EPHESIANS 5:22-24 - Subject to Christ

Introduction

How many people remember taking “Home Ec” in high school? I’m not sure if they teach “Home Economics” anymore; I suspect that it has been deemed too politically incorrect, and possibly illegal...) Teaching cooking, sewing, nutrition, budgeting and basic home management is considered a waste of time (and budget) compared with the perceived need for teaching college prep courses and the growing stigma in our society against the so-called “gender stereotypes” of “women’s work”. No one wants to pay property taxes to the school district to teach their daughter to become “nothing more than a housewife!”

But this is because we have in large part lost sight of what a household is. People think of their homes now as a place to go to relax or rest after work; a place of recreation or leisure. At the same time there is a decay in the understanding of what makes a home: A married man and woman raising children together is not only a rarity these days; in some circles it is actually considered offensive.

But this was not always the case—you may remember in the not too distant past when politicians used to say things like how “the family is the basic building block of civilization”. But if you really want to understand the foundational importance of the household, you need to go back to the ancient Greeks and Romans—in fact, in Paul’s day the ideal of the household was widely seen as the absolute foundation of all society.

Imagine living in a world where there are no companies to work for, no hospitals or schools, no supermarkets or department stores, no police or paramedics or fire departments. In a world like that, the household provided for all of those things. (In fact, the Greek word for household was oikonomia—where we get our word economics!)

Ancient Greco-Roman households functioned somewhat like a completely self-sufficient settlement: The husband and father was the head of the whole operation, but shared important duties of running the operation with his wife, and then as they grew into it, their children. They also had hired servants who helped work the fields and maintained the property. (Perhaps the closest modern equivalent we have today would be something like a working cattle ranch in Montana). Everyone had a role to play and duties to perform in order to maintain the household and ensure that it would sustain them. If they did not, the entire household could collapse and endanger all of them.

In the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul has been demonstrating what we have been calling “God’s blueprint for living”—the new reality that has been ushered in by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and its impact on every aspect of our lives.

Throughout the book, Paul has used the metaphor of a household to describe God’s plan for the world in Christ:

Ephesians 1:9–10 LSB

making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him for an administration [oikonomia] of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in Him.

Ephesians 3:1–2 LSB

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— if indeed you heard of the stewardship [oikonomia] of God’s grace which was given to me for you;

Ephesians 3:8–9 LSB

To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for all what is the administration [oikonomia] of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;

The book of Ephesians is the description of the reign of Christ over the cosmos—all things in heaven and earth are summed up in Him. And beginning here in Ephesians 5:22, right on through Ephesians 6:9, the Apostle Paul takes and overlays that description of the household of God onto the life of the Christian household. Paul covers the relationship of wives to husbands (5:22-33), children to their parents (6:1-3) and servants to their masters (6:4-9)—each of these areas is an opportunity to demonstrate the supremacy of the reign of Christ over all things. This is why, as soon as Paul is finished describing the Christian household, he immediately begins describing spiritual warfare against cosmic powers of wickedness in the heavenly places!

The message of Ephesians is something absolutely mind-blowing—the Christian household is the means by which Christ will conquer the cosmos! Is it any wonder, then, that Satan has been doing everything he can to destroy the very concept of the household? If he can sabotage the Christian household, he will spike one of the biggest guns arrayed against him!

And so we are going to take the next few weeks to work carefully through Paul’s household code here in Ephesians, and we are going to start where he does—with a wife’s relationship to her husband:

Ephesians 5:22 LSB

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

And right away we come to the site of some of Satan’s most spectacular tactical victories in his cosmic war against the rule of Christ—weakening the household by making everyone (including everyone in this room) wince a little bit when this verse is read out loud. (And if that’s not enough to make you flinch, Paul reinforces it again in Verse 33:

Ephesians 5:33 LSB

Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

If the Enemy can bring discord and distrust between husband and wife, then he can bring down a household. And a Christian home that is divided with disrespect and selfish pride is no threat to him. And so as we consider these verses this morning, what we find here is that

A godly wife FIGHTS FAITHFULLY for Christ as she seeks to SUBMIT to her HUSBAND

In order to understand what this faithful fight looks like in the Christian household, the first thing we need to do is address

I. The SATANIC LIES about submission

Immediately in Verse 22 we have the first response to Satan’s lie that godly submission means that all women are expected to submit to all men. But that is not the truth about the submission God’s Word is calling for here—

It is not UNIVERSAL (v. 22a)

Ephesians 5:22 LSB

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

The duty of a Christian wife in a Christian marriage is to submit to her husband. This verse immediately follows from the command to “be subject to one another in the fear of Christ”—in fact, the word “subject” (or submitting in the ESV) isn’t even found in Verse 22, it is an extension of Paul’s thought in Verse 21. It literally reads, “being subject to one another in the fear of Christ—wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord...” Paul is making a direct connection here to show that submission isn’t just for women to their husbands, it is the duty of every Christian to defer to one another in respect and submission, to be subject to each other. Sisters, you have a particular calling to submit to your husband, just as he has a calling to submit—to those in authority over him and ultimately to Christ.

Satan has successfully spread the lie that submission means that every woman has to submit to every man. But godly submission is not universal. And in the rest of verse 22 we learn that

It is not CONDITIONAL (v. 22b-23)

Ephesians 5:22–23 LSB

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.

The reign of Christ in the cosmic household He has established demonstrates that He is the head of all things:

Ephesians 1:9–10 LSB

making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him for an administration of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in Him.

Just as there is no debate in a healthy, Biblical church as to whether it should submit to Christ’s headship, so there should be no debate on the part of a faithful Christian wife as to her relationship to her husband. As she faithfully submits to Christ, part of His will for her is to faithfully submit to her husband.

And this is the point at which you might be thinking, “Well, sure, I desire to submit to Christ, but it’s easy to give Him my submission—my husband, on the other hand, isn’t quite as Christlike as he should be...”

There are a couple of things to consider at this point. First of all, there is nothing in this verse that says that your husband’s incomplete submission to Christ gives you a pass to disrespect or refuse to honor him. Two wrongs still don’t make a right. And secondly: If you are waiting for your husband to improve his submission to Christ before you will consider respecting him, ask yourself if your own submission to Christ is as complete as all that? You are both being called to faithfulness, and it is simply not optional.

The submission you are called to, Christian wife, is not universal—you are not expected to submit to every man everywhere—and it is not conditional. You are not allowed to withhold your obedience to Christ until your husband has reached the level of sanctification you deem sufficient before you begin respecting him.

And the third lie of Satan that we have to clear up about submission is that

It is not INFERIORITY (cp. Luke 2:51-52)

The word that is used for “subject to” or “submit to” in these verses is actually a military term that is most often used outside Biblical Greek to describe submitting to a superior officer. There is no sense in which two men—a sergeant and a lieutenant, for instance—are necessarily superior or inferior to one another as men, but one of them, for the sake of the effectiveness of their unit and accomplishing their objectives, has to submit to the other.

The same thing is true in all kinds of situations—a nurse submits to a doctor, a salesman submits to a manager, a motorist submits to a traffic cop. The fact is, submission and authority is simply hardwired into the way the world works, and no amount of screeching about “the patriarchy” is going to change that!

Sister in Christ, being called to submit to your own husband in the Christian household does not make you inferior to your husband! It is the way that God has ordained that the household functions, and it is reflected in God’s household by the relationship of the Church to her head, Jesus Christ:

Ephesians 5:24 LSB

But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

There is one other thing to note about the Bible’s teaching on submission that is instructive for us here. I mentioned earlier that the Scriptures uses the word “submit” in several places. There is one in particular that I want to point out. Keep your place in Ephesians 5, and turn with me to Luke 2:51. This is immediately after Luke’s account of Jesus’ parents finding Him in the Temple and scolding Him for upsetting them—

Luke 2:48 LSB

When they saw Him, they were astonished, and His mother said to Him, “Child, why have You treated us this way? Behold, Your father and I have been anxiously searching for You.”

A few verses later, Luke tells us that Jesus

Luke 2:51 LSB

...went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection [there’s our word] to them, and His mother was treasuring all these things in her heart.

Do you see it? If Jesus Christ, the perfect, sinless Son of God in human flesh, could willingly submit to sinful parents who were so ignorant of God’s purpose for Him that they scolded Him for speaking in the Temple—if He could submit to them, then you can submit to your fellow sinner of a husband.

Sisters in Christ, the fight you are fighting for the reign of Christ in your homes is to fight against the Satanic lies that surround God’s call to reflect the relationship of the Church to Christ by your godly submission to your husband. But the world is not made up of propositions and axioms, is it? It is made up of people, who are all broken and bent and fallen in one way or another. This call to submit to Christ by submitting to your husband is one thing when both of you are fully committed to Christ and both seeking to walk by the renewed mind of the New Birth and not in the old futility of mind of the world.

It is enough of a challenge to practice godly submission when two children of God are loving Him and loving one another—but what about the believing wife whose husband isn’t even a believer—when he is not submitting to Christ at all? How can a godly wife fight faithfully for Christ by submitting to her husband when he has no interest whatsoever in being a godly husband?

Consider with me for a few moments the encouragement that God’s Word has for you about

II. The SPIRITUAL POWER of submission

Turn with me to 1 Peter 3—it’s on page XXX of the pew Bible. The Apostle Peter is giving his own version of a household code for his readers, and he speaks specifically to wives with husbands who do not believe:

1 Peter 3:1–2 LSB

In the same way, you wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, as they observe your pure conduct with fear.

See what the Scriptures tell you about your godly submission here, sister—

It is EVANGELISTIC (cp. 1 Peter 3:1-2)

As one commentary puts it:

For a Christian wife to have a different religion than her husband was quite astonishing for that culture. For example, the Greek historian Plutarch (c. a.d. 46–127) said, “A wife should not acquire her own friends, but should make her husband’s friends her own. The gods are the first and most significant friends. For this reason, it is proper for a wife to recognize only those gods whom her husband worships” (Advice to Bride and Groom 19, Moralia 140D). (Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 2409). Crossway Bibles.)

In the same way, a Christian wife today does not honor the same standards as her unbelieving husband—he walks according to the futility of the old darkened mind, she walks as a child of light in Christ’s wisdom. But Peter says that her walk is never to be disrespectful or demeaning; she is not to make snide remarks under her breath about his sleeping in on Sunday, for instance. Instead, when her husband sees her kindness, generosity, faithfulness and respect for him even though he knows he doesn’t deserve it—this is a powerful proclamation of the grace of God in the Gospel to an unbelieving husband.

Now, of course this is not to say that a believing wife is expected to submit to a husband who is actively harming her—an abusive man who is endangering his wife’s safety or that of her children is not what Peter has in view here. Such a man has violently broken the terms of the marriage covenant, and there is nothing in Peter’s words here or the rest of Scripture that suggests a woman in an abusive or dangerous environment should just “submit and take it.” What Peter has in view here is a woman who has come to faith in Christ while her husband is still worshipping other gods, but who is nonetheless willing to remain married to her and loving her and committing himself to her in his own way. Peter is writing about the quiet respect and support of a wife who loves her unsaved husband and desires to see him submit to Christ.

It is often said and taught regarding godly submission in the household that of course a wife must submit to Christ first, and if that submission to Him makes it impossible to submit to her husband’s sinful or wicked demands, then she must submissively refuse to submit to his pressure to sin. To be sure there are Christian women in that predicament, but to be honest, that is not where the problem usually lies.

And for this reason, it is important to understand that godly submission is not only evangelistic for your unsaved husband,

It is SANCTIFYING (cp. Gen. 3:16)

for you!

The chief difficulty of godly submission is not how to submit to a wicked and unbelieving husband who is forcing you to sin against God. The presenting issue is usually more along the lines of the aforementioned snide comments under your breath; the disapproving glare when his language turns foul; the tendency to speak unkindly or harshly about him to your Christian friends; the quiet judgmentalism that you allow to silently grow in your own heart in your self-satisfaction with your upright Christian walk compared to his unbelief.

And to be fair, those are temptations that are not unique to the wife of an unbelieving husband, are they? Because these temptations to sin against your husband go all the way down—to the Garden of Eden itself:

Genesis 3:16 LSB

To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain and conception, In pain you will bear children; Your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”

The desire to usurp your husband’s role as Eve did—she did not submit to Adam’s headship, but instead took the initiative away from him and decided to eat the fruit of the Tree that God commanded them not to eat. She took matters into her own hands; she did not wait for her husband to defend her from the Serpent’s lies (though as we will see next week Adam sinned as well in not taking the initiative, but abdicated his role to protect her), she decided to rule over him in that moment, and since then every one of her daughters has done the same (and desired to do the same) with their husbands right on down to the present day.

When women sin, they sin in distinctly feminine ways. And in the context of a marriage, feminine sins take on forms of usurping their husband’s role in the home. By browbeating him or constantly criticizing him; by pouting or refusing to speak to him; by shaming him or humiliating him before others; by tearing him down behind his back or betraying his confidence; by silently keeping a record of every time he disappointed you or disciplined the kids differently than you wanted; by holding grudges over times when he really did sin against you and using that list of grudges to justify every unkind thought and harsh word that comes out of your mouth toward him.

But, dear sister—you have the mind of Christ! You have the mind of Him Who submitted Himself to sinful parents even though He had the absolute right to disregard their headship because of their sin. You have the mind of the One Who laid aside all of His rights and privileges of Deity in order to be mocked and shamed and beaten and spit upon and ridiculed and exposed and publicly tortured by wicked, evil men so that He could redeem your never-dying soul from eternal damnation!

In short, the only way to escape from that desire to lord over your husband, dear sister, is to die to yourself and live in the New Birth. To walk in the steps of your Savior and love Him by loving your husband with sacrificial love and godly respect; to demonstrate the forgiveness you have received for your offenses against God through Christ by freely and fully forgiving your brother in Christ; to die to your own pride and self-will and submit to Christ’s will, even as your husband seeks to die to his pride and self-will and submit to Christ.

Dear sister, when you seek to grow in your holiness by obeying Christ’s call to submit to your husband, it means that you are seeking to die daily to yourself and live for Christ in your marriage. And because Christ has risen from the dead, that means that the entire Christian life is one of dying and rising. Everything that falls into the ground and dies is raised back up. Everything that is mortified is resurrected. Everything that you sacrifice is transformed—including your relationship to your husband. The submission that you offer him in obedience to Christ is evangelistic, it is sanctifying, and

It is REDEEMING (cp. Eph. 5:32)

Godly submission offered in obedience to Christ to your husband doesn’t turn you into a doormat, and it does not turn your husband into a tyrant. Obedience to God’s commands never brings a curse; submission to Christ always brings blessing. And the blessing that attends your faithful obedience in this matter is that respect for your husband will bring about respectability in him. Godly respect will not make a Christian man say, “Well, now I can become really disreputable!” Think about it: If your husband is loving and cherishing you as Christ loves and cherishes His Bride the church, does his godly Christlike love for you make you want to become less lovely to him?

In the same way your godly respect toward your husband will be blessed by Christ in his growing respectability in his role as the head of the household that God has established in your marriage. As you lay down your life for him, he will lay down his life for you because Christ has already laid down His life for both of you. The futility of the old darkened mind cannot comprehend this—as Paul writes in Verse 32:

Ephesians 5:32 LSB

This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

Dear sister, what does Christ become to His church when she submits to Him in joyful obedience? Has he become a tyrant to her? Has He left her undefended against her foes? Has He degraded her or ridiculed her? Has His affection for her grown cold because she has humbled herself before Him? As His church gathers before Him every Lord’s Day here in this place to submit to His Word, has our Head ever failed to feed, nourish, cleanse and strengthen us? Nor will He ever fail to do so. If the Head of the Church is faithful to love and sanctify and cleanse us, then can He possibly fail to do the same through the head of your Christian household?

Dear sister, try Him in this and see if He will not show Himself faithful! Lay aside the resentment, the score-keeping, the emotional manipulation, the constant second-guessing and criticism, be done with the habit of tearing him down behind his back, whether to your friends or in the privacy of your own heart.

Instead, make it your aim to pray diligently for him—for just as your great task and duty in the war for the cosmos is to lay aside your self-will and submit to him in the fear of Christ, his great task is to lay aside his self will and submit to Christ as well! And pray diligently for yourself that you might trust in Christ even as you are learning to trust your husband.

And if in God’s providence you find yourself belonging to a household whose head is not obedient to the Word; if your husband is not a believer, you are not released from this great duty—you have the added joy of laboring in the harvest field for your husband’s soul. Not by constant preaching or shaming; not by badgering him over his unbelief, but by laying down your life for him as Christ laid down His life for you. This is where I believe St. Francis of Assisi’s famous statement fits best—in your marriage to an unbeliever, sister, “Preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words!”

By your genuine love and affection and ordered loyalty—to Christ first and always, and then to you husband in everything else—you have been given the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel in your grace and mercy and kindness and respect and support and submission. And it may be the day will come when his heart is turned in repentance and faith to Christ because of the life he sees in you!

Only be sure, beloved, that you never try to do this in your own strength. Be sure that there is no power within your own flesh to submit in a godly way to anyone, let alone to your husband. Godly submission to your husband is impossible for you unless you have first submitted yourself to Christ in salvation. There is no way to lay aside your own pride or anger or bitterness or anxiety or unbelief or the brokenness and hurt of your past unless it has been put to death with Christ on the Cross. In His humiliation and death He suffered far beyond anything you could possibly bear, and He offers you not only the cleansing and forgiveness and freedom from your guilt and sin, He offers you His perfect righteousness and He offers you His own strength to submit to Him in everything—even submission to your husband.

So, dear sister, take up your role in the great war for the cosmos. Let your obedience to God’s Word draw you toward your duty in the most powerful weapon for the Kingdom ever established—the Christian household—as you seek to faithfully submit yourself to your husband even as you both submit yourself to the One under Whom all things are being subjected—your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Jude 24–25 LSB

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

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