A Word to the Wives is Sufficient

       One of the dirtiest words in our society is submission.  It implies inferiority—a lack of freedom—especially to a society that is obsessed with freedom.  We live in a society where there are liberation movements for women, men, gays, seniors, blacks, nerds, Indians, workers, consumers and more.  Taxpayers want liberation.  There is even a libertarian political party that is dedicated to freedom from government regulation. 

       Each of these movements causes us varying degrees of satisfaction or nausea, depending on our views.  In general, however, Christians welcome all movement toward liberation.  Jesus came to set captives free.  No one is more concerned with liberation than Jesus.

       But the paradox that Jesus taught, as Paul stresses in our scripture, is that liberation comes through submitting ourselves to others.  Jesus taught, “The one who would be great among you must become the servant of all.”  This command is like many of the other commands Jesus gives us—like His call for us to forgive one another, love one another, and to maintain the unity of the Spirit in our church family.  These commands are impossible to obey without the presence and power of Jesus Christ in our lives.

       The particular emphasis of our scripture for this morning is the relationship between husbands and wives who are a part of the people of God.  Paul writes in Colossians 3:18, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.   He writes in Ephesians 5:21-24: “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.

       If Paul were on the Oprah show I can almost hear Oprah turning to Paul at this point and saying, “Come on Paul, this is 2006.  That kind of thing might have worked in the first century but things have changed.  Get up to date.”

       After the applause died down, however, Paul would have the opportunity to expand on what he has said.  I do not doubt that Paul would point out two important facts about our scripture.

       The first fact is that the teaching about wives being subject to their husbands in Ephesians 5:22 cannot be separated from the prior teaching in verse 21 that all Christians, men and women, young and old, rich or poor, black or white are to be subject to all other Christians…men or women, young or old, rich or poor, black or white. We focused on this verse last Sunday. 

       These distinctions, as Paul points out in his letter to the Galatians, are not important for we are “all one in Christ Jesus.”  The teaching on wives being subject to their husbands in these verses is but one particular example of the mutual subjection that all Christians are to practice.

       In fact, the word “subject” isn’t even found in verse 22.  It is borrowed from verse 21.  It is literally “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to your own husbands as to the Lord.” 

       The second fact that Paul would need to point out to Ms. Winfrey is that the teaching on wives being subject to their husbands in Ephesians 5:22-24 also cannot be read apart from the instructions to husbands which begin in verse 25.  This week the husbands can nudge their wives and say, “see!”  Next week we will look at Paul’s instructions to husbands and then it will be the wives ' turn to do the nudging.  We’ll see which husbands have the nerve to show up.  I have to.   But I’m safe up here.       In Ephesians 5:22 Paul writes:  “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord.”  This is the first example Paul gives of the mutual attitude of deference that is to characterize all Christian relationships.  What is proclaimed to be a theological and spiritual truth must be lived as well as believed.  It needs to be shown in our sacred relationships as well as in our teaching. 

       So what is God’s word saying?

       The first thing that we need to understand if we are to accurately apply this teaching in our relationships, is that subjection is not the same thing as subjugation.

       The word that is used here is not the word used to imply a simple, unquestioning obedience to authority.  It is instead the voluntary surrender of one’s freedom of action for the sake of another.  In the ancient world, the word was sometimes used to describe two oxen pulling together in harness or two wings of an army moving in common, coordinated attack.  The idea is of one equal partner following the lead of another in order to accomplish a common purpose.  A more modern example would be riding a bicycle built for two through the Ojai Valley .  The one in front has to steer and the one in back has to allow the one in front to steer but both need to supply the power to keep the bike moving toward a destination where they have both agreed to go.   It does not mean flowing blindly when you partner tries to drive off a cliff.

        The second thing that we need to understand if we are to accurately apply this verse is that Paul is saying all that he is saying within the context of Christian marriage.  He is not implying that women are inferior to men or that all women should be subject to all men any more than men should be subject to women.  He is speaking of Christian marriage and of the attitudes which make it the fruitful, joyful relationship God intends it to be.

       The third thing we need to understand is that this subjection is not called for on the basis of an arbitrary whim on God’s part.  It is, instead, an outgrowth of the nature of the world God has made.

       In this letter to the Ephesians Paul speaks of the most common of relationships, but he does so in connection to the most cosmic of motives.  He takes the church we all know and speaks of it as already seated in the “heavenlies” and there revealing to the “principalities and the powers” “the many colored wisdom of God.”  In that same way, we cannot understand God’s instructions to Christian wives and husbands without also remembering that Paul regards these members of the family as, at the same time, members of the eternal, mystical body of Christ whose every action has a significance that is far beyond the readily apparent.  Our marriages, a lot like our church, are to be a place where God’s purpose for the world is being worked out and demonstrated.

       The fourth and final things we need to realize for an adequate appreciation and application of this teaching is that subjection is always done “as to the Lord.”  Let’s look at what this means.

       It means first of all that this subjection is not grudging but natural, joyful and confidant.  It means second of all that this subjection of a wife to a husband is never total or unconditional.  It is subjection “as to the Lord.”  It’s not in place of the Lord.

       Paul is not teaching here that women are inferior to men or that wives are inferior to their husbands either naturally or spiritually.  But Paul recognizes a divine order in creation in which God give the husband the “headship” of the family.  When the wife recognizes and accepts this fact, she does so “as to the Lord”, acknowledging His ordinance.

       However, this ordinance of “headship”, does not mean, that the husband takes the place of Christ.  The wife’s subjection to her husband is always qualified by her prior obedience to Christ.  It is never unqualified, never unconditional.  This means that a wife does not submit to that in her husband’s leading that she knows is not Christ’s will.  She does not submit to his sin, his arrogance, his bigotry, his pride or his immorality.  One cannot obey Christ and let sin go unchecked in your husband’s life in the name of submission.  To meekly say “yes dear” and watch him destroy himself, the marriage or the family is not God’s desire. 

       A Christian wife is always a sister in Christ before she is a wife and so must speak the truth in love,  reprove, exhort, and walk in the light.  A Christian wife is always a sister in Christ before she is a wife.

       The husband is not some infallible leader in a chain of command.  He is a servant of God in the office of “head” of the family. 

       However, this qualification does not let the wife off the hook.  For she is called to submit to her husband’s functioning as head under Christ’s leadership by following his leading where it is not contrary to Christ’s will.  Subjection as to the Lord becomes the grateful acceptance of Christ’s care ministered through another believer. 

       In verse 33 of Ephesians 5, Paul tells wives that they are to respect their husbands.  I knew of one wife who could not only read her husband like a book but who insisted on doing book reviews for all her friends.  That is not respect.  For the wife to respect her husband means for her to be willing, even anxious, to follow his Godly leadership.

       The word that Paul uses to describe this leadership in verse 23 is “head”.  “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.”

       What does Paul mean here?

       It is unfortunate that the Good News Bible at least translates the word “head” as authority because authority is not used here, head is.

       Authority tends to lead us astray.  Those of us who are stuck in the ’70s think of Archie Bunker sitting in front of the T.V. yelling, “Hey, Edith, bring me a beer.”  Edith does so because Archie is her boss.  Or we may think of the doctrine of submission taught in some churches that is harmful to women’s souls – and has actually harmed some women sitting here today. 

       For some, headship implies the superiority of the male.  He is numero uno.  But in scripture headship does not mean authority or boss.  It means source.  As Christ is the head…source of the church, so the husband is to be the source of the wife’s life.  As Christ gives care and nourishment to the church, so the husband is to give care and nourishment to his wife.  Not to kill life but to give life is the idea.

       Paul doesn’t say that the husband is the lord of the wife or the boss of the wife but the head.  The idea id submission is still there.  You can’t deal that card out of the deck and be faithful to the text.  But the submission is to being nurtured and cared for, not to being pushed around.

       Headship is a special office given to the husband so that the marriage may thrive and grow.  The wife submits to her husband’s leadership for the precise reason of allowing him and enabling him to carry out his God-given ministry.

       All who hold an office…whether church leaders, magistrates, husbands, parents, or employers…have a certain God-given authority which God expects others to acknowledge.  Husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants have equal dignity as God’s children but different God-appointed roles.  Equality of worth is not the same as identity of role.

       The role of the husband and the role of the wife have different responsibilities before God.  The Christian wife asks: “Lord, how can I show my love to you in the role you have called me to fill?”  God answers, “Show it in your open heart toward the leadership of your husband.”  The Christian husband asks, “Lord, how can I be the kind of man you want me to be as a husband?”  God answers, “By your limitless, self-giving love for your wife.”  Paul gives husbands the example of Jesus Christ who gave Himself for the church. 

       In verse 24 Paul writes:  “But as the church is subject to Christ, so ought the wives to be subject to their husbands in everything.”

       I can almost hear the protests.  But you don’t know my husband!  He’s a slob.  He would run us into the poorhouse if he had his own way.  He is keeping me from realizing my identity.  Come on Paul.  This is 2006.  Don’t be so archaic.

       But lets look at what Paul is saying here.  Is it an archaic holdover, or is it still God’s plan…still God’s plan because it’s still what works.

       Paul is teaching a reality of mutual need and love in marriage as reflective of the will of God.  Far from being degraded, wherever Paul’s teaching has been accepted, women have been enfranchised, ennobled and given their just and proper rights.

       Those of us reading all of this in the twenty first century cannot fully appreciate the revolutionary nature of Paul’s teaching. Throughout the centuries the Christian view of marriage has become widely accepted.  It is still recognized as an ideal even in our permissive age.  Marriage is regarded as the perfect union of mind, body and spirit between a man and a woman.  But things were different when Paul wrote these words.

       The Jews of the first century, for example, had a low view of women.  In his morning prayer the Jewish male had a sentence in which he thanked God that he was not born a Gentile, a slave or a woman.”  In Jewish law a woman had no rights.  The law of divorce in Deuteronomy 24 said that a man could divorce his wife if he “found some indecency in her.”  Most of the Rabbis of the first century interpreted this as meaning that a man could divorce his wife for spoiling his dinner by putting too much salt in the food or if she spoke to another man on the street.  The law also said that a man could divorce his wife if she “found no favor in his eyes.”  One influential Rabbi named Akiba interpreted this as meaning he could divorce his wife if he found another woman he considered more attractive.  The wife, on the other hand, had no right of divorce at all unless her husband became a leper or an apostate from Judaism.

       The Greek world was even worse.  Demosthenes had laid down the accepted rule of life:  “We have courtesans for the sake of pleasure; we have concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation and we have wives for the sake of having legitimate children and of having a faithful guardian for all our household affairs.  It was the aim, as Xenophon put it, “she might see as little as possible, hear as little as possible, and ask as little as possible.”  Socrates asked: “is there anyone to whom you entrust more serious matters than to your wife…and is there anyone to whom you talk less?”  The Greek expected his wife to care for his house and care for his legitimate children, but he found his pleasure and his companionship elsewhere.

        The point I am making is that Paul is not the enemy of women he is sometimes caricatured as being.  The words he writes are words of liberation.  They are also words that are in keeping with God’s pattern for human life from the beginning as first declared in the Garden of Eden: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”  God calls us to deep unity in our marriages and says that this is achieved by a wife being subject to her husband’s headship and by the husband ministering in love to the concerns of the wife.

       But doesn’t a woman have equal rights with a man to self-determination?  May not a married woman make herself a career as well as her husband?  The answer that the New Testament would give is that she may certainly do so.  The Book of Acts suggests that career women like Priscilla and Lydia were crucial to the spread of the good news.   But this should not mean the sacrifice of the divine pattern for the life of the Christian home, for family relationships and for the whole Christian community.  A woman may fulfill any function and any responsibility in society, but if she has accepted before God the responsibility of Christian marriage, that must be a priority and this is expressed in terms of her relationship to her husband in his God appointed role.

       Does this sound hard?  Well it’s not all that hard to move to the leadership of one whose only goal is to seek your highest good.  In the words of Colossians 3:17, it is not too hard for a Christian to follow a person who is speaking every word and doing every deed “in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” We’ll look at the husband’s role next Sunday.  Men, get ready to be nudged – hard.

       But until then let me leave you with two questions.  The wife must come to terms with her role and ask, “Do I love my husband enough to live for him.”  And as we will see next Sunday, the husband must come to terms with his role and ask, “Do I love my wife enough to die for her?”