Waneta Dawn

Retha,
“That is not a command, say Charis, but more like being subject to gravity. It is a statement that your man have an influence on you, wether good or bad.”

I suspect Charis is right. I also suggest that when husbands became Christians and began serving their wives, like Christ served the Church, the knee-jerk response of wives would tend to be similar to Peter’s when Jesus knelt to wash his feet. It would seem so out of place, so unusual, so inappropriate, so shameful to the wives that they would protest and actually refuse to allow their husbands to serve them. It would be like the planation master scrubbing the kitchen floor while the slave sits down to eat. Paul was telling husbands to stop acting like the plantation master, and serve their wives, giving up their privileged status, like Jesus did for us. And wives are not to resist submitting to the husband giving up his status. Once the wives got over that first knee-jerk reaction, and got used to the new order of husbands being sacrificial instead of domineering, then the wives would again return to submitting the same way they submit to gravity–it just is.