Wives Submit? | Ephesians 5:21-24 - Conrad Macintyre

Sermon Outline

1. 0:07:31 1. Preamble — The Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate
   particular leadership role by virtue of being male, and women are not disqualified from any role on the basis of gender. I want you to know that there are biblically serious scholars and laypeople on both sides of this debate who love Jesus and are sincerely trying to obey Him. I have no intention of trying to score points for either side. We can disagree on this with clarity and charity and still be sisters and brothers in Christ. Also: I was gently teased by some when I first arrived about my methodically-paced verse-by-verse teaching as opposed to the more popular 5-weeks-on-a-topic approach. This passage is a near-perfect illustration of why I teach this way. When we approach a text with the debate already framed and the outcome already decided, we tend to find what we expect and miss what we do not. Verse-by-verse teaching forces me to deal with what is actually there, in the order it appears, in the context the author provides. It disciplines both preacher and listener. If what I believe ever comes into conflict with what the text actually says, it is I who must yield — not Scripture. And here is what I think that approach reveals: most people speak of this passage as though it begins and ends with husbands and wives. But Paul does not stop there. He moves from marriage to parents and children, and then to masters and slaves — three pairs, three relationships, one continuous argument. How we read one pair affects how we read all three. When we let the whole passage speak together rather than isolating the part that interests us most, we are required to deal with all of it. That is what the next three weeks are for. My goal is not to win an argument or advance a framework. Those things may happen. But my goal is to teach Scripture — to ask what Paul meant when he wrote this, and how that truth speaks to us today. So if anything I say over the next three weeks unsettles you, I want to invite you to do two things. First, take it to the Lord. Ask honestly whether you are unsettled because I have misread the text, or because the text itself is pressing somewhere costly. And second, come talk to me. My door is open. I would rather have that conversation than have you carry it alone. Wherever you land when this series concludes, my prayer is that our faith in the Lord will be stronger, our love for one another deeper, and our delight in the beauty of his Word greater than the pride of being correct ever could be. Amen? Amen. Let's get into it. 21 being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. If it feels like we just dropped into the middle of a thought — it's because we did. Some Bibles place verse 21 at the top of a new paragraph titled something like "Rules for a Christian Household." Others place it at the end of the previous section. Others treat it as its own standalone paragraph. Why the confusion? Those headings and paragraph breaks do not appear in the original text. The ancient manuscripts are essentially a wall of text — paragraphs and headings were added later for ease of reading. In cases like this one, that addition can actually create confusion, because verse 21 is connected all the way back to verse 15: Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. Paul goes on to tell us that the controlling influence of our lives should be the Holy Spirit. And when the Spirit is our controlling influence, our lives will be marked by corporate worship, personal worship, intentional thankfulness —
2. 0:12:11 2. Verse 21 — Mutual Submission as a Mark of the Spirit-Filled Life
   — and now this: being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. This is not an interruption of the Spirit-filled life. It is one of its defining marks. It is also worth noting immediately that this posture of submission appears all over Scripture — Christians submitting to governments, slaves to masters, children to parents, including Jesus himself, wives to husbands, and all of us to God. This is not denigration. It is an expected marker of every Christian life. The word rendered "subject" here carries an almost-military flavor — but not the passive, helpless kind. It describes a competent person, fully capable of doing otherwise, who chooses to take their place in a formation. That active, volitional quality is important. We will come back to it. Which brings us to "one another." This phrase is often made into the largest pivot point in the entire passage — so it is worth getting right. I don't think we can reasonably argue that Paul is not calling all Christians to a lifestyle of submission. It seems extremely unlikely to me that Paul intends worship and gratitude for all believers, but submission for only some. So what does mutual submission actually look like? It can plausibly represent either a symmetrical submission — where everyone submits in the same way — or an asymmetrical submission — where everyone submits differently according to their relationship. Egalitarians will almost universally point to this phrase as a rallying cry, arguing that everything which follows is an outflow of that mutual posture. Complementarians will point to the same verse and argue that the ordered structure of the examples which follow demonstrates a God-given hierarchy. Both are reading the same words. Given the examples Paul uses, asymmetrical submission seems most natural to me — different people submitting in different ways according to their relationship. But before we move on I want to plant a question in your mind that we'll explore throughout this miniseries: in every case Paul cites, the subordinate party — wife, child, slave — is told to order themselves under the free male. Every single one. Now: it seems unlikely to me that God's creational ideal for human relationships would align so perfectly, so effortlessly, with the dominant cultural priorities of the Roman Empire — the same empire that imprisoned Paul and murdered Jesus. Whether that alignment reflects God's permanent design or a pastoral concession seeking to avoid a culture war in a fallen world is precisely the question this series exists to answer. Let's keep reading and see if we can discern the direction Paul is leading. 22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord, There it is — the line that launched a thousand articles, books, blogs, and social media arguments. And it is easy to read this through our modern lens and feel a fight-or-flight impulse rise up. But if we understand the world Paul is writing in, this verse takes on an entirely different character. It starts with one word: Wives. As I mentioned earlier, this passage belongs to a well-known literary genre — the Household Codes. Every educated person in Ephesus would have recognized the form immediately. But Paul's version is shockingly different, and the biggest clue is that first word. In every existing Roman household code — including Aristotle's, the most famous of them — these codes addressed only the free male. Women, children, and slaves were not moral agents. They were objects who existed at the pleasure of the man of the house—the paterfamilias. And just so we appreciate how wives were seen — and why they appear in this list alongside children and slaves — let me be direct. Men in the Roman world were not expected to be monogamous within marriage. By the time a Roman male married — typically in his early thirties, to a wife in her late teens — he
3. 0:17:17 3. Verse 22 — Wives as Moral Agents: No New Command, No Compulsion
   he was already sexually experienced with slaves and prostitutes of both sexes. The wife's sole recognized social function was to produce a legitimate legal heir. That was it. That was the role. So when Paul turns to the wives first — before the husbands, before anyone else — he has already done something quietly extraordinary. He is not discussing wives. He is addressing them. Directly. As people capable of hearing a moral instruction and choosing how to respond to it. We are one word in and the revolution has already begun. It deepens immediately. Because the words "be subject" do not actually exist in the Greek text. The original reads simply: wives — to your own husbands. The verb is absent — Paul carries forward the participial force from verse 21, where the whole congregation was already called to mutual submission. What this means is striking: Paul introduces no new imperative for the wife. He commands the children to obey. He commands the slaves to obey. He issues three distinct sets of commands to the free male. But to the wife — no new command. He reframes an existing expectation rather than issuing a fresh order. We should be careful not to over-read the silence. But it is not difficult to see what Paul is doing. In the existing codes, wives were told to obey — the same word used for children and slaves, carrying no sense of agency or choice. Paul instead reaches for hupotasso — a word with an almost-military flavor describing a competent person choosing to take their place in a formation. This is not the language of compulsion. This is the language of volition. Paul is not telling wives to comply. He is inviting them to choose. And you can only choose something you could refuse. The freedom is assumed in the ask. This is where we need to slow down. Submission — real submission, Paul's submission — requires disagreement. If you agree with a decision, you are not submitting to it. You are simply concurring. Submission only becomes submission at the moment when you could say no, you have good reasons to say no, and you choose the relationship anyway. Not silence. Not erasure. Not the suppression of your voice or your judgment. The full, free, costly choice of a person who knows their own mind and chooses to yield it. The model — and Paul has already placed him in this passage through the Christ-church analogy — is Gethsemane. Not my will, but yours. That was not compliance. That was not agreement. That was the most costly act of submission in human history, made by someone who genuinely did not want what was being asked, who said so plainly, and who chose it anyway. That is what Paul is asking wives for here. Nothing less. As for the phrase "as to the Lord" — this deserves more than a passing comment, because how we read it changes everything. The most natural reading is comparative: submit to your husbands in the same way you submit to the Lord. And I want to be honest — that reading is not unreasonable. It flows grammatically and has serious scholarly support. But I find it theologically troubling. If wives submit to their husbands in precisely the same manner they submit to Christ, Paul has implied an authority for the husband that he never explicitly grants anywhere in this passage. The husband is called to love as Christ loved — to model Christ's self-giving posture. But modeling a posture is categorically different from holding an authority. Nowhere does Paul say the husband speaks for Christ to his wife, stands in Christ's place, or mediates Christ's lordship over her. The alternative reading — that "as to the Lord" indicates motivation rather than comparison, meaning for the sake of the Lord — fits Paul's consistent pattern elsewhere. When Paul tells slaves in Colossians to work "as for the Lord and not for human masters," he is not saying their master is Lord-equivalent. The Lord is the ultimate referent of their service. When Romans 14 says those who observe certain days observe them "for the Lord," the Lord is the reason and the audience. The grammar allows both readings. Paul's pattern across his letters favors the motivational one. And the implication matters pastorally. If the wife submits for the sake of the Lord, then the Lord — not the husband — remains her ultimate authority. The husband is honored. He is not enthroned. Her submission belongs to Christ first and flows toward her husband as an expression of that primary allegiance. Which means the moment a husband's instruction requires her to dishonor Christ, the logical and theological structure of this very verse gives her the grounds to refuse. We will see why that matters most when we reach verse 24. 23 for the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now we reach the verse that has generated more argument than perhaps any other in this letter. And I want to begin by reminding you of something we established together back in chapter 4, do you remember talking about growing into our Christ, our head in the same way that babies grow into their heads? Remember that when Paul describes Christ as the head of the church in Ephesians 4:15-16, he is not describing a CEO. He is describing a coordinator — the one whose faculties of perception and orientation allow the whole body to assess its environment, find its direction, and grow into maturity. But the
4. 0:24:24 4. Verse 23 — The Husband as Head: Responsibility, Not Authority
   the whole point is that the body grows into maturity. Christ's goal is to nurture His Bride into adulthood. We said back then—and it bears repeating—that this was responsibility language, not authority language. And I contend that this is the definition Paul is now applying to husbands. The "just as"—the Greek word kathōs—is not introducing a new concept. It is pointing back to the one Paul previously established. When Paul says the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, he is saying: remember that definition we discussed before? Apply it here. So the husband is powerful, well regarded, trained, learned, and respected. The visible one in society. He is the one who must use the clout and privilege he has been allotted to orient the marriage toward its shared mission—and also the one who takes primary responsibility when it loses its way. Paul doesn't paint men into a position of protected authority, but calls them to take seriously the cause of growing the body into full maturity, knowing that he is accountable for how he leads. Next week we are going to ask why Paul specifically addresses this responsibility to husbands — and the answer has everything to do with what the first-century world had done to women before they ever walked through the door of a church. It is worth the wait. But for now, notice what Paul does next. Because Paul does something critical here that almost every reader of this verse seems to rush past. He does not stop at "Christ is the head of the church." He adds one more clause that I would argue leaves no ambiguity about Paul's intentions: and is himself its Savior. This is not decorative. Paul is telling us what Christ's headship looks like in practice. The head of the church is its Savior — the one who stepped between the church and everything that threatened it, took the wound himself, and bore the cost so the body would not have to. The one who gave up all of his power and privilege to fight for His Bride—quite literally—to the death. This head is defined not by what it receives from the body but by what it gives to it. Not by what it takes but by what it absorbs. This is the headship Paul is asking husbands to embody. Not the Roman paterfamilias who holds power of life and death over his household. Not the executive with whom the buck stops. The rescuer—whose prominence in the relationship is earned through self-expenditure on behalf of the one entrusted to his care. Which raises an uncomfortable question worth sitting with before we move on: if a husband's headship is defined by the Savior clause, what exactly does he have authority over? Paul has just told him his model is a man who was stripped, beaten, and executed by the people he came to rescue. We will see what Paul does with that in the verses that follow. 24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Before we get to "in everything" — and we will get there, I promise — let's notice something in the architecture of this verse that is easy to miss. That opening word, "just," is actually a different Greek word than the "just as" in verse 23. It functions as a gentle contrast — a pivot. Paul has zoomed in on Christ as Savior, and now he zooms back out to the marriage. And in doing so he completes what scholars call a chiasm — a literary structure that looks like this: The husband is head of the wife. — Christ is head of the church. —— Christ is the
5. 0:29:00 5. Verse 24 — 'In Everything': What the Spirit-Filled Woman Does with Reality
   the Savior of the church. — The church responds with submission. The wife responds with submission. Notice what is missing from that structure. There is no parallel for Savior that maps onto the husband. Paul does not say the husband is the savior of the wife. Not even close. The husband is called to lead the way the Savior led — broken, poured out, spent entirely on behalf of his Bride. But he is not her savior. That role belongs to Christ alone, and Paul's structure makes that unmistakably clear. Now — "the church is subject to Christ." This is worth slowing down for. Back in verse 22 we noted that Paul carries the participial force forward from verse 21 rather than issuing a fresh imperative to the wife. Something similar is happening here. "Is subject" is written in the indicative mood. That means it is not a command — not "the church should be subject to Christ" — but a statement indicating a reality. This simply is the nature of the relationship. And the reason that matters is this: in the world Paul is writing to, wives being subject to husbands was equally simply a reality. It was not debated. There was no movement challenging it, no cultural moment questioning it. It was an unquestioned fact of life. An is is not the same as an ought. Which makes the next word interesting. Because Paul literally uses the word "ought" — doesn't he? Wives ought to be subject in everything? Actually, no. That word is added by English translators to smooth out an awkward Greek construction. The original reads: as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives — in everything — to their husbands. No "ought." Paul is not introducing a fresh command here. He is mapping an existing relational reality onto an analogy. Whether that reality is God's permanent design or just the world Paul is pastorally navigating? That is one of the questions we are seeking to answer—and now's as good a time as any. Let me show you where I land — and why. Complementarians will argue that this is a timeless arrangement rooted in creation, that God designed male headship before the fall, and that Paul is here affirming and Christianizing that design. I've thought hard about this and I find it unlikely — and if you want to understand why, I'd point you to our Advent series on Genesis 3, which is on the YouTube channel. The short version: I don't think the case from Genesis says what Complementarians think it says. I think Paul is doing something different, and it comes in two parts. First, Rome was deeply suspicious of groups that undermined family values. The patriarchal structure was not up for debate, and Christians were already drawing enough hostility without adding a gender revolution to the charge sheet. Paul is writing this letter from a Roman prison. He knows the cost of unnecessary cultural provocation. Live as light in the darkness, make the most of the time — right? There was wisdom in not starting a culture war over a non-Gospel issue when the Gospel itself was already getting people killed. Second, I cannot help but notice that Paul's direction to wives is nearly identical to Peter's, except that Peter adds something interesting: "be subject to your husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by their wives' conduct." Peter openly states that wives submit with an eye toward winning their husbands to Christ. If we believe—as any Christian should—that God's Word is consistent and without contradiction, then it seems a reasonable assumption that Paul has a similar goal in mind as well. Conduct yourselves wisely within existing structures, because your life in this marriage is itself a witness. So here is what I understand Paul to be saying in this verse, gathered from everything we have seen together this morning: Wives — you live in a world that has placed you under your husband's authority. That is the reality of your moment. Paul is not pretending otherwise. But here is what a Spirit-filled woman does with that reality: she takes it, and she transforms it from the inside. She submits not because she has no choice, not because her husband deserves it, not because the culture demands it — but as to the Lord. Freely. Volitionally. As an act of Christlike strength rather than cultural compliance. "In everything." That phrase has stopped many readers cold — and it should. But notice what Paul has and hasn't done here. He has not introduced a new command. He has not issued a fresh decree. He has described the world his readers actually lived in — a world where wives were subject to husbands in everything, without qualification, without exception, without debate. That was simply the reality of their moment. Paul is not endorsing that structure as God's eternal design. He is acknowledging it as the water these women are swimming in — and then telling them how a Spirit-filled person swims. And here is what that looks like: not resentment, not mere compliance, not the grinding performance of a role you never chose — but eyes fixed on the Lord who sees you, knows you, and is your ultimate authority in every area your husband thinks he owns. The wife who submits in everything does so not because everything belongs to her husband, but because everything belongs to Christ. She is not surrendering her life to her husband. She is entrusting it to the Lord, in the shape that her moment requires. That is a different thing entirely. And it is only possible because of everything Paul has already told her about who she is. You remember our superstar musician — the one whose producer finally put his foot down and forced a silence that nobody in that room had ever heard before? This story seems to be equal parts myth and legend. Whether or not each detail is real, it is well worn precisely because it captures a real pivot — the moment a man went from a talented and celebrated musician to one of the all-time greats. That man was Miles Davis. Arguably the most influential figure in the history of jazz. The silence the producer forced that day allowed a young pianist named Bill Evans to finally be heard. And it became the defining creative experience of Davis's life. From that day forward, Davis became almost obsessive about space. About restraint. About what happened in the gaps between notes rather
6. 0:37:19 6. Conclusion — Miles Davis and the Cruciform Life
   rather than in the notes themselves. He said: "Don't play what's there. Play what's not there." That is not the philosophy of a man trying to be heard. It is the philosophy of a man who has learned that the most powerful thing he can offer is the space in which something else — something better, something shared — can finally emerge. That philosophy produced Kind of Blue — the best-selling jazz album ever recorded. Never out of print. Studied in conservatories, sampled by hip-hop producers, played in surgical waiting rooms and wedding receptions on every continent. It exists — it only exists — because Miles Davis learned to stop filling the silence. He didn't become less of a musician when he learned to yield. He became the fullest version of himself. The most liberated, most celebrated work of his life came not from asserting himself more loudly, but from reducing his own stature so that something greater could emerge. And here is what I want you to see: Paul is not just writing to wives this morning. He is writing to every Christian who has ever been in a room where they had the better idea, the stronger argument, the clearer vision — and had to decide what to do with it. He is writing to every person who has ever had to choose between being heard and being Christlike. Because submission — the kind Paul describes, the kind modeled in Gethsemane — is not a wifely virtue. It is a Christian one. It is what happens when a Spirit-filled person decides that the music matters more than the solo. That the kingdom matters more than being right. That the other person's flourishing matters more than my recognition. Jesus himself — who was not merely overlooked but falsely accused, beaten, and executed — yielded. Not because he had no power. Not because he had no voice. Not because the authorities over him were right. He yielded because the mission required it. Because something greater was at stake than his vindication in that moment. And three days later, the resurrection answered every question about whether his submission had been weakness. That is the model. And it is worth saying plainly: that model has nothing to do with tolerating abuse. Paul is not calling anyone to remain in a situation where they are being harmed. God is not using your dangerous marriage to sanctify you — that is a distortion of this text that has caused real damage to real people, and it needs to be named as the lie it is. If you are in an unsafe situation, please talk to us. We will help you find safety. That is not a failure of faith. It is wisdom. But for the rest of us — for those of us sitting in ordinary marriages, ordinary workplaces, ordinary relationships — the version of this we usually face is less dramatic. It is not persecution. It is not abuse. It is just the quiet indignity of having the better idea and watching it get passed over. You made the case. You laid out the argument. You were right — you know you were right — and the decision still went the other way. And now you have to decide what to do with that. The flesh has a very clear answer: nurse it. Bring it up again. Make sure everyone knows whose idea it actually was when it eventually works. Wait to be vindicated. Keep score. Paul has a different answer. And it is not "your idea didn't matter." It is not "your voice is unimportant." It is something harder and more interesting than either of those. It is: what if the kingdom advancing matters more than you being right? What if the most powerful thing you can offer right now is not your superior idea, but the space in which something else — something shared, something better — can emerge? Kind of Blue exists because Miles Davis stopped insisting on himself. He had the better instincts. He was the most gifted person in the room. And he learned that the fullest expression of that gift was not filling every silence but creating space for something greater. That is what Paul is asking for. Not less of you. The most Christlike version of you — secure enough in who you are before the Lord that you don't need the credit, don't need the win, don't need to be heard in every room you enter. JOY — Jesus first, others second, yourself last — is not a cute acronym. It is what a life shaped by the cross actually looks like. It is what happens when a person who has every right to fill the silence chooses instead to let the music through. Lord, you have asked us this morning to do something that does not come naturally to any of us — to take our eyes off ourselves and fix them on you, and then on the people around us. Forgive us for the ways we have filled every silence with ourselves. For the ways we have mistaken being heard for being faithful. For not just the wives, but every Christian in the room — give us the strength that submission actually requires. Not the strength to be silent, but the strength to be fully present, fully ourselves, and still choose the other person. That is Gethsemane strength, Lord. We cannot manufacture it. Would you produce it in us? And remind us Lord that the cruciform life is not the consolation prize. It is the whole point. It is where Kind of Blue gets made. It is where the kingdom advances. And for anyone sitting here today in a situation that has twisted these words into a reason to stay in harm's way — would you make a way out, and would you use us to help them find it. Send us out smaller than we came in, and therefore more useful to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

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