Submitting the Wise Mothers Model: Practicing What We Preach About Authority

Once upon a time there was a young boy who had trouble obeying his mother. You may now be wondering: What a boring story. This boy is just like any other child. And so it was, except he ignored his mother’s wishes for one very specific and well-articulated reason: his mother was a cashier, never a douche.

“Eat less sugar,” she mumbled to him, half-chewed chocolate muffling her voice.

“Stop using the iPad,” she said, not bothering to look up from her phone.

“Finish your homework,” she would tell him, as the dirty dishes piled up more and more.

“Go get some exercise,” she would shout upstairs, never actually climbing the stairs herself.

“Drink water, not soda,” “Eat fruits and vegetables instead of junk food,” “Choose sleep over media,” “Give thanks instead of complaining,” “Listen before you speak”: he heard his orders. But he never saw them.

Although his mother reminded him (almost every day, in fact) that her instructions were “good for him,” over time the boy came to believe that her rules weren’t necessarily very good at all. Because if they were really good, she would have done more than just said them. She would have lived them.

Unfortunately, I am sometimes not so different from the boy’s mother, especially in one area: submission to authority.

Words to live by

In the spirit of Ephesians, I often pray that our son will accept child rearing as a gift from God for his good. “Children,” Paul writes, “obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” But while I refer a lot to Ephesians 6:1, I have a harder time heeding Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”

One moment I am calmly explaining to our child that obedience to me as a mother, despite my imperfection, honors God, and the next moment I am needlessly arguing with his father. As I do so, disrespect is evident on my face, annoyance in my voice, and disbelief in my heart.

I cannot choose to trust God’s will for children while rejecting His will for wives. He breathed into existence every word of the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16), and He calls all human beings—babies, the elderly, boys, girls, married people, single people, husbands, wives—to “live … by every word” (Matthew 4:4).

Not only know every word (which would be wise). Not only tell others to obey every word (that is asked). But, first and foremost, live by Every word is for us. And for women, submission to our husband, as the God-appointed head of the household, is a word we are called to embrace in our lives.

To be clear, accepting the submission does not mean not This means remaining silent. A submissive wife is always talking. She asks questions, expresses her concerns, expresses her disagreement. She is not afraid to share the desires of her heart or the burdens of her mind with her husband, nor to tell others about domestic violence. do Fear is a thousand-year-old temptation that a woman experiences to want to dominate the one whom God has designated as her leader (Genesis 3:16; Ephesians 5:23).

In the outside world, God commands both men and women to submit. (Hebrews 13:17; Romans 13:1) But in the home, it is the wife who is called to submit first and foremost, and therefore the mother. Given the amount of time the family spends under that roof, mothers are in a unique position to teach children that God gives authority for their good—if only we ourselves believe it.

How much more readily would young children submit to their parents, teachers, church leaders, government authorities, and (we pray) God himself, if they spent a decade watching Mom lean into Dad’s leadership, seeking to support his efforts, responding respectfully to disagreements—in other words, if they watched Mom joyfully submit to Dad?

Words of life

When our hearts rebel against submission, we may forget that the words we are called to live by are the words of lifeI am not talking here about words that improve our physical bodies, that increase our life span on earth. I am talking about words that bring unfathomable joy to our souls, whether in life or in death, because they draw us ever deeper into our all-satisfying God (Psalm 16:11). The words that this God speaks are “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

“How we treat our spouse with honor shows little ears and eyes how seriously we take God’s word.”

Women, it is strange that Ephesians 5:22 exists in the universe of John 6:68. No matter what society may shout, submission does not mean inferiority or disgrace. No, when we rely on the leadership of a husband, we are not ultimately relying on the ways and desires of a sinful man. We are relying on the perfect, life-giving word of God.

How fortunate for mothers! Where the world would call the Bible archaic (at best) and oppressive (at worst), we can show our children that submission to God’s law in its entirety does not make Christians fools or victims. It makes us happy, even abundantly so.

The words he lived

Of course, we can’t always do that. feel We are happy to submit. Willingly yielding to someone is a demanding act of self-denial—the kind of act Jesus describes as the hallmark of true disciples: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). But he also tells us that dying to self is the hallmark of true life: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24).

When a woman tackles the most difficult aspects of Christian obedience, her life will cry out to her sons and daughters that Jesus speaks the truth. In the Christian life, spontaneously “feeling like” to do something is not a prerequisite to actually doing it—trust in God’s promises is. And his Word assures us that self-sacrifice, no matter how painful at the time, is the foundation of unwavering joy. What might this lesson mean to children if they not only heard their mother say it but watched her live it?

And there is only one way for sinful mothers to do this: by ChristHe doesn’t just ask us to deny ourselves; he deprived himself of the splendors of heaven to do his Father’s will (John 6:38). He doesn’t just command us to take up our cross; he took up his cross “unto death” (Philippians 2:8). And he doesn’t just ask whether losing his life will lead to gaining it. No, even now—even as you read this—he is enjoying the fruits of his sacrifice. The tomb is empty, but God’s right hand is not (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus sits there in glorious joy. And from there he has given us his Spirit to enable us to perform similar acts of seemingly impossible obedience (John 15:26).

It is How mothers live out the words of life before the eyes of their children—looking to Christ who has already lived them. When submission looks like a cross, it doesn’t prove submission is wrong. It proves submission is biblical, Christian, and life-giving, in an upside-down way that only a Spirit-indwelling believer can understand. And isn’t that the kind of Christian we hope our children will one day become?

Mothers who live

If there is a fly on the wall of marriage, it is our children. How we treat our spouse with honor shows little ears and eyes how seriously we take God’s word. Behind closed doors and Facebook posts, is the Lord of heaven and earth worthy of obedience? Our children know our soul’s response by heart. They have paid close attention to our lives.

Oh, let us not be the mother of the young boy. She heard and she commanded, but she never acted (James 1:22–24). And while she may have deceived herself, she did not deceive her son. He knew that she did not really believe the “good words” she had spoken. If she had believed them, she would have put them into practice.

Let us instead be the mother of James 1:25. This mother “keeps diligently the perfect law of liberty, and continues in it, not being a forgetful hearer but a doer.” This mother “will be blessed in her deed.” Her life will commend God’s commandments to her children as words of life.