June 15 - Ephesians 5:22,25

Wives, submit yourselves

to your own husbands

as you do to the Lord. …

Husbands, love your wives,

just as Christ loved the church

and gave himself up for her

Ephesians 5:22, 25

^NIV

 

Is Scripture against women? That’s what I heard a lot in my early years.

 

People would quote Ephesians 5:22 – “wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands,” and they’d say, “How dare anyone say that a woman ought to submit to the power and oppression of a man”?

 

As a young fellow, it took years before I read this passage in context.

 

In fact, I imagined this passage being read out loud in the first century – an era when gender equality was virtually non-existent.

 

Centuries before the invention of the printing press, that’s how Scripture was almost always read – to crowds – and I could imagine a crowd hearing the words: “Wives, submit to your own husbands.” What would they be doing in response? Shaking their heads, “Yes. Yes. That’s the way it is. Wives, submit to your husbands.”

 

And then I could imagine a bomb being dropped on that same crowd: “Yes and husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

 

Boom!

 

Jaws would drop (as that bomb was dropped).

 

“Husbands, how did Jesus love the church? He gave everything for her – everything, including his entire life.”

 

The harder demand in Ephesians 5 is on the husbands. Women were given value. (And while some semblance of gender-equality has taken much too long to develop around the world, where has it developed? Slowly but systematically, in cultures shaped by the Gospel. Cultures following the teachings of the rabbi – Jesus – who embraced the needs of women, like the woman at the well or the woman who’d had a lifetime of vaginal hemorrhaging.)

 

So, men, your called to give everything for the sake of your brides.

 

And women, in response, the wife is invited to give everything for him too.

 

And that’s the context for submission! It’s not a chicken-and-egg kind of thing – if my spouse gives everything to me first, then perhaps I’ll respond by giving everything to them. No! It’s a call to trust God’s guidance and be joyfully generous, giving all.

 

Question: When an individual comes to me for marriage counseling, I often say, “Yes, your spouse might be causing a few problems. But we can’t change them. We can only change ourselves.” Therefore – whether you’re the husband or wife … and regardless of how you’re spouse is doing at this task (no playing-the-victim) – how are you doing at giving everything on behalf of your marriage?

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who wouldn’t have

been cheering when that

“wives, submit” passage

was read first without

a deeper context

(and who really wouldn’t

have been cheering when

Scripture dropped the bomb

on husbands)

This is hard for many.

Let’s make sense

of it together.