Wives Submit?
Submission.
It's not a popular topic. It's not something we often practice.
Our culture and society do not value submission. Just that word can leave a sour taste in our mouths.
It becomes confusing when we read passages in the Bible like Ephesians 5. Wives submitting to their husbands and husbands loving their wives. Even for the most devout Jesus loving Christians these types of verses can trip us up. Even for those of us that believe every word of the Bible was divinely inspired and placed there for a reason it can be confusing. How do we reconcile our current culture with 2000 year old instructions that just don’t seem to fit together?
I have never liked those passages. Most women who grew up in the church know what I am talking about, but in case you don’t, let me bring you up to speed.
Ephesians 5
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
1 Peter 3
Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won overwithout words by the behavior of their wives, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. 4 Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 5 For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
Colossians 3
18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
I never understood these in full, but one day I had a revelation about these passages. The way I saw it, I had two options.
I could disregard the verses and ignore them.
However this would mean even in the smallest way I would have an uneasiness and unreconciliation in my spirit. I would constantly be fighting a tiny battle between the desires of my mind and what my spirit needed.
I could press in. I could dig deeper. I could ask God for his supernatural revelation and wisdom. I could just ask him what the heck that means and what that actually looks like.
Obviously, since I wrote this and you are now reading it I went with option two.
That was just my introduction. Now comes the fun part. This may get heavy at times, but my ultimate goal with this writing is to not tell you what I think you should do, but to give you insight and revelation. I want you to ask yourself questions and challenge your own beliefs if necessary.
Let's start with the original Greek word used in all these passages. Hupotassó.
Hupotassó can most accurately be defined as a ranking or ordering under authority.
I came into this study with the idea that submission was the same as obedience.
That however, is not true. The word obedience implies a blind submission or compliance to an authority figure. The ranking or order described with hupotassó is a little more gentle in my eyes. The submission talked about in these passages is a deference to an authority figure as a soldier would defer to a general. It is compliance because of the natural order of things. It is submission because you believe that your authority has your best interest.
This word is used throughout the New Testament to describe our relationship of submission with God. It is used to describe our relationship with other believers.
It is not exclusive to marriage. It is an ordering that was created by God for proper harmony and balance throughout the world.
1 Corinthians 15
27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
It’s the same word there. Hupotassó. To order or put under.
God designed this world to have ranks and hierarchies. The animal kingdom has them. The plant kingdom, too. Our natural state as humans is to create governments and authority within our societies (and there are a ton of verses about that kind of submission, too).
It's how everything exists to some extent within our world.
Whether we like it or not, marriage has a hierarchy, too. In a healthy marriage the husband is the head of the house. This does not downplay the worth or importance of the wife, but instead takes some pressure off of her. The husband, as head of the marriage, is not only responsible for his own well being, but for that of his wife and children as well. There is an extra responsibility on the husband that is not placed on anyone else in the home.
Did you notice in all these passages I mentioned in the beginning that the instruction was for wives to submit to their husbands, but the husbands were also given a task?
The husbands are to love their wives. Not a shallow, passing affection. They are to love their wives and care for their well being just as much as their own, if not more so. In Ephesians husbands are instructed to love their wives as Christ loved us. Jesus literally died for us, so this would also imply husbands are to lay their lives down, too. Husbands are to love their wives by sacrificing their own wants and desires for them.
In return, the wife knows she is loved and knows her husband always has her best interest, so she is able to submit to his decisions because she trusts him.
This is all well and good for a perfect marriage. Are you beginning to see the order that was designed for marriage?
Maybe you are, or maybe you are thinking “that sounds all well and good, but what if that isn’t reality? What if the wife is the head of the house? What if the husband isn’t fulfilling his role? What then?”
I plan on covering that in another entry. I also plan on writing about the husband's role of love and responsibility in more depth. Marriage takes two people fulfilling their roles to be happy and fruitful.
I have heard these verses misused for the mistreatment of women. Because of these verses men expect blind obedience from their wives, but have no intention of putting their wives needs above their own.
It just doesn't work like that. But again, we will get to that in a bit. Back to submission.
Submission is a concept within my own marriage that I have been trying to consciously put into practice within the last year.
My husband does not make decisions and then expects me to blindly follow whatever he says. He loves and respects me. I trust him. When decisions are made, big or little, we make them together. My husband trusts my wisdom and discernment in decisions, not just in our home but for our businesses. If we are not seeing eye to eye we look at pros and cons and earnestly listen to the other’s point of view. This works for us.
Except when it doesn't.
It is rare, but there have been times when we could not come into agreement on both big and little things. So what then?
Well this is where that submission comes in. In submission to both my husband and Jesus I have adopted an attitude of “it is what it is”. Its not that I don’t care, but that I trust that if my husband is right God will bless the decision and if he is wrong then the Lord will protect our family and reward my willingness to respect my husband.
There have been little things that I have given up because of my husband. Two that come to mind are my belly button ring and false eyelashes. He strongly dislikes both. Instead of wearing them behind his back or just wearing them anyways, I respected him. He never told me I could not use them or even asked me to stop. But when he shared his dislike I respected that. I don’t want to bring anything into our marriage that is not a blessing to both of us.
A few years ago Joel grew a big beard. I hated it. I told him I didn’t like it. He was being stubborn about it, but I chose to hold my peace and let the Lord deal with him. Months later he got some wise counsel from another man who reminded him that his body was mine as much as his. He was given the advice: “if your wife hates your beard, trim it”. So he repented and trimmed the beard.
There have been bigger issues we have disagreed on as well.
We have disagreed on discipline for our children and I have had to give it to the Lord. Instead of constantly fighting about it and making a big deal out of it, I respected my husband's decisions and trusted the Lord would iron it out. And the Lord did.
We also have disagreed on people to hire and large business issues. In these situations I have learned to state my opinion and then let it be. I will either be proved wrong or right in the end. If I was wrong I will thank my husband for his wisdom and insight that I was overlooking. If I was right and it was a bad decision I will never ever say “I told you so!”. Instead, I will help my husband find a solution to the problem he created.
I have noticed that since I adopted this attitude of submission my husband and I have begun to work even more so as a team. We have both put our trust deeper in the Lord and each other. Our family, businesses and ministry have begun to flourish.
After writing out those examples I realized there was a common theme I had never considered before now. Giving it to the Lord. Trusting that even if your husband is wrong the Lord will honor your respect for him and iron it out.
There are exceptions to every rule, and this one, too, but again, that is a topic for another time.
For now I want to leave you with these questions to ask yourself and ponder on. If you are not on my email list yet and want to be notified of the next part to this series you can sign up here.
Questions:
What feelings does the word submission create in you?
Do you have a hard time submitting to authority in general?
Do you believe your husband is the head of the household?
Does he act like the proper head of the household?
Do you trust your husband? Do you feel loved by him?
How do you feel about your husband making a decision you don’t like?
Has your husband ever told you no and you did it anyways? What was the outcome?
Have you ever been hurt by your husband (or another man) and now have trust issues?
Want to go a little further? Here is a video of my husband and I bantering about this topic for like 20 minutes.
