The issue of gender roles has become a hot button issue in contemporary American Christainity. “Egalitarians” argue that there should be essentially no distinction of roles between men and women, while “complementarians” argue that the roles of men and women should differ in certain contexts. This controversy about gender roles centers around two distinct issues: leadership roles in the Church and leadership roles in the family. In this post, I will set aside the first issue and focus solely on examining what Scripture has to say about gender roles in marriage and family.
Gender Roles in Scripture
For the most part, the Old Testament Scriptures assume the existence of patriarchal patterns of leadership and do nothing to challenge them. God did establish a new law that if a man dies and has no sons, his daughters should inherit his property (Num 27:1-11). And God did appoint Deborah, a woman, as one of the judges who led Israel (Judges 4). But other than that, there is little in the Old Testament that challenges patriarchal patterns of leadership in family and government.
The Jesus of the Gospels never addresses the issue of gender roles. Many argue that Jesus treated women with significantly more respect than was typical in first century Jewish culture (although the extent to which this is the case is often exaggerated). But nothing in Jesus’s teachings challenges patterns of male leadership in the family.
Several passages in the apostolic epistles explicitly address the issue of male leadership in marriage. In Ephesians, Paul commands, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. . . Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:22, 25). In Colossians, Paul again commands, “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them” (Col 3:18-19). In Titus, Paul teaches that women should “be subject to their husbands” (Tit 2:5). Similarly, Peter commands wives to “submit yourselves to your own husbands” and husbands to “be considerate as you lives with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers” (I Pet 3: 1, 7).
These New Testament passages seem to clearly indicate that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands’ leadership in marriage. This is how they have traditionally been read. Recently, however, some have sought to challenge the traditional interpretation.
Paul’s command for wives to submit to their husbands in Ephesians 5: 22-23 is immediately preceded by “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21). Many point to this and argue that this shows that what Paul is really commanding is mutual submission of husbands and wives to one another as equal partners in marriage. However, it makes no sense for two people to mutually submit to one another, at least not in the same way. Paul’s teaching here about wives and husbands is the first part of a longer passage in which he commands children to obey their parents (Eph 6:1-4) and slaves to obey their masters (Eph 6:5-9). Paul certainly did not intend to say that parents should submit to their children and that masters should submit to their slaves. Paul’s command “submit to one another” certainly cannot mean that every individual Christian is supposed to mutually submit to every other individual Christian, such that there are no relationships of leadership in the Church at all. Elsewhere, Paul clearly commands that there be elders in positions of church leadership, and he certainly intends these elders to have real authority, not to mutually submit to those they are supposed to be leading.
Paul’s command “submit to one another,” then, must refer in general to the various ways in which Christians submit to other Christians, which include the relationships between husband and wife, child and parent, and slave and master. If Paul intended to say that husbands and wives should mutually submit to one another (whatever that means), then he would have said so. Instead, he writes, “As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit themselves to their husbands in everything” (Eph 5:24), and nowhere suggests that husbands are supposed to submit to their wives. Obviously, the relationship between Christ and the church is one of genuine leadership and authority, not “mutual submission,” and so the relationship between husband and wife must be the same.
Some argue that the apostles only commanded wives to submit to their husbands so that Christians would seem respectable by conforming to the form of marriage that existed at that time. This might be a plausible interpretation of Peter’s teaching that wives should submit to their husbands “so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of their lives” (I Pet 3:1-2). However, it is not a plausible interpretation of Paul’s teaching that wives should submit to their husbands “as is fitting in the Lord” (Col 3:18).
Some acknowledge the exegetical point that the New Testament does command wives to submit to their husbands. However, they then make a hermeneutical argument that modern marriage is so different from what the institution of marriage was in the first century that these New Testament commands do not apply to marriages today. Thus, they argue, although the New Testament clearly teaches that wives should submit to their husbands, Christians today should have egalitarian marriages in which the husband is not the leader of the family.
This hermeneutical method is deeply problematic. If applied consistently, it would allow us to justify literally anything on the grounds that things are different today than they were in the first century. For example, one could say, “Yes, the New Testament tells us to love our enemies, but today we have a Christian Empire, so we are justified in ignoring this New Testament teaching and burning heretics at the stake.” Such a hermeneutic is arbitrary and effectively ends up making it impossible for the New Testament to speak Authoritatively to us on any issue at all.
If it really were the case that the New Testament is just giving its blessing on the way marriages were in the first century, and so we should just give our blessing on the way marriages are today, this still would not support the idea that we should have egalitarian marriages in which the husband is not the leader of the family. In most cultures in the world today (including many subcultures in the U.S.) male leadership in marriage is still taken for granted. Therefore, if we were to apply this hermeneutic consistently, we would still have to give our blessing on wives submitting to their husbands if they are living in cultures where that is the norm today. And if there is a culture where wives are considered nothing more than property and are treated horribly, we would also have to give our blessing on that type of marriage relationship in that culture. If we say, “wives, submit to your husbands” is merely culturally relative, then we must also say that, “husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church” is also merely culturally relative. Obviously, this is a very disturbing implication that shows the incoherence of the revisionist hermeneutic.
Marriage is not a human institution that changes as culture changes. Jesus makes it very clear that marriage is a Divinely created institution that is part of God’s created order. The cultural forms that marriage takes may change, but marriage itself is the same as it has always been. Christians do not have the right to reject the teachings of God’s word about marriage just because they do not line up with the ideas about marriage that are popular in their culture.
Thus, although it is countercultural and politically incorrect, Christians should believe that husbands have a responsibility of being the leaders of their families. It sounds nice to say that husband and wife should be equal partners. But if they have to make an important decision and they simply cannot agree, how is the family to make the decision? There is no third party in the marriage who can break the tie. So, someone must be pre-designated to be the leader who will make the decision in these cases, and to whom the other spouse will submit. According to Scripture, the husband has this responsibility.
Objections to “Patriarchy”
Anyone who espouses the traditional idea that wives should submit to their husbands will be met with a host of angry objections. Doesn’t this give opportunity for men to abuse their wives? Doesn’t this entail the oppression of women? Doesn’t this make women second-class citizens in our society?
No. Claiming that Scriptural teaching about male leadership in marriage supports abusing or oppressing women requires ignoring everything else that the rest of the New Testament says. Any abuse of or oppression of women is obviously radically incompatible with the character traits of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23) that all Christians must demonstrate in their daily lives.
It also would require taking these verses which speak of wives submitting to their husbands wildly out of their immediate context. In Ephesians, Paul spends much more time talking about the responsibility of husbands to love their wives as themselves, “as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” (5:25-33) than he does the responsibility of wives to submit to their husbands (5:22-24). In Colossians, Paul commands husbands to “love your wives and do not be harsh with them” (3:19). And the apostle Peter warns husbands that if they are not considerate to their wives and do not treat them with respect, God will not listen to their prayers (I Pet 3:7).
According to a biblical view of leadership, leadership is exercised not for the benefit of the leader but for the benefit of those they are leading. It is not a position of privilege, but of service. At the Last Supper, Jesus washed His disciples’ feet (a lowly servant’s work), and then told them, “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:13-15). This is the kind of servant leadership Paul has in mind when he tells wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives “as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.” As a husband exercises leadership in his family, he is to love his wife self-sacrificially, putting her needs and desires before his own. This is the farthest thing from “abuse” or “oppression.”
Does male leadership in marriage make women second-class citizens in our society? No. Saying that wives should submit to their husbands in marriage does not mean that women cannot occupy positions of leadership in government, business, and other organizations. Scripture does have a few things to say about gender roles, but we must not conflate this with various human traditions about gender roles that have sometimes been associated with these Scriptural teachings. And we must challenge some popular traditional understandings of gender roles that are clearly at odds with Scriptural teachings (e.g., masculinity=violence). Gender roles vary from culture to culture, and there are many diverse understandings of gender roles that are compatible with Christianity. But Scripture is clear on at least one thing: generally speaking, husbands have the responsibility of exercising leadership in their marriages.
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