Two Marriage Pillars

Loving headship by the husband and joyful submission by the wife are the top two keys that the Bible gives for marriage. Take a look: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her... This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22-25, 32). Marriage stands for something huge. It models the essence of the gospel. God designed marriage as a living drama of how Christ and the church relate to each other. We have the privilege of fulfilling these roles of loving headship and joyful submission to reflect something glorious. Let’s take a closer look at these roles:

PJ on Ashleigh’s Submission:

Ashleigh expresses her submission to me through her inclination to support my leadership and initiatives within the constraints of obedience to Christ. Her submission is not the removal of her opinion and intelligence from our marriage, nor does it result in her playing a lesser role in our marriage. Here is a real-time example: last night I mishandled a situation with my 11-year-old son, Jack. As I was busy mishandling it, Ashleigh was giving me verbal and body language indicators to help me adjust my approach. But I thought I knew better. Twenty minutes later she returned to chat to me and, with an attitude of deference, made a compelling case for Jack’s side of the argument, which resulted in me climbing down, apologizing, and modeling the art of apology to Jack! Do you see what had happened? Even when she disagreed with me she maintained an honouring demeanour, but her submissive bias was still potent in influencing me and shaping family life.

Ashleigh on PJ’s Servant Leadership:

PJ tries to lead me in a loving, serving, and confident manner—like Jesus loves the church. It is not about being authoritarian, autocratic, domineering, bossy, or abusive. It is simply Christ-like servant leadership, and it is a pleasure to submit to this type of leadership (mostly!) as I know that he has my best at heart. But more than that, I know that my submission honours God. My biggest submission struggle in recent years was agreeing to relocate to Johannesburg to plant our church. To be honest, I felt the beaches of Mauritius needed a church more than Jo’burg, and I was willing, definitely willing, to lay down my life to take the gospel to that tropical island. But PJ felt it was Jo’burg, and so I needed to submit to his headship. Submission is dead easy when you agree! We firmly believe with John Piper, who wrote

:

When sin entered the world it ruined the harmony of marriage not because it brought headship and submission into existence, but because it twisted man's humble, loving headship into hostile domination in some men and lazy indifference in others. And it twisted woman's intelligent, willing submission into manipulative obsequiousness in some women and brazen insubordination in others. Sin didn't create headship and submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and destructive.

Piper goes on to say that we are now involved “not in the dismantling of the original, created order of loving headship and willing submission, but a recovery of it from the ravages of sin.” What a privilege!