When you read a murder mystery, you may be asking, “Who did it?” In Ephesians 5:21–33 Paul writes about a great mystery. The passage describes not a murder or other crime, but one of the most wonderful things in creation. The question is not who — God is the one who is active. The question to look at is why God did this.
Submit? What, me submit? There is something in us, in both men and women, husbands and wives, that pushes back against the idea of submitting. We like to think that we are our own masters, and no one is going to tell us what to do. Submission is often tied to the idea of inferiority. If I have to submit, I am being placed in an inferior position. That can come to expression in a radically unbiblical manner, rebelling against any God-ordained authority and even the creation order.
Because submission doesn’t come naturally to us, the wives in the church at Ephesus needed to be reminded to submit to their husbands. And this isn’t just Paul’s advice nor is it limited to a situation a couple of thousand years ago. The Holy Spirit includes it in Scripture for us. But, precisely because it is Scripture, we need to understand it carefully in its context. Although Paul specifically reminds wives to submit to their husbands, there is also a broader, mutual submission, out of reverence for Christ, Ephesians 5:21. Ephesians 5:21 reads “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”(NIV). Paul did not insert paragraph and section breaks in his original letter, but for our convenience the NIV editors placed a section break before verse 21. They make that verse a separate paragraph, and then the following paired instructions for wives and husbands, children and fathers, and slaves and masters are each separated into a distinct paragraph. The ESV, on the other hand, puts a section break between verse 21 and verse 22. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is making connections which our editorial breaks can obscure. Ephesians 5:21 is connected with the preceding context. The word we translate “submit” in Ephesians 5:21 is actually a participle, more literally translated “submitting.” It looks back to the main verb in the sentence in verse 18. Believers are prohibited from getting drunk with wine and, positively, are commanded to keep on being filled with the Spirit. What does being filled with the Spirit look like? Paul describes that with a series of participial phrases: addressing one another with psalms and hymns, singing and making music to the Lord, giving thanks to the Father, and finally, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Just as all believers are to be filled with the Spirit, sing to the Lord, and give thanks to the Father, so all believers are to submit to one another. That is true for men as well as women.
Yes, submit in Christ. When Paul moves to addressing wives, he is not introducing a new topic. The verbs in verses 21 and 22 are the same. In fact, in some of the earliest Greek manuscripts of this letter, the verb “submit” is not stated in verse 22, but is just assumed from verse 21. (Similarly, in verse 24, the verb to submit in the second half of the verse is not expressed, but is picked up from the first half of the verse.) In verse 22 our English translations, and many later Greek manuscripts, supply the verb “submit.” But whether the verb is expressed or assumed, the connection with verse 21 is clear. The submission that Paul instructs wives to give to their husbands, is a specific application of the mutual submission of the previous verse. Submission reflects a structure, a structure that has not just evolved, but one which God has set up. Submission is ultimately a reflection of your relationship with Christ, which is the reason Paul gives for submitting. Paul’s words do not do away with authority and responsibility in the home or in the church. But they do challenge us to be consistently biblical in our relationships with one another. Paul reminds us that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. Wives, the Holy Spirit who inspired Paul, calls you to pattern your submission to your own husband after the way the church should respond to her Lord. Husbands are not perfect, and there are clear limits in Scripture to submission and obedience to human authority. Don’t misuse this passage to justify forcing submission to sinful oppression.
Love! Husbands, love your wives! Husbands, note that the Bible never commands you to make your wife submit. The command addressed to you is to love. I’ve read reformed ministers argue that women are ontologically, in their being and nature, inferior to men. That thinking is derived from Aristotle, not Scripture. Husbands, if you are asking yourself, how do I exercise my authority, how do I make my wife submit to me, you have company — the company of Jesus’ disciples in Matthew 20, who argued about who was the greatest. Jesus rebuked them in verses 24–28, pointing out that this was a pagan notion. The Son of man came, not to be served, but to serve. That is your model. Paul’s instruction to husbands is even more challenging and more detailed as well: to love as Christ loved the church. Love is not first of all a feeling. Rather, it is action — obedient action — doing what is right, regardless of how you feel about it. The love Christ has for his Father and for the church led him to enter this world and to suffer and die in the place of his people. Husbands that is the standard Paul holds out for you as to how you are to treat your wife. The gospel is ultimately the marriage manual. The submission and love in marriage is a specific instance of what it means to walk in love.
“If we do not address the selfishness in our hearts it will at some point give way to the practice of treating image bearers as tools, or objects. We do not see others as people to whom we give the respect and dignity that they deserve as men and women created in God’s image. Instead we see them as something less and use them to accomplish our purposes and goals. In marriage this quickly leads to the attitude “you owe me.” We can end up manipulating our spouses to get what we want from them, which in many cases is our pleasure.”
Steve Green, “What Does the Bible Teach Us about Sex and Love?” an unpublished paper
Note that Christ’s care for the church involves doing humble, dirty work — washing, cleansing. Husbands, the loving humiliation of Christ as he became incarnate, not to serve but to be served, is what God is calling you to.
Reveal the great mystery. But back to the mystery. The mystery is not just the mystery of love between a man and a woman. Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 and takes you back to the creation account. When God creates mankind in his image why does he create them male and female? God is triune, three in one. From all eternity, prior to creation, the persons of the Trinity, equal in power and glory (that’s why the teaching of the eternal subordination of the Son is a serious error), united in perfect love and fellowship. God created mankind, male and female, to image him, to reflect his character and nature. In that first marriage in the Garden (the only marriage in which the coule were sin-free), in the love between Adam and Eve something of the love, communication, and fellowship of the Trinity was reflected in the creatures. Sin marred those relationships, not only between the humans and their Creator, but also between each other. The blame game promptly started. What was originally good became selfish and oppressive. But even after the fall, marriage continues to picture the relationship between God and his people. In Isaiah 54, the Lord is the husband comforting and restoring his bride, his people. Paul expands on that imagery here in Ephesians 5. And the last day culminates with the great wedding feast of the Lamb as the Lord takes his bride, his purified church, into the newly merged heavens and earth. Marriage is mysterious, but even more deeply mysterious is the relationship between Christ and his church. Paul points you beyond the immediate relationship between two people to the relationship that the Lord has with his church. Because you are united to Christ, every one of you, whether married or single, is called to reflect the holiness of the God in whose image you are made.
“God has built into the order of creation a relationship which — yes, with all its own mysteries — provides a clue to the Ultimate Relationship, the experience of being a couple in a marriage relationship that points to the Ultimate Couple — Christ and his Bride, the church. This marriage ‘made in heaven’, but forged on earth, is destined to last for all eternity. And every Christian marriage is called to reflect and manifest it. Glorious mystery indeed!”
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Let’s Study Ephesians, p. 155
For those of us who are married or who hope to be married at some point, your marriage is not just about you and your spouse. It is a living illustration of the relationship between Christ and his people. Make sure that, but God’s grace, it is reflecting the glory of that relationship.
Don’t come to this text simply looking for some advice on marriage. See how Paul ties what he says to husbands and wives to the topic of submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, which is what you do as you keep on being filled with the Spirit. And don’t stop when you hear Paul tell wives to submit and husbands to love. Look beyond that to Jesus, the Lord who is busy right now perfecting, shaping, washing you, his bride, the church, preparing you for the glory in which you will one day join him. And until that day comes, ma the marriages in this congregation and the lives of each of us, married or single, reflect the mysterious glory of our Lord.