Four Reasons Why Your Wife Is Not Submitting To Your Leadership

In our culture, the word submit has become a swear word. This is very unfortunate because it has been twisted out of context. When people think of submission, they envision a cave man like guy dragging his wife by the hair while she makes him breakfast. This is the most distorted and inaccurate view of submission that anyone can come up with. Submission is not a chore but rather a great privilege. Why? Because God designed it that way. Here are four reasons why your wife is not submitting to your leadership:

1. You are demanding it. As soon as you have to say that you are in authority, you have already lost it. The only reason why God gave the male a leadership role within the family is to lovingly minister to his wife. The use of leadership or authority to do anything but that is a blatant abuse of authority that should never have been given to you in the first place.

When God created a woman, He called her a “helper,” which translated from the Hebrew ‘ezer is another word to describe God (Gen. 2:18). It can also mean powerful, courageous and strong. The woman then is not a suitable helper but rather a strong helper. God created a woman with intelligence and strength that would complement the man. But because of sin, the original plan intended for spousal unity has become a point of spousal division.

2. Your definition of submission is un-biblical (Col. 3:18-19; Eph. 5:22) Submission is not a cuss word. It is a natural response to loving leadership.

When the husband leads the wife lovingly, the wife responds submissively.

When the husband leads the wife with love, the wife responds to that leadership. Her desire then becomes not to dominate over her husband but rather to organize her life around him. The more the husband submits to Christ, the more the wife desires to submit to her husband in every way. The two then become a very powerful team and together, can accomplish great things.

When Paul uses the word submission, the idea here is that of cooperation. It is a husband and a wife who are lovingly cooperating with one another to live for God’s glory and not their own.

3. You have a distorted view of women. A cultural that is in aggressive opposition to Biblical values in marriage mistakenly thinks that if a woman submits to her husband, then she is being de-valued. This is a lie.

Because a woman was created in the image of God, there is no one or no thing that can de-value her or take away the value that was given to her by the Creator God. A woman’s value comes not from submitting or not submitting to her husband but rather from God, who created her.

4. You don’t spend enough time loving, treasuring and pursuing your wife. Just like with many other relationships, you get out of them what you put into them. The relationship with your spouse will most likely be the highest form of sanctification that you will go through. At the same time, you will experience the most profound joy, with your spouse.

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The gospel is.

You must love your spouse, even when that is the last thing you want to do. Why? Because Jesus loved us when there was nothing lovable about us (Rom. 5:8). He still pursued us, while we were aggressively pursuing His death.

The action of love will shape and mold the feelings that will come after.

Motion initiates emotion.

Think about if Jesus only loved us when He felt like it. How often would that actually be?

Question: What else would you add to the above four things?