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The Bride of Christ
For years, I have been engaged in a debate on the relevance of these verses to modern teachings with a friend who is an ordained priest. Because my oral arguments skim the surface of my thinking, I wasn’t able to get down to the heart of what I was arguing, so I wrote this letter to him. He encouraged me to publish it, though not in this format! It is light in scholarly work, so I chose not to publish it through the church. However, it is an interesting idea and might be food for thought and discussion on this site. Enjoy!
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.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Ephesians 5:22-25
I do not like to interpret verses out of context. When I say this, I mean more than just the surrounding verses, even more than the entire book. For one reason, the Epistles are likely a compilation of the total letters Paul sent to that church OR he addressed many issues going on in the church in one single letter. Some churches had similar issues or he addressed similar things to multiple churches and some issues were echoed by other letter authors. The sentiment expressed in these verses is repeated in Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians 7, and 1 Peter 3. But not only this, but also in the totality of scripture as a whole.
Primarily, we should not interpret these verses outside of the context of God’s love for us as expressed throughout the Gospel and succinctly capsulated in John 3:16.
We also know from the Creation story in Genesis 1-3 that creation wasn’t complete until woman was created and that it isn’t good for man to be alone. We learn here that woman isn’t inferior to man, but integral to creation, created in God’s image.
In Galatians 3:28, we know that there is no distinction between man and woman in our spiritual life – that we both have the same propensity for sin, the same necessity for Grace, and the same access to spiritual gifts. This means that women have the same access to the gift of leadership as men. However, God has placed on us boundaries in how we express our gifts. 1 Corinthians 13 gives a general boundary in that gifts expressed without love are empty and then proceeds to define what love is.
1 Timothy 2 and Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and 1 Corinthians 7 place additional limits on women in the expression of the gift of leadership.
Many men of the church, for generations, have attempted to create justifications for these limits on women, many times in disparaging and diminutive attempts. I can understand such a need – we frequently seek to understand the injunctions in scripture from our own, limited perspectives. I do not wish to get into the weeds of these justifications as they seek to impute onto God human understanding and cloud and diminish other treasures to be found in these verses.
Instead, I would like to focus on the part of these verses where Paul likens husbands and wives to Christ and the Church.
The relationship of Christ and his Church is pivotal to the understanding of these verses, for if husbands are to Christ in this analogy, then wives are analogous to the church. So to understand what Paul means by leadership and submission in the marital relationship, we should look at the relationship between Christ and the Church. The imagery of the Church as the bride of Christ is profound and repeated many times throughout scripture – whether it is Hosea and Gomer showing the relationship between God and the unfaithful Israel, Christ’s many references to Heaven in terms of a bride-groom preparing for his bride, or the literal illustration of Revelations. Give yourself a moment to consider the beauty on display, echoed through these words of a favorite Twila Paris song: How beautiful, the radiant bride, who waits for her groom with His light in her eyes.
Christ loved the church, he was willing to die for us. But he didn’t die for us when we were perfect, but while we were still sinners. He did not wait for us to be perfect or our obedience or to turn away from our sins. For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He also doesn’t demand obedience from the church, rather he invites us, allowing us to freely come to him and obey him of our own accord.
The church, in turn, is not forced to obey Christ. Rather, it is out of love for Christ that we choose to obey him (1 John 5:3). We respond to his love and Grace by willingly coming to him and keeping his commandments.
When husbands and wives follow this edict to lead, love, and follow, they are witnessing to the world the beautiful and captivating relationship between Christ and the Church.
But this is just the beginning. This is not a church loving and obeying a perfect God. This is a wife following her sinful husband. In loving a sinful husband, it is necessary she show Grace to him just as he shows grace to her in loving her in her sin. By sacrificing her pride and following her husband, she invites him to do better and shows him Christ-like humility, love, and grace. In this, she exemplifies the image of Christ, the Servant.
Her husband, in loving her, covering her, and leading her, exemplifies the image of Christ, the King. Together, in Biblical matrimony, they exemplify the full image of Christ.
Thank you, Stina, this was beautifully explained and written.
Beautiful and very well written – I’m saving this one.
I echo the praise of the OP. Extremely well done with a good scholarly touch. Many objections to it have already been addressed.
My gripe is with the follow on issue. Why do we (at almost every level that comes to mind) seem to prove with our actions we don’t believe this, preferring models based on love, a soul-mate or compatibility? I accuse myself: my mind agrees with the OP, but my actions and attitudes prove my driving thoughts are about what my spouse should do/hasn’t done for me.
The heart is desperately wicked…who can know it?
How is it we can come to live out these injunctions unless we get constant reciprocity? and even then the odds aren’t good…
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
I completely agree with what you have said and am completely in the same boat as you. It isn’t easy to carry this out.
But on some level, I think many have been convinced that this isn’t necessary… that wifely submission and husbandly headship is outdated and no longer relevant. It makes it harder to find a sympathetic and wisened ear when the sympathetic and wise are more inclined to trash your spouse than give you Biblical advise. And our husbands face the same struggles in learning how to navigate a biblical marriage.
For now, I’ll be content to struggle through my marriage, meting out forgiveness and accepting grace, trying to convince others that this is still relevant, and that it is beautiful and desirable (not oppressive), and that maybe, someday, I might have the wisdom to teach my daughter and possibly daughters-in-law how to navigate their marriages with grace and humility.
This is a crucial distinction. A lot of the criticism of traditional marriage and patriarchy focuses on the idea of an abusive, tyrannical husband who forces his wife to obey through abuse and threats of violence. That’s obviously a repellant model that no one wants to associate with or defend, but it’s worlds apart from an entirely voluntary obedience.
Well the model described here is one based on love, but I’m guessing you meant “love” in the romantic, Hollywood sense of “falling in love” where emotions (and hormones) dominate rather than love in the sense of willing what is best for the beloved.
Beautifully written, Stina.
I’m always struck by the fact that marriage is really the only institution of everyday human life that Christ said anything about. And what he says , Matthew 19, has nothing to do with submission. The married couple “are no more twain, but one flesh.” And it’s forever; the Jewish law which allowed divorce is but a concession to human evil. This spooks the disciples so much they wonder if it’s worth getting into it at all, and Christ follows up with an approving shout-out to eunuchs.
(Given this, I can’t see why the Catholic Church–or any of them, really–would allow divorce, the one thing Christ expressly forbade except in case of fornication–but concentrate on not allowing abortion, which is never mentioned in the Gospels. And even more amazing, that any Christian denomination allows same-sex marriage, when Christ prefaced these remarks with, “Have ye not read, that he that made them at the beginning made them male and female…?” )
I know Paul was actually writing before the Gospels were written down. But assuming the Gospels do represent what Christ said, I think It was obvious to Paul that Christians might have to live in the world for a while before Christ returned, whereas in the Gospels it’s obvious Christ and his disciples believe they are living in the last days. So Paul talked about obedience to human governments, and endorsed marriage as it had always existed, with the husband as Dominus. Paul was a Roman citizen after all. Christ was concerned only with the sacramental mystic union on earth. After all, he says marriage will not exist in Heaven. When two are one, there’s no question of authority or submission.
Why do you say that is obvious when Jesus says only the Father knows when the world will end?
His point seems clear: we don’t know when the Son of Man will return, nor even when our own lives will end, so we should always be prepared:
Don’t put off repentance until tomorrow, for tomorrow might not come.
On the other hand, it might, and many tomorrows after it, because of that day and hour no one knows. Thus Paul writes to the churches he founded with advice on how to live as Christians in this world, since unlike the many false prophets over the centuries who claim to know the precise day and hour when the world will end, Christ himself told us he will return “at an hour you do not expect.”
I think it’s obvious for the reasons I said in my original comment. Christ and his disciples were itinerant begging preachers. They weren’t concerned with human institutions, except for trying to stay out of their way: render unto Caesar, agree with thine adversary quickly, etc. they were to take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat,what ye shall wear. To me these are the pronouncements of a doomsday cult. All the stuff about ye know not the daSORRY! SCREWED UP SEE MY NEXT COMMENT FOR CONTINUATION…
I think it’s obvious for the reasons I said in my original comment. Christ and his disciples were itinerant begging preachers. They weren’t concerned with human institutions, except for trying to stay out of their way so they could spread the Word: render unto Caesar, agree with thine adversary quickly, etc. They were to “take no thought for the morrow, what ye shall eat,what ye shall wear”. To me these are the pronouncements of a doomsday cult. All the stuff about ,”ye know not the day nor the hour” means: any second now!
But whether I’m right or not, my point was, Paul reinforces the institutional , societal features of marriage; Christ concentrated on the Union of souls. As I’m sure you know, some early Christian sects did not believe in reproduction and made no distinction among ministers regarding gender.
In fact I have read this is one reason the Gnostics were suppressed: women as ministers, literal interpretation of Christ’s words that an evil demiurge is Prince of the entire material world. What did gender matter under those circumstances?
And I have read the entire book of Revelation is a reaction to the fact at the early Christian church allowed female ministers. We’da been far better off with the eschatology of the Shepherd of Hermas!
I read it as urging them to trust completely in God’s providence. After all, if they sat down and wrote a business plan for how to covert the entire Roman Empire to the new faith (we will need thousands of preachers to cover every town, we’ll need a training program for them, we’ll need an advertising budget, how will we raise the money, do we know any rich donors…) they’d either spend their entire lives planning without actually doing anything or simply realize how daunting the whole dream was and give up.
Instead Jesus urges them to simply take a deep breath and plunge in, trusting that God will provide the means if it be his will that the enterprise succeed. And — remarkably — it did.
I see more there than just simple reinforcement of current social institutions. That was one of the arguments my friend brought up and why I bring up the comparisons to Christ and the Church and the frequency that Christ used marriage as an illustration through parables. This goes beyond social institutions, and while it may be a social institution, it is one being held up for far greater reasons than that.
It is important that just because our new social institution rejects the patriarch (or dominus, as you put it) marriage and accepts egalitarianism (no leader), it does not make these verses irrelevant.
Is that true though? My hand and my head are part of one flesh, yet my hand obeys my brain for the good of the body as a whole.
After all, a body with multiple heads would bicker with itself, rendering itself unable to act decisively in dangerous situations…