What does submission in marriage mean?
The verses in Scripture addressing wives and talking about submission are some of the most weaponized in the Bible. They’ve been used to tell women that it’s wrong to correct your husband (as Emerson Eggerichs does in Love & Respect); that you must obey your husband even when he’s wrong and is endangering the family, because God will reward you anyway (as Michael and Debi Pearl say); that you must stay in marriage even if you’re being abused (as John MacArthur said).
None of this is of Jesus, as I’ve been showing in the series on submission we’ve been doing, that I started looking at what it meant when Sarah was praised for obeying Abraham.
Today I want to finish it by talking about what submission means!
Our Sale for Our Whole Story Sex & Puberty Course ends tonight at midnight!
Our awesome online video-based course, where your kids hear the low-down on everything to do with sex and puberty, and then you get to finish those conversations, is on sale right now!
You get lifetime access to the course. And it helps you make sure your kids have all the info they need!
As one mom said today:
My husband just finished going through The Whole Story with our youngest son. I asked him what he thought, and he said he liked it and really enjoyed the questions his dad asked him (straight from the material). When I asked if he learned a lot, he said, “Yes! I learned everything. I didn’t know any of it before then.” It was the sweetest thing.
He’s right at the beginning stages of puberty so the timing was perfect. It warmed my heart that he hadn’t already picked these things up at school, but instead got to hear them in a healthy, God-honoring way. And the best part? He had absolutely zero shame or embarrassment talking to his mom about it. I’m sometimes blown away at the conversations I have with my kids, and how extremely different it is from my childhood.
Take advantage of the sale, and get it now!
Let’s look at some principles we can glean about submission in marriage from Scripture.
1. Everyone is to submit–submission isn’t just for women
Paul starts his conversation about marriage with the command “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:21). This command frames the entire rest of the passage, which then goes on to describe what this submission looks like in different contexts.
2. Wives are not called to obey
What does it mean to obey someone? It means to do what they say. They make the decision of what you should be doing, and you must go along with it. But this is not what Paul calls us to. There is a Greek word for obey, but Paul does not use it for women (and I talk in this post about Peter’s use of it in regards to Sarah). Paul only uses it for children.
Submission, then, is not about doing what the husband says, or letting him make the decisions. If that’s what the verse was about, (1) Paul would have used a different word; and (2) then submission in verse 21 makes no sense. How does EVERYBODY obey everybody else?
3. Men are called to submit too
Verse 21–submit to one another–applies to men as well as women. It could be argued that the entire passage is just about showing what submission looks like for different groups of people. The verb tense that Paul uses for wives isn’t actually a command; it’s more like “submit, as you have been doing…” So Paul is saying, “women, keep doing what you’re doing.”
But then he addresses men, and spends much more time there, showing that the way to get a Christian marriage to look like Christ at that period in history was for MEN to do something different. And what Paul explains men are to do–to give themselves up for their wives; to sacrifice and serve them–sounds like submission. He’s saying, “everyone submit. Here’s how women do it. And men–here’s how you need to do it!
4. Submission literally means to put oneself under
The Greek word is hypotasso. And this meaning is consistent with how Jesus’ mission and life is described.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
What did Jesus do, and what does He ask us to do? To serve one another. To be humble. To look out for the interests of others.
Again, this is not about authority, but rather about our attitudes towards one another. We are to want to serve and care for the other–all of us, together. That’s how Christian relationships are to work! It’s not a military formation with one in authority. Jesus Himself said we weren’t supposed to be about that or to pursue that. Jesus is our authority, and then we serve Him by serving each other.
How does all of this about submission fit together practically?
I love what Marg Mowczko had to say about this passage on submission (and you can listen to her on the Bare Marriage podcast here!).
“Another way of understanding “head” in Ephesians 5 is to recognise that it is part of a head-body metaphor signifying unity. (This is my preferred interpretation.) Unity between husband and wife, between head and body, is a theme in Ephesians 5, and in the three verses where the word “head” appears, the church and women are to grow in fullness and become like the head (Eph. 1:22-23; 4:15-16; 5:28-31).
The wife submits (acquiesces and cooperates) to promote this unity. The husband gives himself up for his wife, he effectively lowers himself to promote unity. But there’s more to it than that. Paul wanted husbands to love their wives as their own male bodies, which according to the social standards of ancient Roman times had a higher status than women’s bodies. By treating his wife as his own body, a husband was effectively lifting her up, and this further promoted unity and mutuality…
…Importantly though, submission isn’t just for wives. The Ephesians passage about husbands and wives is prefaced with a call for mutual submission (Eph. 5:21). And Christ-like, sacrificial love isn’t just for husbands. Chapter five of Ephesians opens with a general exhortation for all Christians to follow Jesus’ example and to love like Jesus loved (Eph. 5:1-2). A submissive attitude and loving behaviour, where each person prefers and honours the other, should be character traits of all Christians, regardless of gender or marital status.”
In other words, the call for wives to submit cannot be read in isolation from the call for husbands to also submit and sacrifice, because they all go together!
What does this mean for wives? What are we called to do?
Here’s my personal take: We are all called to submit to one another, but Paul does repeat this to women several times. So what does this mean for us?
It doesn’t mean subservience or obedience or decision-making. But it does mean a special attitude within the marriage relationship.
While we may bless everyone and serve everyone in the abstract, we’re asked specifically to do it for our husbands. So we may be kind to strangers, we may buy coffee for a co-worker, we may listen to a friend as she unburdens to us, but these things are largely done in the moment. God asks us, though, to be intentional about serving our husbands.
You can’t serve everyone in the same way. After all, we have limited energy and limited time. And God isn’t asking us to do everything for everybody. Our attitude towards everyone should be to serve and bless them, yes. But with our husbands–it goes beyond that. With them, we are to be intentional. We are the “suitable helper”, or “necessary ally”, as ezer kenegdo implies.
To me, that means making a plan. I can get easily get wrapped up in my work or in what I want to accomplish this week. But as I’m looking at my goals for the week, one of the first things I’m trying to train myself to ask is, “how can I be a help to Keith this week?” What does he have on this week that could be a stressor for him, and how can I help to alleviate that? What are his goals for this week–with health, with his spiritual life, with his work life–and how can I be a part of helping him meet those goals?
Even writing this I’m feeling convicted that I don’t know the answers to some of that (I don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish in his work life this week!). And I really should. Because your spouse is to be a special focus.
When we’re proactive, we pay attention to what’s happening in his life. More importantly, perhaps, we ask God to show us what He is doing in our husband’s life so that we can participate. We get excited about the things that excite him. We think about ways to bless him. We plan how to help him reach his goals.
That’s really the beauty of marriage, isn’t it?
That you have someone who walks through life with you and has your back. Who studies you. Who knows everything about you. Who willingly looks out for your interests over their own.
That you have someone who cares for you and makes plans on how to best help you. That’s beautiful. That’s partnership. And I think that’s what submission calls us to!
What do you think? What does submission look like to you?
And don’t forget to take advantage of our sale on The Whole Story–before it ends tonight at midnight!
Our Submission Series
- What does it mean to obey like Sarah?
- Does the way we talk about submission make marriage into an idol?
- In the case of ties, he wins--Is that what submission means?
- Are you following God or your husband?
- What does submission really mean?
You may also enjoy other posts on submission:
- The Marriage You Want--about the kind of marriages that thrive
- Keith's series on the Danvers Statement (the statement defending complementarianism)
- PODCAST: Are we making a strawman out of complementarianism?
- PODCAST: We sum up the Danvers Statement's issues!
The thief comes to kill steal and destroy but Jesus comes so all may have life abundantly. john 10:10
The words of the bible will always be used by the corrupt to justify their actions. The scriptures warn us do not separate what God has joined together.
When a man and woman are joined together by God in marriage they become one flesh, physically and spiritually.
When we try and make man over woman or woman over man we are falling into the trap of the enemy.
Husband and Wife are both made in the image of God and deserve respect and love equally. I 35yr old man, long for the Wife God has for me so I can show her the love of God through marriage, to show her love like Jesus loves the church and respect that she deserves.
Steven, thank you for reminding me of the John 10:10 verse. “The thief comes to steal and destroy . . .” This is what patriarchy does. It has stolen and destroyed so much, from both men and women. The fruit of this tree is rotten to the core. I’m grateful to have that verse brought to mind for me to ponder anew.
Thank you for sharing this! I really appreciate your take!
I commented on an earlier post about submission (September 15) that I had been really impressed by a blog I read a few years ago, but I could not remember the author’s name. Well, I’ve found it (and I did go back and add it to the comments on the Sept. 15 post, but by then I think most readers had moved on to more recent posts, so I will repeat it here). His name (it’s a pen name) is Stant Litore, and you can find this specific post at https://stantlitore.com/2018/06/25/misleading-translation-wives-submit/ or you can go to his website to find several other good posts as well as this one (and as well as information on his books: he’s an author). I am so impressed by him that I emailed him, and he kindly emailed me back and gave me a bit more information on his background in ancient languages. He learned Koine Greek from a Lutheran pastor and from a professor of Greek while working on his PhD, and like Marg Mowczko, he reads the psalms every day in their Koine Greek translation. I love his interpretation of “hypotasso” and how significant it is that Paul chooses to use a military term. He would translate it not as “wives, submit to your husbands” but as “wives, deploy yourself to go to battle to defend your husbands against the enemy.” As Sheila notes in this post, it is impossible for Paul to be telling us to all submit to one another in the sense of obey one another. If that were true, husbands would also have to obey wives, parents would have to obey their children . . . it makes no sense at all to translate “hypotasso” as “submit/obey,” but it makes good sense to translate it as “support and defend.” That is something we all can and should be doing for one another.
It also occurs to me that if we do take “hypotasso” to mean literally “to place oneself under” (and there are those who disagree — check out Jocelyn Andersen’s post at https://jocelynandersen.blogspot.com/2019/09/hypotasso-alignedarrayed-with-not.html in which she gives examples from the New Testament where “hypo” sometimes means “over” or sometimes “with”, not always “under”), then even that need not inevitably mean to make oneself subordinate to another. It doesn’t have to be about hierarchy. Isn’t that what we do when we bend over to pick up a toddler? We place ourself under him to lift him up. Isn’t that what God does when he says that “underneath are the everlasting arms”? So I take “hypotasso” to mean NOT “submit/obey” (which it cannot possibly mean) but “lift up, support, defend.” Then it makes sense for Paul to tell us all to do this for one another, and it makes sense for wives to do it for their husbands — and for husbands, equally, to do it for their wives, as Paul says.
That’s so good, Kristy! Thank you!
Not to be frivolous… have husbands and wives actually just tried being kind to each other and realising that they are in the same team?
I don’t think that the root of marital problems is lack of female subservience. It’s always going to be someone putting selfishness or cruelty above the well-being of their spouse. Hence Paul’s call for mutual submission: we have to squash the worst of ourselves for the higher good of our marriages. That sounds a lot like what God asks us to do in our daily lives: die to sin and selfishness.
If you’re a man and you need your wife to submit to stroke your own ego, are you really emulating Christ’s love for His church?
Amen, Jane!