Wifely Submission
Does the Bible really require wives to 'submit' to a patriarchy? What about husbands?
I originally wrote this post back in November 2022, which was mostly a copy/paste from sections of chapter 5 in my book Jesus and Captain Kirk which I wrote in 2019-2021.
Back then it was a mostly academic discussion between two different ways theologians and interpreters viewed a handful of verses in the New Testament regarding gender roles. One view (egalitarian) holds that scripture advocates for and supports full gender equality and that leadership roles in the church and state are as open to women as men.
Patriarchs (also often referred to as ‘complementarians’) believe scripture restricts leadership roles to men only. In complementarian circles this typically extends to church leadership as well as within marriage. In the context of marriage, men are to take the lead as ‘head’ of the family, and wives are to ‘joyfully’ submit and support their husbands.
Christian Nationalists are thoroughly patriarchal, and they have a far reaching agenda to revoke voting rights for women and to remove women from all leadership roles - not just in church but in secular government as well.
I am re-upping and updating this post in light of recent news that top leaders in the current U.S. administration are coming out in support of Christian Nationalism.
It’s mind-boggling to me that this could even be a topic for discussion in 2025, but here we are. As a good friend of mine messaged me yesterday, it’s like watching a Twilight Zone episode. These people seriously want to revoke women’s right to vote, and push women out of all positions of leadership, taking us back to the 18th century - which they bizarrely look back to as some kind of golden age we need to return to.
They believe this would be more ‘biblical’, and they believe it’s necessary to turn America into a biblical country (whether the rest of us like it or not) in order to secure God’s blessing and avoid divine judgement.
What’s next? A return to slavery? Given that Doug Wilson and other Christian Nationalists have made sympathetic comments regarding slavery , that’s not so far fetched anymore.
Because Christian Nationalists claim biblical support for their agenda, they are sowing a lot of confusion about the Bible and bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into disrepute.
As a theologian with formal seminary training who holds a Master’s degree in Theological Studies, my focus will be on the biblical argument. This is where I feel I can make the best contribution.
Their ideas of what’s ‘biblical’ are drawn mostly from the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments and other Old Testament laws, and the life of Abraham and other patriarchs. There are also a small handful of verses in the New Testament that they use - taken out of context and interpreted in isolation.
As I discuss in this post and in several other posts on this substack blog, Christian Nationalism isn’t Christian and is the antithesis of Jesus’s message.
I used to be a complementarian (a fancy theological term that simply means patriarch) and for most of my Christian life attended complementarian churches. I didn’t hold that view out of any misogyny towards women, but simply out of a sincere belief that that’s what Scripture taught. I didn’t like it and often felt uncomfortable about it, but I just figured God must have his reasons. And in my experience, most complementarians held that view in the sincere belief that’s what Scripture taught. As a conservative Christian who holds a high view of Scripture, setting aside Bible verses I don’t like simply isn’t an option.
So I felt stuck with it.
I attended seminary and earned a Master’s degree in Theological Studies. It was a good seminary, with professors in both complementarian and egalitarian camps. One of the delightful aspects that I really enjoyed about my seminary was that professors could freely discuss and debate their various opinions and talk about why they held their views, and it was done in an accepting atmosphere of ‘exegetical humility’ and respect. We would defend our different views while prepared to respect the views of others. It was a healthy atmosphere that we all enjoyed, and I had good friends who held different views on the subject of gender.
I graduated seminary still firmly in the complementarian camp, but that started to change a few years later when I started working on Jesus and Captain Kirk. My original purpose in writing it was to defend the Christian faith against the ‘New Atheists.’ I sought to write a sweeping defense that covered all the major points of attack, two of which were along the lines of slavery and gender. Atheists and other critics of Christianity often argue that the Bible supports slavery and misogyny.
I tackled the slavery texts first. If you cherry-pick a few verses and interpret them in isolation from the meta-narrative of the Bible, and out of their historical context, it’s possible to conclude that God is indeed okay with the subjugation and oppression of other human beings.
Fortunately the abolitionists were by and large also Bible believers who argued that Scripture, when properly understood and all relevant passages considered, believed that slavery was wicked and an offense to God and the spirit of mercy, love and compassion at the heart of Jesus’ gospel.
It was an interesting exercise that is largely academic now because slavery, thankfully, is no longer an issue. But it was very interesting to see how Christians on both sides of the debate approached their interpretation of Scripture back when slavery was still legal and accepted by society, and hotly debated.
Of course it’s a very safe argument for me to make now, but I could see why the abolitionists got it right, and why the Christian defenders of slavery got it wrong. I cover this in chapter 4 of Jesus and Captain Kirk, and I feel very satisfied that the spirit and over-all meta-narrative of the Bible is full racial equality, and the freedom of all people from any form of oppression and abuse.
Obviously that’s a no-brainer today, but as I studied the theological arguments both sides made back in the day, it was startling to see how the defenders of slavery misused and mis-interpreted Scripture.
In short, defenders of slavery made the exegetical error that all my seminary professors warned of: do not lift verses out of their historical and literary context and interpret them in isolation. Do not interpret any verse in isolation from the rest of Scripture.
Then I turned to writing chapter 5 of my book, in which I discuss gender roles in the home and church. I was still a complementarian when I started work on it, and as I dug into the research it slowly dawned on me: when it came to my biblical understanding of gender roles, I was making (as I believe complementarians still do) the same exegetical errors that slave-holders made in the 19th century about slavery.
I came to the conclusion that I must be wrong about gender roles, but a few passages in the New Testament were troublesome and I struggled with how to interpret them.
I turned to some books by intelligent scholars and theologians for help, that convincingly make the biblical case for full gender equality. (I list these at the end of this post. Please consider purchasing them - you won’t be disappointed.)
It was incredibly liberating, and I think it simply makes better sense given who I believe God to be and what he is like.
So let’s look into why Christian Nationalists and patriarchs like Doug Wilson are dead wrong when they assert that the Bible mandates male headship and female submission in the home.
This is important because they are using the Bible as justification for their views and are seeking political power so they can force it on the whole country. Christians opposing Christian Nationalism need to defend the word of God from such abuse and mis-use.
In a recent post, Women Not Permitted to Lead?, we looked at 1 Timothy 2:8-15 and 1 Timothy 3:1-13, the two key passages that advocates of patriarchy in church claim as proof that God doesn’t want women taking leadership roles in the church.
I think we did a pretty good job of demolishing that view, and showed that the overall biblical message and spirit of its meta-narrative is full gender and racial equality, which also includes women in leadership roles.
However, complementarians also believe that the so-called hierarchy of male leadership extends into the home and marriage. For complementarians, one of the key markers of a ‘real’ biblical marriage is male authority and leadership in the home, ‘complemented’ by female submission.
Wifely Submission and the ‘Household Codes’
They claim biblical support for their views, and there are three passages that are their go-to prooftexts: Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, 1 Peter 3:1-7. Collectively, these three passages are commonly known as the ‘household codes.’
The first thing we must take note of is that these passages are directed specifically at married men and women, and so have nothing to say to the unmarried, and that they address only the personal relationship between husband and wife. Therefore nothing in these passages can be used to preclude women from leadership in general, and certainly have nothing to say to single women.
On the surface of it, a plain reading of these passages appears to provide solid support for complementarians. Ephesians 5:22 exhorts “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church.” In Colossians 3:18 we read, “Wives, submit to your husbands,” and in 1 Peter 3:1 we again read “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands.”
My discussion of wifely submission and the household codes will center mostly on Ephesians 5:22-6:9 for a couple of reasons: the passage in Ephesians discusses all the household roles more thoroughly than the other two passages. Not just wives, but also husbands, children, slaves and masters are covered, whereas 1 Peter addresses only wives and husbands. We’ll see why this is important to the discussion shortly. Colossians 3:18-19 is very similar to Ephesians 5, so the conclusions we draw from Ephesians can be safely applied to Colossians without the need to repeat. And 1 Peter also calls upon wives to “be subject” to their husbands, so our discussion of submission will also apply.
The text in Ephesians calling wives to submit to their husbands (v.22-24) is organically part of a long passage addressed to the entire household, addressing husbands (v.25-33), children (6:1-3), fathers (6:4), household servants (6:5-8) and finally masters (6:9).
Wives are to be submissive and respectful to their husbands, and husbands are to love their wives. Children are to obey and honor their parents, while fathers are not to provoke their children needlessly to anger. Slaves are to obey their masters and masters are “to do the same” and treat slaves decently, and are reminded that they also have a master in heaven. We will focus on v.22-24, but the verses concerning wives must be understood within the context of this wider passage to the entire household.
In v.22-24 married women are called upon to submit to their husbands. There really does seem to be a distinction between men and women in their marital roles. Married women appear to be singled out in this requirement to submit, and complementarians see this as proof that God has ordained a hierarchy between men and women within marriage.
For the complementarian understanding of this passage to have any merit, the wifely submission of verse 22 can only work one-way. In their view, because wives are mentioned in v.22, then only wives, and not husbands, are required to be submissive. It has to be so, otherwise what’s the point (in their view)? If husbands are also to be submissive to their wives, then there is no real hierarchy of male headship.
And this is precisely where the complementarian argument breaks down. Immediately following “wives, submit to your husbands,” we read “husbands, love their wives.” We need to ask if these exhortations were intended exclusively, to work only in the one direction. Are we going to conclude that because husbands are told to love their wives in verse 25, that only husbands need love their wives, and that wives need not to love their husbands? Are we to infer from this that women are exempt from loving their husbands?
As a happily married man, I certainly hope not!
If we interpret v. 22 as applying exclusively to women, because only women are cited, then by the same logic v. 25 should apply only to men because only men are referenced. Women are therefore exempt from loving their husbands. It is hard to imagine that was Paul’s intention.
If we accept that wives are also to love their husbands, which I think we can all agree is a safe conclusion, then we must also admit that husbands are to submit to their wives. I see no way around this for the complementarian. If they are going to insist on a wifely submission within a hierarchy – that it works only one way and that only wives are required to submit – then I don’t see how they can avoid the same conclusion regarding the requirement to love your spouse, and that only husbands need to love their wives, and wives need not return that affection.
These verses go together and should be interpreted consistently. To argue that husbands are exempt from submission because only wives are mentioned in v.22, but of course wives are to love their husbands; that v. 22 only works in one direction, but v. 25 works both ways, strikes me as special pleading, not to mention inconsistent. So we must ask ourselves how much hierarchy in marriage we can legitimately infer from this passage. I would argue that the requirement to be submissive doesn’t work just one way, any more than the requirement to love.
We also need to consider just how exclusive the use of gender references in any particular passage is intended to be. The use of a gendered noun or pronoun here, as in any passage of the New Testament, isn’t necessarily exclusive to that gender. Throughout the New Testament there are passages that make use of gender references that we know are intended for both genders. There are too many such passages in the New Testament to list, but here is one good example:
In Ephesians 2:15 we find the phrase “one new man” in Christ. Are we to take this in a gender exclusive sense? Because Paul uses “man”, is his intention that only men are in the body of Christ, the church? Are we prepared to exclude women from the body of Christ?
So the use of gender references in v. 22-25 does not mean it’s intended as a universal rule only for that gender. This is perhaps easier to see in v.25, “husbands, love your wives”, because it is easier for us to grasp that both men and women should love their spouses; but I would argue the same applies to “wives, submit to your husbands”, and so I don’t think we can use this passage to enforce a rigid male dominated hierarchy.
It gets even worse for the complementarian position. Our understanding of any single verse or passage must take into account the rest of scripture, and the household codes are no exception to this hermeneutic rule. They need to be understood within the context of the entire New Testament, the meta-narrative of the gospel, in which Christians, both men and women, are exhorted to love, to be respectful, to be at peace, to treat others as we wish to be treated, to be humble and place others first, to lay down our very lives for each other.
In verse 21, the verse immediately prior to this passage, all men and women in the church are called to mutual submission. Married men are not excluded from this. So while we find in verse 22 a specific call for wives to submit to their husbands, we also find that Christians in general, everywhere, are called to submit to “one another” (v. 21).
Over and against the three passages complementarians focus on for wifely submission, there are, as Peppiatt notes, fifty-nine “one another” passages exhorting all Christians to love one another,[1] to submit to one another, to be humble towards each other, to be forgiving, to live in peace. This also includes married couples.
“Husbands, love your wives.” And what is love, if it is not also humble and carries with it a submissive attitude. According to the classic passage on love read at so many weddings, 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is patient, love is kind, love is not arrogant or proud, love does not seek its own, but seeks what is best for others, it does not insist on getting its own way. Love does not seek to dominant and rule over others. A better definition of a humble and submissive attitude is difficult to find.
1 Corinthians 13 is just one passage. Peppiatt also points to 1 Corinthians 7:3-4, saying:
“It is interesting (and not a bit disturbing), that so many men choose a few verses in Ephesians in order to attempt to demonstrate that a Christian husband has authority over his wife, who in turn, they say, should be submissive and subordinate to her husband, but then completely ignore 1 Corinthians 7. In 1 Corinthians 7 we find the only reference to authority, and it is here that Paul tells the Corinthian wives that just as their husbands have authority over their bodies, they too have authority over their husbands’ bodies. So, where Paul actually uses the word authority, which does not occur in any of the other passages on marriage, the authority he speaks of is entirely mutual and in relation to sex.”[2]
Peppiatt points out the revolutionary subversion in Paul’s words that’s easy for modern readers to miss: “…the idea that a wife would have any authority over her husband in sexual matters was unheard of in Paul’s time.”[3] The Christian revolution works by subverting oppressive structures of society, which brings us to our next point.
The Subversion of Hierarchy
If wives are also to love their husbands, and husbands are also to be submissive, then why would Paul intentionally reference wives and husbands in vv. 22-25?
“…it appears that there is some disparity between the role of the wife and the role of the husband, where wives are exhorted to submit to their husbands and husbands to love or respect their wives. Modern readers sometimes make much of the disparity, and hierarchicalists focus almost exclusively on wifely submission and male headship as the mark of Christian marriage. But whereas we might react to the disparity with disdain or confusion…, it appears that ancient readers would have heard a different emphasis and experienced the shock of a new order.”[4]
I don’t think Paul’s intention in this passage was to underwrite male patriarchy. He certainly didn’t need to. It was already well established in Roman society. I think he was doing just the opposite: subverting it and leveling the hierarchical playing field between men and women.
The entire passage of 5:21-6:9 is an organic whole addressing the typical Roman household, which often included “slaves” (household servants). Roman society and households were extremely patriarchal, and Paul was referencing the key relationships within the typical Roman home: husbands, wives, children, servants, and masters. It is difficult for the modern reader to pickup on the subtleties of this passage because we are so far removed from that culture, but Paul was not endorsing male hierarchy, he was undermining it.
The subversive element of this text is found in its address to the men, rulers of the Roman household. Paul tells them to love their wives, to treat their slaves decently, and – shockingly – after outlining how servants are to behave, tells the male patriarchs to “do likewise.” The men are to behave like the slaves.
This would effectively, as the new paradigm takes hold, overturn the oppressive societal structures of slavery and hierarchy. I believe the same “cultural” argument that complementarians (as all Christians) make for “slaves, obey” (Eph.6:5) also applies to “wives, submit,” (Eph.5:22) and thus, far from an endorsement of these institutions, when properly read in their historical context, this passage overturns slavery and hierarchy.
The shock to the system these words must have conveyed to Roman men of the time is difficult for us to appreciate today. Roman men were at the top of society, slaves at the very bottom. Slaves were barely people, had no status, and were certainly not worth noticing. And here Paul is telling masters, immediately after outlining the duties of slaves, that they are to “do likewise”. Men can no longer simply do whatever they wanted with other people (as Roman law and custom allowed). They were now expected to behave within boundaries of love and decency towards all other people. Men and masters were being brought down a few notches, women and slaves elevated, bringing a clear shift towards full equality across all lines of gender, race and social status as expressed in Galatians 3:28.
Peppiatt summarizes the revolutionary impact of this passage: “For an ancient reader, there would have been no surprise in the instruction to a wife to submit to her husband. This would have been a standard pattern…however, the instruction to the husbands, read aloud for all to hear, would have caused considerable ripples throughout the household because they and those around them would now know that this behavior is also expected of him, and here is where we find the Christian revolution.”[5]
Roman men had the legal power of life and death over everyone in their household, not just their slaves, but their wives and children. Into this atmosphere of extreme patriarchy Paul calls upon men to love their wives as they love themselves, to cherish them as they cherish their own bodies. He reminds the masters (again usually the same male heads of households) that they have a master in heaven and that God is not partial to them, that God looks upon slave and master the same, a revolutionary idea that would have shocked people at the time.
When Paul tells men that they are to love their wives as Christ loves the church, he is reminding them what love means. It is self-sacrificial. It is not about dominance and control, but self-sacrifice and giving. This love puts others ahead of itself, it regards the welfare of others as more important than its own welfare. It seeks the good of others, not its own good. Whereas complementarians harp exclusively on a couple of passages to argue for gender-based control, the message of love, self-sacrifice, humility and mutual submission is infused throughout the entire New Testament like sugar and cinnamon is baked into sweet rolls.
This is the Christian revolution, which changes society from the inside out and from the bottom up. By changing hearts and the way we view our fellow humans. By seeing all people, regardless of gender, race, age, class, net worth or social status, as human beings fully worthy of dignity and respect.
Christ reminds us that God loves the poor and lower classes as much as the wealthy and powerful. This is the heart of the Christian message when we are being true to the words of Christ and the New Testament. To regard others ahead of ourselves. How could the institution of slavery or hierarchy, of any system that oppresses and subjugates others, survive in such an atmosphere?
Ephesians 5:22-6:9 isn’t a biblical endorsement for a universal, never ending male hierarchy. Rather, it contains within it the seeds that bring it to an end. Despite Paul’s specific reference to woman in 5:22 to be submissive, we cannot read into this an endorsement of a gender hierarchy anymore than we should see within 6:5 a biblical support for slavery. It is curious that complementarians will see hierarchy in this passage, but not slavery. They will allow for a cultural understanding of “slaves, obey your masters” but not for “wives, obey your husbands.”
The Limited Scope of Ephesians 5
Some of my best friends are complementarians, and I have no wish to intrude on the private relationship between a husband and wife. How they wish to arrange their personal relationship and home is entirely their business.
Which brings us to the salient fact of this passage that must not be ignored – its extremely limited scope. The text about submission addresses only married women in relationship to their husbands. It has nothing to say to unmarried women, whether widowed, divorced or never married. It says nothing about church leadership or other roles, and says only that those wives are to be submissive to their own husbands. There is nothing in this passage that can be used to exclude any woman, especially single women, from leadership roles. There is no hint of hierarchy outside the marriage bond.
For arguments sake let’s allow, for the moment, the complementarian reading of the household codes. Even taken literally at face value, they can at the very most only be used to regulate the relationship between husband and wife within the private sphere of their home and marriage.
It has nothing to say about women in leadership roles, and certainly cannot be taken to mean women in general are to have submissive attitudes towards men in general. They do not preclude an unmarried woman from leadership. Paul is clearly limiting his address to married Christians and their personal relationship within their marriage. Married women are certainly not being asked in this passage to adopt a submissive attitude towards any other man but her husband. What complementarians cannot do is infer from these passages a general hierarchy between men and women, nor can it be used to keep women from leadership.
I believe God is love. Everything else is just footnotes. I believe the over-arching message of Scripture is for full gender equality, just as it is for full racial equality. Of course it is quite possible to lift a verse out of context and make the Bible say almost anything you want. You can do that with pretty much any book ever written. I’m sure I could make Barack Obama look like a white supremist by cherry-picking something he says and ignoring everything else’s said.
In this post I focused on the key New Testament passages that patriarchs rely on to support their views of hierarchy in marriage. Christian Nationalists also draw a lot of their ideas from the Old Testament, often turning to the examples of Abraham, David, Jacob, etc. They were all patriarchs, after all - so we should be too, goes the logic.
As I’ve noted elsewhere in another post, but bears repeating here, this is the classic “is/ought” fallacy that amateur interpreters, like Doug Wilson, often fall into. They are confusing what ‘is’ described in stories with an endorsement of what we all ‘ought’ to do.
Serious bible interpreters are on guard for that sort of error. Abraham also had a servant girl that he impregnated. Should all Bible-believing men go out and follow that example? Many of the patriarchs had multiple wives. King David and Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, a different woman for each day of the year, it would seem. Is that your idea of ‘biblical’ marriage? David got another man’s wife pregnant, and then had her husband murdered. Are these examples for us to follow?
I’ll cover Christian Nationalists mis-use of the Old Testament in an upcoming post. They are for the most part very weak and obviously fallacious, and are well refuted elsewhere. Along these lines there are a few books I’m happy to recommend: Bob & Helga Edwards (Equality Workbook and Let My People Go. Both are available on Amazon); Lucy Peppiatt (Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women); Beth Barr (The Making of Biblical Womanhood). These writers do a very thorough job of destroying the patriarchal position. I also cover interpretative issues with the Old Testament in chapter 6 of my book, Jesus and Captain Kirk.
For Further Reading
Barr, Beth Allison, Dr. The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (2021).
Bessey, Sarah. Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women (2013).
Edwards, Bob. Let My People Go (2013).
Edwards, Bob & Helga. Equality Workbook: Freedom in Christ from the Oppression of Patriarchy (2016).
Jenkins, Phillip. The Next Christendom (2011).
Peppiatt, Lucy. Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women (2019).
_____. Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians (2015).
Swidler, Leonard. Jesus Was a Feminist (2007).
_____. Biblical Affirmations of Women (1979).
Webb, William. Slaves, Women & Homosexuals (2001).
(This post has been adapted from my book, Jesus and Captain Kirk, chapter 5.)
Updated August 23, 2025
[1] Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p. 90.
[2] Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p. 95.
[3] Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p. 95.
[4] Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p. 92.
[5] Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p.93.