By Pastor Ken Burisek, The Ole' Country Church, Medford, Wis.
To properly approach this question, let’s take a look at just what “submission” actually means. We find this command in the book of Ephesians.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24). God has established a certain order in the world: governments to keep civil order, pastors to lead and feed the sheep of God, husbands to love and nurture their wives and fathers to be examples to their children.
Each of these relationships requires submission in order to work: citizen to government, sheep to shepherd, wife to husband, child to father. The Greek translation explains that submitting is a continual attitude, which becomes a pattern of behavior. First, of course, we are responsible to submit to God, which is the only way we can truly obey Him (James 1:21; 4:7). And each Christian should live in humble, ready submission to others (Ephesians 5:21).
In regard to submission within the family unit, 1 Corinthians 11:2–3, says that the husband is to submit to Christ (as Christ did to God the Father) and the wife is to submit to her husband. There is much misunderstanding in our world toda ...
