Mutual Submission

The Key to understanding the roles of headship and mutual submission is found in Ephesians 5:21, ” and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” Most sermons, books, lectures, and Sunday School lessons omit this small but profoundly important verse in their teaching on the roles of husband and wife.

One of the reasons for its omission is that bible publishers tend to put a paragraph heading in between verses 21 and 22 such as “marriage like Christ and the church,” (new American Standard bible.)  The problem with this is that it gives one the impression that verse 21 is not related to the subsequent verses. The result is quite misleading.

What Paul is saying is that everything that follows verse 21 about the relationship between husband and wife is to be understood and lived out in context of mutual submission; the wife is to be submissive to her husband and the husband is to be submissive to the wife.

Paul wants us to understand the distinctiveness of these roles, not in terms of superior to inferior, but rather in terms of servant to servant, submitter to submitter.

The phrase “be subject” is from a Greek word used in a military sense meaning
to arrange or rank under.”   The essence of this concept is the relinquishing of your rights to another person.  In the context of our study, mutual submission means that the husband is to relinquish his rights to his wife.

James asks us, What is the source of conflicts and quarrels among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? (James 4:1). Most of the statistics listed above are due to men who determine to satisfy their own pleasures at the expense of others.

Pastor Kirt Eure – Mutual Submission