Back in the late 2000s, when I was in youth group, our youth band had a little chorus that we often sang: “May we decrease so that you may increase.” 

Even now, I find myself singing those words to myself often when I am cooking, cleaning, working, or at rest– just going about my business. The melody is just one of those things that bubbles up often in my heart in worship to the Lord. It’s simple and short, but it’s a much needed reminder to my heart in allowing Jesus to be in control, to be at the front and center in my life, and that my desires, dreams, and will must not only conform to be pleasing unto the Lord, but they also must step out of the way if they are not in line with God’s desires, dreams, and will.

Let’s be real: How many of us really read those introductions to the various letters in the Bible? Do we read them with the intent to get something out of it, or do we gloss over them and jump right into the thick of it? I always try, and I mean really try, to break those opening sentences down. I admit, it can be really hard to do, mostly because they can be long, run-on sentences, and truthfully, most of them say the same thing: Grace and peace be with you. It’s always something along those lines.

If you haven’t noticed by now, when Jesus teaches the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, He unveils them in such a way that they build upon one another. Blessed are the poor in spirit. That applies to any believer in God, where at the point of salvation, they realize they are so spiritually bankrupt that they could never save themselves. Thus, they are in need of Jesus to save them and pay that debt. Blessed are those who mourn. In other words, blessed are those who see their sin and realize how that sin has grieved God, and grieve over it themselves. They deeply understand just how badly their sin has separated them from the presence of God and find themselves in sorrow over how they’ve wronged God, and yet they find comfort from the Lord in that those sins are forgiven. And blessed are the meek?

The Proverbs 31 woman is the church’s best example of an exemplary wife, mother, and friend. Maybe we roll our eyes sometimes at how cliche it might be, but the fact of the matter is this: there is a reason she stands out from the rest. And if she is the model for all women to strive for in their Christian walk, then logically, she must fall in line with what we’ve been talking about. That’s why I wanted to end our series about submission here: at the pinnacle, the best among us. So that, hopefully, after all this unpacking of, “Wives, submit to your husbands,” we could have something to aspire towards and remind us of the fact that when Paul tells women to honor their husbands, it isn’t to hide them away, but to help them flourish in the space God has given them to occupy as women.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing what Paul really means when he tells wives to be submissive to their husbands in Ephesians. It is my deep desire that, if you’ve been reading along, you have found peace surrounding the subject and that the Lord’s character has shone through. This week, I want to further delve into the subject by taking the key verse through which the other side of the argument stakes its claim to validity. And I’m not talking about those that just flat out renounce God and the Bible. I’m talking about Christians; those that believe that wives being submissive to husbands is an “antiquated cultural ideal” that died off with tunics and the Roman Empire. The thought process on that end of the spectrum is that there should be no submission between genders when God has declared us all as one.

Submission. In 2021, that’s an uncomfortable word when it comes to relationships. In a “woke” culture that champions girl-bossing, equality, and feminism, submission feels like a dirty word. A social taboo that culture twists to say, “See? The Bible is an antiquated book. Why would you live by that? It devalues women as the lesser sex! Only a bigoted jerk would still follow it!” And the only reason people can get away with saying that is because the church has done a poor job at explaining the subject of, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”