We are all familiar with the admonition in Ephesians 5:22-33 for
husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and for wives to submit
to their husbands as the church submits to Christ. A marriage that functions biblically is a beautiful picture
of the gospel relationship between Christ and the church.
Some wives, perhaps under the influence of an increasingly
liberal culture, may feel as if they are getting the raw end of that metaphor. “Husbands get to emulate Christ, while
wives only emulate the church.” We
may read into that metaphor a natural superior/inferior kind of
relationship. Christ certainly is
superior to the church…He is the Creator of all things (John 1:3; Heb 1:2) and
He is before all things (Col 1:17).
But we should not deduce from the fact that Christ is superior to the
church that the husband is superior to the wife.
The Bible teaches that men and women are both created in the
image of God (Gen 1:27). If men
and women are equal in bearing the image of God, men and women must also be
equal in value and personhood, for the value of man, as opposed to the rest of
creation, is tied to his being created in God’s image (Gen 9:1-7). Where men and women are different is in
their God-given roles. In the
home, God has given the husband the role of loving headship and the wife the
role of submissive helper. We
should never allow these different roles to lead us to regard one as more
important or valuable than the other.
Did you know that there is authority and submission within
the Godhead? The Son submits to the Father (John 8:28-29) and the Spirit
submits to the Father and the Son (John 14:26, 16:7). Yet, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one
essence in three persons, that each member of the Trinity is co-equal, each is
fully God. Equality within the
Godhead is perfectly compatible with authority/submission within the
Godhead. It is only our fallen
minds that would infer form an authority/submission relationship that one party
must be superior in value to the others.
Paul uses the relationship between the Father and Son to
help us understand the relationship between husband and wife. 1 Corinthians
11:3 reads, But I want you to understand
that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and
the head of Christ is God. The
word “head” is a reference to authority. If Christ is the head of every man, He
has authority over every man and every man is to submit to Him. Paul shows this
to be parallel with the husband and wife and with the Father and Christ. The head of the wife is her husband as
the head of Christ is God. Therefore, the wife is to submit to her husband as
Christ submits to God.
That puts a magnificent face on the concept of submission,
doesn’t it? Jesus Christ, Creator and Lord of all things, submits to
authority. He is equal with the
Father and He submits to Him. In the gospel of John, Jesus says
explicitly that He came to the earth because the Father sent Him, which
obviously implies submission to authority (John 5:37; 6:44, 57; 8:16, 18, 42;12:49; 17:21, 25; 20:21). He also
indicated that it was His joy to submit to the Father; He did not regard it as
demeaning or loathesome (John 17:1-26; Heb 12:1-2). He said, “My food
is to do the will of Him who sent me…” (John 4:34).
So, the wife has two biblical examples of godly
submission. She may emulate the
church in her submission to Christ, and she may emulate Christ in His
submission to the Father. And contrary
to what our world would say to the Christian wife who aspires to godly
submission, she is not demeaned in doing so. In fact, we could say that she is never more like Christ
than when she lovingly and joyfully submits to her husband.
Posted by Greg Birdwell
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