​96. A God in Their Own Image

The other day I ran across a blog post of an incredibly intelligent and capable believer who had convinced herself that here on earth, the idea of submission to our husbands is a fallacy because Jesus was instilling a kingdom where men and women were on even playing ground.

Jesus does see women and men as both vital to the kingdom. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have different roles that He didn’t uphold and fulfill through Scripture, a Scripture that is reliant on the concept of order and our places within it. Here’s a little of what I said (which I actually borrowed from a comment I posted on my friend Crystal’s Instagram account. She’s doing a great job of explaining what true, Scriptural headship looks like):

“If submission and headship don’t apply anymore, neither does anything else in the Bible. God is a God of order, not chaos. Our roles within that order don’t change because the year does. The worldly sins of today are the same they’ve always been, we just like to think as a society we’re more evolved. Just looking outside at the world’s chaos says otherwise. I think people who can’t submit on their own volition within their own family can’t truly submit to Christ. They’ve unfortunately created a god in their own image that promotes their self autonomy other than God’s sovereignty in this world.

I know what it’s like to buck against the idea of submission. I used to be a feminist atheist and the idea of submission made my skin crawl. Now that I’ve given everything to Jesus, I realize not submitting is one of the main reasons we used to have problems in our marriage. We’re definitely not perfect people but by us both submitting to Christ and me allowing him to lead our family, I can honestly say I truly enjoy what we have and am very grateful. I will say, I am fortunate to have a husband who always asks my opinion and thoroughly respects me (which I know isn’t always the case), but if a husband doesn’t treat his wife like Christ treats the Church then he shouldn’t be leading in the first place.”

As Genesis 3:16 points out, women will desire to master their husbands, a concept that is still prevalent today. We’ve lived a lifetime of this sort of marital tension between women who want to rule and men who won’t step up. Instead, why don’t we both bend our knees to Jesus, and in doing so, lovingly fulfill the roles God designed for us in the first place?

Whenever we attempt to secularize our faith in order for the world to pat us in the back, we should be wary. For we are not the world’s but God’s. And just because man has twisted this concept of submission to manipulate and control doesn’t mean we can’t take it back and live it as God originally intended.