In the traditional vows found in most denominations or federations’ forms for marriage, there is a promise from the bride to obey her husband. For example, the form read in my former federation, the Canadian Reformed Churches, asks the bride, “Do you promise to love and obey him?”
In the federation I grew up in, the United Reformed Churches, there had been a slow change to a different form for the vows, where the bride promises to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ, and the groom promises to love his bride as Christ loves the church.
It’s an interesting movement. Truthfully neither form is definitively better than the other. There are potential uses for both forms. And both stand squarely against the egalitarian and anti-family nature of our age. In fact, unusual for our day and age, the newer form might take a harder line than the old form; the concrete example of the church’s submission to Christ replaces the reference to obedience. Arguably, the obedience due to Christ is far more full than the obedience due to a husband. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of each form? (I limit this discussion only to the vows. I also assume that both forms are faithful to the biblical understanding of marriage).
As I mentioned, the concrete example of Christ and his church is the most valuable part of the newer form. Today’s world seeks to undermine all authority through the examples of harmful authority in the past. There are plenty of examples of bad husbands who abused their authority over their wives. There continue to be many examples. The example of Christ’s authority and his use of authority is beyond reproach and silences all the accusers. Nobody can attack a man who reflects to use his authority as Christ uses his authority. Nobody can seek to attack a woman who seeks to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ.
There is the critical aspect of the “as” here, however. The woman’s submission is like the submission of the church to Christ. While the church’s due obedience to Christ is absolute, the woman’s submission to her husband is in all things lawful, according to the sphere of authority that belongs to a husband and the law of Christ. While Paul compares the church’s submission to Christ to slavery (Romans 6), with Christ as the perfect Lord and Master, who has bought the church, Paul never uses slave language of the huband-wife relationship.*
Her submission is more like that of a subject to a king, who is not a father over children or a master over slaves in the scriptures, but first among brothers. She retains certain rights and freedoms upon entering that relationship. Her obedience is not total as a child’s obedience is or a slave’s obedience (and even those are not in the proper sense total; they are still defined according to the law of God). Although similar to wife and husband, the church comes from a place of slavery to freedom, while the wife can come into the marriage as a free woman who is freely binding herself to a man.
When the scripture uses analogies, they are not necessarily meant to be precise. They are, instead, meant to highlight a certain aspect of one relationship as symbolic of certain aspects of another relationship. The purpose of bringing out the analogy to Christ and his church in the epistles of Paul is to demonstrate how the closeness of the relationship between man and wife resembles the relationship between Christ and his church. Just as the church is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh to Christ, so the wife is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh to the husband. This also creates an analogy of the purposes of the relationship. The goal of the husband is to adorn and beautify the bride. The wife’s purpose is to fill the husband’s house, honor him, and respect him before the world.
This is where the older form can be helpful because it helps define what submission to the husband means. It means to “love, honor, and obey.” Or as the Heidelberg Catechism in its exposition of the fifth commandment says, “due obedience.” There is a sort of obedience that children owe to parents according to their sphere of authority. There is a sort of obedience that subjects owe to kings. And there is a sort of obedience that wives owe to husbands. All this is according to the rule of Christ and, first of all in submission to him.
A final benefit of the newer form is its acknowledgment that God is the one who renews marriage. Christian couples affirm they look to God as the source of life and goodness in their marriage. They recognize that their marriage is an outpost of the kingdom of God. The nature of these vows is such that they reflect the reality that we have died in Christ to this world and live unto God. They are words that a non-Christian cannot honestly say, but only a Christian can say.
And that is also the downside of these new forms. The Pastor cannot use them for those who are outside of Christ. These newer forms do not explicitly recognize that marriage is an institution that was there before Christ. Because the unbeliever has not accepted what Christ has done for him, he cannot imitate it in his marriage. These new forms only allow pastors to perform marriage for Christians. Yet the unbelievers have legitimate marriages, and even if they are not Christians, they are still called for the sake of the common good to make promises with the order that God has established.
The newer form, then, can begin to teach Christians that marriage is merely ecclesiastical, and not civil, while it is both and for the good of both.
In conclusion, I don’t have a clear preference, but if I were to use a form for unbelievers, I would use the older form, and I would be open to both for the marriages of believers. Keeping both would emphasize the importance of imitating Christ in our marriages but also keep us careful to recognize that marriage is an institution of the old world that must be transformed in the new world that Christ is bringing into the world.
*the church is, of course, free, so even that analogy is not perfect. When Paul uses that analogy in Romans 6, he is careful to say that he speaks in human terms. Yes, she is bought and belongs to Christ, but her possession is unto true Christian freedom. Following Christ’s law is not done in a Spirit of slavery but out of a desire that one may not be enslaved once again.