What Did God Mean by "Wives, Submit to Your Husbands"?
People have very different ideas of how to describe a good wife. Their opinions differ one couple to another. In fact, sometimes a husband and a wife may even disagree about the wife's role in their own marriage. But what's God's idea of a good Christian wife--how did He design her role from the very beginning?
Adam Meets Eve
After Adam had seen and named all of the creatures on the earth, it was apparent that none of them were comparable to him. Eve must have been quite a pleasant surprise! Let's look at two scriptures that give us insight into God's original intention for her:
- “So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him” (Genesis 2:20)
- “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him’” (Genesis 2:18).
Notice that both of these verses of scripture refer to woman as a comparable helper. The phrase comes from two Hebrew words, ezer k’negdo, and actually has nothing to do with domestic things, although wives commonly function in that capacity. A wife who fits the description of ezer kenegdo is a corresponding helper who has the strength to protect, to surround, to aid, help and support. A wife is her husband’s partner and counterpart, his opposite and his mirror that reflects how he looks.
God's intention was for the wife to reflect her husband.
Mirror Mirror
“But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).This verse says we are being transformed by looking in the mirror of the glory of the Lord. What an amazing reality! You’re transformed into what you’re looking at, or in other words, you look like what you look at. This is very important as we bear in mind that God, the Creator, from the beginning made a woman to be a mirror to her husband. She was made to show him what he looks like, which before the fall of man, reflected the gorgeous qualities of God Himself.The tragedy is that both of them fell from the glory of God. How did this affect Eve, the wife? The woman still functions as a mirror because God made her for that purpose. But now she reflects what’s broken. After the fall, man became cracked and so is woman. In other words, she’s a cracked mirror, reflecting a fractured man. Oh dear! As she reflects what’s broken, it sounds more like this, “Adam, you’re being arrogant and mean. You’re so self-absorbed. You never listen.” What’s she doing? She’s mirroring. What is she mirroring? The fractures.Adam then sees himself through what Eve says, which keeps on confirming and re-confirming his faults. A woman’s desire and intention when she says, “You’re insensitive. You’re being irresponsible. Can’t you be more affectionate?” But that’s not the way to do it. All that does is reflect to him how terrible he is: Yeah, that’s horrible me. That’s who I am. My help-mate is showing me how bad I am. I’m pretty much rubbish. That’s who I am, all right. I’m just no good.Do you see that? Pretty sad, isn’t it?
Do you see that this is a cruel plan of the devil is to get a woman to sabotage her marriage and hurt the one she loves?
What ends up happening is that he becomes bitter at the “mirror” who keeps telling him his faults even though she’s telling him those things for the purpose of making him better. Of course, her being fractured herself makes it worse yet.
Nag Drag
Then he said to the woman, “...And you will desire to control your husband… ” (Genesis 3:16 NLT).Remember, in this portion of scripture, God was describing to the serpent and Adam and Eve the particular curses each of them would experience as a result of their part in the transgression.
For Eve, the tendency to nag, fault find, and control would be a curse to her—and Adam also.
This is not the only tendency that started as a result of the fall. There’s more.Genesis 3:16b gives us another way this can be interpreted, “To the woman he said, ‘...your desire shall be to your husband and he shall rule over you.’” Part of how Eve would be affected is that her husband would have rule over her. That’s not a blessing—but a curse and something else that resulted from the fall.But why is the woman’s “desire to her husband” a curse? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Part of the damage Eve sustained in the fall is that she “needs.” She needs reassurance, she needs help, she needs comfort, and she needs to be lifted up, and she looks to Adam to give her what she needs. Her desire for fulfillment is on Adam to supply, so she begins pulling on him, “I need! I want!” Then if he doesn’t give what she needs, she demands more.This tendency isn’t experienced in only one culture, but it’s common the world over. But here’s the weird thing. This “need for more” often begins even before a couple marries. A woman will start demanding more and more of a man to be what she needs.
Actually, she will demand that the man be all she needs—to be what only God could be. How suffocating and frustrating!
Think about it. If you’re walking along and someone hangs heavily on your arm, what do you want to do after a while? Honestly? You probably will have an urge to push that person’s hand away, but when you do, it gets even worse. The person grabs on and drags even harder. If you’re trying to walk forward, that person hanging on is not a blessing. It’s not helping. It’s hanging. Get it?The woman’s “desire toward her husband” is also that she looks to him to be the image that she was created to reflect. There is something hard-wired in her to reflect God, and originally, that image was visible in Adam. Post fall that’s no longer the case. So, the woman starts demanding and demanding more. She begins nagging.This odd and wearisome tendency is a part of the curse of the fall. It’s not a curse that God pronounced like, “Now, I curse you.” No.
God identified that this tendency and fracture would be a curse in the dynamic of marriage, and is that ever the case.
In order to deal with a woman’s continual nagging, it’s common for the husband to ignore her or put her down under His control. And the more that happens, the more she demands. This only incites bitterness in the man. At this point, the woman needs her husband but refuses to submit to him. We’ve already described this ugly cycle in Chapter 21.Is there hope? Yes!
A wife’s ability to help her husband was sabotaged in the fall but it’s restored in Christ.
Ladies, identify yourself by saying, “I’m an inChrist wife. Instead of nagging my husband, I freely give to him, because I freely receive God’s strength.” I don’t have to give my husband what Eve gave Adam—the fruit of the knowledge of what’s wrong and what’s right. Instead, because the roots of my life are in Christ, the fruit of the Spirit are all available to my husband.
Submit as to Christ
Our hope for breaking out of this cycle is not found in Adam but found in Christ. The Bible provides specific instruction for the inChrist wife. Let’s see what it says.Ephesians 5:22 says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” Notice the words as or hoce, which mean in the same way or manner you would submit to the Lord, you should submit to your own husbands.Ephesians 5:24 says, “Therefore, just as the church is to submit to Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” Encouragement to submit appears once again.Ephesians 5:25b says, “...let the wife see that she respects her husband.” This verse doesn’t use the word submit. Instead, it says a wife is to see that she respects her husband (we will return to this point.)Colossians 3:18 says, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord.” The instruction to submit is the same in this sister book of Colossians.Titus 2:4 says, “So that they will wisely train the young women to be sane and sober of mind, temper- ate and disciplined to love their husbands and their children.” Here in the verse, younger wives are to be taught to love their husbands. Really? Does this actually have to be taught? Obviously, this scripture must not be referring to a gushy feeling or twitterpated-type of love. No, this is talking about teaching a wife how to love like God created her to love her husband. God’s kind of love can love when there’s no feeling at all.
You must be taught to love this way! It doesn’t come by hormones or chemistry. It doesn’t come by sentiment or as a reaction to flowers or perfume. You must be taught in the Lord how to love as an inChrist wife. And the Holy Spirit can help you learn.
The apostle Paul was also saying that women who have learned how to love like this are to teach younger wives the art of this love.Here’s yet another scripture instructing wives to submit. Titus 2:5 says “to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God” (NLT). Read the last phrase of that verse again: “Then they will not bring shame on the word of God.” Wow. It doesn’t matter how super spiritual a woman is with spiritual gifts, speaking ability, prayer, and ministry to people. A woman who does not respect and honor her husband sets up the Word of God to be blasphemed. That’s awful. It’s an honor to the Word and to God Himself for a wife to be subject to her husband and respectful to him.Here’s the deal. It may not be easy for a husband to love his wife when she is not the way he wants her to be. He may think, If she would just do this or that. I’d like her to look a certain way. I don’t like the way she talks. She needs to stop doing this and do that. If she’ll do this better, then I’ll love her.” No! That’s certainly not in Christ.
The inChrist man loves. Period. He loves and gives Himself.
He pours out his love even before he gives any kind of correction or direction at all—love, love, love. Why? Because that’s the way Jesus does it. That’s the way Jesus loves the Church—that’s the way Jesus loves. In the same way that love is the bottom line for men, being subject and submissive is the bottom line for women. The truth is, being submissive wouldn’t have been repeated so much in the Scriptures if it came easily to women. I don’t know a woman on the planet who believes this always comes naturally.There may be subservient women who just do what they must do because they are slaves, but that kind of woman is so inglorious to a man. When a man treats his wife like a slave, it’s pathetically ugly. There’s no glory for that man. He may look arrogant and powerful but not at all glorious.My husband, Tony, had an uncle who would tell his wife to walk behind him. That was the culture of the town he came from in Italy years ago. So, sometimes when I’m with Tony in the mall, he tells me to walk behind him in an Italian accent. It makes me laugh, because I know he’s teasing me by imitating his uncle. But in cases where it’s not a joke but in reality, the man who degrades and diminishes a woman is never glorious. He’s robbed himself of his own glory by acting like that.On the other hand, not honoring and submitting to a husband makes a woman inglorious as well. Why is submitting so difficult for a woman to do? One reason is fear—fear of being controlled, fear of being misrepresented to other people, and fear of never getting what she wants and needs. In fact, fear is the basis for a woman’s desire to control, which isn’t confined to her husband. It goes beyond that, directed to her children, friends, and others.Look at this translation of Genesis 3:16b where we see the beginning of control and manipulation: “...and you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you” (NLT).Perfect love is found in Christ, and what does perfect love do? It casts out fear. In other words, when a man gives perfect love—not conditional but unconditional love—it will cast out the fear of submitting, and his wife will be freer to submit.
Yet, when a husband does not act like Jesus, it can be scary to submit to him.
Breaking the Cycle
Why would God give direction to women to submit to their husbands if it’s so difficult and scary to do? Because submission has the ability to break the cycle.When a man gets his love from God to love his wife—even when she’s not doing, looking, and being what is needed to merit his love—that God- given love will help her submit, which will make her more lovable.In the same way, where will the woman get the perfect love that casts out the fear of submitting to a man who has serious fractures and isn’t loving to her? If she waits until everything is lovely, nothing will ever change. She will have to stop reflecting her husband’s negative characteristics. That’s a time waster.
Instead, she must trust and draw on the perfect love that comes from God and reflect what God says about her husband.
Faith in God, not her husband’s perfections, enables a wife to submit. God watches over that kind of trust. He personally works with that woman, not to submit like a degraded slave, but to submit as an expression of her trust in God. God can work with a woman like that.Aren’t we thankful for redemption? It is not just about heaven and healing; redemption also restores the sexes and the roles those genders play. Walking in the light of redemption and the promises found in God's Word is the key to a happily ever after for every husband and wife.