Ephesians 5:22-24 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Wives submitting to husbands is one of the most contested concepts in the Bible for many who are concerned about men usurping their authority over their wives in a controlling, abusive, non-Biblical manner, as it should be. Wives submitting to their husbands has nothing to do control or lording over, rather, when it is done in the context of a Biblically based marriage it is the most amazing display of Christ and the church. It is the perfect picture of our submission to the headship of Christ in all of our lives.
Paul tells us to submit one to another in verse 21 before he discusses wives submitting to their husbands because he wants both men and women to understand that their lives are under the authority of Christ. Regardless of our gender, we are all to submit one to another as the Lord leads.
In these verses, two reasons Paul gives this command are the lordship of Christ and the headship of man. As the wife submits to Christ, she will naturally desire to submit under the headship of her husband, understanding that it is the desire of the Lord and not the concept of man that designed this in marriage. Headship does not mean dictatorship. She doesn’t become a slave or a piece of property, since she understands that her husband too submits to the lordship of Christ. This mutual submission to Christ leads to harmony and unity rather than division and strife.
As Christ is head over the church, so husbands are to be head of their wives. When we see the image of this in a marriage, we begin to have a picture of our relationship to Christ. Many people believe that marriage is for companionship, procreation, and friendship… which, in part, it is. But the reason we are man and wife is to display the glory of Christ. To show the world the love God has for the men and women of the world. When we turn marriage into the goal of our life then marriage becomes an idol. Rather than using our marriage to represent and reflect the order of God, we seek to simply find pleasure in our marriages. God designed it for far more than simply an experience, He designed it, as wives submit to their husband and husbands submit to Christ, to be an image of how we, as the church, are to submit to Christ and one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit to your husbands, and husbands, love and cherish your wives.