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The Christian life is one of submission: submission to God and to each other. This isn’t a cringing subservience. It’s more about not always needing to have things our own way, and letting the other person be right, get the good seat, or even win.

This means we should live in unity with each other, both across the church and in our own homes.

This story, about a husband sacrificing his own goals so he can help his wife achieve hers, is a good example of the sort of unity God wants.

For wives:

Ephesians 5:22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.

For husbands (who have a much more demanding role if you think about it):

Ephesians 5:25-30 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body.

Similarly, children are told to honour their parents, and parents (particularly fathers) and told not to frustrate their children. And slaves are told to obey their masters and work to please them and serve them as if they were serving God Himself (which they are).

Ephesians 6:9And you, masters, do the same things to [your slaves], giving up threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.

How revolutionary: to instruct slave owners to treat their slaves with respect, under a general instruction for everyone in the church to submit to each other.