I’ve argued in previous articles that Paul’s teaching about marriage in Ephesians 5:22-32 is an amplification or application of what it means to “submit to one another” ((5:21). This means that you can describe it as “mutual submission” albeit:
- That it is within the context of the husband as head which suggests an order to the relationship.
- That it is asymmetrical. The way that the husband relates to his wife is not identical to how she relates to him. This is one reason why not everyone would be comfortable to use the language of submission to describe the husband’s responsibility.
However, whether or not we buy into the concept of mutual submission, I think that generally speaking Christians would agree that there is reciprocity expected. The husband is to love his wife and she is to let him. She is to respect or revere, he is to be willing to lay down his life for her. On a side note, it is interesting that in the modernised marriage vows that remove “obey” from the wife’s vows, his commitment to “cherish” her is also removed.[1]
Importantly, she submits to him “as to the Lord” and that is, according to Paul, because he is the head. The point is that he is meant to model Christ’s side of his relationship with the church, just as she is meant to model the church’s side. All of this suggests that Paul has in view a marriage where both parties are believers.
So, what, then, if you find yourself in a marriage where your husband is not a believer? Or what if, even if both of you are Christians, there is a sense in which one of you is letting the side down, not fulfilling their responsibilities. What if the husband is not proactively and sacrificially loving his wife? What if she isn’t allowing him to love her.
Well, first of all, it is worth noting that even here, Paul’s focus is on what you do. It’s not your job to make your spouse do what they are meant to do. Secondly, I would argue that whilst the unreciprocated relationship isn’t in view in Ephesians (or its equivalent in Colossians), Peter in 1 Peter 2-3 does deal much more with the relationship between believer and unbeliever, the relationship that is not reciprocated.
Peter’s instructions to wives in 1 Peter 3:1-7 might be summed up, in that context, as “You keep your side of the bargain, regardless of whether or not they do.” The sense then is that if they are not a believer, then they might be won over. I think that by implication we can also say that this must apply to a husband. Indeed, we might say that you are to keep on wooing them.
What this will mean is that even where it seems that the emotion of love isn’t present, that a wife will continue to seek to respect her husband. It means that when, and this may not be through her fault but actually through his long term failings, he feels un-respected that he continues to show a love for her that is willing to die for her. He may think that she isn’t letting him love her -but he should love her all the same remembering that Christ loved us first before we would or could love him back.
I would argue too that this might even prick the conscience of the other party as they get those unexpected and undeserved responses. They will start to get a picture of what their marriage should be like and could be like.
[1] Incidentally my preference is against “obey” as the Biblical language of “submit” is different. But I certainly am dead-set against removing “cherish.”
Faithroots 