Wives may get impatient with his imperfections and find they are quicker at seeing some issues or some hidden snags in a course of action. They may have many intuitions he lacks and may, in the secular world, hold great authority, so at times it may be difficult for them to be in submission but they have to say to themselves, ‘I am called, nevertheless, despite all that, to acknowledge his calling to be the head of the family, and I do it for Christ’s sake’ and frustration must turn to prayer so that they please the Lord.
It is something we have to pray for. If you are a person who is inclined to be short-tempered; if you are a person who in any way would spoil this love, or you never focus on its departments and its obligations, then the first thing to do is to pray because that will enable you to improve yourself and to be more concerned for one another. Prayer is everything in marriage. Self-discipline is not enough; prayer comes even before that.
Is this simply a cultural matter? No, we cannot say that the apostle Paul was only asking godly women to conform to the culture of the times, because there are five very strong references, some more amplified than the rules we are given here, to the same effect. You cannot say, ‘That is how they all had to live in those days and therefore the Christian had to conform to that.’ In fact, it wasn’t how they all lived in those days; this is the word of God and it is God’s command to us. In the pagan world women were just possessions. They were like slaves largely, unless they were very rich women. They were treated so badly and in Roman society they really did think that women were greatly inferior to men. Greek society wasn’t much better. The Greek philosophers used to call women terrible names. They said that by nature they are selfish, jealous and less than slaves. If there is any accuracy in that sort of description, it applies equally to men, we know as Bible believers. There was certainly no respect, no understanding, shown to women in that culture. With the gospel there comes in an entirely different attitude to women. They are greatly elevated in status; it is made so clear in the New Testament that before God we are equals. While there is an order in marriage, viewed spiritually before God, whether in terms of gifts and so on, intelligence, or spiritual capacities, men and women are absolutely equal. That is the teaching of Christ and of the gospel right through the New Testament.