As we’ve seen, Paul had a lot to say about marriage relationships. In Ephesians 5:22-24, he tells wives:
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
And in verse 33 he adds:
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Submitting carries the idea of showing respect. If we go back to verse 21, we also find this admonition:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
There has been much debate about what it means to “submit”. Whatever it means, we must all learn to do it, both to one another and to the Lord. However, the wives are admonished pointedly to submit to their husbands—as to the Lord. If a wife claims to know Christ but doesn’t submit to her husband, then she doesn’t really know Christ or submit to him. Paul says again, in 1 Corinthians 11:3:
Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Paul shows us that this was the way it was designed from the beginning. He tells us in 1 Timothy 2:12-13:
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
Then he gives another reason from the Creation story in the following verse, verse 14:
And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.
Of course, Adam also became a sinner as he listened to the voice of his wife. In Romans 5:19, Paul states that sin came into the world by Adam, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus] the many will be made righteous.” He was held responsible, because he was the “head”.
Submission has the idea of being under someone; wives are “under” their husbands in the same way that they are under Christ. When we consider the term “head”, we realize that being the head of an organization does not mean that he is to abuse those under him, or that he rules with an iron fist. The head of a school confers with those under him to get their ideas and input so that he can lead in a productive way. The same with a head of a state; he has many advisors that he listens to before making any major decision.
Jesus taught us even further what it means to be a head. On the night that he was betrayed, he humbled himself like a servant and washed his apostles’ feet.
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet, John 13:14.
When a husband understands the true meaning of headship and is willing to love his wife as he loves himself, it is very easy for a wife to submit—it is a joy. She submits voluntarily; it is not something that she is forced into by abusive behavior.