Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Colossians 3:18,19
Well known feminist Gloria Steinem usually gets the ‘credit’ for the following saying: ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’. But it did not originate with Steinem, but with Australian politician and activist Irina Dunn when she was a student at the University of Sydney. And even then, Dunn was just paraphrasing a statement by an atheist philosopher, Charles S. Harris, who said that man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle. No matter, they are all wrong. Who says so? God says so. Harris is wrong, because while a man can live his life ignoring God, he cannot survive a split second without God granting him each moment of time, each beat of his heart, each breath of his lungs. And of course, the man who thinks he can live without God cannot die without God. Steinem and Dunn are wrong because God created humanity in two complementing halves that cannot possibly be complete without each other. But they complement each other according to our text, not according to the ideas of those who misquote or misread it.
The first part of today’s text is politically incorrect (political correctness has nothing to do with being right, and is usually just the opposite). Notice that our text does not say ‘Husbands, dominate your wives’, but that is the way in which dominating men tend to look at it, and the way in which rebellious women tend to condemn it. The word ‘submit’ has nothing whatsoever to do with being dominated. It refers to the order in which God desires that humanity is to operate. A wife who submits to her husband is submitting to God’s order. Notice that our text does not place a period after the word ‘husbands’. No, it qualifies the submission to that which is fit in the Lord. Because God never intended that a man should abuse or mistreat his wife in any way, God never intended that a woman should be submissive to a man who would abuse or mistreat her. Submission to a husband who acts as God directs will never lead to abuse or mistreatment.
And how should the man act? Just as the second statement in our text declares, with love and understanding. A good verse to place alongside this is Ephesians 5:25: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it. A man who loves his wife with the same sacrificial love that Christ has for His bride should find little desire on the part of his wife to rebel against his authority. Because marriage unites two people as one, the husband is given the following direction by Ephesians 5:28: So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
What a difference we would see in this world if people would recognize the wisdom of submitting and loving as the guiding principles of happy marriage. This is what the world should see in every Christian marriage. – Jim MacIntosh