What is the wife supposed to do in the family? What is a wife? What is a wife supposed to do? Where you get your answer to that question is very important. You can get an answer from everybody around you in the world. Another place is from those people who go to church with you. Their answer should be different from what the world says. But there is still one more place you can go. That is to the Bible.

     The problem is: The Bible has it's view point on what a wife is supposed to be. And let's say it is right here (stage right) and it doesn't change. In time, however, society is going to change their viewpoint and move farther and farther away from the Bible until they are way over here (stage left). Do you know what the church does? It gets about half-way between. It says, "We're not as bad as that. But that is a long way to go. I mean, that's old fashioned. Surely God didn't really mean that. That is not how we live today."

     Well I'm not going to teach you what society thinks or what some Christian counselor thinks. I believe that the only answer to the question "What is a wife supposed to be?" is in the Bible. It was God's idea wasn't it? All the way back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2 there is a very interesting picture.

1. THE ROLE OF THE WIFE: HELPER
      Genesis 2:18-20 "And the Lord God said, "It's not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him." God created Adam first. But then said, "It is not good that Adam is alone." "So I will make for him a ..." God could have said, "a companion, someone who can keep him company so he's not alone." But he wasn't just lonely. He was alone in doing something that God wanted him to do. He needed a helper to accomplish something. That is the best translation of the Hebrew word (??). It means, a helper or an assistant, somebody who comes alongside and helps. What is the big idea of a wife? Answer, biblically -- helper. We call that a role. It's an assigned activity or an assigned office. 1 Corinthians 11:8 says "For man is not from woman but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman but woman for the man."

      What is she to help her husband do? Look at Genesis 1:28. "Then ... God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion ...over every living thing that moves on the earth." First, Adam needed a helper to have children. But the second part was to control and rule the earth; to do very great things that were worldwide. And for that God said, "Man, you need a helper to accomplish the goal that I have. I'm giving you woman."

      The idea that it's the wife's role to help her husband is 100% the will of God (pause). A good question for a wife to ask her husband each day is "What can I do to help you today?"

2. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WIFE: SUBMITTING
      Now that we know the role of the wife the next question is, "Well, what is she supposed to do? What is her responsibility?" There are four or five key passages in Scripture that answer this question. And there is one word, one verb, that appears in each passage.

      First, look at Colossians 3:18. It says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord." Paul is saying that as wives who have already given their lives to Christ it is proper that they now submit to their own husbands. This verse is not saying that all women are to submit to all men but a wife to her own husband.

      The word "submit" is a combination of two Greek words upo and tasso (upo meaning "under" and tassso "to arrange or organize"). Let me show you what tasso means (arrange some flowers). The word literally means that a wife is to arrange or bring every area of her life under her husband's authority.

      Second, look at Ephesians 5:22-24. "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord...in everything. " Let me illustrate this for you (call a man and woman to the front; have them face each other with the man up on a step; speaker, lean over man's right shoulder). God says to the woman, "I want you to submit to him as if you are submitting to me. So when you are submitting to him, you are submitting to me." Can a wife not submit to her husband and say, "I am submitting to God." No. So if a Christian woman is not submitting to her husband, that's a big sin because that's the #1 thing God tells a wife to do.