God's Pattern for Wives, Part 1

God has always desired that women have a meek and quiet spirit.

God has always desired that they adorn the hidden person of the heart. He has always desired that they are submissive to their own husbands. This has always been the standard folks. This isn't new. This isn't some bias or chauvinism.

It's always been this way. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's no secret that good marriages and families don't just happen. Certainly, the wife bears some responsibility in that. And when it comes to being a Christian wife, there are some specific attitudes God calls women to adopt. Of course, in a world where influential voices call those attitudes old-fashioned or inappropriate or even insulting, today's Christian woman probably has never faced more resistance to being the kind of wife God wants her to be.

If you're feeling that pressure, today's broadcast is going to encourage you. John MacArthur helps you separate truth from falsehood on this issue of wives and submission. It's part of his current study called The Fulfilled Family.

And now here's John. It's our privilege to turn in the Word of God to a great portion of Scripture as a starting point for our message on God's pattern for a wife, Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 through 24. And there the Word of God says, wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

In the passage that I just read to you, there are several obvious points that are made here. But the overarching point is one about submission. And we draw that from verse 21 where the general responsibility of all believers to one another is to submit. We submit mutually to each other, being more concerned about the other than we are ourselves, more concerned about the things of others than our own things, looking not on the things which concern us, but the things which concern others, all of that we learn from the book of Philippians chapter 2. We are to approach all of our relationships with humility, with self-abnegation, if you will, unselfishness, self-denial, and a desire to meet the need of the other person. So the general spirit of all relationships should be one of submission. And then in particular, wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. You will notice that the words be subject or submit in some versions is in italics because it is not in the original. It's not in the original.

It doesn't need to be there. He has just said be subject to one another and then He says wives to your own husbands. And being subject is obviously implied. All of us submit at some point, wives submit to their husbands. She is to follow willingly the leadership, the headship of her husband.

This and this alone can minimize the curse and reverse the conflict. And we see then, first of all, the matter of submission there in verse 22. The matter of submission clearly introduced, be subject to your own husbands.

Very specific, by the way. She is not available to all men. She is not told to be submissive to all men, only her own husband. The man she possesses, her own husband, the one that is hers. And there is in that very phrase a lovely sense of possession. He belongs to her, yet she submits to him.

And there again is that magnificent mutuality. Now, as we look at Ephesians chapter 5 and consider these instructions, wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord, we find there are some supporting passages to these and we want to look at them for a moment before we go on in the text. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3, they further open this truth to us and help us to understand it. 1 Peter chapter 3 says, in the same way you wives, be submissive to your own husbands.

And again, you have the very same issue. What is quite interesting is that little phrase, in the same way. Go back to verse 13. Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of those who do right. In other words, all of us submit to the authority of government. Verse 18, servants, submit to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.

Now, keep this in mind. We all submit to the government, to the king, to the authorities, to the governors. Verse 15, this is the will of God. We are to fear God and honor the king, verse 17 says.

It doesn't tell us what form of government, what kind of government, what the moral standards of that government happen to be. It says we are to submit. And then in verse 18, the same kind of submission to your employer, whether he is good and gentle or absolutely unreasonable. This finds favor with God if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears up under sorrows when suffering justly.

No matter how difficult your employer might be, you bear up. That finds favor with God. When you suffer unjustly, you are increasing your eternal reward. And then the most marvelous illustration of suffering unjustly, sometimes under the oppression of a government, sometimes under the oppression of an employer or a slave owner in ancient times, but the greatest illustration is the Lord Jesus Himself. Verse 21, Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps. He shows us how to suffer unjustly.

He shows us how to bear the burdening yoke of unfair leadership. He suffered, committed no sin. Verse 22, was no deceit found in His mouth. While being reviled, He didn't revile in return. While suffering, He uttered no threats but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously. And in the process, He Himself bore our sins and His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, for by His wounds you were healed. In other words, Christ suffered undeserved punishment. He suffered it without retaliation, without reviling back.

He uttered no threats. He just turned Himself over to God, took His suffering, and in the end, it had a profoundly significant result. It redeemed souls out of the human race. And then you come to chapter 3, verse 1.

Remember, there are no chapter breaks in the original text. In the same way, you wives, what do you mean the same way? As someone under the authority of government, as an employee under the authority of an employer, whether the government is good, bad, or indifferent, whether the employer is good and gentle or abusive and unreasonable, in the same manner that Jesus suffered unjustly and did nothing but commit Himself to God for God to bring out of that unjust suffering a glorious end, you, wives, be submissive to your own husbands.

The implication here is that it really doesn't matter what kind of husband He is. You say, well, I have a husband who's disobedient to the things of God, who's indifferent to Jesus Christ, who's not kind and loving, who's not good and gentle. All the more reason, Peter says, in the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the Word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives. Line up under them all the more reason if they are not saved, if they do not obey the Word of God.

Some are unsaved implied there, but it could also imply a person who had made a profession of faith in Christ and was not obedient to the Scripture. All the more reason to be submissive, and again I remind you, as is fitting, and fitting has its limits, you're not to be submissive if He commands you to do directly that which opposes the Word of God or commands you not to do that which the Word of God does command you to do. But apart from those things for which you are under the command of God, you must submit to your husband, hupatasso again, line up under him. And the key in verses 2 and 3, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior, that's what you want them to see. You want them to see your virtue, your purity.

And then in verse 3, and let not your adornment be merely external, only external, braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry or putting on dresses, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God. You have a husband who is a trial to you, either because he's unsaved or he's a disobedient believer. He fails to fulfill all of your hopes and expectations for what you would want as a husband. He comes short of what you hoped for and maybe what you thought he was. And you are gravely disappointed. You chafe under his authoritarianism.

He cares little for how you feel, it seems. All the more reason to be submissive, all the more reason to demonstrate to him a meekness, a purity, a respectful kind of behavior, all the more reason not only to adorn the outside and please do that. We all appreciate it, but do more than that, more than putting on a pretty dress or wearing gold jewelry or doing your hair. Adorn your heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God.

And I might say every man's dream. It doesn't mean you have to kill your personality. It doesn't mean you have to become a robot. It doesn't mean you have to become boring.

It doesn't mean you never give your opinion. But there needs to be deep down in your heart gentleness, quietness. That hidden part is precious in the sight of God. God prefers a woman like that. Like 1 Timothy 2 says, silent, learning in subjection.

This is of great price. Verse 5, for in this way, in former times, the holy women also who hoped in God used to adorn themselves being submissive to their own husbands. This has always been the standard, folks. This isn't new. This isn't some Pauline, Petrine bias or chauvinism. This isn't something they just came up with.

It's always been this way. God has always desired that women have a meek and quiet spirit. God has always desired that they adorn the hidden person of the heart with those imperishable qualities. He has always desired that they are submissive to their own husbands. And again, that same phrase, their own husbands. Not to all men. Women collectively are not under the control of all men.

A wife is under the control of her husband. And verse 6 gives us an illustration. Thus, Sarah obeyed Abraham.

May I suggest to you here that the concept of submission comes eventually to the point of obeying? She called him Lord. There's a thought. Yes, my Lord. No, something wrong with that.

It just doesn't sound modern, does it? She called him Lord. She obeyed him. And you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear. And that's, you know, that's what comes up. You know, when you do counseling, inevitably when you're talking to a woman about how she should respond to the leadership of her husband, whatever kind of leadership it is, she says, well, you don't understand.

It's very difficult. And sometimes I'm afraid of where he's going to lead me. I'm afraid of where he's going to take me. And that is precisely why this verse says, just obey, call him Lord, do what is right, and don't be frightened by any fear.

Because you have put yourself in the place of the blessing and protection of God. As Abraham was the father of the faithful, Sarah is the mother of the submissive. She's the prototype. Abraham is the prototype of faith.

She's the prototype of submission. No terror. The word is literally terror at the end of verse 6. Great peace, great security. It's a tremendous passage, tremendous passage. And it cannot be argued against.

It is too clear and too direct. 1 Corinthians chapter 11 is another passage that demands our attention as we think about what it means to be submissive. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 3 and following is a fascinating portion of Scripture dealing with the woman. Let's start with a brief reminder that in Corinth, a woman's liberation movement had arrived. And perhaps there were certain Christian women who were enjoying their new liberty in Christ and thinking they were now free in Christ, they thought they no longer perhaps had to be under the authority of their husbands. And since they were one in Christ with them, their spiritual equality gave them complete freedom and complete equality on all fronts and so they were overstepping their limits.

And as a result, they were bringing reproach on the church and reproach on Christ. And apparently in Corinthian society, a veil was the symbol of submission, the symbol of modesty, the symbol of meekness. And in the past I've done some reading in the history of that period of time and I found out that there were basically two kinds of women who didn't wear a veil. Feminists, those protesting the role of women and harlots, those prostituting the role of women. So, protesters and prostitutes threw off their veils.

That's the background. Verse 3, I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of a woman and God is the head of Christ. And Paul is just saying this to show you that there is an authority and submission principle built in all the way from God on down. This isn't something cultural.

It isn't something just recently invented. There has always been in God's plan and God's economy a place for submission and authority. And along that line, verse 4, every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head for she is one and the same with her whose head is shaved.

Now we're getting a little more deeply into what was going on. The protesters in Paul's time were shaving their heads in protest against the feminine role. Verse 6, if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head.

In other words, there's no happy medium. If you take the thing off, you might as well go the whole way and shave your head because you have done as much as protest the purposes of God. God accepts the fact that that culture had certain ways to identify women. They were covered and they had long hair.

And that was the sign of their femininity. When they wanted to protest that, they threw off the veil and shaved the head. He says if you're going to throw off your covering, you might as well then go ahead and shave your head and join the prostitutes and the protesters.

So he says to the Christian women, you can't do that. Your culture has an understanding of the distinction between men and women. That is a divine distinction, though the particular custom is not ordained by God, the distinction is. And in whatever way your society maintains that distinction, you be sure you hold it up, lest they conclude that you are fighting against that. And if you take off your covering, they will conclude that.

You might as well shave your head and join the march. On the other hand, in verse 7, a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man. A man is not to wear anything that marks submission. He is not to wear that which identifies a woman. Back in Deuteronomy, it says a woman is not to wear anything that appertains to a man or vice versa. So the order of creation has put man in the place of headship and leadership and woman in the place of submission. She is to sustain the mark of that submission which in that culture was long hair and a veil.

That makes sense. That suits the created order and you Christians should not violate that. If you're going to violate that just because you think you're free in Christ, then go ahead and shave your head and join the prostitutes and the protesters.

You've done as much in discrediting the distinctions that God has made. Then in verse 10, he adds another thought. Therefore, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels.

That's most interesting. What it's saying is that the angels recognize the authority and submission principle. The angels, no doubt, have been told by God about how He has designed man and woman to live together.

That would be a great curiosity to the angels since among the angels there is neither marrying or giving in marriage and so it is outside their realm of experience and comprehension and consequently they're extremely curious about the whole relationship. They understand authority and submission. They understand the authority of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit. They understand that there are even ranks of angels.

There are principalities and powers and rulers. There are cherubim and seraphim and they would understand all of that. But with regard to man and woman and how they relate, they're very concerned to see God's order manifest in the church.

No doubt God has expressed to the angels that the curse in the fall which threw marriage into chaos can be minimized through the power of the Holy Spirit, through salvation and you can look at the church and see at least a glimpse of what my original intention for marriage was. And so for the angels, maintain the symbol of authority on your head, women. Maintain your femininity. Whatever the symbols of your femininity are, maintain them in that society and in most societies.

It's long hair and a covering. Even the angels recognize that principle. And the purpose would be, of course, so that the angels in seeing this wonderful work in which God has brought about the mitigation of the curse and brought a man and a woman together without the conflict and the war and the hostility in Christ and by the Spirit, this would cause the angels to give praise and glory to God. So the glory of God among the angels is the issue. Then in verses 11 and 12, however, in the Lord, just to make sure you don't misunderstand it, neither is woman independent of man nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman and all things originate from God. In other words, there is mutual dependence.

The man leads the woman, but the woman gives birth to the man. Don't think that this means because there is authority and submission that there is inequality spiritually, that there is inequality humanly, that there is inequality personally. There is not.

There is not. Beautiful interdependence. What is distinct are the roles, not the intelligence, not the spiritual capability, not the mental capability, not the social capability, not the wisdom, but the roles. So Christian women must not think that their equality in spiritual standing before God and their great freedom in Christ has obliterated God's created and sustained and spiritually beneficial design for them. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, his current series is titled The Fulfilled Family. Now, up to this point in the study, we've mainly seen the challenges to the family, even attacks on the family that affect both the husband and the wife. But John, these days, I know you are particularly concerned about the assault on the other key members of the family. It's the children who these days are unwilling participants in what you have described as a war. Talk about that for a minute. John MacArthur Yeah. Well, you know, Phil, I've been thinking about this for the last couple of years.

It's been high on my list. I preached a series at the church on the war on children a couple of years ago. I've never in my long lifetime seen a culture so completely and totally bent on the destruction of children, and nor has there been a time in my life when the family is as weak as it is today. A culture may have had designs on kids in the past, but the family's strength provided some insulation.

No more. The corruption of the family, I mean, starting with the feminist movement that overthrows the submission of women, and then the assault on men and toxic masculinity, and then the assault on every other thing in life that's related to goodness and virtue and morality has caused the family to be anything but a protection. And so kids are exposed without any mitigation, it seems to me. And all the things that would corrupt children are not necessarily available anymore.

They're ubiquitous. It's not that the parent can't say, well, you can't read that book. I don't want you to read that book. We've got to protect our kids.

How do you do that? Give them a cell phone, and you can't protect them any longer. Send them to school, and you can't protect them any longer. So this has been a very deeply concerning issue to me, because the church's responsibility is to evangelize the children, evangelize the children. In 1996, a book, It Takes a Village, famously challenged the God-given role of parents. The underlying theme of that book was raising children should be a collective effort of the government.

That's terrifying. The book stirred controversy a quarter of a century ago, but the notion that children should be nurtured and controlled by the state has become widely popular to this day. From the White House on down, politicians are making the case that government ought to have authority over the moral indoctrination of children. Christian parents can't go along with the flow of this culture.

They have to redouble their commitment to wise focus, never let your guard down biblical parenting. And again, you have to realize what's going on here with the war on your children. It's a devastating war with eternal impact. I cover all of that in a brand new book called The War on Children.

I urge you to read the book. Give it to others as well, affordably priced, and for the first time available from grace to you. Thanks, John. And friend, even if you're not raising children of your own right now, you still have an indispensable role to play in this war, because it's an ideological conflict with eternity at stake. To order The War on Children, contact us today. You can call us here at 855-GRACE, or you can place your order online at GTY.org.

The War on Children costs $15 in hard cover and shipping is free. Again, to get a copy of John's brand new book, The War on Children, call us today, 855-GRACE, or shop online at GTY.org. And remember, at GTY.org, there are thousands of free resources that will help you grow spiritually. You can read three different daily devotionals written by John, or check out our blog series called Different by Design, helping you dig deeper into God's design for men and women. You can also download any of John's sermons, including every lesson from his current series called The Fulfilled Family. All of that and more is free of charge at our website, GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today and be here tomorrow when John continues his look at the biblical pattern for wives and how you can resist the attacks from the world to compromise God's design. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.