What Submission Is: Marriage As Glory 31

INTRODUCTION:

We now come to look at what submission actually is. We have been careful to avoid distortions of this teaching because in our generation it is both embraced and rejected wrongly.

THE TEXT:

“For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man” (1 Cor. 11:7)

OVERVIEW:

Although this is not a definition in the modern “dictionary sense,” it is a definition. And notice what we learn—the woman is the glory of the man. The apostle Paul is choosing his language very carefully here. He says that man is the image and glory of God, but he does not say that woman is the image and glory of man. This is because Genesis is very clear that man and woman together constitute the image of God. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27). It would be a grievous error to hint that women were not fashioned in the image of God just as the men are. But star differs from star in glory (1 Cor. 15: 40-41), and the glory of the sun and moon are not the same. Glory ascends and descends—and that is its glory. Glory bows and glory curtsies. Glory shines and glory reflects. Glory empties and glory fills. Glory ascends in the Shekinah column, and glory descended into the virgin’s womb. Glory is anything but domesticated or predictable.

RETURN TO THE DANCE:

When we were considering what submission is not, the relation of authority and submission was compared to a dance, not a fist fight. It is not a competition. No gentleman bows to a lady after a dance and then says, “Beat you.” And although the man leads in the dance, the result of his leading is to showcase his lady. This is because he is dancing with his glory, and the last thing in the world he should want to do is upstage his glory. It would make no sense. “Stop looking at my glory! Look at me.”

SUBMISSION IS GROWTH INTO GLORY:

We have seen that the Scriptures teach women in multiple places that they are to be submissive to their own husbands. As forgiven sinners, they are being taught to reassume the position that their mother Eve forfeited through being deceived, and which their father Adam lost for them through his rebellion against the word of God. Before the Fall, certain motions between husband and wife were just natural, normal, right, and effortless. After the Crash, all of us who are redeemed in Christ are going through intensive “physical therapy” in order to relearn some of these fundamental motions. Just like a victim of an automobile accident who has to learn how to use a spoon again, so men have to learn how to take responsibility and women have to learn how to submit. And it can be exasperating to have to be told the same thing by your therapist ten times in a day. Exasperating but worth it.

But do not become so consumed with the details of the therapy that you forget the point. The point is restoration. Now submission (rightly understood) is this motion of feminine response to a masculine husband. And what is the wife to that husband? She is his glory. And so learning how to respond to him is growing up into glory. If a woman is a man’s glory, learning to respond as a woman is learning to be glorious.

THREE ASPECTS OF THIS GLORY:

In the passage that follows our text, the apostle Paul gives us three characteristics of women that help us understand what this glory involves. The first of the three is that woman is “from the man” (v. 8). She is his glory because God created Eve from Adam’s side (Gen. 2:21). The second is that she was created “for the man” (v. 9). This depends on Gen. 2:18, where God created a helper for man that was suitable for him. And third, woman is the glory of man because every man with a wife is a man with a mother (vv. 11-12).

So glory involves being “from the man,” “for the man,” and “the mother of men.”

FROM THE MAN:

In Scriptures, origins are always important. The fact that woman was after the man (and from the man) is the reason why, today, we are not to have women who are elders or pastors (1 Tim. 2:13). The origin of woman is not some tidbit of “ancient history,” or an irrelevant detail. It is a design feature with continuing relevance. The God who created the human race in that way continues His work today in how He has fashioned every man and woman here. This means that a woman who embraces her derivative glory in this is embracing wisdom.

FOR THE MAN:

Two basic questions are these: where did I come from? where am I going? The fact that woman is from the man answers the first. The fact that she was created “for the man” answers the second. Notice (not that I have to tell you to) that this kind of organic interdependency is mortally offensive to the autonomous, individualistic, and atomized spirit of the age. What should a woman’s orientation be? Toward her husband—she was created to be his helper. But we are making a point far beyond this. When a woman is oriented this way, she is her husband’s glory, and not her husband’s drudge.

MOTHER OF MEN:

The apostle Paul knew the sinful heart of men, and he knew that the first two things mentioned here could easily be twisted by men into a vainglorious way of disparaging women. Men are not autonomous any more than women are (vv. 11-12). If it is important that the first woman came from the first man, it is also important (obviously) that every man since, from Cain on down, has been born of a woman. And to anchor the point for all time, our Lord Jesus was born of a woman.

THE WAY GOD GAVE IT:

And so a woman’s derivation is her glory. Her task is her glory. Her fertility is her glory. Remember always that distinction and mutual indwelling are Trinitarian realities. Independence and autonomy are Trinitarian heresies. Denying origins and refusing assigned tasks are Trinitarian heresies as well. Receiving what God gave, the way God gave it, is godly gratitude to the triune God who made us all.