Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage are often misunderstood, so it helps to read them in their full context. The call for wives to submit sits right beside the call for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and both follow a command for all believers to submit to one another. Together these passages describe a marriage shaped by humility, service and the example of Jesus.
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Ephesians 5:21 (KJV)
Before addressing wives or husbands, Paul calls all believers to submit to one another in the fear of God.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Ephesians 5:22-24 (KJV)
Wives are asked to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, as the church is subject to Christ.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
Ephesians 5:25-27 (KJV)
Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, a call to sacrifice.
Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
Ephesians 5:33 (KJV)
Sums up the teaching: husbands love their wives as themselves and wives reverence their husbands.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.
Colossians 3:18-19 (KJV)
Wives submit as is fit in the Lord, and husbands love their wives without bitterness.
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
1 Peter 3:1-2 (KJV)
Wives are encouraged that godly conduct can win a husband who does not yet obey the word.
For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.
1 Peter 3:5-6 (KJV)
Sarah and other holy women are held up as examples of trusting God and honouring their husbands.
Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
1 Peter 3:7 (KJV)
Husbands must honour their wives as heirs together of the grace of life.
That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
Titus 2:4-5 (KJV)
Older women teach younger women to love their husbands and children and to be discreet and good.
But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1 Corinthians 11:3 (KJV)
Paul describes an order of headship in which Christ is the head of man and God is the head of Christ.
The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
1 Corinthians 7:4 (KJV)
Husband and wife each have authority over the other’s body, showing mutuality within the marriage bond.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Genesis 2:18 (KJV)
God makes a help meet for the man, describing partnership rather than inferiority.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28 (KJV)
In Christ there is neither male nor female, affirming the equal worth of husband and wife.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Philippians 2:5-8 (KJV)
Christ humbled himself and took the form of a servant, the pattern for all Christian submission.
But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Mark 10:43-45 (KJV)
Jesus teaches that greatness means serving, since he came to minister and give his life.
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
1 Peter 5:5 (KJV)
All believers are to be subject one to another and clothed with humility.
But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:6-7 (KJV)
God gives grace to the humble, so submission begins with submitting ourselves to God.
Ephesians 5:21 sets the tone: submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Paul then asks wives to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord and husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. The role of the husband is described in terms of sacrifice, nourishing and cherishing, not control. Colossians 3:18-19 and 1 Peter 3 teach the same pattern, and 1 Peter 3:7 reminds husbands to honour their wives as heirs together of grace.
The model for all of this is Christ. Philippians 2:5-8 describes Jesus humbling himself and taking the form of a servant, and in Mark 10:45 he says he came not to be ministered unto but to minister. Biblical submission is a willing choice made out of love and trust in God, never blind obedience or an excuse for mistreatment. Galatians 3:28 affirms that husband and wife are one in Christ.
Sarah is held up in 1 Peter 3:5-6 as an example of a woman who trusted God and honoured her husband. Her story shows that submission rests first on confidence in God, who cares for both spouses. Anyone facing abuse should seek safety and help right away.
Ephesians 5:21s submitting yourselves one to another precedes the more specific instructions, establishing mutuality as the frame.
When Paul wrote to the Ephesians and the Colossians, he used a Greek word, hypotassō, that carries the picture of arranging yourself under another person, the way soldiers fall into ranks or a household finds its order. It is not the word for obeying a master. It is also not the word Paul uses when he speaks to children and slaves a few verses later. Children are told to obey; wives are told to submit. The difference looks small on the page and turns out to be large in a real home. One is a command to do as you are told. The other is a posture that only a free person can choose to take.
Readers who open a collection of Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage often expect a list of orders. What they find is a vocabulary of willingness. Paul asks wives to place themselves under their husbands “as it is fit in the Lord” (Colossians 3:18), and the phrase in the Lord matters, because it sets the motive and the boundary in one breath. A gift freely given cannot be pulled out of someone by force, and that is the one thing a controlling spouse never seems to grasp. Take the force away and what is left is trust, which is what Paul was after all along.
In the original Greek, Ephesians 5:22 has no verb of its own. It borrows its action from the verse before, so a close reading goes something like this: submitting to one another in the fear of Christ, wives to their own husbands as to the Lord. Most English Bibles slip a heading in between verses 21 and 22, and that small break has shaped how generations read the passage. Take the heading out and the paragraph flows as one thought about a community that gives way to each other because it stands in awe of Christ.
Paul then spends three verses on wives and six on husbands. The proportion is worth noticing. The man who was assumed to hold every scrap of power in a Roman household gets the longest instruction, and it reads like a list of costs: give yourself up, cleanse, nourish, cherish (Ephesians 5:25-29). Anyone who reads verses 22 to 24 on their own has lifted a few sentences out of a long conversation and made them say more than Paul meant. The teaching in these verses on marriage reads best when you start at verse 21 and keep going all the way to verse 33, where Paul sums up with love on the husband’s side and respect on the wife’s.
Peter wrote to scattered believers who lived under suspicion, and many of the wives in those churches had come to faith while their husbands had not. That detail changes how 1 Peter 3:1-2 sounds. He is not describing the everyday marriage of two believers. He is coaching a woman who has chosen a new Lord in a house that has not. Her conduct, he says, may win her husband without a word, because he watches a life that is pure and respectful.
Then comes Sarah, held up in 1 Peter 3:6 as a woman who obeyed Abraham and called him lord. Peter chose a woman whose story is more tangled than that single line. Sarah laughed behind the tent door (Genesis 18:12), she pushed Abraham toward Hagar, and when she demanded that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away, God told Abraham to listen to whatever Sarah said to him (Genesis 21:12). So the example is no silent doormat. Peter ends the thought by telling wives not to be afraid with any amazement, which is a quiet way of saying that fear is not the engine of this kind of submission. If it were, the whole teaching would collapse.
The verse that follows Peter’s advice to wives is, if anything, sharper. Husbands are to dwell with their wives according to knowledge, giving honour to the wife, as heirs together of the grace of life, so that their prayers are not hindered (1 Peter 3:7). Look at what is put at risk. It is not the wife’s reputation or the household budget. It is the husband’s own prayer life. Peter treats the way a man talks at the supper table, and the way he listens in the car, as something that reaches all the way up to heaven.
Paul says something close to it in Colossians 3:19: “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.” Bitterness is a quiet word for the sour, sarcastic, score-keeping attitude that can settle into a long marriage without anyone ever raising a voice. A man can be technically in charge and thoroughly bitter at once. Scripture does not let that pass as headship. When people read Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage and pay attention only to the wife’s side, they skip the clauses that hold the husband to the harder standard.
Paul gives a chain in 1 Corinthians 11:3: the head of every man is Christ, the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. The last link surprises people. Christ is fully God and equal with the Father, yet he lives in willing obedience to him, saying in John 5:30 that he seeks not his own will but the will of the Father who sent him. An ordered relationship, in other words, does not make one person lesser than the other.
Teachers have argued for centuries over how far to press the comparison, and an honest teacher will admit that. What nobody can dispute is that the Son’s submission was never forced and never silenced his voice. In Gethsemane he prayed plainly about the thing he dreaded, and then he yielded (Luke 22:42). A husband who points to 1 Corinthians 11:3 to end a conversation has missed what kind of head Paul has in mind, because in Ephesians 5:25 the head is the one who gave up his life. Authority in this picture is measured by what a person is willing to lose for the other, and that is a very different yardstick from who gets the last word.
Few passages are as evenly balanced as 1 Corinthians 7:3-5. Corinth was a city of extremes. Some believers there were saying that the truly spiritual abstained from marriage altogether (verse 1), and Paul answers them with a startling symmetry. The wife has no power over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband has no power over his own body, but the wife does. Every sentence is doubled. Whatever he says to one spouse, he says to the other in the very next breath.
That kind of symmetry was unusual in the ancient world, where law and custom ran almost entirely in the husband’s favour. Paul also forbids coercion. Husbands and wives are not to deprive one another except by agreement, for a season, to give themselves to prayer, and then they are to come together again. Among all the passages gathered under Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage, this one is the clearest proof that Scripture pictures authority running both ways. Nobody in that marriage holds a one-way key. Each has handed the other something precious and each is responsible for handling what they have been given with great gentleness.
Genesis 2:18 says God made a helper suitable for the man. Many people hear the word helper and picture an assistant, someone a rung lower on the ladder. The Hebrew word, ezer, tells a different story. It is used of God himself when he comes to the aid of his people, as in Psalm 33:20, where the Lord is our help and our shield. A word that describes the Almighty can hardly mean a lesser being. It names the one who supplies what is missing, and Genesis presents the man as lacking something until she arrives.
Paul closes off the other misreading in Galatians 3:28, where there is neither male nor female, because all are one in Christ Jesus. Equal worth and different roles can live in the same home without either cancelling the other. We see it in the New Testament itself. Priscilla and Aquila took Apollos aside together and explained the way of God to him more carefully (Acts 18:26), and Paul names Priscilla first in several greetings. Her husband was not threatened by it and she was not bossy about it. They were simply a team who worked at one table, and the church was better for it.
Submission in Scripture is always “in the Lord,” and that phrase has an edge. When the authorities in Jerusalem ordered the apostles to stop preaching, Peter answered that we ought to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). The same limit applies in a marriage. A wife is never asked to join in sin. Sapphira shows how seriously Scripture takes that, because she agreed to her husband’s lie and was held answerable for it (Acts 5:1-10). On the other side of the ledger, Abigail saw her husband Nabal’s folly threatening the whole household and acted quickly on her own to avert disaster, and David blessed her good sense (1 Samuel 25:32-35).
A caution belongs here, and it needs saying plainly. Nothing in Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage asks anyone to absorb cruelty, threats or violence in silence. The Lord, according to Psalm 11:5, hates the one who loves violence. If you are afraid in your own home, please talk to a pastor you trust, a counselor, or a local support service, and get to a safe place first. Questions about doctrine can wait. Safety cannot. Churches that quote Ephesians 5 to send a frightened person back into danger have used the verse for something it was never written to do.
Much of the friction in a marriage has less to do with theology than with pride. It shows up in small scenes. Two people argue over directions to a cousin’s house, or about how often to visit his mother, or about a purchase that was never discussed, and each is quietly waiting for the other to give in first. Philippians 2:3-8 speaks right into that kitchen. Do nothing from selfish ambition, count others better than yourselves, and look to the interests of others, since Christ, who was in the form of God, took the form of a servant.
James puts the principle in a single line: God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, so submit yourselves therefore to God (James 4:6-7). Peter echoes it when he tells everyone in the church to be subject one to another and clothed with humility (1 Peter 5:5). Notice that all of these appeal to both partners at once. Neither spouse is asked to wait for the other to go first. The real work of living out Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage is mostly the daily, unglamorous decision to lose a small argument gracefully, because the marriage matters more than the point.
One more picture helps here. Think of two people carrying a heavy table up a narrow staircase. Neither can move without the other, and the one walking backwards has to trust the one who can see the landing. Then at the turn they switch what they are watching and what they are trusting. Marriage tends to work like that. Sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow, and the skill lies in knowing which moment you are in and saying so kindly. Couples who have spent years with the Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage often say the same thing: the verses stopped feeling like rules once they started feeling like how two tired, loving people get a table up the stairs.
Say a husband is offered a job three states away. His wife has roots, a church she loves and aging parents nearby. Who decides? Nothing in the New Testament hands over a simple formula, and pretending otherwise does couples a disservice. What Scripture does supply is a set of habits. Amos 3:3 asks whether two can walk together unless they are agreed, which suggests that agreement is something a couple works toward, not something one person announces. Proverbs 15:22 says plans fail without counsel, and that counsel can come from a wise pastor or an older couple who have lived through the same decision.
Ephesians 5:21 sits over every such conversation. Both listen, both give way where they honestly can, and both stay willing to hear the Lord say something neither expected. Where a decision truly has to be made and the couple cannot agree, a husband who has taken Ephesians 5:25 to heart will lean toward the choice that costs him more. A wife who has taken Colossians 3:18 to heart will say her piece honestly and then trust him with the outcome. Few marriages need more rules. Most need slower talking and a shared willingness to pray before the argument starts.
Lord, we have read what your word says about the way a husband and a wife should treat each other, and we are not as good at it as we hoped. Some days I want my own way more than I want peace. Some days I use a verse like a stick when I should use it like a mirror. Forgive me for that. Teach me to listen the way Christ listened, and to give myself up the way he did, without keeping a ledger of who gave more.
Soften whatever is hard in me and in the person I married. Where we have been bitter, let us be kind. Where we have been afraid, let us be honest. Give us the humility of Philippians 2 and the patience of 1 Peter 3, and let Ephesians 5:33 become true in our house, so that love on one side and respect on the other are no longer a standard we struggle to meet but a habit we have grown into. We bring our marriage to you as it is, and ask you to finish what you have started. If we are stuck, send us the right counselor and the courage to go. Amen. May the verses in Bible Verses About Submission In Marriage be less like a debate for us and more like a way of living.
Other collections you may find useful: Bible Verses For Spiritual Healing, Bible Verses About God's Protection, Bible Verses For Anxiety, Bible Verses For Powerful Prayer, Bible Verses About Perseverance, Bible Verses About Financial Blessings, Bible Verses For Peace in the Storm, Bible Verses About Christian Living, Bible Verses About Overcoming Struggles, Bible Verses About Being Strong and Bible Verses For Staying Strong.
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Ephesians 5:21 sets the tone: submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Paul then asks wives to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord and husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.
This page brings together 7 King James Version references about submission In Marriage, drawn from 6 different books of the Bible.
The verses about submission In Marriage on this page are drawn from the New Testament, including passages such as Ephesians 5:21.
Ephesians 5:21 is one of the verses about submission In Marriage referenced in this collection, alongside Colossians 3:18.
Yes, the verses referenced on this page, including Ephesians 5:21, are quoted according to the King James Version (KJV), and are suitable for daily reading, memorization, or devotional use.
