What Is Biblical Submission?

It is interesting to me that whenever women begin talking about submission, nobody seems particularly confused about the meaning of the word until a husband enters the conversation.

We understand submission to civil authority.

We understand that an employee works beneath the authority of an employer, that a child is under the authority of a parent, and that order requires somebody to carry responsibility for leadership.

Then we arrive at:

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” Ephesians 5:22.

Suddenly the word becomes terribly complicated.

We begin reaching for qualifications, unusual circumstances, hypothetical situations, and every possible example of what the verse surely cannot mean before we have spent much time considering what God plainly said.

I understand the instinct because I am a woman too.

Submission presses against something in our flesh.

We like our own judgment.

We have preferences, opinions, reasoning, and often very good ideas about how something ought to be done.

Some women are especially capable, decisive people who can look at a situation and see a solution before anyone else in the room has finished identifying the problem.

Then God asks us to submit.

That can feel terribly inconvenient.

I once heard submission defined in a way that has stayed with me, essentially as surrendering ourselves to another while conducting ourselves among people as children who ultimately belong to our Father in heaven.

I think that last part matters most.

Christian submission has always been rooted higher than the person immediately in front of us.

Before I ever consider my relationship to my husband, I have to look at Christ.

Hebrews 10:7 records His words:

“Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.”

The life of Christ was marked by surrender to the Father.

He knew exactly who He was, possessed all power, and still submitted Himself to the will of God, even when that road led through Gethsemane and ultimately to Calvary.

Most Christian women would gladly say we want to follow Christ.

The difficulty comes when following Him leads directly into an instruction we would rather arrange differently.

What happens when part of doing the Father’s will is submitting to the leadership of a fallible man?

That is where all the “what ifs” begin.

What if he makes the wrong decision?

What if I understand this situation better?

What if my idea really is wiser?

What if he overlooks something?

There are legitimate situations where a husband asks his wife to participate in sin, and no biblical understanding of submission requires disobedience to God.

Abuse should never be hidden beneath Christian vocabulary either.

Those situations require wisdom, help, and sometimes intervention.

But most of us do not live every day inside the extreme hypothetical.

Most of our submission gets tested in painfully ordinary places.

He wants to handle something differently than I would.

He makes a decision after hearing my thoughts and still chooses another direction.

He does something in a way that seems horribly inefficient to me.

I have explained my opinion clearly, perhaps more than once, and there comes a point when the discussion has ended and I have to decide what kind of spirit I am going to carry afterward.

That is where submission becomes very personal.

Can I fall in graciously when I did not get my way?

Can I express my thoughts without needing to control the final outcome?

Can I trust that God is capable of leading my husband without requiring me to stand over his shoulder supervising the process?

Those questions reach much deeper than whether I verbally say, “Fine.”

Sometimes the mouth says fine while every cupboard door in the kitchen learns how very un-fine the woman actually is.

I know that because I have lived long enough in marriage to recognize how easily a wife can technically comply while making everyone in the house pay for the privilege.

There is a spirit to submission.

Christ demonstrated it perfectly.

He entrusted Himself to the Father.

That may be the most searching part for me because ultimately submission asks whether I believe God’s order is trustworthy even when the person occupying a position of authority remains human.

Of course my husband is fallible.

So am I.

The fact that I can identify his weaknesses does not automatically qualify me to take over his God-given position, especially when I possess enough weaknesses of my own to keep the Lord busy sanctifying me for the rest of my life.

Ephesians does not leave the husband without tremendous responsibility.

He is commanded to love his wife “even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Ephesians 5:25.

That is an enormous calling.

His headship carries accountability before God, and someday he answers for how he handled it.

My responsibility remains mine.

I think women sometimes exhaust themselves trying to make sure the husband fulfills his half of Ephesians 5 before they feel safe enough to obey theirs.

Yet obedience has never worked particularly well when we require another person’s obedience as the down payment on our own.

There comes a point where I have to ask myself whether I trust God.

Really trust Him.

Enough to believe that His arrangement for marriage contains wisdom beyond my own immediate understanding.

Enough to believe that He can work through an imperfect husband.

Enough to believe that if I obey Him faithfully, the consequences of that obedience can be placed into His hands.

Paul explains later in Ephesians 5 that marriage carries a much larger picture within it.

“This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” Ephesians 5:32.

A husband and wife have been given roles that point beyond themselves.

The husband pictures Christ.

The wife pictures the church, His bride.

Neither spouse invented those assignments, and neither bestowed the role upon the other. God established the order.

That truth has helped me because submission begins to feel different when I stop viewing it primarily as a question of which spouse is more competent.

There have been plenty of situations in our marriage where I may have known more about the particular subject at hand.

My husband has areas where his judgment and experience far exceed mine too.

None of that rearranges the order of the home.

A wife is a help meet, and being a good help meet absolutely includes speaking.

Sometimes helping my husband requires telling him something he has missed, offering another perspective, bringing wisdom I possess into the conversation, or even warning him strongly when I believe something matters.

Submission does not require a wife to erase her brain.

The question often comes afterward.

Once I have helped, advised, explained, and said what needs saying, can I stop?

That little question probably exposes me more than all the complicated theological arguments surrounding submission ever could.

Can I stop?

Can I leave the decision with him without bringing the issue back six more times under slightly different wording?

Can I refrain from recruiting someone else to agree with me because my husband did not?

Can I resist the temptation to punish the decision with attitude if it goes another way?

Sometimes biblical submission looks remarkably ordinary.

Sometimes it looks like keeping my mouth closed because I have already said enough.

And goodness, that can be difficult.

I have reached an age where I am increasingly aware that spiritual maturity often involves learning when another sentence will add nothing useful.

There are times when my desire to “clarify” is really my unwillingness to release control.

The Lord knows the difference even when I have convinced myself otherwise.

Perhaps that is why this subject ultimately reaches far beyond marriage.

Submission reveals what I believe about God.

Do I believe His Word is wiser than my instinct?

Do I believe His order is good even when my flesh strains against it?

Can I entrust myself to Him when obedience requires surrendering the comfort of having the final say?

We can spend years debating every conceivable exception and never get around to obeying the instruction sitting plainly on the page.

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

Simple words.

Not always simple flesh.

I am certainly no flawless example of them, and marriage has given me enough evidence of that to keep me humble.

But I have also lived long enough to see that God’s order does not need me to improve upon it.

My husband needs a wife who will help him honestly, speak wisely, pray faithfully, and then trust God enough to allow him to carry the responsibility God placed upon him.

And I need the sanctifying work that happens inside me when I surrender my need to control every outcome.

Perhaps submission becomes less frightening when we remember whose hands ultimately hold us.

My husband is not my final authority.

God is.

And when I submit to the order He established, I am placing far more than a decision into His hands.

I am placing myself there too.

Biblical Womanhood

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