The Bible instructs spouses to submit to one another, with wives being taught to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, and husbands to love their wives as Christ loves His church (Ephesians 5:21-33, 1 Peter 3:1-7). Submission is not about being a spouse’s slave; it is about following their lead and choosing to love them even when we don’t feel like it or they don’t deserve it. This means trusting God to lead the husband, and the wife follows. This means continually loving the wife even if she rebels. The submission to the command to love our neighbor as ourselves applies in marriage in a deep, intimate way. If the husband, who is responsible for the family, is failing in his role, God can lead the wife to take action. If she has to choose between God and her husband, God would ultimately come first.
Throughout the Old Testament, the prophets use the analogy of marriage to represent Israel’s covenant relationship with God. Oftentimes, it’s used to compare idolatry to adultery. Worshipping idols was cheating on God because they made a covenant with him and him alone. Like Ezekiel 23, where Ezekiel compares Israel and Judah to two adulterous sisters. One notable book that does this is the book of Hosea. In Hosea 1-3, Hosea becomes a living metaphor because he marries a promiscuous woman who abandons him for other men after giving birth to his children. However, instead of having her punished for adultery, he takes her back and forgives her at God’s request. Then God says, he is going to take back Israel after the exile, just like Hosea takes back his adulterous wife, forgiving them of their idolatry and restoring them as his “wife”. This is where the New Testament picks up the analogy, referring to the church (the body of believers in Christ) as the bride of Christ, and Paul says that husbands should love their wives like God loves his wife. Wives are to love and follow their husbands like the church follows Christ (Eph 5:21-33, 1 Peter 3:1-7).
A husband is to love his wife like Christ loves the church. He should submit to and trust God to lead him so he won’t lead his family astray. He has to be willing to love her no matter how often she loses faith in him. God doesn’t give up on Abraham, the Israelites, or the Church today. No matter how many times we disobey and resist submission to him. The wife is to trust in God’s grace to help her husband and trust her husband to follow God and love her even when she has doubts. If at least one of them is following God by choosing to love, they can draw the other back to God (1 Cor 7:12-16).
Think about how Abraham had to trust God to give him a child, and despite nearly giving his wife away twice and having a child in adultery, God still gave him the promised child. Even when tested with the threat of God taking the child in sacrifice, he reached a point where he finally trusted God, believing that God would resurrect Isaac to fulfill the promise (Heb 11:17-19). God’s people are to trust God to the ends of the earth, no matter what it looks like, that is submission. So a wife is to trust that her husband is looking out for her well-being. Sarah Abraham’s wife had to trust Abraham and follow him to a foreign land called Canaan, and trust his lead despite his failures, and in the end, she got the promised child. If men learn to submit to God’s leading, they will be better able to empathize with their wives’ position and handle them with care.
However, since husbands are human men, they are not perfect. A slightly different analogy to account for this would be: if we, the civilians, are like the wives, then our governments are like the husbands. Rom 13:1-7 and 1 Tim 2:1-4 are about respecting and praying for government authority. This means Christians shouldn’t be involved in political rebellion and anarchy. We are to submit to those in authority over us unless we are challenged in our faith. In that case, Christians can subvert in love (civil disobedience). This relationship would be like the unequally yoked marital relationship Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, of an unbeliever married to a believer. The believer can’t divorce the unbeliever simply because they don’t believe, but instead are to walk in love towards them, and hope they win them over to Christ. However, if the unbeliever initiates a divorce, then the believer is free.
Christians are set apart and do not belong to this world, according to Jesus in John 17:14-19. This is echoed in 1 Peter 2:11-12 and Hebrews 3:14. We are not to compromise with sin or revolt against authority, but to follow the third way, the way of love, the way of the exile, just like the Israelites while exiled in Babylon. The prophets Daniel and Jeremiah give us insight into how we are to live in this world through the story of the Jewish exiles. Revolting and rebellion against authority purely out of disdain would make them a target, but compromising to sin put them at odds with God, which is what got them into that situation in the first place. However, those who follow the middle path of loving God and resisting sin, while following the laws of the land (unless they explicitly cause compromise of God’s laws), are following the way Daniel and other Jews operated. They faithfully served the Babylonian and Persian kings until forced to compromise their faith and then drew the line. God vindicated them by using them as examples to display His power when rescuing them from the fiery furnace and the lion’s den so that those government leaders would know that the God of Israel is the true God.
The wife takes the Middle Path with her husband. Walking in love by following his leadership, unless the husband sins against God, then she is to submit with love because God’s leading is superior to her husband’s leading. As Jesus pointed out in John 7:22-23, some of Moses’ laws are higher than others. Thus, something like circumcision was allowed on the sabbath because it is a higher command. Women of God were his daughters before they were wives, so it stands to reason that following God is more important than submitting to one’s husband. Remember this in the case of sin and abuse. In fact, 1 Peter 3:7 says that husbands who mistreat their wives will have their prayers hindered. God will vindicate wives who submit to God by doing right, even when their husbands fail. 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Paul writes that when a man or woman is married to an unbeliever or someone in sin, the believer is to live as a light and represent God in the family, hoping to bring their spouse back under submission to God. The idea is that the believer submits to God and their spouse at the same time, unless that person does something specific that breaks their marriage covenant, then divorce is allowed. Furthermore, he says in 1 Corinthians 7 that believers with unbelieving spouses shouldn’t initiate divorce but are allowed to let the unbelievers leave them.
To be clear, submission does not mean a person has to sin with their spouse; submission to God always supersedes submission to a spouse because only God is holy and perfect. In some countries, if a wife renounced Islam, her husband could have her killed. Does she submit to her husband and go back to Islam, or can she subvert at the cost of death for following Jesus? According to the Bible, what would Jesus have her do? Submission to a husband is superseded by submission to God because, in the new heaven and earth of the post-resurrection future, there will be no marriage between humans, but there will always be the worship of God. Ultimately, our marriages are limited to lives on earth, but a covenant with God is forever. Therefore, wives are to submit to their husbands, but the line of course is drawn at God’s word. One Old Testament example is Abigail in 1 Samuel 25, who subverted her wicked husband Nabal’s stubbornness when David asked for help, and she helped David anyway when Nabal refused. God punished her husband, Nabal, with a sudden death for his stubbornness, and she ended up marrying. David, who would later become King.
Submitting to each other, something spouses do out of love for each other. It is the compromise of marriage.
1 Peter 3:1 (NLT) In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husbands. Then, even if some refuse to obey the Good News, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over 2 by observing your pure and reverent lives. 3 Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. 4 You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. 5 This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. They put their trust in God and accepted the authority of their husbands. 6 For instance, Sarah obeyed her husband, Abraham, and called him her master. You are her daughters when you do what is right without fear of what your husbands might do. 7 In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.
Ephesians 5:21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.