What Submission is Not: Marriage As Glory 30
INTRODUCTION:
Having looked at what headship is not, and what it really is according to Scripture, we now need to take a look at what submission is not. In this fallen world, glorious things are slandered and caricatured first, and sometimes the defenders of such things find themselves defending the caricature, and not the reality. So if we want to talk about submission and at all (and practice it), we have to begin by rejecting various errors about it.
THE TEXT:
And they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh” (Gen. 18: 9-15)
OVERVIEW:
There are a number of things we could draw from this passage, but we will limit ourselves to the points that the apostle Peter makes from it. Peter says that Sarah was one of the holy women of old, in submission to her own husband (1 Pet. 3:5). The apostle tells us that Sarah called her husband lord, but we should note that she was not be obsequious here or flattering—she called him lord in passing, and to herself. Peter goes on to say that if Christian women do well, and imitate Sarah, they will not be afraid with any amazement. It is interesting to note that in this passage, Sarah was afraid and denied having laughed at the incredible promise. But the Lord answered her, and said, “No, but you did laugh.” But we see later that Sarah conquered her fear (by faith), and she owned her laughter. “And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me” (Gen. 21: 6). Isaac means “he laughs.” It was a bumpy start, but Sarah conceived Isaac through faith. “Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11).
SUBMISSION IS NOT OPTIONAL:
Given the way that God has made the world, submission for women is not optional. They will be submissive. Just as we have seen that obedience or disobedience does not make headship go away, neither does obedience or disobedience make submission go away. Disobedience to the word of God means that submission is rendered with a bad grace, with a surley or quarrelsome disposition, or that it is rendered to the wrong men, or the wrong entities.
It is remarkable how many places in Scripture emphasize that women are to be submissive to their own husbands. What this means is liberation from having to submit to all the others. But if a young daughter leaves home because she does not want to submit to her father, she will soon be submitting to others, elsewhere, who do not have her interests at heart. And if a woman does not turn to her husband for protection (from sexual harassment, say), she will be turning to (and submitting to) some federal agency—a substitute father. Submission is inescapable. It is not a matter of whether women will be submissive, but rather to which men or entities she will be submissive.
SUBMISSION IS NOT ACADEMIC:
In a godly marriage, authority and submission ought not to be constantly noticed, but like the air around us, it is still important for all that. Scripture addresses this subject a lot, and so we have to take care to get it straight in our minds and hearts. Once it is straight, we can move on to not noticing. We are a conservative, evangelical, Reformed church. We have to guard against the temptation of thinking that just because we can say the word submission without blushing that this somehow means we live it. We must guard against the self-deception that James warns against (Jas. 1: 22). The conservative Christian world has no small number of big-time submission mamas who are anything but submissive.
SUBMISSION IS NOT CRAVEN OR SLAVISH:
Just as men submit to a Christ who shows them how, so women are to submit to Christian husbands who show them how. When this is the pattern, when this is the way it is done, submission follows the divine pattern. The one who humbles himself will be lifted up. A browbeaten wife is not a submissive wife. Biblically speaking, submission should bring to mind the concept of a very great and gracious lady. When a woman’s crown is placed at a man’s feet, the first thing he does is take it and place it on his head (Prov. 12: 4).
SUBMISSION IS NOT SILENT:
The pattern given to women in submission is the pattern of the Church to Christ. And what does Christ require of His bride? He wants to hear from her. “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Phil. 4: 6).
SUBMISSION IS NOT A BAD TESTIMONY:
Quite the reverse. More than once, the apostles link a right relationship of a wife to her husband to a good testimony before pagans. He does not say that this is the case in the first century only, or that such is a good testimony in a Greco/Roman setting. “. . . that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Tit. 2: 4-5).
SUBMISSION IS NOT UNITARIAN:
We have emphasized this before, but we have to keep reminding ourselves lest we slip back into understanding submission as coping with raw power. That is not it at all. Authority and submission is a dance, and not a fist fight. Moreover it is a dance grounded in the way things ultimately are, because this is the way our triune God ultimately is. The nature and majesty of God is clearly displayed through the things that are made (Rom. 1: 20). And one of the great things made, one of the great mysteries, is the way of a man with a maiden (Prov. 30: 19).