Adam, Where Are You?

By John Piper

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. - Ephesians 5:21-28

The question I want to raise and try to answer today is one that is repeatedly neglected in Christian feminist treatments of Ephesians 5, namely, What is the positive, practical difference in a marriage between the man's role as compared to Christ the head, and the woman's role as compared to the Church, Christ's body? Ephesians 5:22-23 says, "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body." Verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her." Husbands are compared to Christ; wives to the church; husbands to the head; wives to the body; husbands are commanded to love as Christ loved; wives are commanded to submit as the church to Christ. My question is: What are the positive, practical differences between a husband's role and a wife's role implied by these different comparisons?

As I read Christian feminist books and articles on this passage my main disappointment is that they seldom get around to this question. They stop short of it. They point out correctly that verse 21 teaches a mutual submission; they stress correctly that Christ's headship was not domineering but servant-like; and they emphasize that the Church's submission is not slavish but free and willing. But then they stop. (See Margaret Howe, Women and Church Leadership, p. 55; Patricia Gundry, Woman, Be Free, p. 73.) And because they stop there, young people today are left with great ambiguity and confusion about the proper roles of husband and wife. Christian singles and young couples know that husbands and wives are not to lord it over each other; they know they are to serve each other and put the other's interests first and not be mindless and obsequious. They know the pitfalls of domination and servility. But if you ask the average young man or woman today, who has been bombarded with feminist ideology for fifteen years, What is distinct about your God-intended role as husband? What is unique about your God-intended role as wife? What are some positive, practical implications of being called "head" that make the husband's role different from his wife's?—young people have a very hard time answering these questions. Interpretations of Ephesians 5 have been so defensive that very little help has been offered to young people in defining the Biblical differences between the roles of husband and wife.

But every ordinary reader can see in Ephesians 5 what feminist scholars so often neglect: after declaring that there is mutual submission in verse 21 Paul devotes 12 verses to unfolding the difference in the way a husband and wife should serve each other. After verse 21 the whole passage is devoted to making distinctions between the loving headship of a Christ-like husband and the willing submission of a church-like wife. What we so desperately need to hear from this text today is not just what headship and submission don't mean, but what they do mean and the difference between them. What are the positive, practical implications of being called "head" that give man his distinct role in marriage? It is not enough to say, "Serve one another." That is true of Christ and his church—they serve each other. But they do not serve in all the same ways. Christ is Christ. We are the church. To confuse the distinctions would be doctrinally and spiritually devastating. So also the husband is the husband and the wife is the wife. And to confuse these God-intended distinctions harms personal, church and social life over the long haul... (read more)

By John Piper. ©Desiring God.