Biblion Bible Commentary
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Wives, as to the Lord
Ephesians 5:22-24
22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. · WEB
Three verses, dependent grammatically on the mutual submission that precedes them, and the head is defined by a title that costs him everything.
The instruction has no verb of its own in the oldest copies. It hangs on the participle of the previous verse — subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ Ephesians 5:21 — and one translation here brackets the word it supplies. Whatever weight the instruction carries, it begins inside a sentence addressed to everyone.
The qualifier is as to the Lord, which sets a standard and therefore a limit: submission rendered as to Christ cannot be rendered in a way Christ forbids.
Verse 23 gives the reason, and the analogy is the one the passage turns on: the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the assembly. The letter has already used that headship language twice, and both times it was about giving rather than receiving — head over all things for the assembly Ephesians 1:22, and the head from whom the body is supplied and grows Ephesians 4:15–16.
And the clause attached to Christ's headship is the definition: being himself the savior of the body. The head is named by what he does for the body, not by what he is owed by it.
Verse 24 completes the comparison and adds in everything, which is the hardest word in the paragraph. What keeps it from being unlimited is the standard already set in verse 22 and the analogy itself: the assembly's subjection is to one who died for it.
The proportions are also the argument. Wives are given three verses; husbands are given nine, and what they are commanded is not authority but self-surrender Ephesians 5:25.
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