How we misunderstand “submission” in marriage
Hi Dojo readers,
I usually post my friend Chris Thayer’s guest blogs on “Thayer Thursday”…but today’s was too good to wait.
I had the privilege of doing a wedding this weekend for a couple in our church (I was the stand-in minister because the original Pastor who was set to do it had to have emergency brain surgery!). The wedding was beautiful and the families were great to meet and spend the day with (and the food was unbelievable!).
Whenever I perform a wedding ceremony, I use a modified version of the traditional marriage vows which I put together a few years ago after studying, among other things, the passage in Ephesians that Chris discusses below…for pretty much the same reasons he lays out in the following post:
“How We Misunderstand ‘Submission’ in Marriage”
Chris Thayer
People commonly use Ephesians 5:22-33 for understanding the relationship between a husband and a wife in the context of a Christian marriage. It is frequently referred to as the Biblical model for how a husband and a wife should act toward one another.
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.
Some believe these verses teach that a wife should submit to her husband and a husband should (conversely) love his wife. The wife’s job is submission; the husband’s job is love.
In an attempt to deal with the uncomfortable language of submission contained in these verses in various marriage curricula or common discussion of the passage, it is not uncommon to hear people say things like: “Yes, a wife is supposed to submit to her husband, but the husband has the harder job because he is supposed to love his wife as Christ loved the church.”
On this side of the feminist movement, it is out of vogue to think of the husband as being the leader of his wife while she submits to his leadership. However, when we follow one of the primary rules of reading scripture – read it in context – the edges of these difficult discussions begin to dull. The unnecessarily rocky issues begin to erode when we read the rest of what is said in this passage – and thereby understand its context better.
We read this text backwards.
Our recent history has been embroiled in the struggle for equality amongst differing races and between men and women. Therefore when we read “wives submit to your husbands” we see it as something that affirms what we have long fought to overthrow.
In other-words, we read it through our culture.
However, when we read this from the perspective of a first century understanding of the family structure we see that Paul is doing something much larger and quite the opposite of what we think him to be doing.
Paul wrote to a culture where it was a given that the husband was the head of the household. But as we unpack what he wrote, we see that rather than teaching people who were understood to be inherently equal that there needs to be a hierarchy, he is teaching people who are inherently hierarchical that their needs to be equality.
The teaching on submission in 5:22-33 does not start at verse 22, but rather at verse 21:
21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
The whole discussion of a husband’s and wife’s attitudes toward one another in 22-33 is therefore couched in the command to mutual submission.
The wife’s call to submission is not a call to be hierarchically lower than her husband, but to be a mutual partner in submission with her husband out of reverence for Jesus. She can submit to her husband confidently because in the context of a proper Christian marriage the husband will behave toward her as Christ did for the church.
Turning then to the husband, Paul admonishes him to likewise submit to his wife by loving her as Christ loved the church. This is the strongest example of submission Paul can provide for the husband. Because Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8)
So when we read this passage in light of its historical and literary context, we see that Paul is teaching the Ephesians a new way of understanding marriage and household relationships; one that glorifies Jesus the Messiah by mutually submitting to one-another and thereby showing the love of Christ to each other and those around them.
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I think Chris is absolutely right. In fact, the verb “submit” is not even found in Ephesians 5:22! It is implied from verse 21–where it specifically commands mutual submission to one another (a fact that often gets ignored or downplayed in many discussions of “Biblical” manhood and womanhood). Ephesians 5:21-22 literally says…
“Be in submission to one another out reverence for Christ, wives to their own husbands as unto the Lord…”
…and then goes on to add the specific command to husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church and gave Himself for us.
How this plays out in individual marriages will likely differ based on the people involved and the setting (culturally, historically and geographically) in which they find themselves, yet the underlying Biblical foundation remains: mutual submission to one another and a willingness to live for (and if necessary die for!) the other.
Thus, the vows exchanged this weekend by the couple read as follows:
In the name of Jesus, I [groom], take you, [bride], to be my wedded wife.
As is Christ to the church, so I will be to you a loving and faithful husband.
I submit to you my deepest love, my fullest devotion, my most tender care.
I promise I will live first unto God and then unto you.
Serving you in self-sacrifice, honoring you above all others.
I promise that I will lead us into a life of faith and hope and love in Christ Jesus.
And no matter what may lie ahead, I pledge to be to you a loving and faithful husband.
In the name of Jesus, I [bride], take you, [groom], to be my wedded husband.
As you have pledged to me your life and love, so I too happily give you mine.
I submit to you my deepest love, my fullest devotion, my most tender care.
I will live first unto God and then unto you.
Serving you in self-sacrifice, honoring you above all others.
God has prepared me for you and so I will ever strengthen, comfort, and encourage you.
And no matter what may lie ahead, I pledge to be to you a loving and faithful wife.
Categories: Biblical Theology, Blog, Ministry, New Testament, Political/Social issues, Relationships, Theological issues