Mark

I’m coming in late to this discussion, but it seems to me what Paul was saying to wives and to husbands was “Be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ,” and that this MUTUAL submission out of reverence for Christ is what we have been called to witness in our marriages. What Paul was saying was not about the husband’s Lordship at all, but about how Christian’s live out what Jesus did on the night he was betrayed–he wrapped a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet. He said, what I have done, you also must do, and we have to do the same if we are to follow his example. We have so much trouble doing it with the feet of aspouse though. Paul goes on to specify the types of submission, that of the wife AND husband, and starting with that wives should be submissive to husbands as to the Lord. But he is saying, be a servant to your husbands as you would to be to the Lord. This is kind of a no-brainer though: I remember that as Christians we are called to see him in everyone; we are always supposed to regard others and serve others as though they were the Lord, and a wife should do for her husband what she does for everyone. But the call Paul gives to husbands is even more astounding, and even more threatening and austere and forceful — love your wives as Christ loved the Church. And then Paul goes on to recall the crucifixion of Christ, how he gave himself: WOW! He totally gave himself for her, and Paul is specifically saying that THIS total giving, THIS dying of self and accepting poverty and embracing the cross for the sake of another is what a TRUE husband does. Where are these true husbands as evangelical Christians discuss real submission? Do they slap around their wives? Are they abusive? Are these servants willing to die for their wives or put their wives over their own needs? What Piper is doing is ignoring scripture when he focuses on a wife’s submission, and he puts it ina totally worldly context, one that focuses on an insititional power-sturcture, as if that was what God or Paul intended. It was not.
What we have is an emphasis on the POWER of a husband over his wife–the opposite of the order, the new order of life in Christ, that Paul is preaching. In Christ, we have all, husbands and wives, become slaves of one another and of a love that now pervades the universe. What Christians have done with Paul’s word is atrocious to me for just this reason. We appear to have taken one line out of Ephesians and divorced it from the rest of the passage, and the rest of what Paul taught in his other letters about putting other people ahead of ourselves out of reverence for Christ. Christian husbands who demand their wives submit to them based on this scripture are absolute morons for all of these reasons: they bring a total ignorance of scripture to bear in making this demand.