Naming Strengths
submitting to gifts
What Did That Mean?
You know how Paul instructed wives to submit to their husbands? Have you ever wondered what authority husbands had over their wives during Greco-Roman times? Were first-century women expected to submit their spiritual decisions to their pagan husbands? Were wives supposed to submit their choices about running their homes to their husbands?
I don’t think we can answer these questions without first understanding Greco-Roman social life and household codes of conduct. As far as I understand it and based on my limited reading, men were considered by nature superior to women at that time. Women and slaves were thought to be people who had to be held in check in order to maintain a stable society. I’m trying to think of a good analogy for this, but what comes to mind may be offensive. I apologize in advance.
Do you know how our society has a fear of homeless people? We expect the local governments to keep the homeless people in check and protect us from the homeless. It was similar for the Greco-Roman people in regard to women. Women’s sexuality was seen as a threat to men and thus believed that it had to be kept in check. According to their laws and Greek philosophers, women had to be kept in check for the rest of society to remain stable and safe from women’s supposed powers. Women were thus not given the same authority and ruling rights as men.
Women were also thought to have inferior natures to men. They were viewed as we might view children or mentally handicapped people. Women were thought to be weak, cowardly, less intelligent, and less capable than men who were considered by nature superior functioning human beings. (Bleah!)
As a result of these views, men had more rights, authority, and power than women in the world outside their homes. Husbands thus acted as gateways to their wives to certain rights and privileges outside the home. A husband controlled a wife’s access to raw materials for homemaking. Husbands could decide to educate their wives or not. It was also through having a husband that wives received some form of protection in the outside world. If someone raped a veiled married woman, he was busted. But the rape of an unveiled woman wouldn’t necessarily lead to legal prosecution. Lastly, it was through a husband’s political authority that a wife obtained a voice in government.
While it wasn’t against the rules for a husband to rule the goings-on in the home, it wasn’t what men usually did at that time. It wasn’t their jurisdiction, so to speak. That was women and servants’ work. Men didn’t bother themselves with that sort of stuff. Therefore, women were usually the leaders of home life, the children, food prep, monitoring servants, running home businesses, and bathing and dressing their families. Women’s inferior natures were considered capable of performing household leadership while men, with their superior natures, ruled the public and political spheres of society.
As far as I can tell, a wife’s spiritual life also wasn’t subject to a husband’s jurisdiction. Women often had deities that they worshipped and prayed to that were different from their husbands’. Women were also able to lead worship, cult practices, and pagan prayer meetings without their husbands.
Thus, when Paul asked wives to submit to their husbands, Paul wasn’t telling wives to let their husbands be their spiritual leaders or to be the head of their homes. That was against the cultural norms of that time. Rather, Paul is most likely instructing the wives to submit to the Greco-Roman social pyramid which relied upon the submission of slaves and women.
Perhaps another way Paul might’ve said this is, “Don’t attempt a social reform at this time. Rather, wives, stay in your current positions. Keep running your homes. Keep treating your husbands like your lord and master. You can do this unto the Lord as you might any job.”
Paul isn’t saying that women are indeed inferior to men or that women will always need to be under the authority of men, but that for the early Christian churches, women might serve the Lord by submitting to their husbands as their superiors. Wives would treat husbands like we might the town mayor if he were to enter our homes. We know and the mayor knows he’s not in charge of how we run our homes or our spiritual lives, but if he comes into our house, we’re going to submit to him and respect him.
This was important for the early Christian Church to do in order to survive in a society that was built upon controlling the slaves and women. If the Christian churches tried to change the Greco-Roman social structure of that day, the Romans would certainly have put the kibosh on those Christian churches.
Paul repeats this kind of instruction to married and unmarried people in 1 Corinthians 7: stay in your current position; don’t try to change your life; God can supply your needs right where you are. Likewise, Paul instructed slaves to continue submitting to their masters and citizens to submit to pagan government authorities. Paul wasn’t writing to restructure Greco-Roman governments or households. Rather, he was writing to explain how Christians might live within their Greco-Roman culture.
Paul also wasn’t dictating moral absolutes for all people for all times. Rather, he was saying, " Only, let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (within his or her society and time) (1 Cor. 7:17 ESV). It was each person’s responsibility to present his life to God as an offering and to discern God’s will for him or herself. This meant that some people led quiet peaceful live and others went to the arena for their faith.
Side note: Paul also asks wives to submit to their husbands in cases where the wives’ primary way of learning the word of God was through their husbands (See 1 Timothy 2:11 & 1 Corinthians 14:34). Without books, seminaries, Bibles, or Chat GBT, this was the primary way women could learn correct doctrine, that is, through submitting to their husbands’ teaching. Without that submission, some women had no other way of learning correct doctrine.
Apply It Today
So what can twenty-first-century Christians learn from this? Our country has done away with the laws that put men’s authority over women’s. And except in certain religious traditions, we no longer have a society that puts husbands in a governing hierarchy over wives. That’s not the secular culture’s norm anymore, nor is it what’s considered good in our society.
Does this mean that because our society has changed, we have nothing to learn from what Paul had to say to wives? No way! Everyone still has to learn to submit to authority in governments, churches, the work world, and even in some homes where one spouse is more dominant than the other. We can observe the cultural norms of where God has placed us and learn to live peacefully while respecting the values of those around us.
Not only that, but we can learn how to peacefully live within a culture through this method of blending into our society. I think Evangelical Christians could learn a lot from this. This means that Christians can thrive and grow and even follow Christ’s teaching even if our government is dysfunctional. We can thrive and grow and follow Christ even if our church’s authority structures are dysfunctional. And we can thrive and grow and follow Christ even if our parents were dysfunctional. Phew! There’s hope for my kids.
Lastly, while husbands no longer are the representative authority for their wives in government—except in some churches—, husbands still have unique God-given strengths. And we wives are blessed when we recognize and submit to those.
I know. I know. You want me to name what those unique strengths are, but I can’t. I think wives need to examine their own husbands and see what those strengths are. I think it can be different for different couples. I can tell you some of my husband’s strengths, but every man’s are different. Here are a few of my husband’s.
My husband has more social tact and discretion than I do. I guess I could call this social authority. I would be a fool not to learn from him in this area since I’m rather oblivious and suffer from foot-in-mouth syndrome.
My husband has excellent gut reactions to what is right and wrong, whereas I tend to overthink things. I benefit greatly from his clear-cut instinctual decision-making powers when I’m lost in analysis and inventing worst-case scenarios. Sometimes, I toss my analysis out the window and just ask him to decide for me.
My husband has a servant’s heart. Sometimes, I stop and see what he’s doing to know what I’m supposed to be doing.
My husband likes including people, celebrating, and not taking life too seriously. I have so much to learn from him when I want to isolate, study, and believe everything is super serious. I benefit from submitting to his way of operating to remember our God who rested on the seventh day.
My husband thinks the best of people and is full of grace.
My husband is more confrontational with my kids when they defy me. There are times, especially when I’m hot with rage or am being manipulated by my kids’ emotions, that I need to step out of the way and submit to my husband taking over the discipline.
See! Submitting to a husband isn’t just something for ancient times. And blending into our culture is a skill we all could use in order to live peacefully among men and so no one slanders the word of God.
Follow-up Question
What’s something your spouse does well? How can you submit to their authority in that area?
What’s something your church’s government does well? How can you submit to their authority in that area?
What’s something our society values? How might Christians adapt to that to be more peaceful and effective witnesses living in your society?
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Very good!