Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. (Eph. 5:22 NIV)
Here, of course, is where the glorious word “submission” has become a cuss word in our culture. It’s one thing to suggest that kids should submit to parents, employees to employers, and people to Presidents, but wives to husbands?
As mentioned yesterday, the Holy Trinity teaches us that submission is not a dirty, degrading act, but a divine one, something that God Himself is doing constantly. If wives think submission to their husbands is degrading, then they have to admit that Christ’s submission to the Father is degrading as well. It was glorious! If these two biblical concepts, equality and submission, are not compatible in our mind, then we don’t understand the Trinity, we don’t understand authority, and we don’t understand what really makes people valuable and significant.
Submission is hard, and again, Christ’s example is helpful. What is that area in which it is hard for you to submit to your husband? How does it compare with submitting to the command to leave paradise and die on a cross for a bunch of God- hating rebels? Really, the things we struggle with are so little compared to the example of our Savior.
The Bible’s instruction to church members has some important application to wives as well: “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.” (Heb. 13:17). A wife’s God-given responsibility could be summed up in one phrase, and it is the greatest compliment any wife could ever hear from both her God and her man: “You’re easy to live with”.