The Place to Be #22

 Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Paul is working his way through issues in the Ephesian church, giving exhortations based on violations of the oneness God intends there to be in churches.  In the paragraphs earlier in this chapter he challenged them to abandon old, selfish, sinful behaviors and patterns of speech which would infect and divide the church.  He now addresses oneness in the home.  The health and impact of the church would be compromised if the individual homes within the church were divided and unhealthy.  He first gives this one exhortation to the wives for their part.  Just as all believers should submit to one another (verse 21), Christian wives were called on doubly to do so.  The headship of the husband was being challenged by some of the women in their church.  They mistook their new freedom in Christ as a reason to resist and rebel against God-given authority.  As we will see in Paul's letter to Timothy, who was later at Ephesus, there were some women who rebelled against authority in the Church as well.  It was symptomatic of a deeper issue seen also in the home.  The relationship of husband and wife was both symbolic of Christ and the Church, and practical in God's design for the home.  In rebelling, they were questioning Christ.