What is biblical submission?

The press is stunned: Michelle Bachman once told a Christian audience that she had submitted to her husband—by studying tax law and running for Congress! Not only are these pundits stunned; they are worried. Isn’t biblical submission a problem for a female presidential candidate? How can a wife who submits to her husband ever be the leader of the free world? After all, who would really be running the White House?

Such questions led a female Republican pollster to respond,

“When people think of women submitting to their husbands, it’s usually they don’t have access to the family checkbook and they’re stuck picking up Cheerios from the floor—not ‘you should get an advanced degree in tax law and run for Congress,’” she told me. That looks more like “loving encouragement,” she says.

Let’s leave the political debate to the pundits and pollsters for now and instead address the question What is biblical submission?

First, what biblical submission is not—it is not blind obedience. In Ephesians 5:22–24 Paul tells wives to submit, each to her own husband “in everything” and “as the church submits to Christ,” “for the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church” (ESV). Now, Paul is saying here that human marriage is a picture of Christ’s union with us, and that a husband is like Christ to his wife. But he is not saying that a husband is equal to Christ. As John Chrysostom observed centuries ago, husbands are not as far above their wives as Christ is above the church! A husband can’t, for example, command his wife to sacrifice their son to God (as God told Abraham; see Genesis 22)—or if he does, she should just say no! Biblical submission doesn’t take away a wife’s right to individual conscience. A husband has only limited authority, under God, and a command to love his wife (Ephesians 5:25–33).

Biblical submission is also not something a husband forces his wife to do, but rather something she chooses to do, submitting herself. There is actually no verb in verse 22. Rather, the verb is carried forward from verse 21, where we read “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (ESV). So Paul is saying, “Likewise, wives, [submit yourselves] to your own husbands,” “out of reverence for Christ” and “respect” for your husband (see verse 33).

A wife’s biblical self-submission is a picture of the church—but also of Christ himself. In Ephesians 5 Paul gives part of the analogy of headship and submission, but in 1 Corinthians 11:3 he gives us the complete picture: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (ESV). Let’s simplify this:

Christ is to every man
as
husband is to wife
as
Father is to Christ

Note that the original is Christ and the Father. In other words, headship and submission are dynamics within the Trinity! Note too that Christ occupies both tiers. He is the example of headship to the husband and the example of one who submits himself (to his equal!) to the wife. So we wives can learn how to submit to our husbands, who are our equals, by studying Christ’s self-submission to his equal, the Father.

Which leads to another thing biblical submission is not. It is not having a disagreement or clash of wills, in which one side gives in. Jesus and the Father have never disagreed yet Jesus submitted himself to the Father. Submission is an attitude of oneness and union, striving to be of the same mind with our husbands. And isn’t that how the church should submit to Christ?

Christ’s example does give us at least a partial answer to the question of whether a wife who submits to her husband can be the leader of the free world. Paul tells us that Christ is head over everything—except the Father himself (1 Corinthians 15:27). In the same way, when God put everything under Eve’s feet (see Genesis 1:28; Psalm 8:5–8), that didn’t include Adam.

But there is no reason—no reason at all—it couldn’t include the White House.

Becoming wise women

Some of the most chilling words in the Bible are found in Proverbs 14:1: "The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down" (NIV). This is what Eve did when she reached out, plucked the fruit, ate it as it lay in her palm, and then handed it to her husband. This is also what Achan did when he took the plunder at Jericho and buried it inside his tent (Joshua 7). His whole family was taken, stoned, and burned.

Eve's sin and Achan's sin are very similar, the Bible tells us. They both saw something beautiful, good, and desirable and took it after God told them not to. What caught Achan's eye was no ordinary piece of clothing, but an exceptionally beautiful robe of Shinar. Shinar (or Sumer) was an Ancient Near East cultural center. This robe may even have been an official's robe, a visiting dignitary's sign of high office. But with it was also a treasure trove of silver and gold. It was too much for Achan to pass up.

Eve also saw an exceptionally good thing. All the trees in the garden were beautiful and delicious, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was one of the two especially good trees, the trees of wisdom and of life that God set in the middle of the garden (Genesis 2:9). When Eve saw the tree, she saw not just a tasty meal but a way to get wisdom with just one bite. But that's not how we get wisdom, Proverbs says. Getting wisdom is hard work. It comes through time and maturity, experience and observation and study, and listening to our Creator and Lord.

Perhaps like me you find Achan's story troubling and unsettling. How could it be fair to stone his family, his sons and daughters, for their father's sin? Maybe they had helped him cover up his crime, some say, so they were also guilty. But what about the cattle and sheep. They couldn't have had any part in his guilt! Yet all are put to death immediately, without appeal.

In this, Achan is like Adam. Adam's sin put his whole family--us!--under a death sentence. Innocent animals died for him and for our mother Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:21). Thus began the centuries of sacrifices that stood in for the Lamb of God, the one who came and willingly sacrificed himself for us, the innocent for the guilty. Jesus died to give life to us, to redeem his sons and daughters from the death sentence that has hung over us since our father Adam ate the fruit from Eve's hand and God said "to dust you will return."

Because of Jesus, there is hope for us. Hope that we will not destroy our families with our own hands but become "Eve's," life-givers (Genesis 3:20). The Valley of Achor where Achan and his family perished and lay under a stone cairn "to this day" (Joshua 7) has become the Door of Hope (Hosea 2:14-23), because our Husband, the second Adam, has given himself up for us, that he might sanctify us (Ephesians 5:25-27).

What's so wrong about same-sex marriage?

"Why can't Christians just join the revolution?" In an oped for The Wall Street Journal ("Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution") R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky asks why evangelical Christians can't join in the "moral revolution" and embrace homosexuality and same-sex marriage the way liberal churches and denominations have. We can't, he says, because "we believe the Bible is God's revealed word" and "we cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches" that homosexuality is wrong and that marriage is "the union of one man and one woman."

It's a matter of the gospel, he continues. "Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and for the forgiveness of their sins." The church is being tested, he writes, "to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach." Will we "see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue"?

Rev. Mohler is right: it is a matter of the gospel, because marriage between a man and a woman is a picture of the gospel (see my earlier post).

The "original fact" God had in mind when he made Eve was Christ and his church ("Canticles," Fausset's Bible Dictionary). As Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5, Adam represented Christ and Eve represented the church in their relationship as husband and wife. Marriage is natural revelation; that is, it teaches us about God and our relationship to him. (See, for example, Mike Mason, The
Mystery of Marriage). The marriage relationship involves all the senses; it is the most intimate and "complete" of the metaphors that Scripture compares to our union with Christ (cornerstone and building, vine and branches, head and body, husband and wife).

Marriage between a man and a woman is a "great mystery" because it depicts the relationship between Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:31-32). This was God's original intent, when he made Adam and Eve. And so, Calvin said, the church is built from Jesus' riven side, as Eve was built from Adam's. So then, as Jesus sacrificed himself for us, a husband should love his wife sacrificially. He should "nourish" her as he would his own body. And as the church submits to Christ, so a wife should submit to her husband and respect him. A loving and harmonious marriage is a preaching of the gospel.

May God preserve and protect marriage as a picture of the gospel!