Page 59 - Family Life Student Textbook

Study Section 11: The Wife is to Submit to and Respect her Husband

11.1 Connect
The most controversial part of the role of the wife is to “submit” to her husband. Many women rebel
against this command. The feminists try very hard to convince us that the wife doesn’t need to
submit to her husband. She needs to stand up for her own rights. No man should be telling her
what to do!

In middle east cultures, the man is extremely dominant in marital relationship. What he says, is so! Is this
what the Bible lays out for the role of women in a marriage? What does the Bible mean when it commands
a wife to submit to her husband? Let’s find out…

11.2 Objectives
1. The student should be able to describe what it means for a wife to submit to her husband.

2. The student should be able to point out that many of our cultural ideas on this subject are wrong.

3. The student should be able to describe practical ways in which the wife obeys this command in everyday
life.

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11.3 The Wife is to Submit to her Husband.

Colossians 3:18 “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”

Ephesians 5:22–24 “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the
Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his
body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives
should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Ephesians 5:33 “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and
the wife must respect her husband.”

The word “submit” comes from the Greek word “hupotasso”, which means “to arrange underneath, to
arrange under the authority”. This word was used in the military to instruct soldiers to obey their
commander.

Romans 13:1 “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority
except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established
by God.”

James 4:7 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

God commands us in his word to submit to his authority. And wives are commanded to arrange themselves
underneath the authority of their husband.

Another necessary aspect of submission is to respect the authority.

7 Credit for much of the material in this lesson given to Dr. Bruce Wilkinson
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