Deuteronomy 6:20-23 reads:
20 “When your son asks you in the future, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ 21 tell him, ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand. 22 Before our eyes the Lord inflicted great and devastating signs and wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his household, 23 but he brought us from there in order to lead us in and give us the land that he swore to our fathers.”
I was recently reading Paul Tripp’s new book Parenting. Tripp writes: “This paragraph from Deuteronomy 6 … tells us that we should root all the rules and beliefs that we give our children not only in the existence of God, but in the things that He has, in grace, done for us. You could say that the advice here is to connect everything you require of your children in behavior and belief to the story of redemption. When your child questions the rules, … talk to him about a loving Redeemer, who not only created him but shed his blood for him so that he could know and do what is right.” (p.30)
This made me think of Ephesians 5: 22-33. (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5%3A22-33&version=CSB) I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I believe gender roles matter to God because they teach us something of how we are meant to relate to Him (https://renewingeve.com//biblical-gender-roles-vs-patriarchy/). Why should wives submit to husbands? The reason given in Ephesians 5 is that her husband is her head. Why should husbands love their wives? Similarly the reason is that she is his body. But Paul foundationally roots those “rules” in redemption, in the loving relationship of Christ to the church, of His washing the church in His own blood. Paul says that there is a meaning and mystery in the roles of marriage – the husband here is standing in for Christ, to display how Christ loves his church, how he died for his church, to purify her and present her spotless and beautiful. The wife here is standing in for the bride, the church, to display how the Church submits herself voluntarily to Christ and respects Christ. If my daughter asks why she should submit to her husband, why I have submitted to my husband, her dad, I could answer it is because I am showing forth the submission of all of God’s people, God’s church, Christ’s bride to Christ the bridegroom. And a good husband, her dad, is showing Christ’s sacrificial love for His church.
Her retort might be “Why can’t the men submit?” My short answer might be to say: “Good question! Men just as easily could be the ones in submission, because it isn’t that we women are inferior. (I am not saying that men and women are interchangeable and will post in the future some thoughts about male/female differences, but I am saying we are all designed by God to be capable of leadership and submission.) But my long answer would be the following.
The command to submit is indeed challenging. Although the Bible clearly teaches that I am an equal image bearer and co-heir of the grace of life, our culture says that it is unhealthy, stifling and wrong for me to submit to my husband. Our distorted human ways lead us to erroneously infer that one gender is more godlike,valuable or better than the other if wives are commanded to submit themselves to their husbands. We start worrying that perhaps God thinks of the husband as the primary or recognized worker and the wife as his less-important helper in the background. We forget that we were co-commissioned as a fruitful team and that our union as husband and wife (and more generally as men and women) is God’s design to bring fruit.
I look to the Trinity for my answer because God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all equally God. God the Son and God the Holy Spirit submit to God the Father. This is a mystery. Jesus submits to His Father – “not my will but yours be done” and “here I am! I have come to do your will.” (Matthew 26:39 and Hebrews 10:7-9) The Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their respective roles work together to create, to sustain, to save and to enliven the universe. They are a loving and fruitful team. The Trinity helps me to understand the apparent “unfairness” of marriage. And marriage helps me to understand the Trinity – with its inseparable oneness, overwhelming mutual love, and yes, with its submission and headship.
But we don’t only question why an equal human would submit to another imperfect human in this gendered way. We also don’t believe submission to God is good either. We are fallen. That is exactly what it means to be fallen. We want to be equals with God, not his subordinates. That was the first human sin, the original sin: to disobey God because it seemed good, desirable, and preferable to us to be His equals. Even though sin brought death, destruction, conflict with one another, shame, disease, and thorns and thistles in all of our work, we still often prefer to be our own rulers in disobedience to God. Obedience would have brought eternal life. But we still don’t believe it. We still think it is boring, stifling, and uncreative to happily obey God. We think it is dehumanizing to obey, when in fact it is humanizing, the most enlivening thing we can do. I am saying that one reason we hate the idea of wives submitting to husbands is because we hate the idea of submission in general to anyone, even to God Himself.
Tripp further writes: “At the core of what God designed human beings to be is the acknowledgement of his existence and surrender to authority. These are the things that he meant to rule the heart of everyone who ever lived. Your kids will never be what they’re supposed to be or do if they lack God-consciousness. It is the essential thing that must be developed in the heart of every child.” (Parenting, pp 29-31)
It is an essential thing for any Christian to have a heart of submission to God, and so God builds in a mnemonic – a living illustration – into the structure of the family.
Imagine if I joyfully submitted to my husband such that I continually helped him as the helper I was made to be, worked alongside him, contributed my intelligence and giftedness, delighted in his love, and partnered with him in the raising of our children, in a way that showed my beauty, as well as his, and simultaneously pointed to the joy of submission to Christ. Imagine if he joyfully loved and sacrificially served me (as in fact Christ did and does), pointing to the beauty of Christ’s love for us. Imagine that together we produced glorious God-honoring work – being fruitful, filling the earth and subduing it as stewards of God’s creation, that we looked at and said like our Maker, “behold it is very good!” God’s work is far better than ours, but I believe that in his image He means for us to love to work and to marvel that He gifted us to create beauty as well. We could be showing forth the goodness and creative power of submitting to God. At the end of our lives, we will be commended for fruitful, faithful service, much of which I believe will be service that we did in community, and more specifically much of it done in marriage. In marriage, we have this special opportunity together to make known the delight of being in union with Christ himself.
Why is there this rule that wives are to submit themselves to their own husbands? To show how humans made in God’s image take hold of the tree of life by submitting to Christ their bridegroom, instead of rebelling against him. Why is there this rule that husbands are to love their wives as they love themselves? To show how Christ our God loves his people as He loves himself, redeeming us at the cost of his own blood. May the Lord empower us to do what He has commanded!
Tripp, Paul David. Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family. Crossway, 2016.