:38-39 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”
Mat 26:39 “ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.’”
Did this submission of the Son to the Father limit His dignity, value or importance in any way? On the contrary, the glory of the Son is more firmly established through His submission. It is because of this that He is so exalted. It is because of this that millions worship Him as Saviour.
Phil 2:5-11 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
It is out of reverence to Christ that we are called to submit in various ways to various ones, so that we might live as Christ lived. We submit out of reverence to the ultimate Submitter.