The Real Meaning of Biblical Submission

After 20 years of marriage my husband and I still have questions about the meaning of submission in Ephesians 5 and how it should apply to marriage today. On the surface it looks as if women should be subservient to their husbands, which gets interpreted more harshly or less so depending on where in the world one lives. Please share your thoughts on this dilemma. We want to embrace God’s will for marriage and the strengthening of our relationship.  

Most people approach Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit to your own husbands” as if it stands on its own. It doesn’t. Verse 21 sets the context: “Submitting to one another in the fear of God.” Paul is describing a home in which mutual deference is already the norm, and then he specifies what that looks like in the relationship of husband and wife. Ellen White noticed this very move in her own commentary on this passage when she writes: “Many husbands stop at the words, ‘Wives, submit yourselves,’ but we will read the conclusion of the same injunction, which is, ‘As it is fit in the Lord.’ ”¹ Submission was never meant to be unconditional or unilateral—it’s submission “in the Lord,” constrained by Christ’s character, not by a husband’s preferences or moods.

Headship Is Not a Hierarchy of Worth

Theologically and pastorally, here’s where it gets important. Ellen White was very clear that headship does not undo the equality built into creation. Referencing the original design, she wrote clearly: “In the creation, God had made her the equal of Adam.”² So whatever headship means in verse 23, it cannot mean superiority of value or intellect—the Bible and Ellen White both anchor equality in creation itself, before sin entered the picture. Ellen White goes on to say: “When husbands require the complete subjection of their wives, declaring that women have no voice or will in the family, but must render entire submission, they place their wives in a position contrary to the Scripture.”³ Here, headship is represented as a matter of stewardship rather than a throne.

Submission was never meant to be unconditional or unilateral—it’s submission “in the Lord."

Paul immediately defines that kind of stewardship as cross-shaped. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (verse 25), he said. That is not a soft afterthought; it’s the whole definition, given that Christ’s headship over the church looks like self-emptying, not command-and-control. Ellen White makes the same emphasis when she shared: “Christ’s authority is exercised in wisdom, in all kindness and gentleness; so let the husband exercise his power and imitate the great Head of the church.”⁴ The truth is, if a husband’s leadership doesn’t cost him anything—his comfort, his preferences, his time—it probably isn’t the Christlike leadership Ephesians 5 is talking about.

Marriage Research Confirms What Scripture Assumes

Decades of marital research by John Gottman shows that relationships thrive on what he calls “accepting influence”—both partners genuinely open to being moved by the other’s perspective, not just one person managing the other’s compliance. A marriage in which only one voice counts isn’t biblical headship; it’s just poor emotional architecture, and it predicts conflict and disconnection far more than stability. Attachment research adds another layer: Children and spouses alike regulate their sense of safety through responsive, attuned relationships—not through rank.

The Household Code in Ephesians Was Already Countercultural

In first-century Greco-Roman society husbands held near-absolute legal and social power over wives, children, and slaves. Paul doesn’t overturn the household structure completely, but he explodes its logic from within. He tells the person with power—the husband—to love sacrificially, and grounds the wife’s submission in mutual submission, not male entitlement. That’s a radical redistribution of moral responsibility for its time; arguably more radical than removing the structure altogether would have been.

So in response to your question, biblical submission is not silence, and biblical headship is not control. Both are forms of self-giving love aimed at unity—the wife’s expressed as willing partnership “in the Lord,” the husband’s expressed as sacrificial, Christlike responsibility. “Do not try to compel each other to yield to your wishes,” Ellen White shares. “You cannot do this and retain each other’s love. Be kind, patient, and forbearing, considerate, and courteous.”⁵ This counsel, more than anything else, is the real content of Ephesians 5.

You and your husband will continue to be in our prayers as you practice the message of Ephesians 5 in your marriage. Remain encouraged and faithful.