The all-sufficient Christ sanctifies our family relationships
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Whether in the public eye or in the privacy of their homes, Christians are to do everything “in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Here Paul applies that general principle to believers’ family relationships. Later on, in verses 5 and 6, he applies it to their relationships to their unbelieving neighbors. The result is a kind of house table, or table of duties. In the writings of some non-Christian philosophers, we also find codes of behavior and suggestions of duties for human society, but only in the Scriptures do Christians find “Do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” written above all our daily duties. Only in Jesus, who stands at the heart of Scripture, do we find the source of love and spiritual strength that will give us the desire and the ability to faithfully fulfill those duties.
The apostle begins his table of Christian family duties by discussing the first and most basic family relationship, the relationship between husband and wife. Marriage, of course, is not limited to Christians. It is God’s answer to a basic and universal human need. Through marriage God graciously provides the special, intimate companionship that human beings need. He likewise provides for the chastity of man and woman and for the continuation of the human race through the blessing of children.
Marriage is not the same for everyone; the apostle’s command to “do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” raises Christian marriage to a higher level. Nor is the contrast between Christian and non-Christian marriage only an external one. It is not just a matter of less quarreling, bickering, or unfaithfulness, though it should certainly include those things.
Doing everything in Jesus’ name affects the whole relationship between husband and wife, as their Christian values and attitudes are continually reflected in the way they speak to each other and treat each other.
With remarkable brevity Paul describes the roles that God has assigned to husbands and wives in a Christian marriage. “Wives,” he says, “submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” Modern feminism protests the word submit. Feminists often label the apostle Paul a chauvinist and denounce his words as a throwback to a less enlightened age. Words like submit and obey, they tell us, must be removed from the marriage ceremony, and what these words imply must be removed from the marriage. The feminist movement, however, cannot eliminate this passage from Scripture. It cannot eliminate what Scripture consistently teaches about this subject. Nor does it take the time to try to understand what Scripture is really saying here.
As we consider this passage, we would do well to remember that it is not only the apostle Paul who is speaking here; it is the Lord. We should not forget either that what the apostle says here to wives is only half of a total picture. All the apostle’s instructions in this section are reciprocal, and the full significance of what Paul is saying here to wives emerges only after we study his corresponding instructions to husbands. Most important of all, we must never forget that all the instructions in this section are given in the spirit of genuine love.
So what does the apostle mean when he urges Christian wives to be submissive to their husbands? He does not mean that the woman is inferior. In heathen cultures women have been, and in some places still are, regarded as inferior, but Christianity gives dignity to women. This same apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ, that is, with regard to salvation, there are no distinctions between male and female. Paul’s call for Christian wives to be submissive, however, reminds us that insofar as this life is concerned, God created man and woman to be different, both biologically and emotionally.
God created the man first and then created the woman to complement the man, to be a “helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). This order of creation is reflected in the family relationship when the husband is recognized as the head, the leader of the family. If you try to create something with two heads, or with no head, you end up with a monster. God makes it clear that in a marriage relationship, the greatest blessings occur when the Christian wife willingly acknowledges her husband’s leadership, acknowledging it for the best possible reason: because it is “fitting in the Lord.”
As we have already stated, all of the apostle’s instructions in this family duties section are reciprocal. We cannot understand the full significance of what he is teaching unless we study both parts of his instructions. The counterpart to “wives, submit to your husbands” is not “husbands, lord it over your wives” but rather “husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” To no husband does the Lord give the right to be a tyrant or dictator in the home.
A Christian husband’s treatment of his wife is to reflect kindness, consideration, gentleness, dignity, and a steady, unwavering love—a love similar to the Savior’s love for his believers. This love—true Christian love—willingly gives and sacrifices without expecting anything in return. It is strange, is it not, that some husbands seem to take it for granted that their wives will help them with their work but then refuse to lift a finger to lighten their wives’ domestic load? The love the Lord calls for in Christian husbands does not take that attitude. It is always gentle and considerate, never demanding or harsh.
Nor does the fact that the husband is the God-appointed head of the family mean that he will make the family decisions in an arbitrary or one-sided manner. The husband who seeks to be an effective head of his family will take time to communicate with his wife. He will seek out her counsel, try to understand her feelings, and seek to discuss family issues and problems in a reasonable, open, and loving way. Together husband and wife will go to God’s Word for its advice regarding decisions that confront them and affect their family life. Together they will pray for wisdom and sound Christian judgment in matters not directly addressed by God’s Word. And the whole vile matter of a husband’s physical abuse of his wife should not even have to be mentioned in relation to Christians.
In Ephesians, which in many respects is a companion epistle to Colossians, Paul compares the relationship that ought to exist between a Christian husband and wife to that which exists between the Lord and his church. As unthinkable as it would be for Christ to turn against the church, to be harsh with it or mistreat it in any way, so unthinkable should it be for a Christian husband to mistreat his wife or be harsh with her. As the church joyfully responds to Christ’s love with willing service, so wives should willingly submit to their husbands’ leadership as it is fitting in the Lord. A Christian husband’s love should make his wife’s submissive role be not a galling or distasteful thing but a reciprocal expression of self-giving Christian love.
The American family is in trouble today. Each year close to a million families are broken up. Who of us has gone through a year in the last decade without observing the breakup of a family somewhere in the circle of our relatives and friends? Is there a reader of this book who has not felt strains in one form or another on his own family relationships?
Our society lacks respect for the institution of marriage and disregards the role that God assigns to husbands, wives, and children. This has contributed greatly to the sad condition of family life in our nation. There are, of course, no perfect marriages here on earth, because there are no perfect people. But as Christ’s love fills the hearts of Christian husbands and wives and as they follow his direction, as each one seeks to love and serve the other, they will build marriages and homes that will better stem society’s tide, finding marriages that can last and homes in which peace and happiness can prevail as God’s blessing rests on them.