.
My next comments do not apply to John Q and Jane Doe public; nor do they
apply to your average rank and file pew-warming Christians. No; my next
comments are restricted to people "in the Lord" and no others.
● Col 3:18 . .Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in The Lord.
● Eph 5:21-22 . . Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ; wives
to your husbands as to the Lord.
● Eph 5:24 . . Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should
submit to their husbands in everything.
The koiné word for "submit" in those verses is hupotasso (hoop-ot-as'-so)
which means to subordinate; but we're not talking about an imposed kind of
subordination like in the military; no, what we're talking about here is
"deference" which, in a nutshell, is respect for one's betters as opposed to
demanding equality with one's peers.
According to Eph 5:21 and Phil 2:3, deference is required of everybody in
the Lord regardless of gender and/or status; for sure in Christian marriages.
In other words: wives in the Lord are expected to take the initiative in this
issue and exercise the self control provided by the fruit of the Spirit as per
Gal 5:22-23; viz: the onus is upon them, and no one else, to stifle their
natural female impulses to be stubborn, disagreeable, hysterical,
demanding, and/or domineering.
A deferent wife is gracious, cordial, affable, approachable, temperate, genial,
sociable, ready to turn the other cheek, generous, charitable, altruistic,
tactful, sensitive, sympathetic; and above all she's coherent, reasonable,
and rational rather than incoherent, emotional, and reactive.
Deferent wives don't have to be right all the time. And most importantly,
deferent wives tread lightly on their husband's feelings. (It's amazing the
number of young girls brought up to believe that men are insensitive brutes
who have no more feelings than a tree stump)
.
A wife that's independent, quarrelsome, complaining, fault-finding, critical,
chafing, hostile, violent, carping, dominating, manipulating, thin-skinned,
defensive, assertive, aggressive, thoughtless, loud, stubborn, scolding,
lecturing, difficult, cruel, gender-biased, confrontational, constantly
clamoring about empowerment and harboring an "I am woman! Hear me
roar!" mentality is not the Lord's concept of deference. Those are hellish
behaviors; the kind of behaviors to be vigorously shunned and abhorred by
wives in the Lord.
_