The Context: Love and Unity

My friend, Tonia, wrote:

"christians like to talk about submission in marriage, though the common discussion, involving authority, gender and who makes the decisions, seems to me something stingy and earth-bound. submission to one another in love is a thing of beauty, a mysterious relinquishing and embracing, of acceptance and yielding that braids together two into one. there's no more powerful force between a husband and a wife than the choosing of the other at personal expense." (italics mine)

Leo Tolstoy wrote:

"Levin had thought there could never be any relations between himself and Kitty other than those based on tenderness, self-respect, and love: But the first month of their marriage showed otherwise.

Their first quarrel arose because Levin had ridden over to inspect a new farm. He returned half an hour late because he had attempted a short cut and got lost. He rode home thinking only of her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the nearer he came to the house the warmer grew his tenderness for her. He rushed into the room with a feeling that was even stronger than the one with which he had gone to propose to her, yet was all of a sudden met with a grim expression he had never seen on her face before. He tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away.

"What's the matter?"

"You're having a nice time . . ." she began, trying to appear calm and venomous.

But the moment she opened her mouth, she burst into a flood of reproaches, senseless jealousy, and everything else that had been tormenting her during the half hour she had spent sitting motionless at the window. It was then that he clearly understood for the first time what he had failed to understand when he led her out of the church after the wedding. He understood that she was not only close to him, but that he could not now tell where she ended and he began. He realized it from the agonizing feeling of division into two parts which he experienced at the moment. He felt hurt, but he immediately realized that he could not be offended with her because she was himself. For a moment he felt like a man who, receiving a sudden blow from behind, turns round angrily with the desire to return the blow only to find that he had accidentally struck himself and that there was no one to be angry with and he had to endure and do his best to assuage the pain. . . .

It took him a long time to recover his senses. His first impulse was quite naturally to justify himself and explain that she was in the wrong; but to show her that she was in the wrong meant to exasperate her still more and to widen the breach which was the cause of all this trouble. One impulse quite naturally drew him to shift the blame from himself and lay it upon her; another much more powerful feeling drew him to smooth over the breach and prevent it from widening. To remain under so unjust an accusation was painful, but to hurt her by justifying himself would be still worse. Like a man half awake and suffering from pain, he wanted to tear off the aching part and cast it away, but on coming to his senses he realized that the aching part was himself. All he had to do was to try to help the aching part to bear it, and this he did."(italics mine)

God-given, grace filled unity and self-denying, other focused love are the context for the headship and submission spoken of in Ephesians 5.  I have often been troubled, like my dear friend, Tonia, by the way headship and submission are discussed and yes, caricatured, as though the only way this Biblical pattern can be lived out is in the roles of domineering husband and cowering wife.  Such caricatures are not truthful representations of Biblical marriage at all.  Nor are they my experience.

There is deep submission in the dying-to-self  loving of a husband's faithful leadership, and powerful freedom in the respect-filled edification of a wife's submission.  When you are not worried about who's the boss, when you consider the other as more important than yourself, when you choose the "other at personal expense" such humility frees you to live fully and joyfully in whatever place God assigns.  Outside the context of unity and love, headship is cruel and submission is weak.

Ephesians 5 talks about the great mystery of marriage, likening it to Christ and the church. Christ is not cruel and the church, when it is truly being the church, is not weak.  So, the caricature has to be wrong.  The true Biblical pattern is much more beautiful - not like the loud clanging of the hammer on the nail but instead like the quiet breeze that makes the golden hickory leaves sway and sing in the afternoon sun.