Reconsidering Marital Submission
When my husband and I were engaged, the wife of an important church leader in our lives told me that, as a new wife, it would be my job to follow my husband wherever he went, even if I had to “follow him off a cliff.”
In other words, even if I believed he was making a bad decision, my job as a wife was to submit to him in that decision and just trust it to God. (I’m sure she would have excluded sinful decisions from this, though I didn’t ask, and she didn’t clarify.)
That advice terrified me.
No matter how much I loved and trusted my future husband, I had no guarantees for how he would act or who he would become. I thought of a woman I knew whose husband was making decisions I found scary and immature. She never talked about it. She always spoke positively about him. She was the picture of a supportive and submissive wife, but I wondered what was happening in her heart as the bad choices he made were piling up and deeply impacting her life.
Looking back, I wish I had known I didn’t have to believe this advice, but everything I had read about Christian marriage only confirmed it. Being a good wife meant unquestioningly supporting my husband and submitting to his decisions.
In the first few years of our marriage, I tenaciously clung to this standard of wifely submission in my desire to be a good wife. Several times, when I thought a decision my husband wanted to make unwise, I gently offered my dissenting opinion. But when my husband attempted to hash it out in a back-and-forth discussion, I immediately gave way to his opinion, because I thought that’s what it meant to be a good wife. I thought standing my ground in a disagreement meant I was out of line.
I didn’t realize it then, but I wasn’t being fair to myself—or to my husband.
I’m thankful my husband is a godly man. He didn’t grow up in the religious culture of the church, and he never cared about wifely submission. He wanted to engage with my opinion, to make space for my voice. When he countered my opinion, it wasn’t because he wanted me to be quiet, but because he wanted us to workshop it together. It took us years to figure out the disconnect in this area. Years of me feeling frustrated when it seemed like he didn’t consider my opinion. Years of him feeling frustrated that I was so timid about expressing an opinion or engaging in dialogue. All because I thought the most godly thing I could do as a wife was to submit and follow.
I silenced myself because that’s what the marriage books and church wives told me to do. But they were wrong. I was wrong. Submission does not mean following your spouse off a cliff.
If you know me now, you probably have a hard time imagining this ultra-submissive version of me, because it’s not true to who I am. I have always had strong opinions, and I have always felt drawn to leadership spaces. The difference is, I used to believe that extreme submission to my husband pleased Jesus; now I know he is most honored when I show up fully and speak authentically.
On this journey, I’ve had to grapple with what the Bible says about submission. In the early years, I practically hated the word, because it represented so much pain and self-suppression. I couldn’t separate my experience from the text. But as I have grown as a person and as a wife, I’ve discovered something surprising—biblical submission is beautiful.
Against all my assumptions, I discovered that submission is not a female word; it’s a Christian word. Yes, Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands, but in the same passage, he also tells all believers to submit to one another (see Eph. 5:15-33).(1) In other words, submission is mutual. We all get to practice submission to one another, and that is beautifully like Jesus.
And when we understand submission as something we are all doing, then we start to ask what submission really means. If submission means obedience, how can we all submit? Wouldn’t that definition imply that some people—those at the top—don’t need to practice submission (except to God)?
Culturally, we have understood submission in terms of decision-making and authority, but what if Paul’s idea of submission was not about defining authority positions toward others, but about cultivating an attitude of mutuality and teamwork? Theologian Marg Mowczko defines submission as “humble, loyal, and loving deference and cooperation,” arguing that the biblical use of submission has little to do with decision-making, but instead with fostering a culture of unity(2)—which is, of course, not the same as agreement.
When we stop reading submit as authoritarian, we realize that Paul doesn’t actually speak about decision-making in his command to submit in Ephesians 5. The only New Testament passage that explicitly references decision-making within a marriage is 1 Corinthians 7:5, where Paul tells couples, “Do not deprive one another—except when you agree for a time, to devote yourselves to prayer…” (CSB). Here, the couple makes the decision through mutual agreement.
And that picture of submission is beautiful.
Paul’s command to submit shows how much we need each other—in the church and in marriage. Because it’s not about who is in charge or who gets the final say. It’s about the beauty of a man and a woman leading their lives together, mutually deferring to and strengthening one another. Now I know, if my husband considers a cliff dive, I’ll do my best to stop him—to rescue him if needed. But I certainly won’t jump too.
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Notes
1. This is a complex passage, and I don’t have the space to address it here, but I appreciate Gordon Fee’s analysis in his article, “The cultural context of Ephesians 5:18-6:9” CBE International (Jan. 30, 2002); https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/cultural-context-ephesians-518-69/.
2. Marg Mowczko, “What does submission ‘in everything’ mean?” (Nov 12, 2022); https://margmowczko.com/wives-submit-in-everything-eph-5/.