Episode 51: Wives, Submit to Your Husbands?
What is God’s plan for marriage between a man and a woman? Did St Paul really justify male domination by saying, “Wives, submit to your husbands?” (Ephesians 5:22)
If not, what did he really mean in Ephesians chapter 5?
We discuss God’s plan, from the very beginning, for the institution of marriage between a man and a woman.
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We will explore God’s plan for marriage from the beginning. Let us begin with one of the most misunderstood passages from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5. I am referring to verse 22, which states, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” Or according to another translation: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord.”
Did St Paul really mean to justify a husband’s domination over his wife? If that is the case, it would be perfectly understandable that ladies should feel utterly riled by this statement.
Sacrifice
To have a better idea as to what St Paul was really saying, we’ll need to take a closer look at the passage from Ephesians chapter 5 more closely, in proper context, in particular with reference to verse 21, which says, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,” and verse 25 which says, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.”
Now, how did Christ love His Church? By dying and offering the total gift of Himself to her. So how are we to love our wife then? By dying to ourselves, our pride, our ego, our selfishness, our lust, our laziness, our self interests, and anything else that might prevent us from being a sincere and life-giving gift to our wife.
Christopher West gave an excellent example:
Imagine the husband and wife both come back from work tired. The husband may then say to his wife, “Honey, I want to love you as you deserve to be loved. I am here for you, to serve, not to be served. Why don’t you sit at the sofa and watch your favourite TV programme while I prepare dinner for you? In the meantime, let me get some tea for you so you can relax while waiting for dinner to be ready. After dinner, let me help with the kids.”
Ladies, how would you feel when you experience your husband’s total self-gift as in the example given? What do you think is the usual response from ladies when I pose this question to them? “Is my husband all right? This is a miracle!”
Mutual Gifts
Most ladies I’ve asked would give a big smile at this scenario and say that through their experience of their husband’s love, they would be more than happy and willing to return that love by being a gift to him in all aspects of their marital life too.
The wife would be more than willing to submit to and support her husband in his mission to love her. In a sense, her submission consists in her acknowledging, accepting, experiencing, and then encouraging and supporting her husband’s mission to love her as Christ loves the Church.
And through that exchange of love that they live, their marriage becomes an image of God, the eternal exchange of love that is the Holy Trinity. The Father, freely loving and giving Himself entirely to the Son, the Son, experiencing the Love of the Father, freely giving Himself entirely back to Him, and their love is so real, so fruitful, that it is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity,
What happens in marriage?
The husband, in his male body, offers the gift of himself in love to his wife. The wife, in her female body, receiving and experiencing the total gift of her husband, reciprocates his love through the total gift of herself to him.
And their love, open to the Lord, the Giver of life, becomes, God willing, another person, their child. The complementarity and union of the husband’s body and his wife’s body, their one-flesh union, thus becomes an icon, an image of Trinitarian love, a love which is free, total, faithful and fruitful.
Through their marital intimacy and union, both husband and wife experience a little of that love in the Holy Trinity. Not only that, they also give their children and others a tiny glimmer of who God is, of what heavenly love is like, and therefore help to point us there.
Revelation
Finally, and in a very beautiful way, the married couple also become a sign, a sacrament of Christ’s love for His Church.
Of course, the Catechism is clear that in no way does this mean that God is sexual. He is pure Spirit. We must remember that we are made in God’s image, not the other way round; God is not made in our image.
So that is what God’s plan for marriage is. That we are subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, by being totally given to each other as husband and wife, in all our masculinity and in all our femininity, for our good and the good of the children He may give us in our nuptial union.
Which is why the Catechism tells us that marriage “is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.” (CCC, 1601)
Let us conclude with this beautiful insight from Pope St John Paul II:
“The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and divine.” (TOB 19:4)
It was created, as male and female, to show the world who God is.
Once we lose sight of the beauty and meaning of the sexual difference and complementarity of man and woman, we will lose sight of who God is, the eternal exchange of love that is free, total, faithful and fruitful. And as the Catechism tells us, “Without the Creator, the creature vanishes.” (CCC, 49)
When that happens, we will fail to appreciate the beauty and greatness of who we are as male and female made in God’s image, we will lose sight of our call to eternal communion, our final destiny. And when we do not even know the address of our destination, we will not even know how to set our moral GPS to get there. In other words, we will lose all meaning of what it means to be human in the first place.
Resources
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2331 to 2336
Making a Total Gift of Self in Marriage, Theology of the Body Institute
The Powerful Sacrament of Matrimony, Theology of the Body Institute
Why Gender Differences Matter, Christopher West