Do wives have to obey their husbands?
Ephesians 5:22, Colossians 3:18, and 1 Peter 3:1-6 all address wives, and the commentators note something striking: Paul deliberately writes "submit," not "obey" — a choice that raises the very question you ask. What is the difference, and does obedience still have a place?
Submission and obedience are two different things
One writer defines the two words with care. Submission is about accepting a place; obedience is about how you act within it:
Julius A Von PoseckSubmitting myself to another means accepting and taking a subordinate place under another person's lawful authority over me. Obedience means behaving and acting according to that place… Submission and obedience, in a natural sense, are not necessarily identical. There may be an outward submission without real obedience. In the Christian sense, both are a matter of the heart, as being done to the Lord.
Why Scripture says "submit" to wives but "obey" to children
The wording is not accidental. Children and servants never chose their place; a wife entered hers freely:
Julius A Von PoseckChildren, being born in the subordinate place, and servants being in the same place by birth or purchase, could not be told to accept or take that place by submitting themselves — because they were already in it, apart from their own consent. Therefore they are exhorted to obey. It is not so with wives. They have become wives by their own free consent, knowing beforehand the character and duties of their place. Therefore they are told to "submit" themselves to their own husbands.
There is a second reason. In Ephesians, the marriage relationship pictures Christ and the church (the whole company of believers):
W. H. WestcottIt is often commented upon that it does not say, "Wives obey your husbands," as though they were children or servants… All that Christ is to the church, the husband should be to the wife. But the wife is to submit herself to her own husband as unto the Lord, finding in the husband the one who directs and leads.
Yet obedience is not ruled out
The same writer warns against playing the two words off against each other. Peter's letter uses both, pointing to Sarah, Abraham's wife, who "obeyed Abraham" (1 Peter 3:6):
Julius A Von PoseckThough submission, and not obedience, is given in Ephesians and Colossians as the prominent Christian feature of wives, yet obedience forms no less an essential part of the divinely required character of the Christian wife… In the epistle of the apostle Peter, both expressions, "submission" and "obedience," are applied to wives. There the Spirit of God points back to Sarah as a pattern of submission and obedience for all her spiritual "daughters" (1 Peter 3:1-6).
The spirit of it: love, not slavery
This submission is nothing like forced servitude:
William J HockingThe submission thus solemnly enjoined is not the blind mechanical obedience of a slave to the owner… Rather is it the glad subjection which springs from a passionate devotion to the loved one, a ready submission to the will of the beloved man, needing no compulsion, nor even prompting.
And the key phrase "as unto the Lord" supplies the power for it:
Edward DennettTo nature, no doubt, it would often be impossible. But mark the provision made for this in the Word… If the wife keeps the Lord before her — sees the Lord, as it were, behind her husband — she will find obedience easy, because she will then receive all from the Lord.
The limit
Submission has one clear boundary — the Lord Himself:
Leslie M. GrantThe wife's subjection applies only insofar as it is really subjection to the Lord — "as it is fitting in the Lord" (Col. 3:18). If the husband demands that she disobey God, this is abnormal and she must not submit to him in this.
Summary
- Place: Submission means accepting a place under lawful authority; obedience means acting in line with that place. A wife entered her place by free consent — so Scripture says "submit," not "obey" as to children or servants.
- Practice: Yet obedience still belongs to that place. Peter applies both words to wives, with Sarah as the pattern (1 Peter 3:1-6).
- Pattern: The model is the church under Christ — the husband is to give love, direction, and care, as Christ does for the church.
- Power: It is done "as unto the Lord." Seeing the Lord behind the husband turns a hard duty into a glad one — devotion, not slavery.
- Limit: Submission stops where God's will is crossed. If a husband demands disobedience to God, the wife must not submit in that.
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