Submission: A Lot More Than Giving In: Biblical Principles on Radically Honoring Husbands

As I drove my fifteen-year-old daughter home from gymnastics, I listened intently to her description of a painful, embarrassing moment. Her emotions weighed not only on my soul, but on the gas pedal. A sick feeling came over me as I saw the flashing lights behind. When the policeman asked me if I had any reason for driving 40 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone, I simply replied, "No sir, I just wasn't paying attention."

When we had finished the formalities of the ticketing process, I drove away (slowly!). My daughter, now truly sobbing due to the increased strain of watching me get a ticket I couldn't afford, began complaining about how unfair the officer had been.

"No," I insisted. "He wasn't unfair. If I was going over the speed limit, he had every right to stop me and give me a ticket."

"But he was so arrogant, so know-it-all," my daughter argued. "And he could have just warned you."

"Well, I've seen worse," I answered.

I didn't resent that policeman, nor did I fear him as a person. I didn't feel either better or worse than he, but he was a policeman and I wasn't. In that situation, I was called to submit myself to his jurisdiction.

Cultural Changes

This situation of legal authority is about the only picture of submission we have left in our society. Though it may not be particularly helpful when we think of a wife submitting to her husband, it does illustrate one principle. Just as the policeman was not "better" than I was, but was simply exercising the authority he had been delegated, so a husband is not "better" than his wife merely because he is in authority. She is no less a worthy human being than he, but authority is a part of his job, his identity and his calling.

I never hear or read the word "submission" any more. I imagine that the average person would give this word a negative connotation. Only wimps submit. The fulfilled person is strong, autonomous, and self-motivated.

When I attended Wellesley College, the feminist movement was gaining momentum. It was unheard of for a woman to announce that her chosen vocation would be marriage and motherhood. Since then, such attitudes about wives and mothers have spread until they are no longer the domain of the radical left, but the common opinions of society-at-large.

In this context even Christian women have difficulty adjusting to the apostle Paul's words to the Ephesians: "Wives, submit to your husbands in all things." Of course, some try to argue that Paul really means a less offensive, tit-for-tat submission, in which each party simply considers the other's needs. To bolster this point of view, some use Ephesians 5:21 which seems to imply a mutual, fifty-fifty submission that might slip unnoticed past the politically correct guardians of our culture.

But surely we sense the implied colon following that verse, in the context of the whole book. Paul follows the command to "submit one to another" with the ways in which we submit, namely wives to husbands, children to parents, slaves to masters (or in our society, employees to bosses). If Paul were only emphasizing a general principle of mutual submission, why should he enumerate specific cases? Had he wanted to illustrate the mutuality of the submission, he would have emphasized both sides of the issue by specifying "Slaves, submit to your masters as masters submit to their slaves. Husbands submit to your wives, as wives submit to their husbands. Parents submit to your children as children submit to their parents." On the contrary, this passage is revoltingly undemocratic.

So how does a Christian woman today live out this notion of submission? What does it entail?

Two Principles

Let's use two Pauline thought patterns to illuminate our discussion of submission. Perhaps if we can train ourselves to think a little more like the apostle Paul, we will understand what this submission should look like.

First of all, Paul gives us the principle of radical positive obedience. Some people have described this as putting off and putting on. Notice in Ephesians 4:28 that when Paul talks about stealing, he does not stop with the negative command, "Cease stealing." Rather, he tells us that in order to cease stealing, we should use our time working with our hands. Yet even this is not sufficient. The thief is to stop stealing, and to work in order to have something to give. So the negative behavior is stealing, the "neutral" behavior is working with one's hands, and the positive behavior is giving away one's belongings to others.

We see Paul use this same principle in relation to speech. It is not sufficient to stop lying, or even to be silent, but one must speak the truth with the goal of building someone up (Eph. 4:29). Likewise, we are not to be drunk, but we are to be filled with the spirit so that we can sing songs and spiritual songs under His control to the edification of Christ's body (Eph. 5:18-19).

The second Pauline principle that will help us understand submission is the parallel principle. Paul makes a strong and specific parallel between Christ's relationship with the church and the husband's relationship to his wife. The very reason for which God created men and women and the profound physical and spiritual union they experience in marriage is to teach them of Christ. All God's creational structures are to help us grasp His nature. He encourages us to learn of Christ and the church by what we know of the marriage relationship and also to apply what we know of Christ's union with his church to our marriages so that we can better understand how to love in the context of that union.

Let's apply these two Pauline ways of thinking to submission.

Radical Honor

Women who actively rebel against their husbands' authority, refusing to accept what God has placed in their lives for protection, are quite obviously not in submission. But, in light of radical positive obedience, it is not sufficient for such women merely to go into neutral. Submission is not a grudging or laissez-faire passivity. To obey Christ's command to submit, a wife must attempt to know the heart of her husband, to honor that heart, to come in line with its desires and joys, its instincts and its passions, and to align herself and her children with those desires and passions.

Not only must we wives not belittle our husbands, we must lift them up. Not only should we not refuse our bodies to them, but we are called to give of ourselves with joy. Not only should we not try to "to dominate him", but we should desire to increase his authority and respect in every way possible, whether in the eyes of our neighbors, our children, or our church friends. The famous Proverbs 31 passage shows a woman who uses her great initiative and creativity to control a sphere of influence given her by her husband, in order to bring honor to his name.

All Things Under One Head

A wife's submission to her husband should parallel the church's submission to Christ. The church's job is to learn to bring all things together under one head, even Christ (Eph. 1:10), and to allow her Savior to make her holy (5:26). We are to bring every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). We are to have our minds renewed (Rom 12:2), conforming them to the mind of Christ, our Savior. We are to be washed clean by the water of Christ's word (Eph 5:26). The church is to adopt Christ's heart.

A wife's job in submitting to her husband is far more than simply acquiescing when his will happens to cross hers, or allowing him to make decisions without objecting. A wife is to bring all things together under one head, her husband. In other words, in the sphere of her home, where her husband is head, she is to gather, collect, and submit all those things that are under her supervision (including her children!) to her husband's control.

I have been married for twenty-eight years. As I gradually understand the radical nature of submission, I also understand the depth of my own rebellion. Without the power and grace of Christ, the church cannot live up to the goal of bringing all things together under one head, that is, under Christ. Without the power and grace of Christ, I will never begin to bring all things in my home together under one head, that is, under my husband. But in my weakness I learn of Christ's strength. As I work at submitting to my husband and coming in line with his heart, even when I don't understand it, I am also helping to bring all things together under Christ. For the man is the head of the woman, Christ is the head of the man, and Christ will then lay all things at the feet of his Father when all things have been brought under his control (I Cor. 15:21-28).

So what is submission? It is whole-hearted participation in exalting one's husband and in lifting him up to glory and honor under Christ.

Without realizing the Biblical basis for her conclusion, one Wellesley graduate, having come to the brink of a second divorce, said, "I guess my first husband was right. It takes two people to make one success." God gave me to my husband to help him succeed in his task of bringing his family and home under the headship of Christ and in his job of preaching the gospel clearly. As children submit to their parents in the strength of the Lord, as employees submit to their bosses through the amazing power of the gospel, and as wives submit to their husbands, we all grow up together into him who is the head, that is Christ (Eph. 4:15). And we fill the whole universe with the knowledge of the glorious God of the gospel (4:10) who has loved us with an everlasting love.

By radically submitting to our husbands with joy, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christian wives participate not only in the original earthly mandate to fill the earth and to subdue it, but also in that greater heavenly mandate of God's church to show the "manifold wisdom of God...to the rulers and authorities" (Eph. 3:10) and to "attain the whole measure of the fulness of Christ" (4:13) in order to lift him up in glory, to "fill the whole universe" (4:10). How great and high is our calling, and what a selfless Savior we have to show us the way.