22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24)
In our text today, the Apostle Paul applies the previous teaching to the wife's relationship with her husband. There is no relationship in which conflict is more widespread than the marriage. The enemy knows that the health to any society begins with the family, therefore he attacks the most important of human relationships. The laminin of any society is the workings of the Lord in the nuclear family.
In v.22 Paul turns his attention to the wife. God calls all believers to a life of submission, including wives, which is couched in our submission to Him. The key phrase here is "to the Lord." The wife is to submit to her husband because she is submitted to the Lord Jesus. The phrase "to the Lord" does not mean that the wife is to worship her husband as though he were the Lord! It means she is to yield to her husband, and such she is yielding to the Lord.
As indicated in v.23, the Lord has given to the husband the role of the head of the wife. The word used for head is kephale in the Greek. This role that God has given the husband is that of servant leadership for his wife and their family. If the husband is being Christlike, then the wife will have no problem submitting to the servant-leadership of her husband.
In v.23-24, the apostle likens the husband's role to that of Christ toward the Church. Of course, this means that when the husband is laying down his life for his wife, she will find it easier to submit to his servant leadership. Yet, God does not qualify His instructions to the wife with this caveat. She is to submit whether or not He loves like the Lord Jesus.
The infrastructure that God's definition brings to our lives, homes and society should never be taken lightly. Just as headship or servant-leadership for the husband is his right to love the Lord and his wife, so the role of submission to her husband's servant leadership is her right to show her love for her Lord and her husband. Without the infrastructure of the Lord's definition of things, the family and the society will suffer great harm.
If parents only knew how our relationship with one another impacts our kids, more than any other relationship, we would take God's instructions to the family far more serious than we do. The relationship of a husband and wife reflect the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the church. The Lord Jesus does not choose His bride because she is lovely but because He is loving. What a picture of what love should be. This type of love withstands the harshest of moments in any relationship, especially marriage.
Finally, our ability to love our spouse parallels our ability to love God. C. S. Lewis put it well: “When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall … not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”
