Submission to Husbands

Some Christian men use Eph 5:22-24 as justification for requiring their wives to submit their will and obey their instructions. Few see the funny side of this claim.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands… Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

According to this passage, wives should submit to their husbands in the same way that the church submits to Jesus. This seems to be a very low standard. For most of history, the church seems to have done its own thing. It has rarely obeyed Jesus.

Jesus never forces the church to do his will. Rather he loves it, and forgives again and again for disobeying and failing to do what he asked it to. The church tends to pay lip service to obeying Jesus, but has mostly done what it chooses to do and asked God to bless it so that it appears to be his will.

So, when a husband says that his wife should obey his commands in the way that the church obeys Jesus, he is setting a very low bar. A wife who follows the example of the church would take the benefits that he provides but ignore his instructions. A woman who obeys her husband in the same way as the church obeys Jesus can choose what instructions she wants to acknowledge and just ignore the rest