Family Matters: The Role of a Wife

Now that we have finished our teaching on the role of a husband, let’s look at three ways a wife should love and submit to her husband.

First, a wife should love her husband by embracing his position of "headship" or leadership in her life.

Ephesians 5:22-24 says, “22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

This is a command, not a suggestion, and the rationale for it is the pattern relationship that Jesus has with his church. Marriage is a picture of that relationship, and, just as the church submits to Christ’s in everything, so does a wife to her husband.

Notice the word “head” again. It is the same Greek word , kephale, that we discussed in an earlier blog, meaning authority and direction. The wife is to “submit” to that authority just as if it were to Jesus Christ Himself. That is what the Bible says, so it is not surprising to learn that the Greek world for “submit” is hupotosso, which is a military term meaning to rank under, or to put in subjection. In Ephesians, Paul goes on to say that not only is a wife to be subject to her husband just as if he were Jesus Christ, but that she is to do so, not just when she thinks he is right, but in everything. (Remember husbands, you are to love and lead like Jesus does the church. His example of sacrifice and service is the one we should model.)

Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, showed us how to be under authority in the kingdom of God by submitting to His Father, the first person of the Trinity, in everything even though He was equal to His Father in every way. In the same way, wives are equal “heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7) with their husbands. “There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Submission is about order and function, not inequality.

This means that a wife’s relationship to God is identical in every way with her husbands. However, they have a different function in His kingdom. Just as God the Son functioned completely under the authority of God the Father, a wife is to function completely under the authority of her husband. This brings harmony to the home as all members of the family yield to the will of its head, and extends the kingdom of God into that home as its members operate as God intended them to operate. There is always a clear line of authority in the kingdom, for it represents the delegated rule of God. Without that clear authority structure, the rule of Jesus Christ, or the kingdom, is not realized. Stay tuned for point number two.