Colossians 3:18 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as is becoming in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be bitter against them.
20 Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.
21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they be discouraged.
My original plan was to just lightly touch over this area, but after studying it out, I realized that we can't understand the true meaning of what is being said here unless we carefully examine each verse. So we're going to take a few weeks to look at God's plan for how a family should function. In an attempt to find the true meaning of these verses I looked up the original Greek words and then got the translations to the words.
Let's start with verse 18.
Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as is becoming in the Lord.
The Greek for the words subject or submit in this text is hupotasso. This is not the same word used for servants or children, which is hupakouo. Hupotasso comes from the root words hupo, meaning “under” and the root word tasso which has the following meanings:
1) to put in order, to station
a) to place in a certain order, to arrange, to assign a place, to appoint 2) to appoint mutually, i.e. agree upon.
It means to voluntarily put one's self under another person authority. By mutual agreement one person is placed as the head of the household and one is placed under that person. It doesn't work to have two people acting as head of the house. If both are acting as the head, there is a clash of wills. The home becomes a place of chaos when both husband and wife are doing their own thing, spending money without consulting each other, taking care of their property, or not taking care of it, in their own separate ways, and raising their children with their own separate ideas of how to raise them. There has to be a chain of command to keep things orderly. But notice, it's a chain of command appointed mutually.
The wife puts herself under her husband will in an orderly fashion. She isn't forced. She does it out of love for her husband and out of love for her Savior. This also means that She is wise and puts her husband's will after God's will. If there is a conflict between what her husband wants and what God has instructed in the Bible, the wife will choose God's will over her husband's. She won't yell, stamp her feet, pout or Bible thump her husband. That is not pleasing to God. She will humbly and gently state that she loves her husband, but she cannot go against the will of God. If she is submitting at all other times, when it is within God's will to submit to her husband, and remains true to God, when her husband is going against the will of God, she is being a faithful witness to her husband.
God comes first, and then because of her love for God, and her love for her husband, a wife will willingly submit to her husband.
For Further reading go to:
Husbands Cherish and Respect
Children Obey
Do Not Commit Adultery
Fidelity in Marriage