(upbeat music) - We have a lot of young listeners who are heading into marriage without a lot of examples in their lives to learn from, and they are asking some really good questions about the basics of marriage. One such listener is Cassie, who writes in to ask this, "Hello, Pastor John, I'm engaged and need practical advice.

"What does it mean and look like "for me to submit to my husband?" - God loves his people, God loves Cassie, and does not command us things that are bad for us. That's just so basic in this issue. God is a good father. He knows manhood, he knows womanhood, he knows them deeply, and he knows how deeply life can be beautiful together when these things are lived out according to his good purposes.

He has given us, he's given to you, Cassie, amazing gifts of sexuality, and amazing gifts of difference between manhood and womanhood that go deeper than sexual organs. We are male and female all the way down, and this is so great and so precious and so pervasive and so profound and so powerful that I think we would be foolish to experiment with it from generation to generation the way the world does.

Like, let's just make something new out of what women are. Let's just make something new out of what men are. We would be wise with only one life to live, to listen to our maker, our designer, our father, our friend, our redeemer, and bring our manhood and womanhood into line with what he has revealed.

So we only have time here for a few comments, but I've written a whole book on marriage that I would point you to, and I've written "What's the Difference of Manhood and Womanhood," and I've edited a big blue book on this issue, so if this feels inadequate, it's because it is inadequate.

Never, ever stop learning and growing. I'm not gonna do any exegesis, for example, any Bible interpretation in this. I'm just gonna apply things I've studied, but if you wanna study, I'm taking it almost all from Genesis 1 to 3, Ephesians 5, 21 to 33, 1 Peter 3, 1 to 7, 2 Timothy 2, 8 to 15, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 to 16, and the way the New Testament shows Christ and his church interacting.

So here are what? I think I wrote down three things, maybe. The first is this, about the meaning of wife's biblical submission. Namely, it is a happy response to a husband's biblical leadership, or as Ephesians 5 calls it, headship. And the point of starting here is that when men are doing what God calls men to do in a relationship and they're doing it rightly, biblically, most women love it and are happy to respond to it supportively.

So my main effort in ministry is to help your fiance. But he's not, you didn't ask about him, you ask about you, so I will try to say something directly to you, but really, this is so important. Be sure you marry a man who understands his role and has the maturity and the humility to grow in the rest of his life into this role, into this leadership and headship.

It will be very difficult for you to live out your life of godly submissiveness if he's not a godly leader. It's not impossible, and the Bible talks about that, but it will be harder, and you don't wanna choose that at the front end of your relationships. Here's the second thing.

I would say that submission means an intelligent, happy, wise support for the leadership of your husband, and that means a few key things from him. This simply means you love it when he leads, and by leading, here comes the qualification so you know what you're aiming at, by leading, I don't mean he makes unilateral decisions without talking to you and caring what you think.

That would contradict your role as a fellow heir of the grace of life. It would contradict his role as a fallible follower of Jesus. He's not Jesus. He's not your ultimate Lord. Jesus is, and he knows that, and he wants to honor that and encourage you in your personal submission to and following of Jesus, so he doesn't put himself in the place of your all-controlling Lord.

He knows Jesus alone holds that, so what I mean by his leadership is that he takes initiative. He says, "Let's," most often. That's sometimes a little thing I say to a couple. I say, "Who says, 'Let's,' most often in this relationship?" And if she's the one who has to constantly say, "Let's do this and let's do this and let's do this "and let's do this," and he's just a slough off, then that's a problem.

He should be taking initiative in family devotions. He should be taking initiative in the discipline of the children. He should be taking initiative in financial responsibility. He should be taking initiative in the moral standards of the home, in patterns of giving, in church life, and on and on and on.

When I say he takes initiative, I don't mean that he takes charge in any detailed way, as if he should run everything. Well, he shouldn't run everything. Here's an example. Let me try to make it concrete. If I say, "Take initiative in finances, man. "Don't drag your feet with regard to how the money is made, "how the money is saved, how the money is invested, "how the money is spent, how the money is given.

"Don't drag your feet here and expect your wife "to solve all these problems. "You are the one that should take initiative." And what I mean by initiative is, he says things like, "Can we talk about our finances "to make sure that we're living in our means "and honoring the Lord with our money?" And then he might say, "You know, "I'm not very good with these numbers, "and you were a math major, "so how about you keep the checkbook "and write the checks for the utilities and so on?" In other words, leadership doesn't mean doing it all.

Leadership means sitting down at the table, taking the initiative to put things in motion that solve problems. Women love to have their husbands take initiative to put things in motion to get problems solved. Of course, they want to be part of the solution and ought to be a part of the solution, but oh, how sad it is when they have to drag their husbands to the table to get something going like that.

In other words, a good wife, a submissive wife, may have more competency than her husband in lots of areas. She might. They both recognize that, and they set up the management of the home in various ways that show that. Leadership doesn't mean superior competencies. Good night. You know, I'm a pastor.

I was surrounded by people with superior competencies than I was, but I was leader. It was my job, maximize those competencies, figure out a way to solve the problems here and set the tone here and cast a vision here that releases those competencies. So submission wants a husband to lead.

She wants him to make things happen, put things in motion, take initiative. Here's the last thing. I would say that besides being an intelligent, happy, wise support for the leadership of the husband, that way, submission means that in principle, in the rare cases where the two of you, after arguing four days about what should be done, it's a draw and you haven't persuaded him and he hasn't persuaded you, the submissive wife says to the husband, "I'm going to trust you to do what's right here." And she may disagree with which way he's going, but she is going to, in those, and I think they're very rare, those situations are probably very rare, she's going to yield in principle to whatever he says.

And the reason I say in principle is because a good husband at that moment might use that privilege to go her way. He may love her, he may want to be gracious to her, he may not want to take that authority here and wield it in a direction she doesn't want to go because he loves her.

And so he may just say, "No, we'll do it your way." But she has sent the message loud and clear to him, "I will not put my foot down and say, "you must do it my way. "We're going to go your way "and I'm going to trust you to do what's right." And I would just end by qualifying that two ways.

One, a good husband will sometimes yield, even though she has given him the privilege, so she yields. And the second qualification is a wife never follows her husband into sin. So the headship of the husband is not ultimate headship, Christ is the ultimate headship, and she will always seek to do the right thing and not sin if her husband calls her to follow him into sin.

So here's my summary for Cassie. Number one, God knows what's best for us and his way of submission and headship is the path of joy. Number two, be sure to marry a man mature enough and humble enough to lead biblically. Number three, submission is mainly an intelligent, happy, wise support for that leadership.

Four, which means that submission is a responsiveness to his initiative taking, which is not comprehensive control, but involves you in the planning of the family life. Five, submission means that in a draw, you say, "I trust you to do what's best." And six, submission means ultimately submission to Jesus so that you never follow your husband into sin.

- Very helpful outline, thank you, Pastor John. And thank you, Cassie, for the great question. If you have a question, please send it in to us via email at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org, and you've probably learned by now, great questions are essential to what we do, so please keep sending them in to us.

In this episode, Pastor John mentioned three books. All of them can be downloaded and read for free from DesiringGod.org, and when we say that you can download and read them for free we always mean you can download the entire book for free, not just a chapter or an excerpt, but the whole thing.

Those titles are these, This Momentary Marriage, What's the Difference? and Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This Momentary Marriage, What's the Difference? and Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. You can download each of those three books for free from our site, DesiringGod.org. Click on the Books tab. Tomorrow is Friday, and we have a question about prayer inspired from our series we did with Tim Keller.

I'm your host Tony Renke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (silence) (silence) (silence)