Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
~Ephesians 5:22-24
I’m taking a class this semester on the culture of the Roman Empire. We had a lecture a recently that completely rocked my world. What if every teaching we’ve ever heard on this verse is wrong?
How many times have we heard that, in times of struggle in marriage, women need to “submit more”? Or somehow “submit better”? As if we can somehow submit wrong? That approach shames women. It places every marriage strife directly on the woman – they must be doing something wrong because if women would just learn to submit, marriage would be all peaches and cream, right?
I’ve been told that a thousand times.
What if there’s actually something else going on in this verse? There is a concept known as “semantic anachronism.” This is when a later definition of a particular word or concept is placed on earlier uses of that word or concept. It’s like if we were to read Shakespeare in its original and presume modern definitions on every word in the story. The story would say things that were never intended, and we might be embarrassed.
How often do we do that when reading the Bible?
We are two thousand years removed from when the Ephesians first heard these words. While God’s Word is meant for everyone in every age, and we cannot pick-and-choose when it comes to His truth. Application is timeless, but often there is a cultural element to consider as well. For example, certain elements of the purity code of the Old Testament do not apply at face value today because our society functions differently. Do we really need to know all the fine details of “infectious skin diseases”? We are not exposed to the same set of germs that caused those skin diseases, and we have modern medicine and thus do not need all the warnings about how to avoid those diseases. If we were exposed to those germs, avoiding them would be make sense. While there is a cultural element to the details, the application is timeless: take care of your health!
Every word of the Bible is applicable to today, as 2 Timothy 3:16 says. But it would be absurd to ignore the cultural element and live dogmatically. As we approach tax season, no one argues that the Bible teaches that we are to pay our taxes. In Mark 12:17, Jesus says “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” No one would say that we can get out of taxes because we have a president and not a caesar.
What if the same thing is happening here in Ephesians 5? What if we are being too dogmatic and literalist when we apply this verse without considering the cultural context?
So what was going on in the culture then? Girls got married when they were teenagers, generally around 14-15 years old. Men were established in their careers first and were older. In the culture at large, girls remained under the authority of their fathers when they were married. Who was the main man post-wedding day? Dad. Not husband.
Paul wasn’t admonishing women to “submit more” or “submit better;” he was instead redefining family. Women are told to listen to their husbands. Men are told just a few verses later (5:31) to leave their family of origin as well. Marriage is husband and wife: a new family. In submission to each other (5:21): serving each other, respecting each other, loving each other, without the influence of outside authority.
What about that part in Ephesians that compares marriage to Christ as head of the church? That’s where we get “men as head of the household” from. But how did Christ lead the church? That’s a key element to that part because men are told to be head of the house in the same way that Christ is the head of the church. Christ served. Read that again: Christ served. Served to the point that He washed the disciples feet – a job that belonged to slaves. The One who created the universe and each one of us was not above the most medial of tasks. Is that how husbands “head” the family today? Christ died so that His bride (the church – a metaphor found all over Revelation in particular) might become pure and complete. Where’s the authoritarian dictator in that?
Paul is telling the Ephesians that in marriage, the two become one. That was a counter-cultural concept two thousand years ago. Husband and wife are to leave their families and submit to each other. This idea of a unified family was unheard of to the world-at-large. It’s something we take for granted, so when we come across verses like this, we try to interpret based on our current society. Instead, what if we quit shaming those who don’t get it perfect (does anyone?) and instead encourage the (dare I say it?) egalitarian unity that God meant for marriage to be?