More than I thought

Today I was checking this out…

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the head. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Ephesians 5:22-25

In the past I had always looked at this and said to myself “that sounds good, I don’t really get it, but it sounds good.”

The tough thing about this is how so many people have used this passage to opress women for so long.

The rest of the New Testament seems to support a radical egalitarianism while this passage talks about women submitting to their husbands. Hmmm. Well, I got thinking and it seems to make sense to me now. What if this message, that addresses both men and women, has a specific message for each sex and not just one message for both?

It seems like this message is targeted to the issues of each sex. Could it be that men need to concentrate on being more loving to their wives and women need to specifically work on submitting to their husbands?

It is so important for us to read passages of scripture with the entirety of scripture in view.