What We Get Wrong About Submission

A Case Study in C.S. Lewis' Fire Department

Don’t have time to read the article? Catch the audio edition of this and all my other posts when you’re on the go by subscribing to the Church Reset podcast! Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to get the latest delivered right to your phone.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” - Ephesians 5:25

“That doesn’t mean she gets to take advantage of him!”
“Yeah but she still has to submit!”
“Well his wife has to act in such a way that he’ll want to lay his life down for her—then he’ll do it.”

I have never seen anyone say any of those phrases or anything like them in response to the plain teaching of Ephesians 5:25. Nor has anyone ever counseled a preacher to say, “Just focus on the wife’s role. The husband will come around if we get her part right.”

On the other hand, every time someone utters 5:22–“Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord”—the comments start flying.

“That doesn’t mean he gets to run over her!”
“Well she can do that if he does a good job leading.”
”Yeah but don’t forget, it starts with his love for her.”

There’s some truth in these points. But there was also some truth in the previous set of points. Why is today’s Christianity so committed to speaking one set of truths but utterly disinterested in mentioning the other?

Some would say that there’s an imbalance in practice that creates a need for an imbalance in emphasis. We have to talk more about men’s domineering tendencies because that’s the bigger problem, in other words. I would agree with the idea of imbalanced emphases in principle, but I’m not so sure I agree with what they see as the imbalance.

Which is the bigger problem?

Do we live in an era of domineering husbands and browbeaten wives?

I don’t know, have you ever heard somebody say “Happy husband, happy life?” I haven’t.
Are wives so put-upon and suppressed into silence that no one would dare ever ask if they wear the pants in the family? Can’t say I’ve seen much of that.
Are young prospective brides commonly teased that they need to start learning to say “I’m sorry,” and “Yes, dear” and “You were right?” Probably not.
Do TV shows and commercials (and sermons) make it a habit to portray wives as immature and incompetent, always bailed out by their wiser, more capable husbands? No.

There’s another way we can test this theory though.

When you start poking around with the tweezers, the part that hurts is usually where the splinter is. So, get up and preach a sermon on male chauvinism and how it’s a sin for men to be domineering and run over their wives. Follow it up with a sermon on feminism and how it’s a sin for women to be unsubmissive (and do it without making 90% of the sermon caveated to death about what that doesn’t mean and how it’s actually the husband’s job). Which one do you think will go over better?

More simply, just post Ephesians 5:25 to your social media profile one day, and post 5:22 the next. Don’t give any context, just post the verses. See what kinds of comments you get.

You can test it for yourself, but I’m almost certain I can tell you how it would go. It would go the way I described above, because that’s the way it always goes when this subject comes up. The chauvinism sermon would get an “amen.” The feminism sermon would get a series of “Okay, buts…”

We do not live a world crashed into the ditch of male dominance. Women receive roughly 60% of college degrees. In 1950, 21.5% of wives worked outside the home. In the 2020s, the number sits around 75%. Leadership and teaching roles in churches are being expanded to include more women all the time. As I wrote a while back, it’s an open secret that many congregations are steered by a handful of women whom the supposed leadership is afraid to cross. A Handmaid’s Tale, this is not.

I suppose I have to tap the “C.S. Lewis’ fire extinguishers in a flood” sign yet again (read more here). We’ve identified a problem, and it can be a real problem. It is wrong for husbands to be domineering. But, by and large, that’s not the problem we should be putting disproportionate focus on right now.

Why is our aim so tilted to the wrong side, then?

Well, it’s what culture wants us to do. A feminist world really, really hates Ephesians 5:22 and 1 Peter 3:1-6. And, it’s safe.

Teaching what submission actually means and going to the much more direct 1 Peter section on submission just isn’t tolerated. Talking about wives as “keepers at home” (1 Timothy 5:14, Titus 2:5) and laying out clear distinctions between men’s and women’s roles in the home, church, and society is a great way to get fired.

But, the splinter needs to be pulled out nonetheless. Though dubiously attributed to Martin Luther, this quote drives the point home well:

If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.

A prophetic voice in this moment is not saying the universally agreed upon truths like “Husbands shouldn’t trample their wives.” Fighting where the battle rages requires saying what submission actually means.

But what about…

I’m confident some will read this and come away thinking I’m promoting male dominance as the answer. That would be incorrect. There are more than two options here.

Ephesians 5 strikes the balance within its own context. The man’s headship is supposed to be like Christ’s—loving and sacrificial, while authoritative nonetheless. There is no way to read the passage consistently and believe that Christ is the head of the church, but the husband isn’t the head of the wife.

And sacrificial leadership, by necessity, means making hard decisions. Sometimes it means making decisions that the wife doesn’t like. That’s why she’s commanded to submit and respect her husband, because from Eve onward (Genesis 3:16), that has been a challenge for her.

The fact that all hierarchy and headship is categorized as abusive, and the view that we must sand off all the sharp edges of this passage, is literally Satan’s view of authority. Not all headship is abusive headship, and so we have to be able to cast a prescriptive vision of the husband’s role rather than only a restrictive one. In other words, understand what husband-led homes does mean and not just what it doesn’t.

Because, after all, that is the great need of our day. I don’t think anything gets better until we get this right. Hierarchy must be properly understood, appreciated, and practiced if we’re going to have functioning homes, churches, and communities.

---

Notes

The Church Reset read-through series is almost complete! Subscribe to the Focus Press YouTube or the Church Reset podcast feed (Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app) for all the episodes and to get the finale when it’s released.

If you’d like to support my work for a few bucks a month, you can do it here or at Bible 101.