Many of you have probably heard what the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians,“Wives, submit to your own husbands,as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” (Ephesians 5:22-24) Growing up where I did, in the middle of the American “Bible Belt”, I heard this verse all the time, most of the time spoken from one woman to another while the second complained. I don't know their stories. I am not sure if their husbands really were that bad, or not. What I do know, is that I have seen this verse used over and over again to justify a husband insisting he is right in marriage, and making his wife do things his way, because of her “duty” of obedience. When used poorly, this verse can be an excuse for narcissism, callousness, and even abuse.

Hear me, I don't think the problem is with the verse itself. These are instructions given to the woman, not a weapon for the husband to use to get his way. What many Christian men fail to do is to read and apply the next eight verses. Ephesians 5:25-26 says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”

I get chills when I read that. Scripture actually compares the way we love our wives with the way Christ loves the church! That means we are to “lay our lives down” for the sake of our wives, just as Christ did. We are to be willing to die for the good of our wife. How different does that look compared to demanding our own way, or throwing obedience in our wife's face when she doesn't like our decision? Marriage is one of the greatest mysteries in the Bible, and a chance for us to exhibit the same love that Christ showed us, not just to our wife, but as an example for those we know who don't know Jesus. 

When we enter marriage, we don't come in expecting our wives to change into the perfect woman – it is actually our job to change. Our job to show our wives what love is every day. To lay down ourselves, our own needs, our own desires, even, perhaps our own hopes and dreams. But we are to do this, just as Christ did, only in submission to God, the Father. Even Jesus said, “the Son can do nothing by himself, he can only do what he sees his Father doing.” (John 5:19) 

If our relationships with our wives is to imitate the relationship of Christ and the church, than we must first get our marching orders from the Father. Only through intimate relationship with Him and His word can we ever attain this kind of love. How much easier will it be for the wife to obey what the scripture says when it says to “submit to your husbands” if we are receiving our own instruction from the Father, as Jesus did. This itself is an act of surrender. It requires that each day we lay down our own ideas of what is right, and before we do anything else, go to the Father, asking for His direction. Only by His life in us can we be what our wives need, and love them the way we are commanded. May God give us His strength – the kind that is faithful, even unto death.