Facing Prometheus — Week 16 (Sacred Lives in a Secular World) | “The Theology of Marriage” | Pastor Jason Parrish
Few passages in the New Testament carry more cultural weight, historical baggage, or pastoral misuse than Ephesians 5:22–33. “Wives, submit to your husbands” has been quoted, weaponized, ignored, defended, and explained away — sometimes all in the same week. But the work of biblical study is not to react to a text; it’s to let the text shape us.
In Week 16 of Facing Prometheus: A Letter to the Ephesians and the Future Church Dilemma, Pastor Jason Parrish does the careful theological work this passage demands — walking through the textual debate, the framework problem, and what biblical submission and headship actually mean in the heart of God.
The Text — Ephesians 5:22–33
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.”
— Ephesians 5:22–33 (CSB)
The Framework Problem
Before we go any deeper into the text, we have to deal with a framework issue. A framework is what we have constructed through various forms of information, experience, belief, and inheritance.
★★ The framework we have defines the life and world that we build.
Abigail Favale, in The Genesis of Gender, writes:
“We must engage the vital questions of personhood, sex, identity, and freedom at the level of worldview.”
— Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender
Or, said differently — at the level of framework. Borrowing from Pastor Jon Tyson at Church of the City New York, there are three predominant frameworks at play in our current culture. All of us view life through one of these in one way or another — especially when it comes to the subjects we’re dealing with over the next several weeks.
| Secular Framework | Sacred Framework | Shame Framework |
|---|---|---|
|
Identity Rights Ideology Pleasure Consent Sociology |
Formation Fulfillment Theology Grace Transformation Belonging |
Legalism Moralism Literalism Fear Secrecy Hypocrisy |
Framework chart adapted from Pastor Jon Tyson, Church of the City New York.
The challenge we all face is that our frameworks shape our understanding and opinions on these issues. Depending on which one we’re operating from, the conversation about marriage, singleness, sex, intimacy, same-sex attraction, and transgenderism will be filtered differently.
As we interact with Ephesians 5:22–33, we all approach it with a framework. The question is: is it the right one?
★★ The work of biblical study is to allow the text to shape our understanding of a subject and to think more theologically about it — rather than viewing the subject through the lens of experience, abuse, preference, and culture. There is no subject more prone to improper treatment than marriage.
Reading the Text in Context
It is crucial that as we study Ephesians 5:22–33, we read it within the context of the greater whole of the letter. If we isolate these verses, we skew the interpretation — sometimes catastrophically.
This passage is one of the most hotly debated texts in the New Testament because of one critically important detail: the verb “submit” in verse 22 is not actually in some of the earliest manuscripts. That changes the interpretive reality of the entire text.
Constantine Campbell comments:
“The command of 5:22, that wives are to submit to their husbands, omits the main verb — ‘submit’ — since it is supplied by 5:21. In other words, the Greek of 5:21–22 says, ‘submitting to one another… wives, to your own husbands.’ Thus 5:22 would be incomplete (and nonsensical) without 5:21, which functions as a pivot from 5:18–21 to the following section.”
— Constantine R. Campbell, The Letter to the Ephesians
Andrew Lincoln adds in his Word Biblical Commentary:
“It is crucial that readers interpret 5:21 as pointing both backward and forward… In fact, almost all commentators, no matter how they divide the passage, treat the verse this way.”
— Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (Word Biblical Commentary)
Theologian Stephen Fowl, in Ephesians: A Commentary, goes further:
“Thus, believers filled with the Spirit will submit to one another. Obviously, person A cannot submit to person B at the exact same time that person B is submitting to person A. Instead, the mutual submission admonished here relativizes conventional authority structures for people who lived in a society where status and authority were rigidly marked and strictly observed.”
— Stephen E. Fowl, Ephesians: A Commentary
★★ Paul is not disorganizing marriage. He is restructuring it around a common goal — the sacrificial service of the other through mutual submission, which is highlighted not by domination but by devotion.
The debate ultimately hinges on whether verse 21’s mutual language governs verse 22, or whether the household code structure that follows clarifies submission as directional despite the missing verb. There is one other clue most scholars point to that supports the mutual submission position — and it comes from 1 Corinthians 7:
“A husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise a wife to her husband. A wife does not have the right over her own body, but her husband does. In the same way, a husband does not have the right over his own body, but his wife does. Do not deprive one another…”
— 1 Corinthians 7:3–5 (CSB)
This was a shocking proposition in a cultural moment when men were the only ones with “rights.” The only way this position is held is if there is mutual submission. What Paul writes here is the definition of mutual submission.
Interpretation: The Pastoral Take
After studying the words, construction, and arguments surrounding this section, the position taken in this message is that there is sufficient evidence to support the view of mutual submission rather than the view that Paul was simply upholding the household codes of the day and Christianizing them.
That said, although verse 22 does not contain the verb “submit,” verse 24 does. And Paul does use the word “head” — a very specific Greek term. We do not get to throw out the verse. Paul is saying what he is saying. But we have to understand it in light of what comes before it. The idea of mutual submission reconstitutes for us what headship, submission, love, service, and respect actually look like.
Theologian Chris Powell puts it succinctly:
★★ “Submission is not the duty of the wife alone any more than love is the duty of the husband alone.” — Chris Powell
So the question becomes: if mutual submission is the framework for verses 22–33, how do we interpret Paul’s admonition to wives to submit, husbands to love, and details like “husbands are the head” and “wives, respect your husband”?
Here are three statements that help frame the rest of this conversation.
1. Marriage Is Designed to Be a Spirit-Filled Union Based on Mutual Surrender — Not Mutual Control
“Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk — not as unwise people but as wise — making the most of the time, because the days are evil… don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit: speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.”
— Ephesians 5:15–21 (CSB)
Mutual submission does not erase distinctions. Paul does not flatten the conversation about marriage, husbands, and wives. Nor does he affirm a top-down hierarchical structure. He elevates the conversation to a different level entirely.
★★★ He gives different expressions of the same Gospel reality: both people dying to themselves. This can only take place through a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led life.
The truth is that marriage fails when either spouse refuses to surrender — and surrender can only take place where the active work of the Spirit is happening in the life of the believer. The problem is that too many couples are fighting for control and power. Marriage was never designed to be a power struggle. It was designed to be a Spirit-enabled surrender.
2. Submission Is About Christ-Like Humility — Not Designed Inferiority
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.”
— Ephesians 5:22–24 (CSB)
Paul says what he says. It is in the text. We have to take it seriously. We cannot modify it or work around it. The best way to deal with the text is to work through it.
For too many, when the word “submission” appears, they stop working with the text and give up. That is mainly because the term in our modern world carries almost entirely negative weight. But the problem is that this term shows up in other passages of Scripture too. What tends to happen is that — because we do not fully understand what the term means biblically — we demonize it and ignore it, which causes us to miss out on the grace, provision, and blessing of what God is actually describing.
What Submission Is
a. Submission is voluntary. It is neither demanded nor received by demand. This is what makes biblical submission, biblical. If it is demanded and given through force, that is not submission. That is being conquered.
b. Submission is an act of grace. This is what brings us back to the Spirit-filled life. Verse 18 carries the rest of chapters five and six, showing what it looks like to be a Spirit-filled believer.
What Submission Is Not
a. Submission does NOT mean inferiority. Nowhere in Scripture will you find this directly said or implied. Men and women are equal in standing before God. Both were created in the image and likeness of God according to Genesis and affirmed by Christ.
b. Submission does NOT mean slavish obedience. When you study the text, many theologians point to the injunctions made on children and slaves in the verses that follow. Paul tells them to obey. But wives are told to submit. According to Roman-Greco culture of the day, women had no rights and were told to obey. Nowhere in this passage does Paul use the imperative “to obey.” Submission is therefore not a subservient role in which a wife is at her husband’s whim, there to do whatever he commands.
c. Submission does NOT mean acquiescing to ungodly demands. Submission is a volitional reality in the life of the wife, and it is to be done unto Christ. Therefore, Christ is preeminent in her life — and so the wife is not acquiescing to ungodly demands or sin on behalf of submission. This is a Spirit-oriented reality, not a man-oriented one. The husband does not replace Christ, nor is he some sort of mediator. This distinction is so important.
Ralph Alexander captures it well in the Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology:
“The husband does not command the wife to do this. The verb implies that she does this voluntarily. Submission does not imply that the wife is inferior, less intelligent, or less competent. Christ submitted to the Father but was not inferior or less God than the Father (1 Cor. 11:3; 15:28). Submission does not indicate that the wife puts her husband in the place of Christ. Christ is supreme in all things.”
— Ralph H. Alexander, “Marriage,” Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology
3. Christ-Like Headship Must Always Be Interpreted Through Jesus
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies.”
— Ephesians 5:25–28 (CSB)
Throughout church history, theologians have wrestled with what Paul means by the word “head.” Some emphasize leadership, responsibility, authority. Others emphasize source, unity, nourishment, sacrificial care.
Just like submission, the text says that husbands are the head. We can’t go around it. We have to go through it and understand it.
Ben Witherington III, in The Indelible Image, offers crucial context:
“If anything is the primary purpose of this code, it is to both ameliorate the harsher effects of patriarchy and to guide the head of the household into a new conception of his roles that Christianizes his conduct in various ways — and so turns marriage into more of a partnership and turns household management more into a matter of actualizing biblical principles about love of neighbor and honoring others.”
— Ben Witherington III, The Indelible Image
Headship in this context means leading through self-sacrifice — not exercising authority over another simply because one is male. Paul is rooting this relationship in the context of marriage (husband and wife), not in terms of gender as a whole. He is dealing with married people. He is not extending it beyond that context or importing other ideas and ideologies from elsewhere.
The real question is this: How does Jesus exercise His headship?
And the answer Paul gives challenges the norms people typically attach to this verse. Christ’s headship looks like:
- Washing feet
- Carrying crosses
- Serving sinners
- Forgiving failures
- Nourishing weakness
- Protecting His bride
- Laying Himself down
★★★ Jesus never uses His authority to dominate the Church. He uses His authority to save the Church.
That means biblical headship cannot mean: selfish control, emotional intimidation, spiritual manipulation, harshness, passivity, or entitlement.
Conclusion
This whole thing called marriage — and ultimately Paul’s point — is that it should all lead us to Jesus. Mutual surrender. Spirit-filled humility. Cross-shaped headship. Both husband and wife racing to the foot of the cross before the other gets there. Both laying themselves down. Both submitting to the One who first submitted to the Father on our behalf.
Biblical marriage isn’t a hierarchy. It’s a partnership shaped entirely by the Gospel.
References
- Alexander, Ralph H. “Marriage.” In Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1996.
- Campbell, Constantine R. The Letter to the Ephesians. Edited by D. A. Carson. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023.
- Cohick, Lynn H. The Letter to the Ephesians. Edited by Ned B. Stonehouse et al. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020.
- Favale, Abigail. The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2022.
- Fowl, Stephen E. Ephesians: A Commentary. Edited by C. Clifton Black, M. Eugene Boring, and John T. Carroll. First Edition. The New Testament Library. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.
- Lincoln, Andrew T. Ephesians. Word Biblical Commentary. Vol. 42. Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1990.
- Merkle, Benjamin L. “The Start of Instruction to Wives and Husbands — Ephesians 5:21 or 5:22?” Bibliotheca Sacra 174, no. 694 (2017): 165–183.
- Powell, C. “A Stalemate of Genders? Some Hermeneutical Reflections.” Themelios 17 (1992): 14–18.
- Witherington, Ben, III. The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament: The Collective Witness. Vol. 2. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010.
This Week’s Podcast
Want to learn more about the roles of men and women in a marriage? This week’s episode of The Analog Gospel podcast with Jason Parrish is for you!
