Submit or Drown Genesis 3:16; Ephesians 5:22-29

The word “submit” is very disturbing to many women in America today. One of the reasons that women find the word submit disturbing is that historically the word submit has been used to devalue the worth of women. It has been used and continues to be used to indicate that men are to control women, and women are to allow men to control them unconditionally. Men do not have to be right on any subject matter that can be thought of because it is the men’s right unconditionally to exercise control over women. These ideals are based upon the Scriptures, supposedly, but I believe that the Scriptures are misinterpreted and rationalized in ways that support the belief and practice of men exercising control over women based on the assumption that men are entitled to rule over women unconditionally. In this article I want to refute this belief that men have the right to control unconditionally. I want to give a more valid reason that the wife is supposed to submit to her husband without giving up her person hood, her rights, and her value in the world that God has placed the woman to live. Let me begin this discussion from the perspective and procedures that life guards are trained to go by.

Let’s begin by describing a drowning person in a swimming pool and the life guard’s assessment of the situation and how the life guard responds. The young man swimming in the pool is drowning. Thus, he is in severe need for oxygen. This need for oxygen causes him to thrash about in the water. He is fighting, it seems, to survive. The fighting is a natural response of any person that is suffering from the lack of oxygen. Now, I have learned that life guards are trained to wait for the drowning victim to stop thrashing about and fighting for air before the life guard takes hold of the drowning victim to rescue him. Why does the life guard wait?

When the drowning victim is thrashing about and fighting for air that person also has an increase in strength because of the adrenaline in the body. This means that while the drowning victim is thrashing about it is likely that he has more strength than the life guard. It is possible that the life guard will be drowned by the victim. When the victim stops thrashing about and sinks into the water he has lost his strength and resistance. The life guard is able to rescue the victim from the water and using resuscitation methods get needed oxygen into the lungs of the victim; thus saving his life. The victim submits to the life guard and the life guard saves the victim’s life. We can learn that there are six things that the victim needs to do that will indicate that he has submitted to the control of the life guard.

First, it is obvious that submission is not a natural response. It is not that the drowning victim is resisting the life guard directly. Rather, it is his natural response to preserve his own life. It is rightly said that the first law of nature is self preservation. The desire to live and the instinct to fight for one’s life is in every animal species that I have been around in my life. I have seen the animals on the farm respond by fighting for their life. These animals in some cases can be dangerous to anyone or anything that tries to stop their attempt to save their own life. Submitting to outside powers is not a natural response.

In our situation, the drowning victim must submit to the efforts of the life guard. This means that he must stop depending on his own efforts. The drowning victim stops thrashing about when he is depleted of strength and energy. Now, the victim is willing to let the lifeguard take control of his body. The victim now listens to the instructions of the lifeguard. He allows the lifeguard to do what the lifeguard knows to do in order to save the victim’s life. Once the victim is revived, he is thankful that the lifeguard saved his life. He cannot express his gratitude enough. Words can never explain how much he appreciates the efforts of the lifeguard. So, what does this have to do with the scriptures?

At the beginning of this article I stated that there have been a lot of misinterpretations of the scriptures, and people, both men and women have rationalized the scriptures so that they are able to use them to support their own personal agendas. Genesis 3:16 and Ephesians 5:22 are used wrongly to support the assumption that men are supposed to rule over women unconditionally. These misinterpretations and rationalizations fail to take into consideration the life setting, the context, and the purpose for these scripture readings.

Let us consider Genesis 3:16. It is said that the woman is being punished for her sin. However, there is a difference between reason and consequences. The increase in pain in child birth and the desire for her husband is not the woman’s punishment. The punishment is death. It is her separation from God. The consequences are the man and the woman will both be driven from the garden into the field. In the garden the woman is joined together with the man. They both talk with God every day (Gen. 3:8). Do you think that the woman never hears God speak? In Genesis 3:9 God calls to the man and calls him into accountability. God tells the serpent, the woman, and the man what the consequences of their sins will be. “To the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you will bring for children; yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (NASB).

God tells the man and the woman the consequences of their sins. God is preparing them to live in the field; a world in which God will not come by everyday and have a little talk with them. In the field their lives will be threatened by the wild animals, hard work to have food, and a world in which strength and might are needed to survive. So what is God saying to the woman and the man? Essentially, God is saying in Genesis 3 the same thing that Paul writes in Ephesians 5.

The man is physically stronger than the woman. It is amazing to me the number of women that reject this fact. I know that in our world today physical strength is less needed than in years past. Now, it is not just that women are getting stronger; it is also the fact that relatively speaking men today are weaker than men in the past. In a world in which physical strength is a premium the stronger man is to have authority over the weaker woman. The problem is not in what is said in scripture. Rather, it is the misinterpretations, the rationalizations that have led to mankind, separated from God and living according to the flesh along with the schemes and deceptions of the devil, the liar and deceiver, that has led mankind to the sad present relationships in the human family.

God does not create the man and the woman to be separate from each other. God creates the woman to be a partner to the man having equal value and equal worth. “‘The man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:23-25, NASB). Why does Paul tell the wife to submit to her husband?

We have illustrated through the drowning victim that he has need of the lifeguard’s strength to protect him and provide essential oxygen in order to survive. The woman is told to voluntarily submit to her husband so that he can love her and give his life for her (Eph. 5:25-32). Men ought to love their wives as they love themselves. Women need men, and men need women. Wives submit to your husband does not mean that women are be dominated and controlled by men because they have unconditional rights to use and misuse the person that God gives to him to be a partner with equal value and rights. Rather, wives are to submit to their husbands for their well-being, and at the same time the husband does everything that he can to make his wife safe and secure. Like Christ, the husbands put his life on the line for the sake of the wife that he loves. Jesus dies for the church, and men are to follow His example.

Wives submit to your husbands and allow him to provide for you and protect you. Husband love your wife. Do not try to control her. She is not less than you. The two are to be one flesh walking together and together meeting with their God.