How Much Are We to Submit to Our Husbands?

Ephesians 5 provides insight into what Christ has done for the family. He has made of marriage the choice symbol of his own relation to the Church, and so family life is lifted into a Divine and spiritual light. The consideration of Christ for his people regulates the consideration husband should show to wife; and the loyalty of Christ's people to their Master indicates the loyalty the wife should show to her husband. Husbands and wives thus own to Christ the purification of their relations and the sanctification of the home!

If Paul would summon husbands up tot he heights of consecration by the example of Christ, he would also summon sizes up to a corresponding return of reverential devotion. The Church, in her love and obedience to Christ, is the pattern of wifely devotion. Now, this leads us to consider how Christ rules in his Christ. It is not an inconsiderate despotism, but an intelligent, considerate rule of love. His wishes are expressed with infinite tenderness. There is no fury in his commandments. The Church feels and find that they are not grievous. And so believers are loyal to the Lord from the heart. Noting is so delightful as to obey him. Suppose, the, that such a spirit characterized the wife's relations to her husband that she say in his every expressed wish the outcome of love, and obeyed him the the belief that obedience was her privilege as well as duty,--what Edenic homes men and women would posses on earth!

Though Christianity emancipates and elevates woman, it does not release her for the duty of subjection (compare I Peter 3:1-6). The relation to the husband is intensified in order to enforce the duty. Let there be a subjection in the case parallel to that in the other, for such is the Divine will and purpose. Any subjection due to the husband must be modified by what is due to God, for as the husband may not require for himself, so the wife may not require for himself, so the wife may not give to him, what is God's: God's will is paramount over all. Of the 3 wills that may be in collision, viz., God's, the husband's, and the wife's--the duty of the wife is to take them in this order, having regard first to God's, next to her husband's, and last to her own.