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Colossians 3:18

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

I’ve thought in the past: Maybe I’ll go on the air today and start my show with, “Ladies! You need to just SUBMIT to your husbands and get over it. Call in at 866-348-7884 and let me know what you are going to do.” Do you think I’d get some callers? Odds are pretty good. In the modern world, the notion that wives should submit to their husbands is far from popular…if not considered outright abusive.

The world, as usual, is wrong.

First, we can’t let the world define the term for us. The ancient Greek word translated submit is essentially a military term. It literally means “to be under in rank.” It speaks of the way that an army is organized among levels of rank, with generals and colonels and majors and captains and sergeants and privates. The idea of submission doesn’t have anything to do with someone being smarter or better or more talented. It has to do with a God-appointed order. “Anyone who has served in the armed forces knows that ‘rank’ has to do with order and authority, not with value or ability.” (Wiersbe)

Second, this is not a general call for women to be submissive towards all men, but rather, just to their husband. It is commanded only in the spheres of the home and in the church. God does not command that men have exclusive authority in the areas of politics, business, education, and so on—a woman can be just as capable and effective.

Third, we must not underestimate the power of the closing words in the passage: as is fitting in the Lord. Pastor John Piper writes, “The reason I say that submission means ‘a disposition to yield and an inclination to follow’ is that the little phrase ‘as to the Lord’ in verse 22 limits the scope of submission. No wife should replace the authority of Christ with the authority of her husband. She cannot yield or follow her husband into sin. But even where a Christian wife may have to stand with Christ against the sinful will of her husband, she can still have a spirit of submission.”

Lastly, we must broaden our understanding of this situation by considering the rest of the biblical record on the subject. This is not an isolated teaching. Warren Wiersbe rounds this out well by reminding us:

“Headship is not dictatorship or lordship. It is loving leadership. In fact, both the husband and the wife must be submitted to the Lord and to each other (Eph 5:21). It is a mutual respect under the lordship of Jesus Christ. True spiritual submission is the secret of growth and fulfillment. When a Christian woman is submitted to the Lord and to her own husband, she experiences a release and fulfillment that she can have in no other way. This mutual love and submission creates an atmosphere of growth in the home that enables both the husband and the wife to become all that God wants them to be.”