“Strong Independent Woman” has been a meme in our culture since the 1970s, and not a funny one. The character developed within the Feminist movement has leavened Western culture so that now this is the cultural ideal. Women who refuse this title are backward and old-fashioned in the worst possible way. The Strong Independent Woman “don’t need no man” and must never do anything for the express purpose of pleasing a man. If she happens to choose marriage, she will remain on a separate path from her husband. Her subservient husband (whom she will call an “equal partner”) supports her independence so that she can achieve her hopes and dreams.
Enter Paul’s words to Christian wives: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (Col 3:18). The words come as so out of place to some Christian commentators that they see Paul’s command as “culturally bound” and can’t be translated into our more enlightened twenty-first-century context. Reading this part of what is called “the household code” must be only to “unmask them as texts promoting patriarchal violence.” (Fiorenza in David Garland, Colossians, 253).
The problem with the culturally bound interpretation is that Paul doesn’t root the command in cultural practices, seeking only to tweak the Greco-Roman household. This command finds its roots in God’s original design for marriage found in the opening pages of history. The family turned topsy-turvy by sin can assume its original design so that it can be truly fruitful and multiply.
Paul homes in on the wife’s submission because the consequence of the fall directly affected her relationship with her husband’s authority. When God addressed the woman in Genesis 3:16, he said in part, “… your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Comparing the desire for her husband with what is said to Cain in Genesis 4:7, the woman’s desire will be to rule over her husband. In his grace, God sets the home right, reestablishing the man’s rule because he didn’t create the woman so that she was exchangeable with the man; that is, the woman wasn’t made to rule like the man. Trying to rule like the man would be unhealthy for her and God’s design for marriage.
All the daughters of Eve live with this consequence of sin. Women tend not to trust men. Why? Because Adam was untrustworthy. When he was supposed to protect her from the serpent, he put her forward to battle with the serpent. When God came for judgment, Adam threw her under the bus. God created women to be protected by men. Since the fall, she has been suspicious. “Will this man do to me what Adam did?” She has a baseline anxiety because she is more vulnerable as the weaker vessel (1 Pt 3:7). Women who have good experiences with their fathers protecting and providing for them will tend to be better prepared for marriage. Women who have bad experiences with men will recoil against any talk of submission. Men can’t be trusted.
That disposition must be subdued within the Christian home. Men ought to be trustworthy, loving their wives (as Paul says in the following command, one that I will take up in a future article). Still, women must also actively subdue their dislike for God’s authority structure in marriage. The Christian woman must cheerfully subordinate herself to her husband’s authority in obedience to and trusting in the Lord. A wife may think she will be happy ruling in her husband’s place, but she will be like a fish on a bicycle. Assuming a man’s authority will only make her more anxious.
A wife’s submission is to be “fitting in the Lord.” At a minimum, this means that submission recognizes God’s boundaries on the husband’s authority. A husband cannot forbid what God commands or command what God forbids. A husband cannot command his wife to sin. Submission doesn’t mean enduring genuine abuse. “Abuse” is thrown around so lightly today that it is sometimes difficult to sort out what is and is not abuse. Getting your feelings hurt or not getting your way is not abuse. Having to do your duties as a wife is not abuse. Being threatened, gaslit, and physically assaulted is abuse. A husband is called to protect his wife. When he becomes the threat, he has breached his covenant responsibility and relinquished his right to authority. Don’t submit to genuine abuse.
However, submission does recognize a husband’s genuine, God-given authority. The English word submission embodies a wife’s responsibility: come under the husband’s mission. The Christian husband sets the direction for the home, and his wife joins him, helping him to accomplish this mission. She takes on his mission just as she takes on his name in marriage (which is what the original woman did as they were together called “Adam;” Gen 1:26-27).
A wife’s submission is respect for her husband (Eph 5:33). She acknowledges the boundaries of his authority and defers to them. She esteems and admires him in word and deed, doing all she can to help him. Sometimes, husbands do things that aren’t respectable, but even then, she “salutes the uniform,” as Doug Wilson says. Her submission means that she is his biggest fan. She lives to see him succeed and does all she can to make that happen. If he says, “Our family will be in worship on the Lord’s Day even when we are on vacation,” she will do everything she can with what he provides to manage the home to make that happen.
Because the husband-wife relationship dies and is resurrected in Christ Jesus, not only does God make it possible that this submission can be the relationship of a wife to her husband, he expects it. He does so not because he hates women or thinks that they are inferior in worth but because he made them for this purpose. Wives are their most beautiful when they submit to God’s design.
So, the problem I have is that God doesn’t take the obvious opportunity to fault Adam in quite the way you do. Other than the actual eating of the fruit, God faults him only for heeding the voice of his wife in enacting his sin. The failure to protect was certainly an error of infantile naivety, but it goes beyond scripture to say that he actively sent her to do battle with the serpent, which would be a heinous transgression. In the macro picture, the order of creation does become inverted, but the woman was the first to fall into transgression (1 Tim 2:13-14). Therefore, nothing the man did before the woman fell into transgression is a transgression, although it may reflect a lack of mature understanding. There is no reason to accuse the man of actively “sending” nor, as Calvin asserted, even being present himself for the actual conversation. But even if he was, he didn’t transgress the command of God prior to the woman’s transgression. This narrative that he did is ultimately another example of caving to the pressures of feminism.