Mutual submission in marriage

If you are asking about these verses, you may be preparing for marriage, trying to love your spouse well, or wondering whether Scripture asks you to accept something that feels wrong. Every reading of these passages begins in the same place: Christ’s self-giving love, which the letter to the Ephesians holds up as the pattern for marriage.

Christians disagree, as brothers and sisters, about how to apply the New Testament verses that tell wives to submit to their husbands. Many evangelical churches teach that God gave husbands a loving authority in the home. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message 2000 says that “a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband,” and also that husband and wife “are of equal worth before God.” Mainline churches read the same passages in light of Ephesians 5:21, which calls all Christians to submit to one another, and they see in marriage two people who give themselves to each other.

What does Ephesians 5:22 say?

The instruction to wives comes in the middle of a longer sentence, which begins with words addressed to every Christian:

being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5:21, NRSVUE

The next verse, Ephesians 5:22, translated from the Greek, reads “Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”¹ In the Greek, verse 22 has no verb of its own. It borrows the verb from verse 21, hypotassomenoi (being subject), which applies to everyone. The submission of wives is presented as one example of the mutual submission that all Christians owe each other. The letter then gives a reason for the wives’ submission in Ephesians 5:23–24: “the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the assembly,” that is, the church.

Then the letter turns to husbands, and the standard it sets is higher than anything it asks of wives:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Ephesians 5:25, NRSVUE

John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage in the late fourth century, told the husbands in his congregation: “You have seen the measure of obedience, hear also the measure of love.” He went on to say that a husband must be ready to give his life for his wife (Homily 20 on Ephesians).

What were the household codes?

Ephesians 5:21–6:9, Colossians 3:18–4:1, and 1 Peter 2:18–3:7 contain what scholars call household codes: lists of duties for wives and husbands, children and parents, and slaves and masters. Greek writers had long described the household in exactly these three pairs. Aristotle wrote in his Politics (1.3) that “the first and smallest parts of a family are the master and slave, the husband and wife, the father and child.” He also wrote that “the male is by nature superior to the female” (Politics 1.12).

The New Testament writers took over that familiar pattern and reshaped it. They spoke to wives and slaves directly, as people who answered to Christ. They bound husbands to love: “Husbands, love your wives, and don’t be bitter against them” (Colossians 3:19). But they did not abolish the pattern. The same letters that tell wives to be subject also tell slaves to obey. Ephesians 6:5 tells douloi, slaves, to “be obedient to those who according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling.”

Every church today agrees that the instructions to slaves described the world in which the first Christians lived, and that they do not express God’s lasting design (see Does the Bible support slavery?). Mainline churches read the instructions to wives in the same way: as wise counsel for Christians in a Roman household, governed by the deeper rule of mutual love. Many scholars also think Ephesians and Colossians were written by followers of Paul after his death.

What does 1 Peter 3 say to wives?

First Peter writes to Christians living as a suspected minority in a pagan society. Its advice to wives has a missionary purpose. 1 Peter 3:1–2 tells wives to be subject to their husbands so that husbands who do not believe “may be won by the behavior of their wives without a word.”

The letter holds up Sarah, who “obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Peter 3:6). Genesis tells a fuller story. At one crucial moment God said to Abraham, “In all that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice” (Genesis 21:12). And 1 Peter itself reminds husbands that their wives are “joint heirs of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7).

What does the rest of Scripture say about husbands and wives?

Genesis describes the first woman as “a helper comparable to him” (Genesis 2:18). The Hebrew word for “helper,” ezer, does not suggest a subordinate. The Psalms use the same word for God: “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:2).

The first time Scripture says a husband “will rule over” his wife is after the man and woman disobey God, as part of the sorrow that follows (Genesis 3:16). Many Christian readers take the verse as describing what sin did to marriage, and they look to the mutual help of Genesis 2 for what God intended.

Paul’s own teaching on marriage in 1 Corinthians is strikingly mutual:

The husband should give to his wife what is due her and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

1 Corinthians 7:3–4, NRSVUE

Jesus told his disciples that the rulers of the nations “lord it over them,” and “it shall not be so among you, but whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant” (Mark 10:42–45). Leadership in a Christian home is measured by service.

What do mainline wedding vows say?

Wedding vows have changed. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, the bride alone promised “to love, cherish, and to obey.” The wedding services of the ELCA, the PC(USA), the United Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church today give the man and the woman the same promises, and neither promises to obey. In the United Methodist service, the groom says:

In the name of God, I, Name, take you, Name, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.

A Service of Christian Marriage I, United Methodist Book of Worship

The bride says the same words, with “husband” in place of “wife.” In the Eastern Orthodox wedding, Ephesians 5:20–33 is the epistle reading, and the priest places a crown on the head of the bride and of the groom alike. For a portrait of a capable, independent wife in Scripture, see What does Proverbs 31 mean?

What if your husband uses these verses to control you?

Your safety matters to God, and no Christian teaching requires you to stay in danger. A husband who demands obedience through threats, insults, or violence is breaking the command of Ephesians 5:25. If you are being abused, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. A priest or pastor can also help you find safety; see Is divorce a sin?

The Song of Songs puts the mutual gift of love into a single line: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song of Songs 2:16). Each belongs to the other, and each gives to the other freely. Whatever shape your marriage takes, the call to both of you is the same one Paul gave the Colossians: “Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:14).

Notes

1. Greek (SBL Greek New Testament): ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις ἐν φόβῳ Χριστοῦ. Αἱ γυναῖκες τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀνδράσιν ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ, Hypotassomenoi (verse 21) means “being subject.” Verse 22, hai gynaikes tois idiois andrasin hōs tō kyriō, means literally “the wives to their own husbands as to the Lord” and has no verb; English Bibles supply “be subject” from verse 21. ↩︎