Wives Submit to Your Own Husbands | Ephesians 4:31-32

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their

Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Today we're going to be speaking on Ephesians 4, 31 -32, and in order to set the context for what we're going to be talking about today,

I'm going to first talk about Ephesians 5 .18, and then we're going to be reading

Ephesians 21 -24, Ephesians 5 .18. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the

Spirit, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the

Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of his church, his body, and is himself its

Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Now, when you think about a passage like this, one of the things to realize is that this really is probably one of the most offensive passages that you could think to even talk about.

And I say that to a church of people who, for the most part, I mean, I believe that most of you believe these things.

We've talked about these things over the course of our ministry here. I believe that most people in the church today believe that these things are true.

And yet, as I've been a Christian over the course of my life, I've been to churches,

I've been to a wide variety of churches. We grew up and moved around to a variety of different places, and then during my college years,

I visited a lot of different churches, and I've had many different conversations about this topic in general.

And one of the things I've realized is that there are many rules to how you're supposed to speak about this topic that are very clear.

I mean, the rules about how you're allowed to talk about this are very clear, and they're the kind of rules that I've seen pastor after pastor after pastor follow, and yet when you think about why these rules are there, it's a little less clear, okay?

So the way that you're supposed to talk about this topic is that you're supposed to basically never really mention these things very directly at all, and then if you do, like if somehow you're forced to mention them, and we happen to be in this passage here today, if somehow you're forced to mention them, then what you're supposed to do is spend your whole time apologizing for the words that are here, so that's what you're supposed to do, particularly as a pastor.

You're supposed to say, hey, I'm supposed to stand up here today and say, hey, guys, I'm sorry. This is here.

This is not me. Don't shoot the messenger, that kind of thing, and I didn't make it up. Don't get mad at me, but it's here, and we need to kind of do something about it.

And so that's the way you're supposed to talk about it. In a very apologetic way, I guess if you're apologizing the whole time, and then when you get to these passages themselves, what you're supposed to do is then you're supposed to spend the entire time basically trying to talk about all the ways in which this can be abused and all the ways in which this thing can be perverted or distorted and then spend very little time actually talking about what it means and why you should do it.

But then when you read the passage, one of the things that you'll realize is, I mean, you can go ahead and read it while I'm talking about it right now, and when you read the passage, one of the things you'll find is that Paul never seems to apologize for anything that's there, and he doesn't seem to do all the qualifications that you've come to expect pastors to do along those lines, and he doesn't even seem to be remotely embarrassed about the fact that it's here at all.

He just says these words in a very plain, straightforward way as if they're just obvious, and not only are they obvious, but then they're good.

Now, over the years, what I've said is that I know that we're living in a culture that's very hostile to these ideas.

I mean, that's obvious. I mean, you can just look at the culture you're living in right now, and these are words that are just absolutely hated and despised, and,

I mean, you see this, Harrison and I see this, with our interaction on the

Internet. There's no easier way to get a bunch of people insanely mad at you than to say some of these things in a fairly straightforward way without apology, but,

I mean, that's just like this is an area that our culture absolutely despises, but then what I'm trying to say is it's not just that our culture despises these things.

The church also despises these things in their own way, and this is very obvious too.

Now, I mean, I've tried to test this out over the course of my life to demonstrate that this is true, and what

I've done over the course of my life is I want to be the kind of guy who's promoting marriage and promoting children, and over the course of my life

I've tried to figure out how to word this, like this passage, in a way that is not going to sound offensive, but the issue is it's very hard to do that.

So, I mean, as I've spoken to unmarried young women over the course of my life, particularly when

I was single, and I would go up to unmarried young ladies and I would just ask them questions, and you can imagine the kind of responses that I would get.

So, you know, I've done this about the most, like anything related to a woman's role.

If you were to ask a young woman if she's excited about anything, like getting married so she can do anything related to a woman's role, you're going to get the same kind of reaction no matter how you ask it, and I've tested this in every way possible multiple times in multiple ways with Christian women who actually say that they believe these things.

So if I were to go up to a Christian woman, and I've done this, and say, hey, are you excited about getting married so you can have kids?

I might get an okay answer on that one. That one's kind of like 50 -50, right? So sometimes they'll get really mad at me if I say, hey, so are you excited about getting married so you can have kids?

You can imagine what the answer would come back with that. It's like, you know, who says I want to have kids?

I might get that half the time, that kind of who says, you know, why do you assume I want to have kids, you know, that kind of thing.

Is that all you think I am, is some kind of baby maker or something like that? These are Christian women who supposedly believe these kind of passages.

I may get that half the time, and then the other half the time, I might get a, hey, I'm really excited about that, right? But if you were to go up to a

Christian woman, and you were to say, hey, are you excited about getting married so that you could have a husband to serve?

What do you think the response that you would get with that is? I've never gotten a good response to that one, okay?

I've literally never gotten a good response to that, and you can imagine what comes back from that. What comes back from that is, oh, you're just a misogynist, you just hate women, you're just a chauvinist or whatever, or ha, ha, ha, ha.

That's very funny, right? But then imagine if I were to say, hey, are you excited about getting married so you can have a man to submit to or follow?

You have a man to follow. Isn't that fun? Isn't it a, are you excited about finally having someone to be subject to?

I mean, you all laugh, you all laugh, but then the issue is, now think about what's happening there.

So think about, I'm not trying to tell a joke. Imagine if I were to ask it the opposite direction, and I have.

Hey, guy, are you excited about getting married so you can have a woman to lead? Do you think they'd pitch a fit?

Do you think they'd get offended? Do you think they'd call me names for saying that? And the issue is, like, what's happening there is, what's happening there is actually pretty profound.

Like, the issue is that I'm not doing something inappropriate. What's happening is that we're living in a culture and society that has trained people to instantaneously be offended by these concepts, and that's what we do.

Like, we respond to these concepts in offense, and not only do we respond to these concepts with offense, we think that it's normal to respond to these concepts in an offended way.

And the reason why is because we know that these things are in there. We know that they're in the text, and we can't argue with that.

So I'm talking about Christians who on paper believe these things. We know that they're there. But then we've been so brainwashed by this pagan culture that we lived in that has trained us to think that this is somehow demeaning and this is somehow degrading and somehow that we should be insulted by this that we've come to a certain set of rules that basically say, hey,

I know that this is in there, but we need to be really careful about how we talk about it, and we probably never need to talk about it at all, and then we're definitely not allowed to treat these things as if they're a good thing and something that God designed for our good and for our blessing.

And what we need to do is basically just kind of be secretly embarrassed of these things, and then we'll say that, hey, yeah, we're committed to all that, but we just don't want to get too carried away, and we don't want to take it too far, and we don't want to be too excited about it.

But what I'm trying to say is that all that goes to show is that you're living in a culture and society that hates these things, and you're not allowed to talk about them as if they're good.

And in that kind of society, I'm not convinced that we're the best models of what these things actually mean.

I mean it's very hard to like excel at something that you secretly have been brainwashed to think is really secretly kind of tyrannical and oppressive and insulting and degrading and everything else.

And so if we're going to have any, like here's the point, if we're going to have any success in honoring the

Lord with these ideas, we do have to become the kind of people who aren't so embarrassed by them and who love these ideas and want to show the world what they look like in a

God -honoring way. Now when we talk about this passage, as I said, I'm starting out by talking about Ephesians 5 .18,

and the reason why, and I'm not going to belabor this point because Marcus has talked about this over the past couple weeks, but if you could imagine an outline on your paper of the passage itself, this is kind of the heading.

Ephesians 5 .18 is the heading, so you don't get drunk with wine for that debauchery, but you're supposed to be filled with the

Spirit. So if you're reading through Ephesians 5 .18, do not get drunk with wine for that debauchery, but be filled with Spirit.

What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, you can basically just look at the rest of the verses, and you can see a list of things.

So what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, the Spirit -filled person is going to be the person who's addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord in your heart. The Spirit -filled person is the one who's going to be giving thanks always and for everything to God the

Father in the name of Jesus Christ. And then the Spirit -filled person is also going to be the one who is submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

And then what you're going to have is, if you want to think about the way the passage works in general, is this submitting to one another out of reverence of Christ, this is going to be the heading that's going to be filled out through the rest of the book.

But then, as I said, we're starting out talking about Ephesians 5 .18, and what you see here is that submission, and we're going to talk about wives' submission to their own husbands in particular, and there's a reason why we're doing that, but this submission, wives' submission to her own husband, this is going to be the result of a

Spirit -filled life. As I said, you're living right now, you're living in a world that utterly hates this concept.

You're living in a world right now that utterly despises this concept and is hostile to this concept.

I mean, it's not just the world, it's the church, okay? I mean, I could give you example after example after example of situations where, you know, as a church leader,

I've sat in denominational church meetings and encountered people who are absolutely embarrassed by these words, absolutely ashamed by these words, demand that you talk about them as if you're walking on eggshells and everything else, but then the issue is, like, you're living in a culture, society, a world, a church that hates these ideas, and it's obvious.

It's obvious in every single show that you're going to watch and every single movie that you're going to watch. It's the main thing.

If you have eyes to see and if you have ears to hear, you can look at pretty much every single form of entertainment that you can possibly think to watch, and one of the primary themes in almost every episode of almost every single show and almost every single movie and almost every single song that you listen to is going to be open, defiant opposition to the idea that God made men and women different and that those created differences are good and that He had different roles for them to actually perform.

That's going to show up in every single show that you watch and every single movie that you watch in a wide variety of ways.

It's going to show up in the commercials that you watch over and over again. You can't even, I mean, I was shocked, and I haven't watched a lot of TV, but I was shocked and scandalized by seeing commercials lately.

I don't watch a lot of TV and seeing the kind of things that are in commercials. You're living in a world that's openly hostile and hates every single thing that the

Bible talks about, particularly one of the biggest battles that you're going to see right now is over gender roles and gender differences between men and women.

We're so confused about this to the point where we can't even tell the difference between a man and a woman anymore. You're living in that kind of world, and what does the

Bible say here? Don't get drunk with wine for that's debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. What is the evidence of a

Spirit -filled life? The evidence of a Spirit -filled life is going to be showing the world a picture of individuals who know, like in the beginning,

God made them male and female, and God's given men and women different jobs. If you want to shock the world and you want to scandalize the world, you want to show what it looks like to have the

Spirit of God living inside of you, then it's very simple, particularly if you're a woman in the room, and this is a message addressed to women today, all right?

I'm not going to pretend like this is a lesson addressed to men today because it's not.

This is a message for you ladies. If you want to show the world what it looks like to have the

Spirit of God residing in you, the way you do it is you embrace these ideas.

You learn to love them, and you learn to excel at them. Instead of just giving lip service to the idea that, yeah, on paper

I agree with those things, but let's just never talk about them because that's a little bit uncomfortable.

You want to show the world what it looks like to have the Spirit of God inside of you, show them how to do it. Show them what it looks like to have a person who loves these things, okay?

As I said, all of this is being put in that context of this whole talk on submission is being put in this context of being the result of a

Spirit -filled life. Now the second thing we see when we're reading through this passage, which it may not be intuitively obvious to you that this is what we see, but I'm going to try to explain.

The second thing that we see here is that submission is a wife's exclusive role in marriage, so a wife's submission to her husband is her exclusive role in marriage.

Now as you're reading through this verse, we're going to start reading in verse 21.

I'm going to read it in English first, and then I'm going to show you how the Greek looks.

I don't know, maybe my Greek diagram is already on the screen, and that's fine if that's the case. But then as you're reading this in most of your translations, what you're going to find is something like this, okay?

So verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, period. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the

Lord. Now what you should see on the screen right now is you should see a diagram of this actual passage in Greek.

And I know that these Greek words, they don't mean anything to you. You probably don't have any idea what they're saying at all, and that's fine.

So what I'm trying to do with this is just to show you the logic of the passage in general.

So the first word that you're going to find there, that big word, hypotasomenoi, that's a word that means submitting, okay?

So hypotasomenoi, I know that's Greek to you. It's all Greek to you. That means submitting, right?

And then the second word is alelois, and that means to one another. So Greek and English, they don't often have the same number of words to express the individual concept.

But think about the flow of thought here. You have submitting, hypotasomenoi means submitting. Alelois means to one another.

In phobokristou, so out of reverence for Christ. So that's the idea, submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

Now notice what's next. Hygounakes, what does that mean? The wives.

That word hy is the word for, it's the article, I guess the definite article. It means the, right?

The wives. Tois ideois anderson, to your own husbands. Hos to koryou, as to the

Lord, okay? So submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. Here's the flow of thought. Submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

The wives to your own husbands as to the Lord. What does that mean, right?

So we're talking about the result of a spirit -filled life. What is that going to look like? The church is going to be submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

The wives to their husbands. And then as you keep on going in the passage of Ephesians, what you're going to find is these are, like this idea of submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

First it shows up the wives submitting to her husbands, okay? And then second it's going to show up, and just turn your

Bible over or flip your screen. Ephesians 6 .1, children obey your parents and the

Lord for this is right. So what you have here in verse 21 is a heading. Submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

The wives doing that to the husbands. The children obeying their parents, right? And then you keep on going.

Ephesians 6 .5, what do you find? Bond servants, what are they supposed to do? Obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, right?

So what you have here is, these are called in theological terms, this is the household codes.

So if you want to know what it looks like to be spirit -filled, the church is going to be submitting to one another in reverence to Christ.

What does that mean? That means the wives to the husbands, that means children to parents, that means bond servants are going to submit to their earthly masters.

That's how it works, right? So submission is part of the Christian life. So now, when you think about it as it relates to our passage right now, where we're at, we're in the section which is talking about a wife's submission to her husband.

That's going to be the result of a spirit -filled wife. So what you see, though, is this. I mean, there's no sense.

Here's what you see. There's no sense in which a husband should ever, under any circumstance, submit to his wife at all, period.

So there's no sense at all, ever, under any circumstance, that a husband should ever submit to a wife.

And if you were inclined to think that that should ever happen, as if submission should be mutual, as if both should submit to each other in some ways and then maybe a wife submits to her husband in a special way, then the issue is we don't actually know what this word means at all.

So submission is a word that we use. It's a word that we throw around. It's a word that is used so often in Christian culture, but then

I'm afraid that we don't even know what it means. I think we use it in such a way that it's a very empty concept that is devoid of almost all meaning.

And in the minds of common people, and I've done enough counseling to know that this is basically how people think about this word.

When you're thinking about the word submission, what you're thinking is that maybe a wife should, in rare occasions, not get her way and let her husband have a tie -breaking vote.

In rare occasions, in big, this is the way we think about it, like in rare situations, big decisions, you can't come to some sort of agreement, then maybe the husband should be able to tell his wife in those situations the decision that they're going to make, but he really needs to be careful about doing that, and that should probably be really rare and almost never happen because if he actually loved her like Christ loves the church, then he would never ask her to do anything that she doesn't want to do or that she feels strongly against, right?

So that's the way that we talk about submission in general. That's what happens in every single counseling situation between a man and a woman

I've ever been in, is that among people who believe that submission means anything, it basically is this hypothetical white unicorn kind of idea that you should basically never apply.

Really, in honesty, if you're a man and you love your wife like Christ loves the church, you should probably want her to be happy, right?

You want to be happy, and so you shouldn't ask her to do things that she's utterly and totally against or think are unwise, but you may have to.

I know you may have to on rare occasions, and no one knows why you would ever have to do that because she's just as good a leader as you and has just as good ideas as you, and after all, she's put on this earth to be your helpmate, right?

So she's put on the earth to be your helpmate. So functionally, this is something that should probably never happen, and if it's happening all the time, right, where your wife is having to submit to a husband, it's probably because you're a bad leader and you're asking her to do things that she doesn't want to do and everything else, and so that's kind of the way that we talk about it, you understand?

But then that doesn't reflect an understanding of what the actual word means, okay?

So like the word, like this word hupotesamenoi that I mentioned, it's not a word that is meant to be understood like that, like a rare tie -breaking vote kind of thing.

Like that's not what we're even talking about at all, right? So what we're talking about is something very different.

So when you think about this word, what I'm trying to say is we're talking about a wife's exclusive role in marriage as it relates to the marriage relationship itself.

There's no sense in which a husband should ever, under any circumstance, submit to his wife, period. But then, you know, you also have to understand that submission is not unique to women in that every single person in this room as a spirit -filled believer is going to have a wide variety of situations where we're responsible to submit to other people.

Meaning, like as I just went through the list, and I'm not going to do a sermon on each one because we're going to go through the passage of Ephesians and talk about different ways in which we submit to other people, and this is not even comprehensive, right?

Meaning, like everyone, as a Christian, we all have a responsibility to submit to God because He is our Lord, and whatever that means.

So think about this. The way you submit to God is not meant to be some sort of rare tie -breaking vote that God has that He should probably be sensitive about and never really ask you to do anything that you don't want to do kind of thing.

That's not what it means there, right? So all of us, we need to submit to God. Our children,

I know we're living in a time right now where there's so many child -centered homes that it's ridiculous, right?

Instead of parents telling their kids their expectations for their behavior, they have to have a conference, set up a conference meeting with them and ask them their opinion on whether or not they should go to nap or not or something like that.

But as it relates to children obeying your parents, that's an obvious application of submission for everyone.

But then the Bible tells men and women to submit to your church leaders, right?

So obey your leaders, submit to them for they're keeping watch over your souls as those who are given accounts. Every single Christian has a responsibility to submit to their church leaders, to submit to God when their children submit to their parents.

Every single one of us in here, I don't know that there's many people in here who have self -employed businesses, but all of us have bosses that we have to submit to on a regular basis.

The best way to get fired would be to go to your boss and say, hey,

I know you're asking me to do this, but I don't know if you're taking into account all of my ideas and what

I have to offer and how it makes me feel what you're asking me to do. So the point here is just to say submission is a concept for all of us in one way or another.

Men submit to their bosses. Men submit to government. Men and women submit to government. Children submit to parents.

Every one of us submit to God. Regular Christians submit to church leaders. It's a comprehensive idea that happens in a wide variety of ways, but then in this passage itself, the emphasis is on the wife's exclusive role in marriage submitting to her husband.

Now, one of the things I said is that this is a word that we've kind of emptied of all content, but then when you think about what this word actually means, like this is a word, hupotasomenoi, it's a word that means voluntary subordination.

Now, when I say that, I know that we're predisposed to be triggered by that, but then the issue is that's exactly what you find when you look the word up in a

Greek lexicon. So the Bible is written in Greek. This is a Greek word. You look it up in a Greek lexicon, and what you're going to find is that this word, hupotasomenoi, it means subject oneself, be subjected or subordinated to obey.

That's what it means, right? So to subject yourself to be subordinated, to be subjected, to be obey.

Now, when you look at that language, it's very clear. That language, the issue is we've taken the word submission and we've emptied it of meaning.

We say, hey, yeah, I'm going to submit. We don't actually know what it means, but what it actually means is be subject, be subjected, be subordinated to obey.

So when you think about it that way, then what you realize is this is king language, right? So you think about it that way.

This is like the language of kingship, meaning like what is a wife's role?

Well, her role isn't simply just like on rare occasions, provided that she agrees, provided that her husband's not asking her to do anything that she finds particularly uniquely burdensome or whatever else, or just in big moments or whatever else.

That's not really what the idea is here. I mean, the idea here is to say that for a wife to be submissive to her husband, it involves her viewing him as if he is in a position of authority over her.

So this is the language that we naturally use, and we use in relationship to kings, right?

So you have a king and then you have subjects, right? And so the subjects are subjected to the king.

They're subordinated to the king, meaning they're subordinate in rank, right? They're subordinated in rank, meaning he's of different rank.

So the king is higher rank than the citizens of the country, right?

So when you think about what this word actually means, it means to subject yourself, to be a subject of another person.

So if you're going to follow what this says, what that means is you have to look at your husband as if he's actually a ruler over you.

That's what it means, to view your husband as if he's a ruler over you and respond to him as if he's a ruler over you.

Now, in every other passage, think about every other passage

I mention, they're all using the same language in every other context, right?

So think about this, that God is our ruler. You know what that means to say that God's your ruler.

What does it mean? It means he gets to tell you what to do, right?

What he says goes, that's what it means. Like if God's your ruler, it means what he says goes, he gets to tell you what to do.

He's the one who calls the shots. He's the boss, right? Like when you come to the

Christian life, submission is part of the Christian life, that's what it means. So I say confess, Jesus is

Lord, right? Jesus is Lord, and if Jesus is Lord, then what he says goes, and he's in charge.

I don't get to say to him, I'm only going to follow you if I think what you're saying is reasonable and if I agree with it and if I don't think it's too much for me.

And you probably shouldn't ask that because you haven't considered how I feel about it, right? That's not really how you relate to God.

So think about it that way. What does submission to God look like? What does it mean to be subject to God?

What does it mean to view him as your Lord? You know what it means there. You know what it means there. What does it mean for children to view their parents as rulers over them?

That means that when your parents tell you, hey, here's what I would like you to do, this isn't the time for negotiation, right?

I mean, this isn't the time to say, hey, you know, I don't know if you considered my needs and how

I feel about having to clean up my toys right now, right? That's not,

I mean, that's, you know what it means there. So what I'm trying to say is for children to do the same word to their parents, to obey their parents, you know what that means.

For people to be subject to God, you know what it means there.

You also, look, you also know what it means as it relates to like bond servants being subject to their masters.

You know what that means there too, right? Every single man in this room, like look, every single man in this room, you have a boss.

You know what it means to be subject to your boss. If you don't know what it means to be subject to your boss, you probably don't have a job very long, right?

That's the way it works. So we all know what it means in every single area, okay?

Like you know what it means as it relates to your relationship with God. You know what it means as a child's relationship to a parent.

You also know what it means as a servant's relationship to their master. You know what that means there. And what

I mean is like there's something about each one of those relationships that's all the same, okay? There's something about it that's all the same.

There's differences in those kind of relationships. They're not the same kind of relation. They're not exactly the same kind of relationship, right?

But there's something about each one of them that's the same. And what's the same about it is the concept of submission is present in every single one of them.

Do you understand? It's the same concept in every single one of them, meaning you have an inferior in rank submitting their will to the superior in rank, right?

That doesn't mean, you know, as it relates to human beings that just because I go to work that my boss is a better person than me, it just means that he has a higher rank or station than me and I better place myself under that rank or I'm going to get fired.

That's what it means, right? If I want to get fired, the best way to get fired is to pretend like we are the same rank.

And if I pretend like we're the same rank, what's going to happen is I'm going to lose my job and we're going to be homeless, okay?

So what I'm trying to say is this word, we know what it means in every single other context.

And then what we do related to a husband and wife concept, a husband and wife context, is we're trained by a society to be so hostile to these ideas.

We're trained to be so hostile to these ideas that we basically empty the word of all meaning.

And we want to think about it as if it's some kind of utterly different thing than it would be in every other authority relationship that has ever existed throughout the history of the world.

Do you understand what I mean? So if you're going to excel, like here's the thing, if you're a woman in the room, you want to excel at this concept.

You want to give the world a picture of what it looks like for a spirit -filled person.

You're going to have to learn to submit to your husband and view him, like submit to your husband, better than any man's ever going to learn to submit to their boss, right?

You should, do you want rewards in heaven? The way you get rewards in heaven, the way you honor the

Lord, the way you live a life that's going to be in contrast to the pagans that are around you is going to be to say, hey,

I want to show the world what this looks like. And I want to show that this isn't something that I hate.

This isn't something that I despise. This isn't something that I'm trained to respond with defense.

This is something that I own as being an essential part of my role as a wife to a husband.

So third point here is just to say that wife submission to her husband is voluntary subordination.

Now, the only, I've noticed that the temperature of the room has chilled somewhat.

The only way that you're going to do this, though, is if it's as an act of reverence to the

Lord. So notice what the verse says. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the

Lord, right? So what does that mean? It means as an act of reverence to the Lord. So what does that mean?

God made us. He's the creator of the universe. He has a plan. He has a purpose for all of us.

Because he's Lord, you know, coming to Christ, when I come to Christ, I confess Jesus is Lord. When I say

Jesus is Lord, that means God calls the shots. He knows what he's saying. His rules are right.

His standards are good. I should trust the Lord with all my heart, not lean on to my own understanding.

In all my ways acknowledge him, and he's going to direct my path. What that means is if there's ever a conflict that I'm going to have between his words and my feelings, then what needs to go is, you know, my emotions.

Like my emotions, my feelings, my preferences, my desires, they need to be placed in subjection to his will.

So what we're talking about here is we're talking about this submission that a wife is made to have to her husband.

It is done as an act of reverence to the Lord. That's how it's done. It's done as an act of reverence to the

Lord. Meaning, like when you get married, like if you're a woman getting married to a man, when you get married, you're signing up in a relationship where you're going to have someone who is a functional ruler over you in the home.

That's what you're doing. We used to know that. I mean, that was reflected in the vows. You know, it used to be that you can just look up the traditional vows, traditional wedding vows in America, and this was reflected in that.

A wife would say that she's pledging to love and to honor and to obey her husband. And we don't like that anymore, so we've removed that, and now it's something very different.

And most of us are probably writing our own vows at this point. But this was reflected in the vows. But then the reason why a wife is doing that is not fundamentally because it's something that her husband is owed.

That's not fundamentally the point. Now, I mean, there's a sense in which a husband is owed this, too.

A good husband should – there's a sense in which you might say, hey, yeah, you know what, like if a guy spends his whole life, 40 years of his life working for you, going to work every day, putting the roof over your head, taking care of all your needs, sacrificing his time and energy, basically enslaving himself to a boss for your sake and working long and hard hours in order to provide for you,

I would think that that would obviously be worth something, right? I mean, I don't think that that's insignificant, and we should look at that as if it's just absolutely nothing and expected and all that.

But even so, I mean, putting all that aside, at root, at base, just because a husband does that does not mean like logically that you have a logical responsibility to relate to him as if he is your leader, okay?

Does that make sense? Meaning like if he is providing for you, I mean, there are certain strings that may be attached to all that if you want to look at it that way.

But in the first case, like this is an act of reverence to the Lord. Your submission to your husband is showing your fundamental allegiance to God.

When you fight and argue and refuse to submit to your husband, then one of the things you're going to see is that's revealing your posture towards the

Lord. And both people in marriages, like if you're in a marriage where this is constantly a fight, both people have to realize that, that there's more people involved in the marriage conflict than just the man and the woman, right?

So you think about what happened in the garden. God gives Adam and Eve a command, right?

So he says, don't eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what happened? Well, like despite the fact that God created man first and created man to be a leader,

Eve took the leadership role in that encounter. And Adam just passively went along with her and violated

God's commands. But then what happened instantaneously after they do that, right? So after they do that, what instantaneously happened is that not only are they hiding themselves from God, but then they're hiding themselves from each other.

Because whenever you sin against another human being, there's more fundamentally something that's happening in that you're sinning against God.

That's why when David committed the sin he committed against Bathsheba and Uriah, he had the audacity to say to the

Lord, against you and you alone have I sinned and done this wickedness. And the reason why is when you look at it, you say, hey,

David, you sinned against Bathsheba, you sinned against Uriah, you sinned against the whole nation. How can you say against you and you alone have

I sinned and done this wickedness? The issue is that all sin fundamentally is against God. And so when you're talking about a woman's voluntary submission to her husband, when she violates that, that's because she's violating her fundamental allegiance to God first and foremost.

I mean, this is the way it works in every single authority relationship too. So as I said, as you're thinking through what's happening in this passage, you should see that a wife's submission to her husband is the result of a spirit -filled life.

Her exclusive role in marriage is a voluntary subordination.

Four, it's an act of reverence to the Lord. And five, it's reflective of the relationship between Christ and the church.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of his church, his body, and is himself his savior.

And, you know, when you think about this, these are concepts that, as I'm saying, we're living in a culture that's so hostile to in almost every single way.

And part of the reason why we struggle with these concepts to the way that we do and part of the reason why we don't like when we talk about these things in a straightforward way is because you're just surrounded by so many pagan examples of individuals who hate these things.

I mean, basically, you think about the movies that you watch, you think about the TV shows that you watch, the plot of almost every single sitcom or something like that is that you have this doofus of a husband, right?

So you have the doofus husband, and then you have the omni -competent wife who can basically do everything perfectly and doesn't need anything from him at all.

I mean, this is like the premise of She -Hulk in certain ways, right? So, like, the idea of She -Hulk, you know what

I'm talking about. Like, She -Hulk comes fully formed as a Hulk. She doesn't need anything from Hulk at all.

I mean, I didn't watch the show, but I watched the reviews. But that's the point. Like, the point is just to say, that's the point.

Think about it. Like, she didn't need anything from him. So he's been doing this for a while. He's been doing this for a while.

He's dealing with the angry rage monster inside, right? And, like, that makes him go crazy and wants to destroy things.

She comes as a Hulk, like, not needing him for much of anything. She's just got it all down.

She's good, right? Think about, like, silly shows like The Incredibles, right? Think about Mr.

and Mrs. Incredible. What's the plot of the show? Like, Mr. Incredible, he can't do anything right, can he?

He's a terrible dad. Not only is he a terrible dad, he's a terrible superhero. That's the plot line of the show, isn't it?

He's a terrible dad. He's a terrible superhero. And what about Mrs. Incredible? She's good at it all. She's the better superhero.

And, you know, not only is she the better superhero, she's also the better parent, right?

So she's got it all taken care of. Every single show you watch, it's the same basic thing, right?

Guy's a stupid idiot. I mean, we used to watch, like, Home Improvement back in the day. And I don't know if any of you know that show.

But if you were to watch that show right now, what you're going to realize is that Tim is the big doofus, right? Tim the toolman.

He's the doofus. And his wife is constantly lecturing him and trying to fix him and help him quit being so stupid all the time.

That's basically the plot of every single show that you're going to watch because you're living in a culture right now, in a society right now, that's trying to basically tell you a woman can do everything a man can do and better.

That's the culture and society that you're living in. Now, when I say that, you think I'm operating out of some kind of bitterness when

I say that, and that's what you're tempted to think. But I'm just pointing out the obvious. Just look at the shows you're watching. Look at the message.

Look at what they're saying. Now, the reason why I'm saying it is not because I'm operating under some kind of bitterness or anything like that.

What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to say, hey, wake up to what they're telling you, right? They're telling you a woman basically can do everything a man can do and almost better.

So much so that when that 110 -pound girl in the

Marvel movie flips the 300 -pound guy, you don't even think it's absurd anymore. I mean, it's not like, that's stupid, right?

You don't think, oh, that's really dumb. That's so strange believability that I'm humiliated for them.

Why would they even make that? You're being brainwashed at every single level to think a woman can do everything a man can do and better.

Not only is she a better, like she's a superior man because she can do everything a man can do and she has ovaries.

She can make babies, you know, like if she wants to. Don't expect her to do that because that would be tyrannical and oppressive and all that.

But that's what you're trained to think. Now, I'm saying this for a reason. You're trained to think that way.

Your emotions are trained to think that way. That's the way you're trained to think, okay? And then when you go into marriage, you go into marriage, being brainwashed to that, you say, okay, that's a little bit silly, you know,

I have a biblical home, that's a little bit silly. But then practically, what do you need?

Like, you know, as a woman, you want to be subject to your husband. The reason why it all seems so crazy and irrational and chauvinistic is because what's happened is that you don't have a bunch of pastors come along and explain why it makes sense, right?

Why does it make sense? Well, the way it makes sense is because it only makes sense if there are differences between men and women that are actually real.

Like there's real differences between men and women. And women actually need men. So if I were to say, hey, women, like you submit to your husband because God's designed your husband to be a better leader than you.

Does it feel like I've just kind of insulted you? It feels like I've degraded you? Why? Like do you think that God just like arbitrarily made your husband a leader despite the fact that he's a buffoon, an incompetent leader, and you can do a way better job at it than him?

Like is that why God did it? He did it just to put everyone in an awkward situation, see how they're going to respond, you know?

Like all these ladies, like they're the best leaders possible, the best leaders imaginable, right? I'm a woman, hear me roar, strong, courageous, independent, don't need a man,

I can do anything a man can do better. All right, you're going to have to submit to this doofus. That's the way it works.

And if you can do it, you're going to get a bunch of rewards. I know it doesn't make any sense because he's so stupid.

I know it doesn't make any sense. He's so incompetent, he's so stupid, he doesn't know what he's doing, but I'm going to put you in a situation where you're going to have to basically like be forced to submit to an idiot, right?

And that's what the culture is telling you. That's what the culture is telling you, that that's how you should feel and that's how you should think.

But then you come to a passage like this, and then the best Christians do when they come to a passage like this is they think to themselves, well,

I guess we better do it. It may not make any sense, but I guess we better just follow it, right? I know it sounds crazy.

I wouldn't have put it in there, right? And that's what the pastors do when they stand up. And the reason why the pastors are doing that is because they don't know why it makes sense, right?

Because they don't have anything to say because any way they can explain this is going to mean that a man is better equipped to do something than a woman, and they're like,

I can't say that because everyone will pull out the picture for us and kill me. So I don't know why it's there, but we should just trust

God, right? And that's what they say. But what does this passage say? As the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body is himself his

Savior. The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body is himself his

Savior. Like this, there's something, like Christ gave himself up for the church.

Christ is the head of the church, right? Christ is the head of church. Christ came and he was designed for this role, and he gave himself up to benefit the church, to save the church, right?

He came for his own glory, but then he also came to save humanity, right?

So he had a purpose. He had a design. So part of what I'm trying to say is as you're thinking about this, like God's made men and women different.

He's designed them for different roles. We're going to read in this next passage, and we'll read it next week, that it's the husband's job to wash his wife with the water of the word.

Like it's his job to wash his wife, meaning he has a role that he's been designed to do.

And you think about all the roles that God's designed men to do. He's designed men to lead a wife, to protect a wife, to provide for the wife, to wash his wife with the water of the word, all these things.

Like God has given men roles to do, and you're going to fight this, and you're not going to like this, and you're not going to understand why it's there until you figure out why

God made men to do that. And just pro tip, think about it on the opposite end.

God's made women to do certain roles too. And you know what? Men are utterly insufficient to do the roles that God's made women to do.

I can't do a lady's role, any of them. Any of the things that God puts for a woman to do,

I can't do it nearly as good as my wife can do. And, in fact, a lot of it is functionally impossible for me to do, period.

But then the issue is just to say that God's made men and women, he's given them different roles, and we're going to fight it until we see that there's actually a need for a husband to be their role that they have.

So it's reflective of the relationship between Christ and the church.

And then finally, a wife's submission to her husband is comprehensive obedience.

Verse 24, now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Let's read it again. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to everything in their husband. Isn't it amazing that it just says that, just like that?

I mean, isn't it? Like if you were to write this, would you write it like that?

Like if you were Paul, and you were to say, if you were Paul and you were to say, hey, what is your message to, like what is the most, so you have a passage on gender roles, right?

You have a passage on gender roles right here. Paul does everything the opposite of what he's supposed to do, doesn't he?

Think about it. You're going to talk about gender roles in the church. What did he do wrong?

Let's talk about all the things he did wrong, according to our culture and society right now. What did he do wrong? Think about it.

Look at the verse. Why did he start out with wives first? You're not allowed to do that, are you?

Every time I've ever done that, people get mad. You're not allowed to do that. This is the wrong starting point,

Paul. You have to start with the husbands. You don't start with the wife. You don't start first by saying that, right? Like you don't start by saying, like, first, first, like you need to talk to the husbands and make sure that everything.

So that's wrong, right? That's the way we think. I'm not saying that's wrong, wrong. I'm just saying that that's the way we think.

It's obviously wrong. And then you're telling them to be subject. You're using this like crazy, tyrannical word, like subject yourself to your husbands as to the

Lord, right? That seems a little bit much. I mean, that seems kind of extreme, doesn't it?

And then not only that, you're comparing a wife's relationship to her husband as Christ's relationship with the church.

I mean, Christ is God, man. Christ is God. We're human beings. It's nothing like that, right?

So if you were writing it, would you think to compare it like that? Hey, don't you know that God, like Jesus is

God, Paul, and we're not? Are you saying that a husband is God and a wife is not?

Like a husband is God to his wife, is that what you're saying? Don't you know that the analogy breaks down at certain points?

Isn't that kind of like dangerous, Paul? Isn't it dangerous? Like why would you put it that way? So you're reading it.

Think about that, right? Think about that. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also the wife should submit everything to her husband,

Paul. Don't you know that there are some husbands out there who are going to abuse this authority,

Paul? Just going to give them a blank check, just do whatever they say? Just, you know, aren't you afraid that some people are going to draw that kind of inference from it?

So why did you put it like that? I mean, can't you just give us a list of all these ways in which it doesn't mean what you're saying it means?

Here's my point here, which is to say that these are the words of God, right?

These are the words of God. And certainly, I mean, obviously it should go without saying that a wife shouldn't submit to her husband if he's asking her to sin.

But when you read this passage, what I'm trying to say is that everything about it is offensive to modern sensibilities.

And if you want to offend everyone around you, just talk about the topic the way that Paul is talking about it, and you'll find a never -ending list of people who will be offended by it because they want you to talk about this topic in a different way than it's actually presented.

And so, like, here's the thing. If you want to be a good wife, wives in the room, you want to be a good wife, the way to be a good wife is not to go into marriage looking for all the exceptions, right?

Thinking through all the exceptions and trying to cautiously follow your husband and be careful about it, right?

Like, I want to be a good wife. I want to follow my husband, but we can't get carried away. That's not really the way to go about doing this.

I mean, the same thing is true on the other side. If you want to go into marriage being a good leader, then, like, the issue is you're never going to be a good leader as a husband, right?

You're not going to be a good leader if you're too afraid to ever try to lead because you might get it wrong or something like that, right?

So think about it. In every single area of your life, every single area of your life that you can imagine, people say, hey, practice makes perfect.

Michael Jordan says perfect practice makes perfect, right? But the issue is just to say that you don't become who you're supposed to be instantaneously.

And if you think that every time you do something, you're going to do it exactly right, and it's going to be right every single time in order for you to try, what's going to actually happen is you're going to be paralyzed at step one, right?

You're going to be stuck at step one the entire time because you're too afraid to do it wrong before you do it right.

But the issue is just to say that as the church submits to Christ, so also a wife should submit in everything to their husbands.

If you want to be a good wife, take that seriously. The guiding thought in your mind is not, hey,

I don't want to really throw myself into it because my husband might get a big head, right?

He may take it too far. I may be getting taken advantage of. I may get mistreated.

If you want to be a good wife, the way to be a good wife is just to say, my default posture is to say

God commands this of me, and I'm going to do it no matter what. Even if my husband doesn't lead exactly the way

I think he should lead. And you know what? If you actually think to yourself, hey, maybe God put my husband in my life to be a leader because I need a leader,

I'm going to follow. Maybe it wasn't irrational. Maybe it wasn't stupid. Maybe it wasn't just arbitrary. Maybe my feelings want to tell me that I could be a better leader than my husband, but maybe actually

God had a plan to put me in this situation with another human being who

I'm going to have to follow, and he's actually equipped them to be a better leader than I would be, and I need to follow them.

And even if my feelings are telling me that's not true, it doesn't matter. I'm just going to ignore my feelings and trust the Lord and do what he says.

I'm going to trust the Lord with all my heart and lean not to my own understanding in all my ways, acknowledge him, and he'll direct my path.

I'm going to go into marriage. I'm going to go into my relationship without all the caveats, without all the qualifications.

I'm just going to throw myself into following this husband. I'm going to try to figure out what his plan is for us, and I'm going to go after it.

I'm going to be the best follower that I could possibly be. I'm not just going to turn my nose up at the idea of being a follower, of submitting to a husband, of following a husband.

I'm not just going to do it resentfully. I'm not going to do it with a bad attitude. I'm going to do it with a good attitude. I'm going to make this the easiest thing.

I'm going to be the easiest person to lead in the world. I'm going to make this as easy as it possibly can.

I'm going to say, hey, what's your plan for us? And I want to do it. I'm going to make it better because I'm here to follow you.

You're my leader, and I'm looking at you, my leader. I'm not looking at you as just some person who's getting in the way of all the stuff

I want and I would rather do because I really secretly think I should be in charge. No, God put him in charge.

He had a reason for putting him in charge. He's sovereign. He knows what he's doing. And that doesn't mean I don't have any ways

I can help him from time to time see things that he's not seeing, but then my default posture is not one of trying to direct the ship secretly the way

I want it to go. My default posture is to try to make his plan the best plan that I possibly can.

And you know what? This is the way submission works in every area of life, isn't it?

If you're a boss, what kind of employees do you want? Do you want the employees that think you're incompetent, who think they know better than you how to do everything?

They're constantly trying to help you. They're trying to help you by telling you all the ways that you should be doing things differently and how you're not considerate of them and how you don't care about their feelings and everything else.

Those are the ones you fire, right? Those are the ones you fire. You fire those. Same thing with the kids.

The best kids are the ones who say, Hey, I want to know Dad's plan, and we're going to do it.

I'm going to do it with a good attitude. It's going to be a joy to do it, right? The same thing is true in every single area of life.

The best citizens are those who are saying, Hey, I want to hear the plan. Let's go. Let's do it.

Let's make it happen. Best church members are those who say, I want to hear the plan. I want to hear the plan. Let's go after it.

Let's do it. Let's make it better, right? I'm trying to hijack the plan to make a different plan, and I want you to get on board with my plan.

The best church members are those who say, Hey, I'm ready to follow. The best kids are those who are like,

Hey, tell me the plan. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. The best employers are those who are like,

Tell me the plan. You know what? The same thing is true of the wives. The best wives are the ones who say,

Tell me the plan. Let's make it happen. Let's make it better. I'm going to make it the best plan.

I'm going to follow this the best way possible. I'm supporting the plan. I'm not trying to hijack the plan.

Lord, we thank You for the opportunity we have to think about the scriptures that You've given us today.

We thank You for these words that You've given us, which are life to us, Lord. We know that Your ways are right and that Your plans are good and that Your purposes will stand and that You know what's best for us.

We know that we're living in a culture and a society right now that basically hates everything that You have to say about almost every single topic of importance,

Lord. We pray that as a church, You would help us to be individuals who love You and that love is reflected in our submission to what

You've done. I know that the only way that we're going to do this is if we look to Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross for us.

He did for us what we couldn't do. He's come to provide us a salvation that will fundamentally change us, change our nature, and change who we are.

Thank You for what You've done. Help us to follow You more closely today. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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and consider supporting us through Patreon. Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.