Should a wife obey her husband? It sounds like a question from another century. And yet, here we are in 2026, and it’s more relevant than ever.
Years ago, as new seminary student and new wife, this passage was constantly in my thoughts. 20+ years later, I thought I’d laid this question to rest. It’s recently resurfaced in my thoughts, partly because of the headlines. Partly because I keep hearing it in conversations with women who are wrestling with what their faith asks of them—and what it doesn’t.
A new global study released this week stopped me cold. Researchers surveyed 23,000 people across 29 countries and found that 31 percent of Gen Z men believe a wife should always obey her husband. That’s double the rate of Baby Boomer men, who came in at 13 percent. Read that again. The youngest generation of adult men holds more rigid views on wifely obedience than the generation that grew up in the 1950s.
Something is shifting in our cultural conversation around gender—and it isn’t moving toward liberation. A separate study published just this week found that online abuse targeting women is rising, with over a quarter of women reporting harassment, a number that has increased from last year. The National Organization for Women connected that rise directly to a cultural climate where demeaning language toward women has become normalized.
I’m a woman with a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. I’ve spent over a decade in ministry. I’ve read the Greek. I’ve sat with the texts. And I want to tell you something that I believe with everything I have:
The Bible does not teach that a wife must obey her husband.
Not the way it’s being weaponized right now. Not even close.
The Text Everyone Quotes (and Almost Everyone Misreads)
When people cite the Bible as evidence that wives must obey, they’re almost always pointing to Ephesians 5. Specifically, verse 22: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”
But here’s what gets dropped almost every time that verse gets pulled out: the sentence immediately before it.
Verse 21. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
Mutual submission. Mutual. One to another.
In the original Greek, verse 22 doesn’t even have its own verb. The word “submit” is borrowed directly from verse 21. You literally cannot grammatically read verse 22 without verse 21. The submission Paul is describing is mutual, reciprocal, and rooted in reverence for Christ—not in a husband’s authority over his wife.
Paul then goes on to tell husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the church—meaning sacrificially, selflessly, unto death. That is not the instruction of a man describing a hierarchy where one person rules. That is the language of radical, equal, servant love.
This is not some progressive theological invention. This is what the text actually says.
What Abigail Knew That Her Husband Didn’t
I want to tell you about a woman named Abigail.
Her story is tucked into 1 Samuel 25, and it is one of the most remarkable accounts in all of Scripture. Abigail was married to a man named Nabal—whose name, not coincidentally, literally means fool in Hebrew. He was wealthy, powerful, and cruel. When David and his men, who had protected Nabal’s shepherds in the wilderness, sent word asking for provisions during a feast, Nabal insulted them and sent them away empty-handed.
David, furious, strapped on his sword. He was coming to kill Nabal and every man in his household.
And Abigail—without telling her husband—gathered food and wine and rode out to meet David.
She didn’t ask permission. She didn’t defer. She didn’t wait for Nabal to handle it. She acted on her own wisdom, her own moral clarity, and her own courage. She interceded. She spoke truth to a king. She appealed to David’s better nature and called him back from violence and vengeance.
She saved her entire household.
When she returned home and told Nabal what she had done, the text says his heart became like stone. He died ten days later. And David, recognizing her wisdom and courage, asked her to become his wife.
Abigail’s story is in our Bibles. We didn’t invent her. God preserved her story. And in that story, a woman defying her husband’s authority is not portrayed as rebellion—it is portrayed as wisdom. As righteousness. As salvation.
I’ve written before about the ways women in Scripture consistently show up as agents of God’s purposes when the men around them have failed. Abigail is among the clearest examples. She is not a cautionary tale about a wife who stepped out of line. She is a hero. Full stop.
When Theology Becomes Dangerous
I need to say something that feels important here, and I want to say it with care.
This isn’t just a theological debate happening in seminaries and church conferences. For many women, it has real, physical consequences.
CBE International—Christians for Biblical Equality—has spent decades documenting the connection between hierarchical submission theology and domestic abuse. Research cited by scholars in their network points to a troubling pattern: behind domestic abuse and violence lies the belief that men should be in charge and make all the important decisions and women should be submissive. And since an overwhelming 90 percent of abusers are men, complementarian emphasis on male leadership in the home and church can create environments that are dangerous for wives and children.
One of the most abused and distorted pieces of theology concerns the idea of submission. When a woman has been taught her whole life that refusing her husband is refusing God—that her obedience is her faithfulness—she loses the theological language to name what is being done to her. The doctrine doesn’t just enable abuse. For some women, it makes it invisible.
I am not saying that every man who holds complementarian theology is abusive. I am saying that bad theology creates cover for bad behavior. And we have to be honest about that, even when it’s uncomfortable.
I’ve written before about the warning signs that can be invisible inside Christian marriages. I’ve also examined the tradwife movement and the way it romanticizes a vision of wifely submission that has little to do with what Scripture actually describes. If any of that resonates with where you are right now, I hope you’ll read it.
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The Difference Between Obedience and Partnership
Here’s the question I keep returning to: What does it cost to frame marriage as hierarchy instead of partnership?
I know what it is to stay far too long in a situation that was slowly hollowing me out—because I believed God required my obedience to a husband who was not loving me sacrificially, not leading me toward Christ, not doing the mutually submissive work that Ephesians 5 actually describes. I have lived this. And I have walked alongside other women in ministry who have lived it too. If you’re wondering what that kind of marriage can actually look like from the inside, I’ve written about some of what I experienced.
The theology of wifely obedience doesn’t just affect women inside difficult marriages. It shapes the entire ecosystem. It tells young women that their wisdom, their discernment, their moral agency—matters less. It tells young men that authority is their birthright inside marriage rather than something earned through Christlike love. It produces the exact generational dynamic we’re watching play out in the data right now.
A marriage is not a hierarchy. It is a covenant. Two people choosing each other, over and over, in mutual love and mutual sacrifice and mutual submission. That’s not a diminished vision of marriage. That is the fullest, most biblical version of it.
If you want to go deeper into what Scripture actually teaches about submission in marriage—the Greek, the context, the full passage—I wrote about this in detail over here: What Does the Bible Say About Submission in Marriage?
So What Do We Do With Hard Passages?
I know some of you are sitting with this and thinking: But there are other passages. What about 1 Peter 3? What about 1 Corinthians 14?
Those are real questions and they deserve real answers, not dismissal. Context matters in every one of them—historical context, cultural context, the specific situations those letters were addressing. This is what it means to engage scripture with intellectual honesty rather than proof-texting. Our theology is shaped as much by the passages of Scripture we choose to ignore as those we choose to cite.
What I can tell you is this: when you read the whole arc of scripture—when you trace the way Jesus treated women in a culture that viewed them as property, when you see how Paul’s letters elevated women’s status in communities where they had none, when you watch Abigail and Deborah and Esther and the women at the tomb act with agency and courage and divine purpose—a theology of wifely obedience becomes very hard to sustain.
The Bible does not call a wife to be her husband’s subordinate. It calls both spouses into something harder and more beautiful: a love that looks like Christ’s love for the church. Self-giving. Mutual. Without coercion.
One More Thing
I don’t say any of this as someone who has figured out marriage. I say this as someone who has wrestled with these texts, sat in seminary classrooms, counseled women navigating impossible situations, and continued to believe that the Gospel is genuinely good news for women.
If the version of Christianity you’ve inherited teaches you that your obedience to a husband is your highest calling, I want to gently, lovingly suggest: that is not the whole story. That is not even the best reading of the story.
Abigail knew it. And she saved her whole household because she did.
If this post resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. And if you’re navigating the cost of living faithfully in spaces that haven’t always made room for you, my book Beyond Comfort was written for exactly that journey.