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!

The value of a woman 3: kingdom coworker

What is the value of a woman? Priceless, according to the Bible. First, every woman is a person in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Second, women are necessary for the growth and survival of the human race (Genesis 1:28; 2:18-24). Third, women are essential to the expansion of God's kingdom.

When God said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:28 ESV), he was talking to Eve too. Eve was Adam's coworker in filling and subduing the earth. When Moses' audience heard this command, they would have thought of their own mothers, wives, or daughters, who helped with the planting and harvesting and herding and milking. These were not surburban housewives but farm women!

I grew up on a farm and many of my relatives were farmers. I can tell you that even before the fall changed work into toil and the fertile ground sprouted weeds and thorns, there would have been a lot to do in the garden! Adam would have needed Eve working at his side, caring for the cultivated plants and domesticated animals. God put the world under Eve's feet too (Psalm 8). Carol Meyers (Discovering Eve) notes that in Genesis 2 Adam and Eve are set like bookends around the world they are to rule together: the garden, the rivers, the minerals, the animals.

Genesis 1 and 2 show us that God didn't intend for Adam and Eve to stay forever in the garden. There was a whole world outside to fill and subdue. Adam would have needed Eve's help to go beyond the garden into that beautiful but undeveloped world outside, where the four rivers flowed and the ground held gold and jewels waiting to be used (Genesis 2:10-14).

God made women to be out and about in his world, filling it with people who know and worship him and subduing it under God's rule, until the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9). Because this world is God's kingdom, every good thing we do is kingdom work, whether we work in our own homes as wives and mothers, or work outside the home for income, or volunteer in our churches and communities.

What has God put under your feet? What is your sphere of influence? Whatever it is, remember that you are a kingdom coworker. Do your everyday work with all your heart; it is the Lord Christ and his kingdom you serve (Colossians 3:23-24).

The value of a woman 2: the war against girls

Since the 1970s, 163 million girls have gone missing! They haven't been kidnapped, but killed--by their own parents, before they had a chance to be born! Couples want to have boys, so they simply abort the girls. It's happening all over the world, but especially in India and China. Now the ratio between boys and girls is out of whack, and there aren't enough women for the men to marry.

Some cultures see girls as a liability. One ad in India reads, "Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later." In other words, it's cheaper to abort a girl than to pay for her wedding! As the mother of two married daughters, I can say this may be true in terms of dollar amounts, but in no way is what they are advertising here "better"! Not only is every daughter a precious gift from God (Psalm 127:3-5), skillfully and wonderfully woven together in her mother's womb (Psalm 139:13-16), made in the image of God himself, and thus worth more than an infinite number of rupees. But also girls are necessary to the human race.

We see this when God creates Eve. When God had made the heavens and the earth, the sky and the seas, the sun, moon, and stars, the plants and sea creatures, and a man in his own image--and all "good" (Genesis 1)--he looked at his handiwork and said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him" (Genesis 2:18). Then, the Bible tells us, he formed the wild animals and cattle and birds and brought them to the man. But among all these creatures "there was not found a helper fit for him" (Genesis 2:19).

I can imagine God laughing a little bit at this point, as Adam scratches his head. These animals can help Adam pull a plow or a cart, they could even be companions, as all pet owners know; but they were not "fit for him." Adam needed someone like himself, made like him in the image of God and yet of the opposite sex. And so God put the man under anesthesia, took one of his ribs, and built a woman.

Eve was the last of God's creation works, and as Susan Foh writes, she was not a luxury but a necessity! She alone, out of everything God made in those six days, shared Adam's nature as image of God. She had intelligence, language skills, the ability to judge and discern, dexterity, the capacity to know God, etc. to be truly "fit for" Adam. And she was exactly what Adam needed if there were ever going to be more people on earth. That is how God made man as male and female; there is no other way to procreate the human race.

This is what countries like India and China are discovering. May God cause all nations to rediscover how "very good" it is to have girls!

Do you like your body?

Psychologist Mary Pipher has been asking young women this question for years. "When I speak to classes, I ask any woman in the audience who feels good about her body to come up afterward.... I have yet to have a woman come up" (Reviving Ophelia). The dissatisfaction, she says, comes from the culture we live in. We see the billboards and magazine ads and movie images, and feel that we don't measure up. But it goes back a lot further than the existence of modern media. It goes back to Eve.

Eve was created, body and soul, in the image of God. As John Calvin said, sparks of God's glory shine in our bodies (Institutes). Now "God is a spirit and doesn't have a body like men" (Catechism for Young Children). He doesn't need actual eyes to see or a mouth to speak, or arms and fingers to do his work, or legs to get about, but we need our bodies. We do need physical eyes to see and a mouth, lips, and tongue to speak and bones, muscles, and tendons, arms and legs, fingers and toes. We need every part of the body God has given us "to exercise the faculties of the soul," as Louis Berkhof put it. Our bodies are necessary to the image of God in us and part of the "very good" creation God made (Genesis 1:31).

So why is that we don't like our bodies very much? Well, the short answer is sin. When Eve took the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate it, she no longer felt comfortable with her own body. She wanted to cover it up, so she and Adam sewed fig leaves together and hid from God (Genesis 3:7-8). But Eve didn't just have a psychological problem now. On that day something also went wrong with her body. She began to die. From their sin in the garden has come all the subsequent pain and disease and problems of aging and death we face (Genesis 3:16-19). But happily for them and for us, God didn't leave them there. He came down and sought them and clothed them and redeemed them (Genesis 3:7-8, 15, 21).

He does the same for us. The Puritans called it "the glorious exchange." Our Savior Jesus Christ took our sins and gave us his righteousness. He took our death and gave us life. The redemption Jesus provides includes even our bodies! The Christian's goal is not to get rid of the body. On the last day, Jesus will transform these bodies to be like his glorious body (1 Corinthians 15:42-49). This is good news indeed!

In the meantime, we live in imperfect bodies, and "in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling" (2 Corinthians 5:2). We see our imperfections; we see our bodies changing and aging and "wasting away" (2 Corinthians 4:16). But that's not the whole story. The "inner man is being renewed day by day." So, as Paul says, "do not lose heart" (verse 16). Like your body! Thank God for this amazing and good gift! Just don't make it the most important part of you.

Women's rights and the Taliban

Women in Afghanistan are worried, and for good reason. The price of peace in their country may be losing their rights to go to school, hold public office, go outside without wearing a head-to-toe burka, or for that matter, even go outside!

Women's rights, like the rights of all human beings, come from God, by creation in his image. Dominion and authority are part of the image of God. And so when God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion ..." (Genesis 1:27), he included all women. When he said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion ..." (Genesis 1:28), God was talking to both Adam and Eve. That isn't apparent in our English translations, but the verbs in Genesis 1:28 are plural. It's as if God said, "Both of you, be fruitful and ... have dominion ..."

Eve's authority to rule over the animals and the earth comes from God, not from man. Yes, Eve is a helper (Genesis 2:18), but she is a helper with authority! Women have a God-given right to participate in the filling and subduing and ruling of the world God made.