Many preachers would probably prefer to avoid today's passage if at all possible. The idea of submission isn't particularly popular in today's world.
In fact, when the Southern Baptist Convention issued a newly revised declaration in June of 1998 that included a special section on marriage and family life, one phrase was extracted from the message and trumpeted all over the media as proof that the Southern Baptists desired to keep women "in their place" and subservient. That phrase stated that a wife should "submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." Well, we can't just throw the passage out because we don't like this particular interpretation. If this is God's word to us, we'd better find out what his intended meaning is, even though ours is an age of liberation. Out age is so in love with liberation, in fact, that in a book on feminist theology I am currently reading for my doctorate, one of the writers states that Scripture must be subordinate to women's experience, and not the other way around. [Stephen E. Fowl, The Theological Interpretation of Scripture, p. 57] His point is that the mere fact that Scripture speaks to us through a patriarchal culture renders all its wisdom about the nature of relationships between men and women invalid.
The idea of submission to authority is completely incompatible with modern ideas of permissiveness and freedom. So anything that even hints of oppression is deeply resented and strongly resisted. So how do we respond to this modern mood?
Well, the first thing to say is that Christians belong on the side of those who seek freedom from exploitation and injustice. We should be against whatever attitudes, practices, or institutions which dehumanize certain groups of people. One of the shames of the Christian church over the centuries is the way we've often acquiesced in the status quo, justifying countless cruelties on spurious grounds in order to maintain our privilege or to avoid discomfort. I don't have to remind you of our own ugly history with blacks and Indians; South African Boers justified apartheid on so-called Biblical grounds. But I'll bet you didn't know that Scottish Presbyterians opposed the use of ether to ease women's pain in childbirth because of the passage in Genesis which tells women, "in pain you shall bring forth children." {Gen 3:16] That's part of the curse Adam and Eve got laid on them for rebelling against God.
But if you stop and think about it, the history of the people of God is actually one of ever-increasing progress out of the world of the curse and toward the kingdom of God. The sort of struggle for equality of women and blacks that was the great achievement of the last generation rests on centuries of struggle for liberation of all people, men included. Christians were in the forefront of the anti-slavery movement. Christians led the fight to end child labor and sweatshops. Christians called for a halt to the Hindu practice of burning widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres. Christians led the fight for universal health care and education nearly 2000 years ago. And the Mosaic law was the earliest legal system that we know of to treat all people - including foreigners, slaves, and women - as equal under the law.
And didn't Jesus Christ himself take huge steps toward liberating women, children and workers? Jesus treated women with respect in an age when they were, at best, discounted and ignored. Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs." [Mt 19:14] Jesus washed his disciples feet because he'd come "not to be served but to serve." [Mt 20:28] Women and slaves were drawn to the gospel because it was a message of freedom and hope.
Because of abuses loosely and indefensibly based on Scripture many people in our modern age have accused the Bible of being a source of oppression, rather than the only guide we have into true freedom. And so we need to be careful what assumptions we bring to a passage like this, which has been one of the texts so misused.
Before we look at this passage we need to understand the Christian worldview that Paul himself teaches. Already in this book he's argued for the oneness in Christ of all races and ethnic backgrounds: that is, of Jew and Gentile. We're all part of God's family, brought to unity in the body of Christ. In his letter to the Galatians he went even further. There he points out that "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." [Gal 3:28] That passage demolishes two more reasons that people have to look down on one another, economic status and gender.
Paul's worldview does not contradict Jesus' own message of value and respect for all people. And this perspective, which is absolutely fundamental to the message and method of Christ, confidently proclaims three truths:
• the dignity of womanhood, childhood and servanthood as shown by the ministry of Christ himself
• the equality before God of all human beings, irrespective of race, rank, class, culture, sex or age.
• the even deeper unity of all Christian believers as fellow members of God's family and of Christ's body.
Because of this, we must reject from the beginning that this passage in any way teaches inferiority. Submission does not equal subjection or subordination. In fact could you say that there's a sense in which you can only submit yourself if you're free to do so. That is, if in fact you're an equal. If you're not free, if you're not acting as an equal, then it isn't submission, it's subjection.
Well, that's all by way of background before we come to look directly at what Paul has to say about personal relationships in the Church. Now remember that Paul is in the middle of explaining how our unity in Christ, and the holiness that being in Christ requires, is to be lived out in our everyday lives. And now he comes to our most intimate personal relationships. He wants us to see that being united as a Church also has to be worked out in our one-to-one relationships.
And he chooses the three most common relationships in society: husband-wife, child-parent; and master-slave. Today we'll only look at the relationship of marriage.
The first thing you need to understand about what Paul is saying is that marriage today does not look like marriage in Paul's day. It didn't matter whether you were Jewish, Greek, or Roman, wives had no rights. They were there to look after their husband's household and legitimate children. They would hardly have spoken to their husbands. Adultery - for Gentile men - was the norm. A woman was considered a mere chattel, a possession like the rest of the livestock, and her legal position amounted to enslavement. Roman husbands could sell their wives and daughters, or kill them - and while it might have been socially disapproved of, the law could not stop them. So what Paul has to say is a radical departure from the general thinking of the dominant culture of his time.
He begins by telling men and women to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Almost all translations put a break between v. 21 and 22; this does not belong there. Listen to the difference:
• Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands.
• Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ; wives, to your husbands.
That repetition of “be subject to” does not belong there. Wives are simply spoken to as the first example of how mutual submission is to work. Paul's words to the husbands are actually much more stringent and demanding.
Now, how does Paul develop his argument? The original Christ is our model. He came as a servant, submitting his whole life to those he served. So out of reverence for Christ, we are to imitate him by submitting ourselves to one another. Notice right from the start, that the notion of submission bears no sense of inferiority. How can there be a sense of inferiority if Christ is our model? No-one would suggest that Christ was inferior to those he came to serve. And it's mutual submission he's talking about, not the dominance of one over another, even if the outworking in the various social roles may be different.
The next thing Paul does is explain why wives should submit to their husbands with another phrase that has caused great controversy. "The husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church." [v. 23] Now there's a difficulty here, isn't there. What does it mean that the husband is the head of the wife? The simplest explanation is that the husband leads and the wife follows. And that sounds a bit oppressive in today's culture. But is this a descriptive statement or a prescriptive statement? Since the simplest explanation - if it doesn't contradict the fundamental message of the gospel - is usually the best, let's consider the possibility that Paul is simply pointing out the obvious fact that the law in their society gave the husband complete authority. In fact, that's the way Genesis 3 has worked out in practically every culture in history. The woman's share of the Genesis 3 curse that I quoted earlier is, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Now the term desire is exactly the same word that's used in the next chapter, when God warns Cain that sin desires to have him. [Gen 4:7] This isn't about physical desire, it's about who's in control. The result of the fall is that men rule over women, and women want it the other way around. The question is, then, how do Christians live faithfully in that environment? Or, how can Christian men and women live free of the curse?
Let me take you back even further to Genesis 2. What was God's intention for men and women? Wasn't it that they work together as equals? The woman was created to be a helper, that is, someone who'd share the man's load. And I want to underline here that the word "helper" doesn't mean servant; it's the same word used later of God himself, as in, "O God, our help in ages past." Woman was intended to be an equal. None of the animals that God has made is suitable. The man needs one who is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones. There is no hint of superiority or inferiority in their relationship. Rather they're spoken of as being one flesh, the prototype and model for all future marriages. In fact, neither man nor woman is in her or himself the image of God; it is only in their union that they partake of the full image.
So when Paul tells wives to be subject to their husbands the way the church is subject to Christ, and tells husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the Church, he's urging us to turn our backs on that way of relating that comes from the fall and rediscover God's intention for male-female relationships. Mutual submission only works when we trust each other, when we're on the same side, when we're working together as a team. It only works when we each consider the other an equal. It only works when men don't take advantage of their legal prerogatives, and when women don't yield to the temptation some might have felt to take advantage of their newly granted freedom.
Now if you're a husband, let me say that verses 22-24 are not meant to be read by you. They're none of your business. Paul never instructs husbands to make sure that their wives submit.
On the other hand if you're a wife, it's only verses 22-24 that should concern you. You need to work out what it means for you to submit to your husbands, and let him get on with understanding and obeying his verses. Which are, incidentally, a great deal more demanding and difficult to carry out, especially in the first century Mediterranean world.
Women can find clues about how to work this submission out by seeing how the church submits to Christ. And the first thing that the church needs to do is to faithfully represent Christ to the world, to bring him honor, not disgrace, to make the world view him with admiration and respect. It is a matter of humility, unity, respect and service. The church also submits to Christ by continuing his work in the world, using the power of her status as children of God to turn the world to God. It submits to Christ by actively and intelligently working towards unity and holiness of life, which reflect our identity with him. It submits to Christ by showing his love to the world. In other words the Church's submission to Christ has to do with being united with him in his mission to humanity.
Now for the men's verses.
"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind-- yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." [v. 25-29]
Think about it. How did Christ get the church to submit to him? Did he order us to? Did he ever use force? Did he work on our guilt? No. He humbled himself. He gave himself up for her. He washed her clean with the washing of water by the word. He provided the bridal clothes so she'd appear in splendor. Those are the images and metaphors that Paul uses. Let me give you some more suggestions. Jesus took disempowered people and gave them high status and unlimited power, setting them free from fear and guilt and sin so that they might serve God with confidence and power. This is God's plan for his church:
"You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you." [Is 62:3-5]
How on earth can anyone look at what Christ has given the church, and the glory to which he calls the church, and think that men have any authorization from God to "keep women in their place"?
Paul goes on with God's original intent for marriage, in which men and women become one flesh. He asks an obvious question: How do you treat your own body? Don't you nourish it and polish it and adorn it? The only reason anyone had for harming or depriving themselves was to atone for sins or be purified before the gods, and Jesus has already done that. You and your wife are alike temples of the Holy Spirit, and to be equally cherished.
And then Paul goes on with what he readily acknowledges is a mystery. The union of men and women in one flesh is in a way a microcosm of the church, what he has been saying about unity and mutual love. Just as a man and woman become one flesh, so too the Church and Christ are united into a single entity. Jesus is the bridegroom, the husband; the church is the bride, the wife. The two can't be separated.
Now, this is not easy. In fact, Jesus himself acknowledged that marriage is not a walk in the park, or a day at the beach, a romantic novel or a guarantee of total fulfillment. Both Matthew and Mark report that when asked about divorce, Jesus said,
"Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, `For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" He said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." [Mt 19:4-8]
Divorce was allowed because of the hardness of our hearts. Marriage - Christian marriage - requires a change in our hearts, what Paul calls a circumcised heart, and what Ezekiel prophesied: "I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh." [Ez 11:19]
Remember that I said before that it is only when men and women are united in marriage that they become full bearers of the image of God? That's the ideal intention from creation. But just as we cannot be reconciled to God without the active presence of Jesus Christ in our lives, that change of heart that enables men and women to reflect the image of God in their union can only come as Jesus Christ is present in the marriage. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but poured himself out ... Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves." [Ph 2:5-7, 3]
Just as the church is made one with God through Jesus Christ, man and women are made one through Christ. Christian marriage consists of three people: husband, wife, and Jesus. This is a mystery, made possible by Jesus Christ for the glory of God:
"As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one." [Jn 17:21-23]
