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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman I
once sat uncomfortably listening to a husband and wife have a heated
argument. To put an end to the dispute the husband assertively said,
"The Bible says wives submit to your husbands, so submit".
As I heard those words I silently cringed while thinking "what a
misappropriation of Scripture". "Wives,
submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord"
(Ephesians 5:22). That statement might sound pretty straight
forward, but misappropriations occur when we miss its literary context and
what I, for the lack of a better term, call an unbiblical hyper-masculine
approach to Biblical interpretation. "Wives,
submit to your own husbands" can't be taken as a stand-alone
statement. That ignores the literary context where Paul just wrote
that all Christians must "submit to one another out of reverence to
Christ" (Ephesians 5:21). All Christians include all Christian
husbands and wives whose relationships are premised on a mutually
submissive, loving, caring, selfless serving of each other where neither
dominates the other. The
other contextual error here is found three verses later in Ephesians 5:25
where Paul told husbands to "love your wives, just as Christ loved
the church and gave Himself for her". The Greek verb
"agapao," that is translated as "love" is sacrificial
in nature, not a hyper-masculine domination. Remember, Jesus said
that "the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them ... but you are not
to be like that" (Luke 22:25 - 26). Furthermore, Paul taught
that church leaders "must be gentle, not quarrelsome" (1 Timothy
3:3) while all Christians are to be "completely humble and gentle,
patient, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2).
An
arrogant hyper-masculinity, although not new, has become culturally
acceptable. We hear it from the lips of politicians, influencers,
White Supremacists, the far left, the far right, Christian Nationalists
and ordinary people. Surprisingly, we see a hyper-masculine spirit
of dominating arrogance in some women.
In
short, we cannot preach wives submit to husbands without first preaching a
mutual submissive husband-wife relationship. If we want to talk
about what is often called "headship" we cannot misuse Scripture
by ignoring Scripture and failing to understand the New Testament's view
of headship. An aggressive hyper-masculine, "do as I say"
mentality among men or women is not Biblically permissible. It's
common sense that a dominating spirit produces a naturally angered
reaction that ends in destructively divisive disputes. It's what we
are now seeing throughout our culture. If winning is what you want,
mutual submission wins in the long run.
Postscript The
Greek verb "hypotasso" is often translated as "submit"
in the New Testament. In its general first-century, Greco-Roman
usage "hypotasso" was a cold-hearted, harsh, dictatorial,
military style word. A close study of the New Testament's usage of
"hypotasso" as it relates to Christian relationships shows that
it is a warm-hearted, loving mutual yielding. It is one of those
Greek words where we must distinguish between its cultural usage and its
New Testament usage. Like many words, a word may mean something
different to you than it does to me.
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