“Wives, be in subjection, as to the Lord,”—as is fitting in the Lord (Col. iii. 18). Again, in 1 Timothy ii. 11, 12, the apostle writes: “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion,” or (as the word may rather signify) “to act independently of the man.” Were these directions temporary and occasional? Were they due, as one hears it suggested, to the uneducated and undeveloped condition of women in the apostle’s time? Or do they not affirm a law that is deeply seated in nature and in the feminine constitution? The words of 1 Corinthians xi. 2–15 show that, in the apostle’s view of life, this subordination is fundamental. “The head of woman is the man,” as “the head of every man is the Christ” and “the head of Christ is God.” “The woman,” he says, “is of the man,” and “was created because of the man.” Whether these sentences square with our modern conceptions or not, there they stand, and their import is unmistakable.[139] They teach that in the Divine order of things it is the man’s part to lead and rule, and the woman’s part to be ruled. But the Christian woman will not feel that there is any loss or hardship in this. For in the Christian order, ambition is sin. To obey is better than to rule. She remembers who has said: “I am amongst you as he that serveth.” The children of the world strive for place and power; but “it shall not be so amongst you.”
Such subordination implies no inferiority, rather the opposite. A free and sympathetic obedience—which is the true submission—can only subsist between equals. The apostle writes: “Children, obey; ... Servants, obey” (vi. 1, 5); but “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The same word denotes submission within the Church, and within the house. It is here that Christianity, in contrast with Paganism, and notably with Mohammedanism, raises the weaker sex to honour. In soul and destiny it declares the woman to be man, endowed with all rights and powers inherent in humanity. “In Christ Jesus there is no male and female,” any more than there is “Jew and Greek” or “bond and free.” The same sentence which broke down the barriers of Jewish caste, and in course of time abolished slavery, condemned the odious assumptions of masculine pride. It is one of the glories of our faith that it has enfranchised our sisters, and raises them in spiritual calling to the full level of their brothers and husbands. Both sexes are children of God by the same birthright; both receive the same Holy Spirit, according to the prediction quoted by St Peter on the day of Pentecost: “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.... Yea, on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour out of my Spirit, saith the Lord” (Acts ii. 17, 18). This one point of headship, of public authority and guidance, is reserved. It is the point on which Christ forbids emulation amongst His people.
Christian courtesy treats the woman as “the glory of the man”; it surrounds her from girlhood to old age with protection and deference. This homage, duly rendered, is a full equivalent for the honour of visible command. When, as it happens not seldom in the partnership of life, the superior wisdom dwells with the weaker vessel, the golden gift of persuasion is not wanting, by which the official ruler is guided, to his own advantage, and his adviser accomplishes more than she could do by any overt leadership. The chivalry of the Middle Ages, from which the refinement of European society takes its rise, was a product of Christianity grafted on the Teutonic nature. Notwithstanding the folly and excess that was mixed with it, there was a beautiful reverence in the old knightly service and championship of women. It humanized the ferocity of barbarous times. It tamed the brute strength of warlike races and taught them honour and gentleness. Its prevalence marked a permanent advance in civilization.
Shall we say that this law of St Paul is that laid down specifically for Christian women? is it not rather a law of nature—the intrinsic propriety of sex, whose dictates are reinforced by the Christian revelation? The apostle takes us back to the creation of mankind for the basis of his principles in dealing with this subject (ver. 31). The new commandments are the old which were in the world from the beginning, though concealed and overgrown with corruption. Notwithstanding the debasement of marriage under the non-Christian systems, the instincts of natural religion taught the wife her place in the house and gave rise to many a graceful and appropriate custom expressive of the honour due from one sex to the other. So the apostle regarded the man’s bared and cropped head and the woman’s flowing tresses as symbols of their relative place in the Divine order (1 Cor. xi. 13–15). These and such distinctions—between the dignities of strength and of beauty—no artificial sentiment and no capricious revolt can set aside, while the world stands. St Paul appeals to the common sense of mankind, to that which “nature itself teaches,” in censuring the forwardness of some Corinthian women who appeared to think that the liberty of the gospel released them from the limitations of their nature.
Some earnest promoters of women’s rights have fallen into the error that Christianity, to which they owe all that is best in their present status, is the obstacle in the way of their further progress. It is an obstacle to claims that are against nature and against the law of God,—claims only tolerable so long as they are exceptional. But the barriers imposed by Christianity, against which these people fret, are their main protection. “The moment Christianity disappears, the law of strength revives; and under that law women can have no hope except that their slavery may be mild and pleasant.” To escape from the “bondage of Christian law” means to go back to the bondage of paganism.
“As unto the Lord” gives the pattern and the principle of the Christian wife’s submission. Not that, as Meyer seems to put it, the husband in virtue of marriage “represents Christ to the wife.” Her relation to the Lord is as full, direct, and personal as his. Indeed, the clause inserted at the end of verse 23 seems expressly designed to guard against this exaggeration. The qualification that Christ is “Himself Saviour of the body,” thrown in between the two sentences comparing the marital headship to that which Christ holds towards the Church, has the effect of limiting the former.[140] The subjection of the Christian wife to her husband reserves for Christ the first place in the heart and the undiminished rights of Saviourship. St Paul indicates a real, and not unfrequent danger. The husband may eclipse Christ in the wife’s soul, and be counted as her all in all. Her absorption in him may be too complete. Hence the brief guarding clause: “He Himself [and no other] Saviour of the body [to which all believers alike belong].” As the Saviour of the Church, Christ holds an unrivalled and unqualified lordship over every member of the same.
“Nevertheless, as the Church is subject to the Christ, so also wives [should be] to their husbands in everything” (ver. 24). Again, in verse 33: “Let the wife see that she fear her husband”—with the reverent and confiding fear which love makes sweet. As the Christian wife obeys the Lord Christ in the spiritual sphere, in the sphere of marriage she is subject to her husband. The ties that bind her to Christ, bind her more closely to the duties of home. These duties illustrate for her the submissive love that Christ’s people, and herself as one of them, owe to their Divine Head. Her service in the Church, in turn, will send her home with a quickened sense of the sacredness of her domestic calling. It will lighten the yoke of obedience; it will check the discontent that masculine exactions provoke; and will teach her to win by patience and gentleness the power within the house that is her queenly crown.
II. The apostle alludes to submission as the wife’s duty; for she might, possibly, be tempted to think this superseded by the liberty of the children of God. Love he need not enjoin upon her; but he writes: “Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church and gave up Himself for her” (comp. Col. iii. 18, 19).
The danger of selfishness lies on the masculine side. The man’s nature is more exacting; and the self-forgetfulness and solicitous affection of the woman may blind him to his own want of the truest love. Full of business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion and confidence in return. This lack of love denies the higher rights of marriage; it makes the wife’s submission a joyless constraint. Along with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there supervenes sometimes an irritability of temper that chafes over domestic troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or inadvertence, ignoring the wife’s patient affection and anxiety to please. Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their espousals. “There are many,” says Bengel (on this point unusually caustic), “who out of doors are civil and kind to all; when at home, toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they freely practise secret bitterness.”
“Love your wives, even as the Christ loved the Church.” What a glory this confers upon the husband’s part in marriage! His devotion pictures, as no other love can, the devotion of Christ to His redeemed people. His love must therefore be a spiritual passion, the love of soul to soul, that partakes of God and of eternity. Of the three Greek words for love,—eros, familiar in Greek poetry and mythology, denoting the flame of sexual passion, is not named in the New Testament; philia, the love of friendship, is tolerably frequent, in its verb at least; but agapé absorbs the former and transcends both. This exquisite word denotes love in its spiritual purity and depth, the love of God and of Christ, and of souls to each other in God. This is the specific Christian affection. It is the attribute of God who “loved the world and gave His Son the Only-begotten,” of “the Christ” who “loved the Church and gave up Himself for her.” Self-devotion, not self-satisfaction, is its note. Its strength and authority it uses as material for sacrifice and instruments of service, not as prerogatives of pride or titles to enjoyment. Let this mind be in you, O husband, toward your wife, which was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly in heart, counting it His honour to serve and His reward to save and bless.