Submission as Intentional Alignment
Day 2
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Ephesians 5:22–24
Looking Deeper
If I’m going to approach this passage honestly, the first thing I have to do is remember what Paul just said a few lines earlier. The momentum of this section begins in Ephesians 5:21: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” That sentence is the hinge for everything that follows. If we lose that, we will almost certainly misread what comes next.
And here is something fascinating that often gets lost in translation. In verse 22, Paul actually doesn’t repeat the verb “submit.” In Greek, there is no verb there at all. He simply assumes the participle ὑποτασσόμενοι from verse 21 and carries it forward.
It is as if Paul is saying: “You know that mutual humility I just talked about? Let me show you what it looks like in a marriage.”
In other words, verse 21 is the principle. Verse 22 is a specific application of that principle within one relationship.
If I were allowed to paraphrase Paul’s thought in my own language, it might sound something like this:
Walk in humility toward one another because you belong to Christ. Now, wives, here is how that humility expresses itself in your marriage.
Okay, before anyone’s defenses go up, it’s worth remembering what Paul is not doing. He is not talking about intelligence. He is not assigning worth. He is not describing spiritual rank. The same apostle who wrote this passage also wrote that in Christ there is neither male nor female when it comes to value before God (Galatians 3:28).
Paul is doing something far more practical than philosophical. He is addressing how power is ordered in a relationship.
Every relationship has power. Every marriage does. The question is never whether power exists. The question is how it is used.
Paul begins by describing a posture of humility that flows out of reverence for Christ. Then he illustrates what that humility looks like for the wife: an intentional alignment with her husband.
Notice the model Paul uses. He does not compare the wife to a servant or an employee. He compares the relationship to Christ and the church.
Now ask yourself a simple question: Does Christ dominate the church?
Of course not.
Christ loves, protects, sacrifices, serves, and ultimately lays down His life for the church. The authority of Christ is not expressed through domination but through self-giving love.
Which means the moment we hear the word submission and picture oppression, we have already drifted away from Paul’s intent.
Submission in the kingdom of God is not about being less than.
It is about ordering love toward life.
And this is where the passage becomes uncomfortable in the best possible way. Because if we read it honestly, it stops being a passage about “them” and becomes a passage about us.
Wives might ask themselves: If I submitted to my husband the way I submit to Jesus, what would look different?
And husbands might ask an even more sobering question: If I reflected Christ more clearly to my wife, what would look different?
Because if a husband truly loves like Christ and a wife truly trusts like the church, something remarkable happens.
Power stops being a weapon.
And marriage begins to look a lot more like the kingdom of God.
Questions to Ponder
- For wives: If I submitted to my husband the way I submit to Jesus, what would look different?
- For husbands: If I reflected Christ more clearly to my wife, what would look different?