“Wives, Submit!” (No Rotten Tomatoes, Please!)
“Wives, Submit Yourselves To Your Husbands!”
Owing to our many preconceived and unfounded notions, God’s word often strikes us with surprise, and sometimes even shock. As a professor at a Christian university, I try to harness this feature to capture the attention of my students and direct it to a learning experience. Sometimes I try these techniques at home, but wisdom teaches that for practical and contextual reasons, there are some passages of Scripture I just don’t quote around the house—out loud, anyway! Take, for example, the apostle Paul’s command, “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands!” (Colossians 3:18).
Although life presents multiple occasions in which this little Scriptural gem might appear to come in handy, experience has shown that gaining the element of surprise does not always achieve a positive result. [Gentlemen, I also do not recommend the more subtle technique of laying an opened Bible on your wife’s nightstand with this verse highlighted in yellow, and “trusting the Holy Spirit to bring about proper conviction”—unless, of course, you have a VERY COMFORTABLE couch and a VERY LOW . . . well, we won’t go there! . . . and you shouldn’t either!]
Seriously, though, the word “submission” is enough to ruffle anyone’s feathers—even a . . . “birdbrain” knows that (if you’ll pardon the pun). But while we’re thinking about what Paul said, it may be equally instructive to mention what he didn’t say.
Colossians 3:18-25 delivers a list of instructions regarding household management. Such lists were common in the ancient world, but Paul’s list differs at significant points. For one thing, the responsibilities of the husband—when they were even addressed at all—were usually directed to proper wielding of power, that is, enforcing certain values and practices, or as we might say, “ruling the roost” or “running a tight ship.”
By contrast, Paul does not say: “Husbands, rule your wives!” Instead, he commands husbands to stop treating their wives harshly and to start “loving” them. But notice also what Paul doesn’t say to wives; he doesn’t say what nearly all moralists of his day did say: “Wives, OBEY your husbands!” Instead, he commands that women should “submit themselves” to their husbands. He reserves “obey” for children.
The instruction to children reveals a third thing that Paul didn’t say: he didn’t say, “Children, obey your FATHER!” Instead, he said, “Children, obey your PARENTS.” In other words, BOTH your father AND your mother are in authority over you—even though your mother submits herself to your father.
The reason we chafe at the mention of the term “submission” is because we view it as a diminution of being, that is, as somehow making the one who submits inferior and less powerful. We often talk in terms of being “beaten into submission.” But nothing could be further from Paul’s mind.
True submission is a courageous act of love, not a cowardly act of acquiescence; it is an inward respect, not an outward capitulation; it is voluntary, not compulsory! It is not a begrudging response to another’s demand; it’s a loving response to The Other’s command. True submission is a decision of the heart, birthed not out of weakness, but out of great strength of character!
The quintessential example of submission is our Lord Jesus. He submitted to His Father’s will by stepping down from His Heavenly realm, by divesting Himself of all the prerogatives of deity, and by being made in the likeness of humanity. He submitted to His Father’s will by choosing a selfless, others-centered program of life that culminated in His sacrificial and atoning death. Weakness? I think not. Inferiority? Hardly. Jesus is every whit as much God as His Father! He is not some lower-level deity; He is co-equal with The Father!
Jesus showed us the ONLY way to enjoy relationship with God: courageous, respectful, voluntary, powerful, loving submission! Submission to God does not make us inferior to Him (we are inferior to Him because He is our Creator and we are His creatures). Rather, submission recognizes God’s legitimate authority over us and demonstrates the respect and love that we have for Him.
This is the critical context in which we must understand submission among our fellow earthlings. Submission to those whom God has placed in authority over us does not make us inferior to them (whether parents, husbands, teachers, bosses, government officials, etc.); it recognizes their legitimate authority over us and demonstrates the respect and love that we have for them (and, far more importantly, for God). If we rebel against these authority structures, we are rebelling against the very God who established them.
How then should we understand Paul’s household marriage instruction: “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as it is fitting in the LORD”? Doormat? Slave? Mindless victim of a man’s anger, frustration, and abuse? NO! NO! NO! And again I say, “NO!”
The attitude Paul urges wives to adopt is the same attitude that was consistently modeled by Jesus. In fact Luke uses this same word when he relates Jesus’ response the time his three-day unwitting separation from his parents culminated in his mother’s rebuke (Luke 2:41-51). Here Luke shows us that Jesus was courageous. Even at age twelve He did not shrink back from expressing (respectfully) the true situation: “Didn’t you know that I have to be . . . ” (Luke 2:49). Though the grammatical construction of the rest of this verse presents an ambiguity that admits several possible meanings, one thing appears likely: Jesus apparently wanted to remain in the temple (a little while?) longer. Nevertheless, Luke adds, “Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He kept on submitting Himself to [his parents]” (Luke 2:51).
Jesus’ entire life was characterized by obedience to the authority structures in His world. Nevertheless, He always addressed injustice and impropriety with a firm voice. And in cases where earthly “authorities” overstepped or indeed trampled on the will of the Highest Authority (namely, God), Jesus chose to obey God rather than any sinful “middle-manager”—witness, for example, His “violation” of Sabbath law by healing people, His clearing the temple of money-changers, His stern rebukes of the Pharisees, and His firm word to a Roman governor that he “would have no authority over [Him] at all, if it were not given to him from above” (John 19:11)—not to mention His sacrificial death. But mention it we should!
In addition to the excruciating torture it delivered, crucifixion was the ultimate picture of weakness and helplessness! In Jesus’ case, however, looks truly are deceiving. You see, at the time, few people—if indeed any—really understood that Jesus had access to all the power of God and could have avoided the cross entirely at any point of His choosing. Yet He voluntarily chose to lay down His life for us! He did not WANT to subject His body to the torture and abuse of the cross; that’s the point of His Gethsemane prayer. Nevertheless, He brought His life-program of SUBMISSION to the Father’s will to its apex by becoming “obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”
The enigma of the cross is that the ultimate picture of human weakness and capitulation is in fact the greatest picture of strength and courage this world has ever witnessed. Whatever else the New Testament writers show us about Jesus, they would surely recoil at the suggestion that He was a doormat or slave or mindless victim of man’s anger, frustration, and abuse. No assessment could be more inaccurate than that.
Only after considering the example of our Lord Jesus Christ do we have the proper context for understanding Paul’s pleading for wives to submit themselves to their husbands. It is a voluntary act of courage in which they submit their will to the will of God showing respect for and submitting themselves to their husband’s divinely appointed function as the head of the household—not as a doormat, forced slave, or (worse!) human punching bag, but as his advocate, paraclete, counselor, partner, and fellow-pilgrim.
Paul follows Jesus in His GREAT respect for women. We see this even here in the household code he delivers to the Colossians. Immediately after he urges wives to submit themselves to their husbands—with no more than a breath’s pause—he commands the husbands: “LOVE your wives, and do not treat them harshly!” (Colossians 3:19).
“Love” says it all. Paul is not speaking of a warm fuzzy feeling; he is speaking of continuous acts of courage and self-sacrifice that flow from a decision of the husband’s will (not feelings)—not “random acts of kindness” prompted by emotional heart-flutters, but predetermined actions calculated to bring about his wife’s highest good, submitting his needs and desires to the needs and desires of his wife.
