How a Wife Submits, Part 1
Monday, June 17
For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24)
Verse 21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." From verse 22, Paul begins to show us what this implies in the context of marriage and the family. "For wives, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ means to submit to your husbands as to the Lord."
The general duty of mutual submission includes the specific duty of wives to be subject to their husbands, and this leads Paul to speak of the relative duties of husbands and wives. And as the marriage relation is analogous to the relation between Christ and His church, he, therefore, illustrates the one by the other. As the relation is the same, the duties flowing from it are the same; obedience on the part of the wife, and love on the part of the husband. Paul teaches the nature, the ground, and the extent of the obedience due from the wife to the husband.
As to the nature of it, it is spiritual. Submission has to be done "as to the Lord". The "as" here does not imply similarity, as though the obedience of the wife to her husband was to be as devout and as unconditional as that which she is bound to render to the Lord. But her obedience to her husband is to be regarded as part of her obedience to the Lord. It terminates on Him, and therefore is spiritual, because it is determined by spiritual motives and directed towards the object of the spiritual affections. A wife should submit to her husband out of reverence for Christ. Nothing more, nothing less.
Doing the Word
Submit to your husband as part of your obedience to Christ.
Prayer
Dear Father, give me wisdom to understand what it means to submit myself to my husband. Help me to be humble to submit myself to him as to Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen.