But it is strenuously urged by those, who are anxious to maintain their usurped authority, that wives are, in various passages of the New Testament, commanded to obey their husbands. Let us examine these texts.
Eph. 5: 22. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.’ ‘As the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.’
Col. 3: 18. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.’
1st Pet. 3: 2. ‘Likewise ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that if any obey not the word, they may also without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.’
Accompanying all these directions to wives, are commands to husbands.
Eph. 5: 25. ‘Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it.’ ‘So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself.’
Col. 3: 19. ‘Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.’
1st Pet. 3: 7. ‘Likewise ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life.’
I may just remark, in relation to the expression ‘weaker vessel,’ that the word in the original has no reference to intellect: it refers to physical weakness merely.
The apostles were writing to Christian converts, and laying down rules for their conduct towards their unconverted consorts. It no doubt frequently happened, that a husband or a wife would embrace Christianity, while their companions clung to heathenism, and husbands might be tempted to dislike and despise those, who pertinaciously adhered to their pagan superstitions. And wives who, when they were pagans, submitted as a matter of course to their heathen husbands, might be tempted knowing that they were superior as moral and religious characters, to assert that superiority, by paying less deference to them than heretofore. Let us examine the context of these passages, and see what are the grounds of the directions here given to husbands and wives. The whole epistle to the Ephesians breathes a spirit of love. The apostle beseeches the converts to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love. The verse preceding 5, 22, is ‘SUBMITTING YOURSELVES ONE TO ANOTHER IN THE FEAR OF GOD.’ Colossians 3, from 11 to 17, contains similar injunctions. The 17th verse says, ‘Whatsoever ye do in word, or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.’ Peter, after drawing a most touching picture of Christ’s sufferings for us, and reminding the Christians, that he had left us an example that we should follow his steps, ‘who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,’ exhorts wives to be in subjection, &c.