(Note: While this post was written with elders’ wives and other Christian women in mind, we hope all of our readers will benefit from it and share it with others who might enjoy it.)
In a perfect world, all husbands would love their wives as Christ loved the church, and submission would be completely natural for wives because their husbands would be so wonderful. But we are sinners, married to sinners. And even when we earnestly want to please God in our marriages, our best intentions are often intermingled with complex emotions and selfish motives that are hard to discern.
Tim Challies writes that both our submission to others and our leadership of others have been “muddled by the fall.” He wisely distinguishes between submission (voluntarily arranging ourselves under legitimate authority) and subjection (being coerced by fear or force to obey a ruler). “The consistent instruction of the Bible is that the one under authority must submit to those over him,” he writes. “Foreign to the Bible is that the one with authority must force the subjection of those under him. So many of our problems arise when sin impacts both sides of that dynamic.”
This week we’re going beyond the last article on what biblical submission means and delving into what submission looks like in difficult situations.
Don’t Ignore the Issues
When we want our husbands to change (a healthy desire, since all believers are called to sanctification), John Piper urges us to consider ourselves as not only submissive wives but caring sisters in Christ toward our imperfect husbands. In his book This Momentary Marriage, he urges us to follow Galatians 6:1: “[I]f anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”
The same Hebrew root word describing Eve as Adam’s helper, ezer, is used to describe God as our help (see Ps. 115:9-11, Ps. 121:1-2, Ps. 124:8), so you can see that the role is the opposite of menial. It’s a noble mission to walk alongside a man, call him to excellence, and help him achieve what God is calling him to do. Being a “doormat,” ignoring your husband’s sin, and withholding your input is neither helpful nor truly submissive—it’s cowardly. Being a godly helpmate to your husband might look like filling his plate with his favorite meals and his dresser with fresh laundry, and it might also look like lovingly confronting him when he’s wrong.
But we must do so without nagging, which the Proverbs warn against repeatedly. “The word nag exists in English to warn us that there is such a thing as excessive exhortation,” Piper writes.
The Bible teaches that we can win over our husbands “without a word”—meaning that how we behave toward them matters more than what we say:
Likewise, wives, 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, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. . . . [L]et your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious (1 Peter 3:1-4).
This is the right approach whether your husband is unsaved, saved but not walking with the Lord, or simply needing to bring some area of his life under God’s authority. These verses don’t mean we should never speak up, but they urge us to entrust our husbands to God and recognize that our actions speak louder than our words. These verses remind us to focus on praying for our husbands more than nagging them, and leading honorable lives before God as we trust him to work in our marriages.
In a recent panel discussion on marriage, Sharon Bettis, wife of author and pastor Chap Bettis, said she prayed for three years for God to change Chap’s heart about an issue he was not open to discussing. She decided to see the situation as an opportunity to grow in prayer, faith, and self-control. She kept a prayer journal so she could see the progression of God’s work in the situation as he changed not just her husband’s heart but also her own patterns.
In the end, she said, “[Chap’s] testimony that I heard him telling somebody else was, ‘God changed my heart.’ Not . . . ‘I finally gave in to her,’ not ‘She’s a dripping faucet; I couldn’t handle it anymore.’ . . . I wanted from the very beginning for this issue to become a testimony of the Lord’s work in our life, our marriage. And it totally was.”
Don’t Underestimate Your Influence
While a wife can’t singlehandedly “fix” her marriage, her attitudes and actions have a tangible effect.
“Your marriage isn’t just a number on a scale of 1 to 10; it’s a mathematical equation: x + y = z,” Gary Thomas writes in Sacred Influence, recently republished as Loving Him Well. “Your husband may be the x—a number you absolutely can’t change. But if you change the y (that’s you), you influence the overall result of your marriage.”
You can’t control your husband’s actions, but you can control yours. You can choose to speak to him (and about him) with respect. You can choose to serve him cheerfully. You can choose to notice and praise the good things about him, even if there’s also a lot of bad. You can choose to be thankful both to him and to God. You can seek camaraderie and intimacy with him in spite of his flaws. And even if none of those things move the needle in your marriage, you can trust that God sees what you’re doing and will reward you with something even better than a perfect marriage: his commendation of “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21).
Thomas goes on to say, “It is entirely natural and healthy to dream big things for your husband, but that’s very different from selfishly demanding those things. When you dream something in a positive way, you offer yourself to God as an instrument of love, change, and spiritual transformation. When you demand that someone change for your sake, you’re literally trying to bend the world around your comfort, your needs, and your happiness. That’s pride, arrogance, and self-centeredness—and God will never bless that.”
Be an Abigail
If anyone knew what it was like to be married to a difficult man, it was Abigail (1 Sam. 25), the “discerning and beautiful” wife of Nabal, who was “harsh and badly behaved”—the epitome of a jerk. Arrogance? Check. Bad temper? Check. Drinking problem? Check. His name even meant “fool.”
One day, soon-to-be-king David and his men were passing through Nabal’s town as they wandered through the wilderness evading the bloodthirsty King Saul and grieving Samuel’s recent death. Needing refreshment, David sent a messenger to ask the wealthy Nabal for food and water. And when David heard how Nabal insulted and refused him, his rash response was to strap on his sword and march with four hundred of his closest friends to kill Nabal and his men.
Abigail heard the rumor and knew her husband’s foolishness caused their predicament. With barely a moment to craft a plan, she hurried to meet and appease David with bread and wine, freshly butchered sheep, roasted grain, raisins, and figs—enough to feed the whole gang. And her plan worked. David relented and recognized that Abigail had been sent by God to turn him back from his bad intentions.
But here’s the catch: Abigail didn’t tell Nabal what she was doing until afterwards. In going behind her husband’s back, was she being submissive or unsubmissive?
In a must-read article on the subject, Bob Deffinbaugh writes:
“How can a woman who refuses to consult with her husband, who acts contrary to his will and his word, and who calls him a fool, possibly be considered a submissive wife? I would suggest that it is only in the externals that Abigail appears to be unsubmissive . . . What he refuses to do is exactly what Abigail does. And yet, in heart she is truly submissive. To think that submission is mere blind obedience, or giving in to the will and the wishes of a higher authority, falls short of the essence of true submission. True submission is the active pursuit of the best interests of another, by the subordination of our own personal interests” (see Philippians 2:1-8).
Abigail was truly submissive in that she put her husband’s interests above her own. To save Nabal, Abigail risked her life to approach David, knowing he wanted to kill her entire household. If she merely wanted to save herself, she would have stayed out of the situation and let Nabal die.
“She would be far better off to act like the perfect wife by doing exactly what Nabal wants,” Deffinbaugh writes. “Had she simply stayed at home, serving Nabal another drink, she would be ‘liberated’ by David. Her worthless husband would be put to death, and she would be free from his tyranny . . . Doing nothing (and thus appearing to be submissive) will further her interests at her husband’s expense.”
He goes on to say that submission typically looks like obeying and honoring one in higher authority, but not always. “There are times when we must act contrary to the wishes of one to whom we are in submission . . . where God’s will is clearly contradictory to the will and wishes of our superior. This can only be when we act in a way that is costly to us, but is truly beneficial to the other.”
He adds that “Abigail’s kind of submission is the exception, not the rule.” True submission, he says, looks like this:
- Submitting primarily to God, and then to others in conformity with submission to God.
- Putting the interests of others above our own.
- Occasionally acting contrary to the will and wishes of the one to whom we are submitting–only because it is necessary for the other’s well-being.
- Neither justifying selfish unsubmissiveness, nor giving into wrongdoing by calling it submission.
*Loving Him Well, referenced above, is an excellent resource for learning how to effect change in your marriage in godly ways. The book is divided into three sections: “Your Marriage Makeover Begins with You,” “Creating the Climate for Change,” and “Confronting Her Most Common Concerns” (dealing with things like anger, lack of involvement at home, pornography, and unsaved/spiritually immature husbands).