I’m so thankful for my husband, Tony. The blessings of being married to him are beyond words.
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It’s my delight to serve Tony and submit to him. And it’s his joy to serve me and lay down his life for me. Really, it’s a race to go lower. A mutual submission.
It wasn’t always that way.
Early in our marriage, I might have been sitting down on the outside, but inside I was standing up. I might have appeared to be quiet and submissive. Inside, I was screaming, “But it isn’t fair!”
What’s the difference?
Early in our marriage I was taught a legalistic hierarchical view. God is over man. Man is over woman and specifically husband is over wife. Jesus said, “It shall not be this way among you” (referring to hierarchy).
When hierarchy is removed, it’s easy to obey Ephesians 5–Submit yourselves to one another, wives to husbands, and husbands laying down their lives for their wives. And it makes for a wonderful marriage relationship.
9 replies on “Why I submit to my husband”
When husband’s and wife’s submit to God first as individuals, submitting to one another is a natural outcome.
Norah, agreed.
But isn’t this simplistic? Paul, that legend of the faith, clearly and repetitively states that woman should remain quiet, submissive, virtually invisible, and then, hopefully, she may gain entrance to heaven (I Tim.2:15). I’ve studied, taught the Bible, and reading the Pauline Epistles again I’ve been shocked by all the references to woman’s inferior status and am trying to work my way prayerfully through this.
I used to be where you are, but I’ve come into great freedom when I realized that those passages can be interpreted, with integrity, in another way. There’s a great book by theologian Philip B. Payne called Man and Woman: One in Christ, that is well worth studying. Or you could check out some of my blog posts on this topic too. Check out a series of posts starting here http://bit.ly/YCBUwZ or another starting here http://bit.ly/WCXH4C
Thank you so much for sharing this. I look forward so much to getting to this place. We are slowly getting there. We have lots of trust things to work out still… lots of bad programming because of what we have seen in the world…….. not really ANY good examples of godly marriage except in His Word…… and so it’s gonna be a long process. Right now, I believe we are working on getting our nourishment, love, affirmation from the Lord and really drawing neear to Him so we can focus less on telling the others person what WE need…and more about… what do YOU need that I can help fulfill??? 🙂
Thanks again
I love the picture of marriage being like a triangle with the Lord at the top and a spouse at each of the other angles. As you get closer to the Lord, you draw closer to each other too.
I agree!! and we have seen that lived out in our lives & hearts.
Why do we so easily fall back on hierarchy?
And why did Paul seem to love hierarchy so much – or does it just seem that way? (I Timothy 2 for example).
I guess what is interesting in that chapter & book is that it never says, “men shall be in authority over their wives”….. it just says “I shall not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man; she must be quiet”….. so were the women in that Church not being submissive, as all christians are called to be?
was that just because of a stereotypical view of men/women and personality tendencies? Something that was going wrong in that Church that needed addressing (a bunch of fired up, passionate, talkative women in that local Church running all over their husband and not helping them be the man designed them to be?).
living by gods being in us in a relationship with him makes life a lot more symphonic
Yes!