Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

We all know that the Bible commands that wives submit and respect their husbands.  We’ve heard it time and again, and though it’s a difficult command, we know that since God expects it of women, that it must be done.

Submission does not mean “door mat”, but instead means that one chooses to allow the other person to lead.  I like to think of it like rank in the Army—submission means that the authority belongs with another, and that I should obey what they have to say—even when I may have a different, and sometimes better, opinion.

However, did you know that there are 6 times when a wife should not submit to her husband?

It’s true, submission is not always the order, but we must be careful with these.  You see, there’s a balance that’s in Scripture, and it’s put there not simply because the requirements are equal, but because the sexes are wired differently.

What you will notice is that every time there’s a passage on the way that the husband and wife are to act in marriage that the wife is addressed first, and that the wife is told to submit and the man is told to love the wife.

Could this be a coincidence?

Perhaps “Ladies First” was a custom in the ancient times as well, but I think that the Holy Spirit guided these conversations because He knew what each spouse would have trouble with.

Wives, Submit and Respect

Spelled out in clear English, the command to the wife is to submit to her husband and to show him respect.  When we go back to the Garden of Eden to look in on Adam and Eve after the fall, we don’t see much respect—when Seth is born you can almost hear Eve say “behold, now I have a man from God” as a put down to her husband that she might still blame for not standing up to her in Eden.

The truth is that in Genesis 3:16 when God tells Eve of her new rank and relationship with her husband that it didn’t end the desire to be in charge right then.  And though many thousands of years have passed, there have always been women that have sought to usurp authority over men.

Which is why the Bible clearly states that women are to submit.  They are to rank under the man in the family structure.  This isn’t a position of inequality—both are equal before God.  But just as the President and the average American citizens are both citizens but one has more authority than the other, so a wife is to consider herself lower rank than her husband.

Furthermore, she is to respect him.  She is not to hold it against him that he is the leader.  She is not to cut him down when he is not around.  She is to give him what he needs—which is not only her support, but her respect.

Husbands, Love—as Christ Loved the Church

For some reason, women tend to think that this is lesser of a command than the one given to them.  That’s led, in my opinion, to many sermons that emphasize this love to the point of missing the meaning.

Yes, Christ loved the church enough to die for it.  Many men in good marriages would give their lives for their families.

The part in here that you should get is that this command is something that God knows the wife needs.  She needs his love—an emotional bonding between the two of them that he needs to invest in.

You see, he’s not naturally wired to love.  He may have feelings, but they are temporary.

What he needs to do is to actively show love to his wife.  So just like all the good blessings Christ bestows upon us, this is what he must do for her.  Just as Christ leads us along, so he must lead her.  Just as Christ patiently develops a relationship with us, so we must do so with her.

The Picture of Christ

Marriage is supposed to be a Picture of Christ.  You would never say that the Church should wait until it sees Christ love (perhaps in the number of members it gets, or a new projector or organ) before it submits and respects Christ—so just like that, the wife should unconditionally submit and respect her husband.

You know that Christ loved the church even when she was unlovely, and that He’s actively cleansing it to be his perfect bride.  So the husband should love the wife regardless of what sin she commits and whether or not she respects and submits to him.

However, both of these people should be doing these things!

Only then will all the needs be met and the family will function as God intended—both for blessing them and displaying God’s love to the world around them.

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