Ephesians 5:22-24

²²Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. ²³For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. ²⁴Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

If you look at v22 and then v33, you see that Paul places this command for wives to submit to / respect their husbands as bookends over this section of Scripture. Paul doesn’t come to this command for wives to submit to their husbands lightly, but he wants to ensure that we see its practical importance. He works hard to show that maintaining proper relationship roles for mutual benefit is the broader scope here. Just as reverence for Christ serves as our motive to submission in general, now in v22-33, Paul reveals that Jesus’ love for the Church is to define the Christian’s love for one another, especially that of a husband and wife. The word “submit” means simply to receive a spouse’s loving care and service. This definition helps us see how the Church submits to Christ; otherwise, this submission might seem unnatural, since Jesus’ disciples were His friends. In v23, we see that Christ’s specific role as Savior models the husband’s responsibility to his wife. He indwells the Church, governing both her and the universe, and He serves as the source of the body’s health and growth to maturity (Ephesians 4:14-16). The Christian wife has been set free to serve Christ by submitting to her husband. And Paul is simply saying that there is no possibility of a Christian woman manifesting her true embrace of the lordship of Christ without showing respect for her husband in the context of the home.

So the submission command means that Christian wives are to give appropriate respect to their husbands. They’re to acknowledge and follow and encourage and respect their husband’s efforts at spiritual leadership in the home; genders are complementary in the Christian worldview. A husband’s leadership is not automatic but should be an initiative to which the wife should respond (1 Corinthians 11:8-9; 1 Timothy 2:13-14). Christ restores to the marriage relationship what was lost from creation’s order in the fall (intimate union). Furthermore, both husband and wife acknowledge that God has established a divine order in the Christian home, and that order is for the good both husband and wife. The wife must not resist or resent that divinely established order, but she must acknowledge and embrace it. God has given husbands a unique spiritual responsibility for which they are accountable to God and with which they must exercise spiritual leadership for the well being of their wives and families in the home. Wives, through submission and respect, need to help husbands fulfill that responsibility; and they need to make a commitment to sacrificial, self-giving, long-suffering loyalty to their husband, keeping in mind that he is a sinner.

John Piper and Wayne Grudem say this: “Submission refers to a wife’s divine calling to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership, and help carry it through according to her gifts. It is not an absolute surrender of her will; rather, we speak of her disposition to yield to her husband’s guidance and her inclination to follow his leadership. Christ is her absolute authority, not the husband. She submits out of reverence for Christ, as Paul said in Ephesians 5:21. The supreme authority of Christ qualifies the authority of her husband. For instance, she should never follow her husband into sin; nevertheless, even when she may have to stand with Christ against the sinful will of her husband, she can still have a spirit of submission, a disposition to yield. She can show by her attitude and behavior that she does not like resisting his will, and that she longs for him to forsake sin and lead in righteousness so that her disposition to honor him can again produce harmony in the marriage.”

So the wife – see Proverbs 31 – should focus on making the home a safe and cozy place for her family for the glory of God. She ought to strive for trustworthiness and dependability. She must work hard to keep a good attitude, cultivate inner beauty, and discuss things in an open, honest, and loving way. The wife should be content, satisfied with her position, with her possessions, with her task, and with what her husband provides. She ought to be patient, forbearing, forgiving, and grateful in all things. And she ought to be industrious for the sake of her husband and household, building loyalty for her husband in her children. The submissive wife offers suggestions and advice and counsel, and even correction to her husband, but she does it in a loving and obedient way that shows respect.

Before moving on, we need to mention, in this world of political correctness, some things that the concept of Biblical submission does not include. First, submission does not mean that the husband takes the place of Christ. Christ has ultimate authority, but the husband is subject to other authorities. Second, submission does not mean that wives must give up their opinions and independent thoughts. Third, submission does not mean that wives must do whatever their husbands demand no questions asked. Submission does not mean, fourthly, that wives should not try to influence their husbands and make suggestions for the direction of the family. Fifth, the idea of submission does not mean that women are somehow intellectually inferior to men. Sixth, submission does not include cowering in fear of the husband’s response to a thought, word, or deed. And all of these examples of what submission is not reveal that the husband is to be someone who loves and cares for his wife, as the next section begins.