Submission in Ephesians 5
If you are still convinced that you want to get married, then let’s continue on to what relationships look like with a husband and a wife. Ephesians 5:22-33 is a fantastic place to start. Paul did a masterful job of describing a man’s relationship to his wife and a woman’s relationship to her husband while at the same time speaking of the mystery of Christ and the church. Earlier in Ephesians 5 Paul listed out how we are to live:
Be Imitators of God
Live like Christ
Don’t participate in sexual immorality
Don’t joke about sexual immorality
Don’t be involved in any immorality
Bring darkness to light and seek to be like Christ
Be filled with the Spirit by:
Addressing one another with awesome songs
Giving Thanks to God
Submitting to one another out of the fear of the Lord.
Paul lists out how we are to live. Then he turns the corner and talks further about being filled with the Spirit. Having uplifting conversations with one another and giving thanks to God didn’t require much explanation. Submission did. Amazing how nothing has changed in 2000 years.
Paul brings to light three different relationships which show submission and a fear of the Lord. He brings out wives and husbands, parents and children, and slaves and masters. The latter two are in chapter 6 which we always assumed was the armor of God chapter and we skipped over verses 1-9 to get to the good stuff. Admit it, you’ve done that. Especially about slaves, because you didn’t think that it applied. But reality is some of you are working harder than a slave putting in 70-80 hour weeks.
These are clear relationships where submission to the one person is like submission to the Lord. The welfare of the submitter is then put into the hands of the one that is in control, much like the Lord who is in control of our lives ultimately. Some people try to say that the word submit doesn’t really mean submit. The word submit comes from the Greek word, Ὑποτασσόμενοι which means to subject oneself to another. It was a military term talking about to voluntarily subject oneself to another. That is what happens in the military. When you sign up, you subject yourself to a system that has structure.
Now in Greek, you can borrow a verb from the previous sentence and infer it into the following sentence. We do it in English sometimes, but here is how it looks word for word.
Verse 21 Ὑποτασσόμενοι (submitting to) ἀλλήλοις (one another) ἐν (in) φόβῳ (fear/reverence) Χριστοῦ (to Christ),
Verse 22 αἱ (the) γυναῖκες (wives) τοῖς (the) ἰδίοις (one’s own) ἀνδράσιν (husband) ὡς (as) τῷ (the) κυρίῳ (Lord)
A lot of us grew up reading a Bible that divided verse 21 from verse 22. But in reality they aren’t. Verse 21 sets up the submission piece as how to live in the Spirit. You will have three ways to do this. With your spouse, with your parents/kids, and with your boss/subordinates. Those three relationships everyone will have to deal with. Wives, children, and slaves were to obey their respective God ordained leader as obeying Jesus himself. The thought of obeying anyone other than Jesus like they were Jesus is kind of ridiculous. But that shows faith. To put faith in Christ that obeying a person who may mistreat you is evidence of faith lived out. A reliance on the Lord is being truly expressed. When we look out for our own welfare, the Lord is taken out of the picture.
In verses 22-24, Paul talks to the wives.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 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. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Not much wiggle room here for those that want to take “obey” out of their vows. These verses make a lot of women nervous, but the reality is that these verses should make men nervous. Think about how much responsibility a man has to lead his wife well. Her role is to submit to his authority and be his helpmate. The success and failure of this dance is all on the man. She follows his lead.
Many scholars have argued that Paul here doesn’t really mean “everything.” They note that Sapphiaras should not have sinned with her husband Annanais and her death proved that. However, when we start to say that wives should only obey their husbands when they are godly, how will they ever know when they are to obey. You might as well command women to obey their husbands except when they are PMSing because, well, no woman can be held accountable for that.
What if a woman marries an abusive husband that beats his wife to a pulp. In the US alone, this happens a lot. The woman marries a man and then finds herself a victim. Many times the man’s issues could have been seen before marriage, but the emotion swept them away and then the wife wakes up one day with a black eye and pounding headache wondering who exactly it was that she married.
The hypothetical lists that can be created are endless and for many women they aren’t hypothetical. Every now and then a husband gets beat by his wife. No, I’m not kidding, I’ve counseled that couple as well. So how do we handle it when a woman is getting persecuted by her own husband. How do we handle it when her husband is sinning against her? The Bible actually does get into this. In Matthew 5, the beatitudes describe how the woman is to react to her enemy. Matthew 18 describes how to handle a believer who is sinning against another believe. The community of believers, the church, is that woman’s protector in the case of an abusive relationship. That is why it is so important for couples to live in community. So if a husband sins against the wife, she brings his sin to him and if he repents then she forgives him. If he doesn’t repent then she brings in one or two others from her church, and if he still doesn’t repent, she takes him before the church. And if he still doesn’t repent, then he is treated like an unbeliever and the husband and wife stay separated until the church sees genuine repentance. That is how that is handled.
I only went into that because sometimes people are so worried about draconian men who are going to use the Bible to get the woman to submit. The great thing about using the Bible to get the wife to submit is that the same Bible can be used for the man to submit to his pastor in separating him from his wife for a while for him to treat his wife appropriately. Paul wasn’t naïve when he wrote this. He had scripture before him and the process for handling sin wasn’t vague, because people lived in community and the mega church wasn’t quite around. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mega church and am a member of one. But when you go to church to hear a sermon, but don’t get involved in a smaller group of people who know your dirty laundry then what you have is a rock concert with an uplifting message. That isn’t church. I know that might rub people the wrong way, but we all agree that the church isn’t a building, so let’s settle the issue that church isn’t a worship service.
Notice that Paul doesn’t give her anything else to do and limits his challenge to the woman to do one thing: Submit like the church submits to Jesus.
Paul turns his attention to husbands in verses 25-30.
We will continue on that thought on the next blog.
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