Marriage Lesson 6 Headship and Submission

Marriage Lesson 6

Headship and Submission

 

Headship: is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christ-like, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home. 

Leadership is the one thing, and protection and provision are the two expressions. 

 

Husband: Is my “headship” dependent on her submission? 

No, but what a miserable and nearly futile marriage to be over one who refuses to be led. 

 

Wife: Is my “submission” dependent on whether he is a godly leader? 

No, but it is miserable marriage to be under a tyrant’s oppression.

This is why choosing the right mate is at the pinnacle of life’s choices apart from salvation. 

 

A Christian, who seeks God’s pleasure, knows the pain of a union when the only way out is death. 

 

Leading as Protector 

 

Christ for His bride… “gave himself up for her,” we hear the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ. When Christ gave himself for us, he took our place. He “bore our sins” (1 Pet. 2:24) and became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13) and died for us (Rom. 5:8); and because of all this we are reconciled to God and saved from—protected from!—his wrath, as Romans 5:10 says: “If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” 

 

If there ever was an example of leadership that took the initiative to save and protect his bride, this is it. So when Paul calls a husband to be the head of his wife by loving like Christ when he leads, whatever else he means, he means: Protect her at all costs. 

 

The husband who leads like Christ takes the initiative to see to it that the needs of his wife and children are met. He provides for them. 

 

The husband in turn, must go to God to provide through him a job and necessities for his wife and children. Christ does not call you to do what he won’t empower you to do. 

 

Phil 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” 

 

Isa. 41:10 “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”. 

So be encouraged. Leadership is hard. But you’re a man. If your father never taught you how to lead, your heavenly Father will. 

 

This next caution is to women. You cannot demand that your husband take leadership. For several reasons: 

 

1) Demanding is contradictory to the very thing for which you long. It is out of character. If you become the demander, he’s not the leader. 

“I want you to lead us in family devotions” – It can be communicated, but not without prudence.

 

2) Demanding will be counterproductive because if he had any impulse to try harder, your demanding will take the heart out of it, because it won’t feel like leading anymore; it will feel like acquiescence to your demand.

 

3) It has to come from inside him brought about by the word of God and the Spirit of God. 

 

So, instead of demanding…

 

a) pray earnestly for him that God would awaken his true manhood. 

b) When you are neither tired nor angry, ask him for a time when the two of you alone can talk about your heart’s desires. When you express your longings, do it without sounding any ultimatums and with a sense of hope grounded in God, not man. 

Express appreciation and honor for any ways that he is leading. 

 

Be careful to not interfere with what God is doing in the husband’s heart. God may be building character, trust, faithfulness, endurance, and obedience to Himself through many and various circumstances. If you interject yourself in the wrong way and at the wrong time when you are not in fellowship, you will snatch away the very tool that God is using to make your husband more Christ-like – for His glory and for your ultimate good.

 

Interfering, intervening, interjecting. 

 

Example: A wife drew a large sum of money from her inheritance to bail her husband out of financial woes in his business. Soon to follow, the husband left her for another woman at work. God was using his failing business to chastise and discipline him to repentance for his unchaste ways, but the wife eased the pain, and the husband left the marriage.

 

Leadership in Physical Provision 

 

The husband bears the primary responsibility to put bread on the table. Again, the word primary is important. Both husbands and wife’s work. 

 

Exceptions and seasons of reciprocal earning…. but never reciprocal authority.

 

What are cautions of women working in the “professional arena”?

 

-If she is in charge of a business or over an area or department of business and she is responsible for personnel under her; whereas, she must make decisions and constantly deal with confrontation, how difficult would it be to come home and shed her “CEO” hat and fall under her husband’s authority. It is a very modal life. 

 

-If her employer or supervisor is a man, she is hired and paid to make him successful. Can anyone really maintain a job and keep it if there was no passion, dedication, or commitment toward their livelihood? How easy would it be for her mind to become more occupied with pleasing her employer than her husband? 

Mental occupation can so easily transition into heart-felt affection. Reciprocal admiration, praise and reassurances can lead a heart astray. 

 

-How naïve one may be to think that with half of one’s work mates as the opposite sex that relationships won’t build, and the fish won’t bite the hook. There are genuine heart lifting and gut-wrenching perils of life shared between coworkers. There are innuendos, secondary meanings, loose lips of shared liaisons between coworkers, talk of “clubbing” and all manner of sensual expressions, and any of these are enough to carry the imagination off the narrow road.  Even if there is no physical embrace, an embrace of the heart is the fast lane to a broken marriage.

 

Leadership in Spiritual Protection 

 

Men tend NOT to pray first – they want to DO first. Praying is the primary way of DOING for our family, NOT praying, is the primary UNDOING of our family.

 

The way a parent “parents” is a barometer of the parents’ spiritual condition. 

 

Ex: Husband delegates to the mother to have watch-care over how the daughter dresses. The husband observes that the daughter’s pants and blouse are way too tight and dresses way too short – overall, provocative.

What does the husband do?

 

First, he goes to the mother who has been delegated watch-care over the daughter’s demeanor, modesty and conformity to godly principles of adornment. The mother also educates the daughter to the alertness that men have to sight and how love would never present themselves as a source of temptation and a pathway to the demise of his purity and of her own dignity.

 

The husband listens to the mother’s response to his objections:

            -It’s what all her friends are wearing at school … and, at church.

            -Well, you take her shopping and see if you can find anything more modest than this that will fit her.

            -She says she wants to be a “Cool Christian”.

            -You tell her yourself that she can’t wear these clothes.

 

Tough. Where does the husband start? 

 

Actually, he shouldn’t be dealing with this. 

This should have been sanctified long ago. We are dealing with disobedience, rebellion, defiance… The issue of defiance and rebellion are not pop-up issues suddenly, they are foundational in a heart troubled from birth that must be saturated with Bible and introduced to the Savior. We, as parents, have a pretty good idea when our children have a propensity to reason, but we wait far too long to immerse them into Bible doctrine.

 

Leadership in Physical Protection 

 

This is too obvious to need illustration—I wish. If there is a sound downstairs during the night and it might be a burglar, you don’t say to her, “This is an egalitarian marriage, so it’s your turn to go check it out. I went last time.” And I mean that—even if your wife has a black belt in karate. After you’ve tried to deter him, she may finish off the burglar with one good kick to the solar plexus. But you’d better be unconscious on the floor, or you’re no man. That’s written on your soul, brother, by God Almighty. Big or little, strong, or weak, night or day, you go up against the enemy first. Woe to the husbands—and woe to the nation— that sends their women to fight their battles! Horribly so, we are on the last woe now in this country.

 

THE HUSBAND NO WIFE REGRETS 

 

When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and God came to call them to account, it didn’t matter that Eve had sinned first. God said, “Adam, where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). 

When a man joyfully bears the primary God-given responsibility for Christ-like, servant leadership and provision and protection in the home—for the spiritual well-being of the family, for the discipline and education of the children, for the stewardship of money, for the holding of a steady job, for the healing of discord—I have never met a wife who is sorry she married such a man. Because when God designs a thing (like marriage), he designs it for his glory and our good. 

 

SUBMISSION:  1 PETER 3:1-6 

 

To set the stage for that impact, notice two phrases in 1 Peter 3:1: “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands.” 

 

Notice the word own in “your own husbands.” That means that there is a uniquely fitting submission to your own husband that is not fitting in relation to other men. You are not called to submit to all men the way you do to your husband. 

 

Be careful of the work world – discerning the difference between workplace compliance to your employer and submission. Not the same.

If the wife is a supervisor and is required to exercise authority over a man – 

1. That will have its peculiar variances, 

2. Then come home and submission to your husband would be a huge transition: a sudden stoppage and reversal in a moments time. That’s tough to do.

 

What does submission look like there? 

SHE HAS HOPE IN GOD

V.5

The deepest root of Christian womanhood mentioned in this text is hope in God. “Holy women who hoped in God . . .” A Christian woman does not put her hope in her husband, or in getting a husband. She does not put her hope in her looks or her intelligence or her creativity. 

 

1. She puts her hope in the promises of God. She is described in Prov 31:25: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” 

She laughs at everything the future could bring because she hopes in God. 

 

2. She looks away from the troubles and miseries and obstacles of life that seem to make the future bleak, and she focuses her attention on the sovereign power and love of God who rules in heaven and does on earth whatever he pleases.

(Ps. 115:3 But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.). 

 

SHE IS FEARLESS

 

2 Tim 3.12

And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

 

1 Pet 3.14

But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. AND DO NOT FEAR THEIR INTIMIDATION, AND DO NOT BE TROUBLED,

 

1Pet 4.19

Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.

 

That is what Christian women do: They entrust their souls to a faithful Creator. They hope in God. And they triumph over fear. 

 

INTERNAL ADORNMENT 

 

v4 but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

 

in verse 4. When a woman puts her hope in God and not her husband and not in her looks, and when she overcomes fear by the promises of God, this will have an effect on her heart: It will give her an inner tranquility. That’s what Peter means in verse 4 by “the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.” 

“This is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands.” 

 

WHAT SUBMISSION IS NOT 

 

1. Submission does not mean agreeing with everything your husband says. 

 

She is a Christian, and he is not. He has one set of ideas about ultimate reality and world view. She has biblical world view and eternal reality. Peter calls her to be submissive while assuming she will not submit to his world view most important thing in the world—God. So, submission can’t mean submitting to agree with all her husband thinks. 

 

2. Submission does not mean leaving your brain or your will at the wedding altar. 

 

Peter does not tell her to retreat from that commitment to Christ. 

 

3. Submission does not mean avoiding every effort to change a husband

 

In case you missed the joke in Lesson 4, So says the wife who has spent her entire marriage trying to change her husband, and with a measure of success, says, “I want a divorce. You are not the man I married.”

 

v1“Be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.” 

 

4. Submission does not mean putting the will of the husband before the will of Christ.

 

This is a huge quandary…

 

Peter passed over the most amazing instance of Sarah’s submission, namely, when Abraham wanted her to say in Egypt that she was his sister. At the risk of her life and sexual abuse, she obeyed. Peter did not choose to illustrate his point with this instance. 

Should she have? Is this prescriptive for submission?

 

Name some situations where you do not have to submit to your husband:

 

1. Immorality / Impurity / perversion

2. Criminal Behavior / Violation of the law    

            How about if he wants you to speed?

            How about if he wants you to go the posted speed limit?

3. He is violent or abusive. How long, how much?

4. He wants you to drink with him – have a glass of wine or a beer? You did it before you were saved. What are biblical principles? Is it “sin” to you?

 

Submission does not follow a husband into sin. 

 

What then does submission say in such a situation? 

What does submission say to a husband who is leading a wife into sin? 

 

It says, “It grieves me when you venture into sinful acts and want to take me with you. You know I can’t do that. I have no desire to resist you. On the contrary, I flourish most when I can respond joyfully to your lead; but I can’t follow you into sin, as much as I love to honor your leadership in our marriage. Christ is my King.” 

 

5. Submission does not mean that a wife gets her personal, spiritual strength primarily through her husband. 

 

So, where does she get her spiritual strength?

 

Submission does not mean she is dependent on him to supply her strength of faith and virtue and character.  

 

She is summoned to develop depth and strength and character not from her husband but for her husband. 

 

6. Finally, submission does not mean that a wife is to act out of fear. 

In other words, submission is free, not coerced. The Christian woman is a free woman. When she submits to her husband—whether he is a believer or unbeliever—she does it in freedom, not out of fear. 

 

Is there any doubt as to the wisdom and prudence required in selecting a mate, young women?

 

Principles for selecting a man of God:

 

1. It is normal and natural, if not inevitable, that any male and female, Christian or non-Christian, one or both, that are drawn together into a work or social environment where they see one another frequently, will develop a relationship that draws them emotionally and intellectually closer.

2. See my Hand out

 

WHAT SUBMISSION IS 

 

Based on Eph 5, …submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts. 

 

Again, submission is free, not coerced. The Christian woman is a free woman. When she submits to her husband—whether he is a believer or unbeliever—she does it in freedom, not out of fear. 

 

The reason I say that submission is a disposition and an inclination to follow a husband’s lead is because there will be times in a Christian marriage when the most submissive wife, with good reason, will hesitate at a husband’s decision. It may look unwise to her. 

 

“Ed, I know you’ve thought a lot about this, and I love it when you take the initiative to plan for us and take the responsibility like this, but I really don’t have peace about this decision, and I think we need to talk about it some more. Could we? Maybe tonight sometime?” 

 

The reason that is a kind of biblical submission is: 

 

a) because husbands, unlike Christ, are fallible and ought to admit it. 

b) because husband’s ought to want their wives to be excited about the family decisions since Christ wants the church to be excited about following his decisions and not just follow begrudgingly.

 

c) because the way my wife expressed her misgivings communicated clearly that she endorses my leadership and affirms me in my role as head; and 

d) because she has made it clear to me from the beginning of our marriage that if, when we have done all the talking, we should, we still disagree, she will defer to her husband’s decision. 

 

GOD’S WAY IS GOOD FOR US 

 

Reminder: marriage is not mainly about staying in love. It’s about covenant-keeping. And the main reason it is about covenant-keeping is that God designed the relationship between a husband and his wife to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. 

 

Covenant-keeping…

This is the deepest meaning of marriage. 

 

And that is why ultimately the roles of headship and submission are so important. If our marriages are going to tell the truth about Christ and his church, we cannot be indifferent to the meaning of headship and submission. And let it not go unsaid that God’s purpose for the church—and for the Christian wife who represents it—is her everlasting, holy joy. 

Christ died for her to bring that about.