Recently the blogosphere lit up (again) – this time over a word association game.
But it got me thinking…

As some who have been following my posts would know, I have been greatly blessed by reading through Ephesians again in my morning devotions recently.
I came to Paul’s instructions to husbands and wives, in ch 5, vv 21-33.
What if we played a word-complement game, Eg.
– “husband” “wife”
– “teacher” “pupil” etc.

What about: “submission” ??
I guess most would say, “authority”.
In fact, Eileen and I have recently been reading together through Rachel Green Miller’s book: “Beyond Authority and Submission: Women and Men in Marriage, Church, and Society”. (While not giving unqualified endorsement, I think what she writes is worthwhile. There is an interesting interview with her here.)

But what I find most revolutionary is that, when Paul looks at marriage, the complement of “submission” he identifies is “love.”

I have found John Stott’s commentary on Ephesians especially helpful. (And I don’t endorse all of Stott’s views either.)
But what he says on Ephesians ch 5 is good.
Here is just his “summary”:

Taking the husband first, what Paul stresses is not his authority over his wife, but his love for her. Rather, his authority is defined in terms of loving responsibility.
To our minds the word ‘authority’ suggests power, dominion and even oppression. We picture the ‘authoritative’ husband as a domineering figure who makes all the decisions himself, issues commands and expects obedience, inhibits and suppresses his wife, and so prevents her from growing into a mature or fulfilled person.
But this is not at all the kind of ‘headship’ which the apostle is describing, whose model is Jesus Christ.
Certainly, ‘headship’ implies a degree of leadership and initiative, as when Christ came to woo and to win his bride. But more specifically it implies sacrifice, self-giving for the sake of the beloved, as when Christ gave himself for his bride.
If ‘headship’ means ‘power’ in any sense, then it is power to care not to crush, power to serve not to dominate, power to facilitate self-fulfilment, not to frustrate or destroy it.
And in all this the standard of the husband’s love is to be the cross of Christ, on which he surrendered himself even to death in his selfless love for his bride.
Dr Lloyd-Jones has a striking way of enforcing this truth:

‘How many of us have realized that we are always to think of the married state in terms of the doctrine of the atonement? Is that our customary way of thinking of marriage?…
‘Where do we find what the books have to say about marriage? Under which section? Under Ethics. But it does not belong there.
‘We must consider marriage in terms of the doctrine of the atonement.’

As for the wife’s duty in the marriage relationship, it surprises me how unpopular this passage is among many women. When it is read at a wedding and it provokes a feminine outcry, I find myself wondering how carefully it has been read and in particular whether it has been read in its total context.

Let me spell out five points which will, I hope, demonstrate that it is not the blueprint for oppression which many think, but rather a charter of genuine liberty.

1. The requirement of submission is a particular example of a general Christian duty

That is, the injunction ‘wives submit’ (verse 22) is preceded by the requirement that we are to ‘submit to one another’ (verse 21).
If, therefore, it is the wife’s duty as wife to submit to her husband, it is also the husband’s duty as a member of God’s new society to submit to his wife. Submissiveness is a universal Christian obligation. Throughout the Christian church, including every Christian home, submissiveness is to be mutual.
For Jesus Christ himself is the paragon of humility. He emptied himself of his status and his rights, and humbled himself to serve. So in the new order which he had founded he calls all his followers to follow in his footsteps. ‘Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another.’
Should not the wife even rejoice that she has the privilege of giving a particular demonstration in her attitude to her husband of the beauty of humility which is to characterize all members of God’s new society?

This is specially so when it is seen that her self-humbling is not coerced but free.
It must have been very obvious in the ancient world. The wife had no status and few rights, as we have seen. Yet the apostle addresses her as a free moral agent and calls upon her not to acquiesce in a fate she cannot escape, but to make a responsible decision before God. It is this which ‘begins the revolutionary innovation in the early Christian style of ethical thinking.’ Voluntary Christian self-submission is still very significant today.

‘Jesus Christ demonstrates rather than loses his dignity by his subordination to the Father. When a person is voluntarily amenable to another, gives way to him, and places himself at his service, he shows greater dignity and freedom than an individual who cannot bear to be a helper and partner to anyone but himself.
‘Ephesians 5 supports anything but blind obedience or the breaking of the wife’s will. Rather, this chapter shows that in the realm of the crucified Servant-Messiah, the subjects respect an order of freedom and equality in which one person assists another—seemingly by renouncing rights possessed, actually in exercising the right to imitate the Messiah himself …
‘A greater, wiser, and more positive description of marriage has not yet been found in Christian literature.’

2. The wife’s submission is to be given to a lover, not to an ogre

The apostle’s instruction is not ‘Wives submit, husbands boss’; it is ‘Wives submit, husbands love’.
Of course there have been examples in every age and culture of cruel and tyrannical husbands, and there have been painful occasions in which in order to maintain the integrity of her conscience, a wife has been obliged to resist her husband’s authority.
But Paul is describing the Christian ideal, not hideous deviations from it. This has always been obvious to commentators.
Back in the sixteenth century Calvin preached.

‘Husbands … should not be cruel towards their wives, or think all things that they please to be permissible and lawful, for their authority should rather be a companionship than a kingship.’

Three times the apostle repeats his fundamental charge:
– husbands, love your wives (verse 25);
– husbands should love their wives (verse 28);
– let each one of you love his wife (verse 33).
If then the husband’s headship is expressed in responsible love for his wife, why should she be reluctant to submit to him?
And if a husband desires her to do so, he will know that it is only by loving her that he will succeed.

3. The husband is to love like Christ

Does the requirement of ‘submission’ sound hard to a wife? I think what is required of her husband is harder.
This is not that he ‘love’ her with the romantic, sentimental and even aggressive passion which frequently passes for genuine love today; instead, he is to love her with the love of Christ.
If the husband’s obligation to love is repeated three times, so is the requirement to model his attitude and behaviour on Christ’s.
– He is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church (verse 23);
– he is to love his wife as Christ loved the church (verse 25);
– and he is to nourish and cherish her as Christ does the church (verse 29).
Thus his headship, his love and his care are all to resemble Christ’s.
The highest pinnacle of demand is reached in verse 25 where he is exhorted to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. This is the totality of self-sacrifice.
He is to love her with what is sometimes termed ‘Calvary love’; no higher standard is conceivable.
A Christian husband who even partially fulfils this ideal preaches the gospel without ever opening his lips, for people can see in him that quality of love which took Jesus Christ to his cross.

4. The husband’s love, like Christ’s, sacrifices in order to serve

We considered earlier the five verbs of verses 25 and 26. Christ ‘loved’ the church and ‘gave himself’ for her, in order to ‘cleanse’ her, ‘sanctify’ her, and ultimately ‘present’ her to himself in full splendour and without any defect.
In other words, his love and self-sacrifice were not an idle display, but purposive. And his purpose was not to impose an alien identity upon the church, but to free her from the spots and wrinkles which mar her beauty and to display her in her true glory.
The Christian husband is to have a similar concern. His headship will never be used to suppress his wife.
He longs to see her liberated from everything which spoils her true feminine identity and growing towards that ‘glory’, that perfection of fulfilled personhood which will be the final destiny of all those whom Christ redeems.
To this end Christ gave himself. To this end too the husband gives himself in love.

5. The wife’s submission is but another aspect of love

We have seen that the essence of Paul’s instruction is ‘Wives submit, husbands love’, and that these words are different from one another since they recognize the headship which God has given to the husband.
Yet when we try to define the two verbs, it is not easy to distinguish clearly between them.
What does it mean to ‘submit’? It is to give oneself up to somebody.
What does it mean to ‘love’? It is to give oneself up for somebody, as Christ ‘gave himself up’ for the church.
Thus ‘submission’ and ‘love’ are two aspects of the very same thing, namely of that selfless self-giving which is the foundation of an enduring and growing marriage.

Not that such self-giving is ever easy. I fear I may have painted a picture of married life which is more romantic than realistic.
The truth is that all self-sacrifice, although the way of service and the means to self-realisation, is also painful. Indeed, love and pain appear to be inseparable, especially in sinners like us, since our fallenness has not been obliterated by our re-creation through Christ.
In marriage there is the pain of adjustment, as the old independent ‘I’ gives way to the new interdependent ‘we’. There is also the pain of vulnerability as closeness to one another leads to self-exposure, self-exposure to mutual knowledge, and knowledge to the risk of rejection.
So husbands and wives should not expect to discover harmony without conflict; they have to work at building a relationship of love, respect and truth.

The giving of oneself to anybody is a recognition of the worth of the other self. For if I give myself up, it can only be because I value the other person so highly that I want to sacrifice myself for his or her self, in order that he may develop his selfhood, or she hers, more fully.
Now to lose oneself that the other may find his or her self—that is the essence of the gospel of Christ.
It is also the essence of the marriage relationship, for as the husband loves his wife and the wife submits to her husband, each is seeking to enable the other to become more fully himself and herself, within the harmonious complementarity of the sexes.

(end of John Stott’s comment)

“God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” 1 John 4:9-10

How gladly, how willingly, I submit to Him!