A Wife’s Submission in the Cosmic Plan of Christ

“I believe wives should be submissive to their husbands. And so do you. See? We’re the same.”

My neighbor was mistaken.

Her argument is quite common. Living overseas, we often hear people drawing the same conclusion when they compare the traditionally conservative values of world religions. “See? We’re the same.”

Early on in our time here in Dubai, I was confronted with this question: How can I help my neighbor see a difference in the hope that I have if my submission to my husband seems to her as “the same”?

Instead of agreeing that all of our virtues and conservative values are signposts on different roads going up the same mountain, I see an opportunity to give a defense of my faith with gentleness and respect.

The Bible defines a wife’s submission to her husband in terms that describe its motive, means, and end as distinctly and uniquely Christian. For my own joy as well, I love to share about the cosmic plan of Christ to be exalted as Head over all things and how this shapes the way I view my submission to my husband.

The penal substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, his resurrection from the dead, and his subsequent exaltation above every name changes how we view our roles in marriage because, indeed, it changes everything. Neither wives nor husbands can understand our respective callings to submission and leadership in Ephesians 5:21–24 without first submitting to the cosmos-ruling Christ of Ephesians 1:9–10, and 1:20–23.

Andreas J. Köstenberger explained it this way: “To the extent that a married couple sees itself as part of the global eschatological movement toward ‘summing up all things in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:9), it will experience fulfillment and share the perspective on marriage Paul presents in the passage at hand (Ephesians 5:28–32).”

When I consider submission as anything less than my whole-hearted participation in Jesus’ plan to be head over all things, my vision for submission is myopic. In this distorted view, glorifying my husband above all things becomes my goal (and the goal that I fall short of). The motive and end for my submission, when applied in this errant way, are husband-centered. Then my grudging attitude and embittered lip-service to my husband’s leadership demonstrates how quickly I take my eyes off of Christ’s purposes in the world and in my home.

The arguments for submission based on pragmatics and traditionalism stop short of leading me to rely on future grace and fail to infuse joy in its application. I’ve seen how meditating on the big picture theology of God’s cosmic plans fills my heart with hope and wonder and drops right into my apartment.

Considering my submission to my husband as part of the epic plan of God has changed the way I view my life in the home. Because no authority on earth precedes Jesus’ authority, I understand submission does not mean that every decision my husband makes is to be infallibly followed. In fact, a husband’s authority is limited to those areas that please Christ (that is, a wife is not called to follow her husband into sin or to simply endure his sinful behaviors).

I am blessed with a godly husband, but there are still moments when I feel like submission to my husband is difficult, and in those moments I remember my submission (like the church’s submission) is as to Jesus. Jesus’ leadership and rule over me is self-giving and cruciform, so I can trust the Lord in those moments and exalt Jesus as I submit to my husband’s Christ-honoring leadership.

What a grace God has given wives to participate in his plan to reconcile all things to himself (1 Corinthians 15:28)! Meditating on Jesus’ headship over the cosmos also gives weight to my witness of the ultimate worth of Jesus Christ both locally in my home and on the cosmic stage. By grace through faith, my submission is a Christ-exalting endeavor as our children and neighbors look on and (Lord-willing) notice a difference in my submission.

As a Christian wife delights herself in the Lord and submits to her husband by faith, she can rest knowing that it is God himself who is working in her, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. God’s good pleasure to exalt Jesus above every name overflows into our own hearts as we make him our treasure. We exult in God’s mercy to sinful husbands and wives as he has put all things under King Jesus’ feet and given him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22–23).

While many cultures around the world base their belief in a wife’s submission to her husband in their own societal traditions, gender inequality, pragmatism, and religion, the claims of Christianity make our perspective quite different. As we read in God’s word, the motive, means, and end of a wife’s submission to her own husband are distinctly Christian. Distinctly Christian submission is grounded in the eschatological premise of Jesus Christ’s supremacy over all creation. Christ is putting the cosmos back in order and this includes restoring God’s original pre-fall design for marriage.

The means of this submission is exclusively by grace through faith as a Christian wife is led and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And the aim of a wife’s submission to her husband is always to exalt Jesus Christ, the Head, who is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (Ephesians 1:21).

Jesus sustains and upholds the universe by the word of his power. All created things exist in him and for him and through him. With Jesus as our Chief Cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20), we are called out of the world to be the household of God in Christ by the Spirit. By grace we are grafted “into Christ” and called to submit our lives to his kingly reign over all things. All of life becomes a sacrifice of praise to Jesus and his glorious grace for all eternity, including a wife’s submission to her own husband.

This post is part of a larger study of marriage in light of Christ’s finished work. Here's the entire series —

Tony Reinke, blog post, “Marriage in the Cosmic Plan of God”Tony Reinke, article (PDF), “Marriage in the Cosmic Plan of God,” The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Fall, 2012)Gloria Furman, blog post, “A Wife’s Submission in the Cosmic Plan of Christ”Authors on the Line, podcast, “Marriage on the Cosmic Stage: An Interview with Bible Scholar G. K. Beale”Luma Sims, blog post, “We Are the Second Eve”

Marriage in the Cosmic Plan of God

How easy is it to detach our marriages from the finished work of Christ?

Very easy.

Tragically easy.

This may be due to living in a society where marriage is ever pressed into molds defined by the increasing unbelief around us, rather than biblical revelation. The very definition of marriage in our day has increasingly taken the feel of Play-Doh, all squishy and moldable in political debates and water-cooler conversations.

But no redefinition of marriage can touch the ultimate reality of God’s design. God has chosen to weave marriages — our marriages — into the most profound theological realities this universe has ever seen. To enter into a Christian marriage is to enter into the drama of Christ’s cosmos-altering victory.

But do our marriages reflect this? Does my own marriage reflect this?

We ask these questions because there’s nothing automatic about living out biblical priorities. As a Christian husband, I evaluate my role as a leader by asking two very important questions:

How am I called to lead in my marriage in a way only possible because Jesus Christ died on the cross for me, was raised from the dead for me, and now lives in me? How does my role as a husband reflect the cosmic-altering work of Christ?

These incredibly important questions force me to think seriously about the way truly Christian theology shapes my marriage. And those questions force me back into the book of Ephesians, where Paul embroiders marriage onto the tapestry of the perfect work of Christ, a King whose resurrection marks the beginning of the reunion of the sin-splintered cosmos (Ephesians 1:10).

In Ephesians, we discover Christ’s restorative power at four levels:

Christ defeated the cosmic powers of evil to become the focal point of everything.Christ inaugurated a new creation.Christ is now restoring first-creation patterns.Christ is now restoring the relational harmony unraveled by the chaos and discord of sin.

This is how Ephesians trains us to think of the finished, cosmic-altering scope of Christ’s work.

But there’s good reason to think Paul converges all of these themes when the topic of marriage emerges in Ephesians 5:22–33. Let me explain it with four corresponding points, each loaded with a summation of what I see in Ephesians:

Because Christ bled and defeated evil, and because he has become the cosmic center of all things, it is now possible for a husband and wife to live out a harmonious, self-giving, complementarian marriage under the Lordship of Christ.Because Christ bled, he has inaugurated the new creation, and a husband and wife who live out a harmonious complementarian marriage are now a microcosm of the Spirit-filled life and a unity of the new-creation people of God.Because Christ bled, he is restoring first-creation patterns, and a husband and wife who live out a harmonious complementarian marriage are a living illustration of the restorative power of the Second Adam in redeeming God’s original design for marriage.Because Christ bled, he is restoring relational harmony and enabling unity, and a husband and wife who live out a harmonious complementarian marriage are a living microcosm of the gospel’s power to unify a sin-splintered humanity.

In the gospel, our marriages find their proper cosmic context.

Now, it will take more than a few moments reading a post like this to actually shape our perspective of marriage. It will require careful meditation as we prayerfully read the entire book of Ephesians and it will require the help of the Holy Spirit.

But the potential payoff is big.

As men and women who live out God-given roles, we discover Christ’s cosmic work is reflected inside our homes. This God-honoring marriage then shines like a light in our neighborhoods to announce to the rulers and principalities the victory of Christ. Christ-honoring marriages are a living proof of the cosmic victory of Christ.

So it becomes critically important for every Christian husband and every Christian wife to think about these connections. This is theology for our homes. It’s not enough to ask what biblical husbandhood and biblical wifehood is supposed to look like, as though we can abstract these roles from Christ. Merely addressing a husband’s role (headship) and a wife’s role (submission) is not enough, because Ephesians will never allow us to live in marriages abstracted from the cosmic-altering gospel.

In moving forward on these topics, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in my own life and marriage, and I suspect you may feel the same. So today on the blog we are setting aside some space to address this topic from multiple angles.

First, to more closely connect our own Christian marriages to the finished work of Christ, and particularly to see the connection in the flow of Ephesians, I wrote the article “Marriage in the Cosmic Plan of God.” It was published in The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 17/2 (Fall, 2012). In this post, I can only briefly introduce the theme, but you can download the entire 8,500-word article for free here (PDF). It provides much more detail.

Second, Gloria Furman is thinking along these lines as a wife, and she writes about it in a post titled “A Wife’s Submission in the Cosmic Plan of Christ,” which will be published on the blog at noon.

And finally, we cap the day with a new episode of the Authors on the Line podcast: “How Christ’s Cosmic Victory Guides Our Marriages: An Interview with Bible Scholar G. K. Beale.” Dr. Beale has been thinking along these lines for many years, and he recently articulated the connections between Christ’s cosmic work and marriage in his book A New Testament Biblical Theology (Baker Academic, 2011).

These resources are all attempts to address the underlying issues in the complementarian/egalitarian debate through a Christ-centered cosmic worldview, the very worldview too often lost and forgotten in debates like this one.

But even more importantly, we pray these resources will help Christian men and women embrace roles of leadership and submission that push us far beyond our natural skills and abilities, that require us to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit, to display the selflessness of the Savior, and to reflect his cosmic victory over sin.

To this end, Christian husbands and Christian wives continue to press.

This post is part of a larger study of marriage in light of Christ’s finished work. Here's the entire series —