Submission ~ Key to A Contented Home

Saturday we attended the daughter’s wedding of a dear long-time friend. (How quickly children grow up and leave home to make their own home!) As the ceremony progressed, my thoughts went back to my own wedding and the vows my husband and I exchanged some 42 years ago (next week!). I’m always eager to hear the wedding vows of a new bride and groom. He promised to love, cherish, and lead; she promised to love, cherish, and submit to his leadership. The submissive aspect is where women who truly understand God’s design for marriage begin a journey that is both challenging and rewarding.

Our culture doesn’t understand that. By and large, there’s a misunderstanding as to what submission is. Titus 2 speaks of encouraging the younger women (and we older women need the encouragement as well) to be submissive to their own husbands. It isn’t that the man is smarter or better in any way. It’s simply a way of providing orderliness and leadership. Every entity needs leadership, and God gave the man that position in the family. He knows how marriage functions best.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

This Mort Kunstler print of Jackson and Lee is hanging in my daughter Laura’s room (the bedroom she had here at home before she was married). She was once a Civil War enthusiast, and this print was purchased as a high school graduation gift. It helps me understand the concept of submission—General Stonewall Jackson in submission to General Robert E. Lee.

The Biblical word for submission is a military term, hupatasso, meaning “to arrange in order under.” General Jackson was under General Lee in military order. General Lee was not smarter or better than General Jackson. In fact, when Jackson lost his arm from friendly fire shortly before his death, Lee was reported to have said, “Jackson has lost his left arm, and I have lost my right arm.” Stonewall was invaluable to Lee. Stonewall was a remarkable military strategist, and Lee depended on him for analysis and advice. Wives are just as invaluable to their husbands.

Leadership and submission is God’s design for marriage to picture the relationship of Christ and and the Church. It's the design for an effective home in living out the gospel and making it believable to a skeptical world.

Saturday’s young newlywed couple understand that. Congratulations, Autumn and Jason!

Painting ~ Signing The Register 1920, Edmund Blair Leighton 1852-1922

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