Submissive Wives

Ephesians 5:22-24

In the context of all Christians submitting to one another, wives are given the special challenge of submitting to their husbands.

Familiarity can breed contempt. Christian wives make a conscious choice to submit to their husbands as they submit to Christ… out of reverence for Christ.

Your husband may not always (or often) deserve this. Do it anyway.

Rear Naked Choke Hold

Logan is learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Wrestling for position, trying to get the right leverage to get a submission hold.

Once someone has a hold on you, they have power over you. Control. They can cause you excruciating pain, or cut off the blood to your head, or snap your arm at the elbow… and you have to submit.

You tap out.

You acknowledge the others hold on you, their power over you

He outranks me. I voluntarily submit to his authority.

Wives, Submit to Your husbands

Let’s close in prayer.

This is a charged phrase and a charged verse. It has been used and misused to abuse and mistreat. There is a book “Battered into Submission: The Tragedy of Wife Abuse in the Christian Home”

A book of that title should not exist, and it plays upon these famous verses.

Why must a wife submit to their husband? Why pick on the wife? What about equality? What about “neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female…” in Christ?

You Outrank Me

Ephesians 5:22-24

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Defining Submit

A military or organizational term. To arrange one’s self “under”. To “submit yourself” has this reflexive sense, you are placing yourself under the authority of another. This is why I use this phrase.

You outrank me. To submit yourself to look at someone else and say “you outrank me.”

The Opposite - Self Absorption

The opposite of voluntary submission: self-absorption.

You want to see all thought of others disappear? Just hurt me. Stab me in the side and my world may collapse down to that point and that pain and I want it to stop. It becomes all about me.

When there is something I am excited about, it can become all about me.

If there is something I am worried about, it can be all about me.

So, wives submit to your husbands. Look at your husband and say “you outrank me.” Elevating his thoughts, desires, needs above your own.

The Context – Holy Spirit filled, submitting to one another

The context of wives submitting to husbands does not start with wives, but instead borrows the word from the previous verse. In fact (I have mentioned this before) the verb “submit yourselves” doesn’t even appear in verse 22, it is borrowed from the previous verse “submitting to one another”

So wives submitting to husbands cannot mean something different than mutual Christian submission.

The context is this: being filled with the Holy Spirit leads to our response in these ways: singing to each other, singing to God, giving thanks, and submitting to one another…

Then it telescopes in to specific human relationships among us, it’s going to go from one to another…

And “so wives to your husbands…”

Ephesians 5:18b-21

but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Parallel – Philippians 2:3-4

We get a further sense of this pattern of behavior in Philippians.

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Super Practical – Super Hard

The idea of “submitting to one another” might be easy… until you start to get down to details. And then it gets messy.

Submit to the guy next to you as the church submits to Jesus! Here’s the problem: you super know that he isn’t Jesus! You have seen him super-not-be-Jesus. He has done stupid stuff. Sinful stuff. Made dumb decisions. Led in bad directions. Failed to lead in any directions.

And I know all of this intimately, because I am a husband myself. And I know I’m not Jesus!

So you, wives, are given this special practical application. Submit to one another… start with the guy you are married to.

Christ as the Head

Now what about this business of “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church?”

A few things to consider.

This is would not have been a cultural battle at the time. This was the expected phrase. What is coming to husbands is the radical counter-cultural punch. So Paul is setting up what is about to come by saying something culturally expected. The old one-two.

Further, Paul is going to build on the metaphor of marriage to say something theologically about the nature and interaction of Christ and the Church. So the weight of the passage here at the end of chapter 5 is a surprising challenge to husbands and a profound mystery regarding Christ and the church and very little focus on women.

Even more important, there is no command to ANYONE to submit women to their husbands. Husbands, it does not say to make sure your wife submits to you. At times I wish it did. You have your own challenge. You don’t submit your wife. If you start turning those verbs around you will not like what happens next week. She will sacrifice you for her sake.

Husbands, do not submit your wives!

Paul might be referencing an eternal hierarchy in marriage where the “headship” of the man carries authority and leadership in a special way. You can’t get there on this verse alone, for sure.

But we actually do not need to decide “my marriage will be structured as an egalitarian hierarchy…” if husbands and wives obey the challenges given to each of them respectively, God’s will for your marriage will emerge.

Your eye is not on the nature and structure of society. We will talk more about how Paul challenges culture and society in a couple weeks when we talk about slaves and masters. Paul is subversive.

Submit yourselves to one another. You outrank me.

This week we especially focus on you wives. Look at your husband. In humility, consider him more than yourself. Put his concerns and needs before your own. Follow him as you follow Christ, even as you know he isn’t Christ, even as you both know that God still outranks you both and His will takes ultimate precedence.

The Rest of Us

What about the rest of us, the most of us, who are not wives? We see in microscopic detail the example of wives to their husbands that mutual submission we are all to practice towards one another. Submit yourselves to one another. You outrank me.

That is easy to say in general… hard to do in specific. So, for the most of us who are not wives. This week pick someone in specific. Someone you know well. You know them well enough to know that they certainly aren’t Jesus. You see them often enough that submitting to them will be a daily challenge. And consider them more highly than yourself. You outrank me. Your opinion matters to me more… your decisions matter to me more… your emotions matter to me more… I think about you more…

What about protection?

Is that safe? What if your husband is wrong? What if he is crazy? God’s will trumps all, so you can consider your husband as above yourself, take his higher opinion into account, then take God’s highest opinion into account.

What about equality?

Better than Equality – Community in Mutual Submission

Equality: everyone has rights. Everyone is equal. Everyone defends their rights and their space.

Mutual submission: everyone outranks everyone else. You are putting their needs before your own… but that’s okay because they are placing your needs before their own. So needs are being met. Wants are being exceeded. People are being loved and blessed.

We are called to something better than equality: mutual submission. In our community. In our marriages.

That sounds like a Christmas movie. It sounds a little bit like Communism. It sounds impossible and idealistic. And it is… unless there is divine intervention involved. Unless there is God Himself at play.

Unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and that is the context in which we are called. This is his eternal life now, the Kingdom among us, the fruit of the Holy Spirit growing on and in us.

Welcome to church. That is what we are called to.

Let us love one another. Let us submit to one another in response to the filling of the Holy Spirit within us.