Mutual Submission - Notes on Eph. 5:21-33

Ephesians 5:21-33

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. 24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind-yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. 33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

This text has led to all sorts of debate about the relationship between a wife and husband. As I was preparing a message on this text, I came across the following helpful notes. I thought you might find them helpful, too.

The following are taken from Klyne Snodgrass’s commentary on Ephesians in the NIV Application Commentary Series unless noted.

Live a life worthy of the calling you have received (Eph. 4:1)
“Be careful then how you live” (5:15)
- not as unwise but as wise (16)
- not as foolish, but understanding the Lord’s will (17)
- not drunk, but filled with the Spirit (18)
(286)

Submission is the essential mark of being filled with God’s Spirit.

- address to wives and husbands is only an example of mutual submission (287)

- relation of Christ and church provides a model for a husband’s conduct toward his wife. (288)

- life in the Spirit is characterized by giving thanks - seen in our lives not just words (291)

- Greek hypotasso (submit) means “arrange under” (292)
all Christians are to submit to Christ and to one another

- submission describes the self-giving love, humility, and willingness to die that are demanded of all Christians (292)

- submission is a strong and free act of the will based on real love of the other person. Submission is nothing more than a decision about the relative worth of another person, a manner of dying and rising with Christ, and a way to respect and love other people. (293)

- a wife submits to her husband because of her relationship to the Lord
Its focus is not on the privilege and dominance of the husband, and Paul never intended to suggest that wives were servants, compelled to follow any and every desire of the husband. It does not tell wives to obey their husband or give license to a husband to force submission. (294)

- Be filled with the Spirit by union with Christ.

“Head” suggests “responsibility for” not authority. The husband has a leadership role, but not to boss his wife or use this position as a privilege. Paul redefines being head as having responsibility to love, to give oneself, and to nurture. A priority is placed on the husband, but, contrary to ancient society, it is for the benefit of the wife. The activity of both wife and husband is based on their relation to Christ and in his giving himself for the church. (295)

In the ancient world husbands had relatively few obligations beyond providing food and shelter. They were free to do as they pleased, whereas wives were obligated to do domestic chores and to do what their husbands required. Paul’s words change the picture dramatically. Rather than being guided by the self-interests, the husband is asked to place the well-being of his wife first and to give himself to caring for her. (296)

This love is not merely the natural love of a man for a woman. As wonderful as such love is, it is insufficient for the marriage relationship. Such love is not confined to feelings and attitudes; it involves a series of choices that expresses discipleship to Jesus Christ. The love required of husbands is Christologically defined. Christ’s love motivated him to give himself for the good of the church. Husbands must follow the same pattern and love enough to give themselves for their wives. (297)

Women were viewed differently in modern Western Civilization than in ancient Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world. . . What information we have about women and attitudes toward them paints an absolutely awful picture. For example, one writer said women were the worst plague Zeus made. Another said, “The two best days in a woman’s life are when someone marries her and when he carries her dead body to the grave.” In Judaism women were not counted in the quorum needed for a synagogue and were ritually unclean during menstruation. One rabbi advised, “Do not talk much with a woman.” Another added, “Not even with one’s wife.”

By and large, women were viewed as inferior and were given relatively little freedom. . . In most places, however, IF they were allowed to live at birth, women were minimally educated, could not be witnesses in a court of law, could not adopt children or make a contract, could not own property or inherit, and were viewed, as both Aristotle and Josephus said, in all respects inferior to a man. They were seen as less intelligent, less moral, the source of sin, and a continual temptation. (302-303)

This text is not intended to grant husbands a position of privilege or to teach that women are inferior. Its intent is to avoid offense to outsiders by encouraging mutual submission – a submission on the part of the wife and a self-giving on the part of the husband – with both partners having their lives determined and motivated by Christ’s own self-giving love. Still, a priority is placed on the husband, a priority that gives him a greater responsibility to care for his wife. (305)

Our society emphasizes equality, but mutual submission is a much stronger idea. With equality, you still have a battle of rights. Equality can exist without love, but it will not create a Christian community. With mutual submission, we give up rights and support each other. Mutual submission is love in action. It brings equal valuing and is the power by which a Christian community establishes itself.

Mutual submission will not allow us to promote ourselves and our own interests. . . (311)

Mutual submission is to mark the relations of all Christians. This does not mean people will always agree, for they will not, just as Paul and Barnabas did not agree about Mark (Acts 15:36-41). Certainly it will not mean giving in to error, for there are times when one must not submit. Note Paul’s refusal to submit to his opponents (Gal. 2:5) when the character of the gospel was at stake. But if the issue is not error, the gospel calls for the sacrifice of self-centeredness and the valuing and promoting of other people. As we have noted, greater responsibility belongs on the person enjoying privilege. Consequently, mutual submission of rich and poor places added pressure on the rich, but with the realization that each makes a contribution to the other. In the end submission is nothing other than humility and the self giving love of Christ. (312)

The real head of the marriage is always Christ, and both partners are to live in mutual submission to each other, seek to promote each other within the purposes of Christ, and live out the oneness of their relationship. (315)

Also from William Webb’s book, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals . . .

In our modern culture it is the wife side of the New Testament household codes that is so striking and “out of step.” But this was not the case in their original setting. For the first-century audience it was not the wife material that was radical or strange; it was the husband material. As with slavery, Paul modifies the “top end” of the hierarchical structure. He pushes the cultural expectations primarily on the husband side of the hierarchy. His words to husbands soften the hierarchy compared to the broader sociological setting. Aside from reading Ephesians 5:22-33 against the backdrop of its original setting, one evidence for softening the top end of the hierarchy is seen in the imbalance between the actual imperatives (commands) found in the passage. Paul commands wives to “submit.” Correspondingly, he does not command husbands to “rule” or “lead” (reciprocal imperative to submit) but to “love.” The husband’s rule or authority is assumed in the discussion, but softened considerably through Paul’s altered focus and the use of sacrificial imagery. In this way, Paul assumes the status quo for women; however, he pushes the boundaries for men with the direction of his command. (80)

Scripture instructs wives to “obey/submit to” their husbands (e.g., Eph 5:22; Col 3:18; I Pet 3:1, 6). There are several reasons why this command made sense in the original culture:

- lack of knowledge/education
- lack of social exposure/experience
- lack of physical strength: greater reliance upon male strength in an agricultural society
- economic dependence: most of the economy and earning potential dependent upon males
- marital differential: young girls (ages 12-14) marrying older males

Each of these factors in the original setting built a natural or understandable hierarchy between men and women, whether or not Scripture had anything to say on the matter. The differential between men and women in knowledge, social experience, strength, economics and age as marriage “partners” created its own hierarchy. With one exception (strength differential) all of these factors are culture-based pragmatics. (213-214)

Also from I. Howard Marshall’s article "Mutual Love and Submission in Marriage" in Discovering Biblical Equality, edited by Ronald Pierce and Rebecca Groothuis . . .

What Paul is doing is to indicate the way wives should be submissive within a society where such submission was expected, just as he can also tell slaves how they are to be obedient in the slave-master relationship; in both cases he bases it in the relationship to Christ.

The injunction to husbands is not that they exercise their proper authority; rather it has a quite extraordinary emphasis on the total love and devotion that the husband must show to the wife. . .

. . . Not only is this instruction to husbands to love their wives unusual and unconventional in the world of the New Testament, but the sheer intensity of the love demanded is extraordinary. (199)

“To have fulfilled one’s role and carried out one’s duties under the guidelines of mutual submission, and as a wife to have subordinated oneself voluntarily to a husband who cherishes one with a self-sacrificial love, would have been to experience a very different reality than that suggested by the traditional discussions of household management.” There is thus something distinctly new in the Christian understanding of marriage, even though Paul’s teaching here assumes a patriarchal structure of marriage. Does it, however, require this structure? (200)