In an easily overlooked comment in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, God moved the apostle to point out one foundational aspect of Christian relations: Holy Spirit-filled Christians submit “to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:18–21).

These words appear prior to Paul’s discussion of marriage, parenting, and work relationships. It is clear from what follows that the general duty of submitting to one another does not swallow up the particular duties that are described at the end of Ephesians 5 and the beginning of Ephesians 6. For example, masters and parents do not abandon their positions of authority with servants and children because of this mutual submission.

And yet, this posture of submitting “to one another out of reverence for Christ” does inform and shape these relationships. Take Ephesians 6:1–4: since children are to honor their parents, parents are not to exasperate their children in the manner in which they call them to obedience. There is asymmetry between parent and child, and yet also reciprocity.

And if Scripture’s call to mutual submission in Christ applies to the relationships in Ephesians 6, it certainly applies to the marriage relationship, described in Ephesians 5:22–33. For this passage on marriage immediately follows Paul’s command to mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21.

Even in Marriage?

Here too, it must be stressed, that husbands and wives do not lose their particular marital callings on account of their general duty to submit to one another in Christ. Mutual submission does not put a wife in charge of her husband. He is still called to love her “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” and she is still summoned to submit to him as her head under Christ (Ephesians 5:22–27).

But mutual submission, as a distinctly Christian concept, will make our marriages look different than non-Christian ones, including those that retain some vestigial, if corrupted, understanding of household headship. Indeed, the idea of a wife’s submission might appear less odious to the Western world today if the dynamic of Spirit-driven, Christ-exalting mutual submission were more visible in our homes and churches.

So, what might mutual submission look like in a Christian marriage? In a nutshell, it is a marriage characterized by mutual respect, care, and service — a kind of quiet competition to put the other person first, a “please, let me get that for you” or “you first!” attitude. Each Christian couple can think and pray through the implications of mutual submission for themselves, in their own marriages, but allow me to prime the pump by offering a few examples of what my wife, Emily, and I are working toward now.

Submission Waits

Mutual respect ought to be seen in the way we speak and listen to each other. Three examples from our marriage come readily to mind.

First, in the spirit of submitting to each other, we try not to interrupt each other. (Husbands, we can lead here.) I don’t mean the happy “I’ll end your sentences, and you end mine” interruptions when telling old stories or jokes. I’m speaking about the “I’ve heard you long enough, and what we really need is my input” interruptions of an impatient and unloving spirit.

Second, when husband and wife both start a sentence at the same time, especially when there is weight, tension, or depth to the conversation, we could do more than offer to “let you go first” (which often only means that we’re waiting for our own turn to speak). Instead, we could indicate that we’d actually like to hear what our spouses have to say first, that we truly wish to consider their ideas.

Third, either because of our age or because of our electronic devices, Emily and I are at a point where we too often derail a train of thought and struggle to remember where we were headed. So, we are learning to say, “I had one more comment, but if you’re going to lose your thought, I’ll let you go first.”

We have a lot of growing to do here, especially me, but we are asking the Lord to help us submit to one another in our speech. Perhaps something like these examples could work for your marriage or for a married couple for whom you regularly pray.

Submission Confesses

We can show mutual care, too, as we emerge from arguments and feel the first uncomfortable tingle of conviction that we might not have been entirely in the right. We have a golden opportunity to go to our spouses (even when we still think we are largely in the right) and say, “I’m sorry for the tone that I used with you. I disregarded how it would make you feel. Please help me to see where I’ve done wrong, and if I don’t agree right away, I won’t push back. I’ll think and pray about it, and then I’ll get back to you.” And if you’re really on a roll, “God put us together for a reason, and I don’t want to lose an opportunity to grow.”

Of course, apologies are rarely easy. In my experience, before, during, and after this conversation I need to pray words like “Lord, please humble me,” “Help me to mean more deeply what I am saying,” and “Open my eyes to see anything, everything, for which I need to repent.”

Submission Serves

Mutual submission also can be developed in the ways we serve each other. In many homes, a happy division of labor already catches the spirit of mutual submission, so I don’t wish for these suggestions especially to be read as prescriptions.

But it might help some marriages if men were quicker to get out of bed and turn off that last light, to attend to that unknown sound in the house, to get that glass of water for the bedside. It might help if we both chipped in to tidy, to vacuum, to set the table. It might help if one spouse said, “Ladies, the guys desperately want to do the dishes tonight,” or, “Guys, go sit down. We’ve got the kitchen.” It might help if both sought space for the other to attend to personal devotions, to go to a Bible study, to hang out with friends, to be alone, to exercise, to rest.

At a basic level, this submission to one another will look at the other’s biblical duties not to generously remind our spouses of what to do, or to tell them in glorious detail how to do it, but to help make our spouses’ tasks easier, even sweeter. If he is to love you as Christ loves his church, how can you act and speak so as to make that duty a joy for him? If she is to submit to you as to Christ, how can you model the ways Christ eases your own burdens in serving him (Matthew 11:28–30)? Can you pull with her on her yoke? Can you lift with her the heaviest burdens?

And, in thinking about marriage, I’d be remiss not to mention that this dynamic applies to the bedroom, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 7. We belong to the other, and therefore we consider first the other’s requests, needs, and desires in intimacy.

All for His Sake

Above all, we remember that submission to one another is for the sake of Christ (Ephesians 5:21). If our husband or wife does not respond in kind, we carry on — we did not do this merely for our spouse or for ourselves. No, we have done it for Christ.

We submit, no matter the expected or seen results, regardless of how our spouse responds, so that Christ will be honored, so that he will be pleased. We submit so that our gracious Master in heaven will say to us one day, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23), even if no one on earth notices right now. And we do it because we know that repenting from our previous patterns of selfishness leads Christ’s angels to rejoice, Christ’s saints to smile, and sinners who are on their way to Christ to wonder.

In the economy of grace, undeserved and unrequited love is the currency that purchased our own salvation. And if Christ has shared with us the treasures of his mercy, we will want to spend this same currency on our spouse as well.

I’m tempted to say that every Christian pastor needs to read Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor. We need to read it more than other pastoral manuals. And we need to read it more than once. After all, for what other book can it be said that merely reading the table of contents could change your life?

Already in his detailed summary of the book, Baxter begins his powerful and practical case for pastoring the flock of God in person. Puritans had finally won their long fight for freedom to preach. In the glow of this victory, Baxter realized that the task of visiting and instructing individuals and families had become so widely neglected that the neglect was no longer considered a problem.

Readers will quickly see how this is relevant for us today: visiting with God’s people, teaching them one on one, being in their homes — or as Baxter sometimes did, asking them to come and meet with him — this kind of personal pastoral work is in many places a lost art. And yet it is often the best way, sometimes the only way, of helping those who do not even know how much they need help.

Visiting Pastor

It means something that Baxter, famous for plugging visitation, was also famous for preaching. He lived as one who had heaven to win or lose just as much as those around him, and that made him relatable. And he preached, he said, as a dying man to dying men, and that made him earnest. His local church was sometimes full beyond its capacity, and he was constantly sought as a preacher at venues around England. He was big deal, a minor celebrity before there were major celebrities, a conference speaker if they had done that sort of thing in those days.

And yet, although he had to preach constantly, he spent two full days per week — or at minimum two half-days — visiting with individuals and families in his town. When he was worried that he might not have enough time to visit his large flock, he cut his own wages so that he could hire an assistant pastor — not so that the other man could to do the visiting on behalf of the “senior pastor,” but so that Baxter himself could better reach the many souls under his charge.

We learn these details from his own massive autobiography and from The Reformed Pastor itself. As the story goes, Baxter had become convinced that he needed to visit with people in his church and neighborhood, and that he needed to try to teach adults and children ignorant of the Christian faith. Once he decided that this was his own duty as a pastor, he figured that it would be just as well if all the ministers in his region did the same, so he gathered them together and persuaded them to join him! (I like this kind of ambition.)

Baxter’s fellow ministers in return had two sensible concerns — the kinds of questions that someone reading Baxter’s book might have too. First, how might people respond to this personal pastoral care? Second, how should it be done?

Baxter addressed the first problem by writing a letter to members of churches that other ministers could themselves use — a piece persuading them of the need for and blessing of shepherds coming among the sheep, “for we were afraid lest they would not have submitted to it.”1 The Reformed Pastor offers counsel to pastors on how to help church members see the blessing of pastoral care. Baxter then planned to preach a practical sermon to area pastors, encouraging them in the work and showing them how it could be done. When he fell ill and could not preach, he simply expanded the planned sermon into a large book — the sort of thing he seemed to do all the time.

Baxter’s Approach

The Reformed Pastor has a series of chapters or parts. It begins with the pastor’s oversight of himself, for Baxter wants the pastor to practice what he preaches. The next part of the book turns to the oversight of the church, and why we must chase after the unconverted, help those who are questioning the faith, build up the saints, and visit families, the sick, and the wandering. The spirit in which this is to be done is considered at length, and powerful motives for investing in the flock are carefully catalogued in yet another section of the book.

Other parts follow, and I suppose that this is as good a place as any to acknowledge that, in addition to sporting a long title (Gildas Silvianus; The Reformed Pastor. Shewing the nature of the pastoral work; especially in private instruction and catechizing), this is also a long book. I recommend reading it in installments. Readers should not race to get knowledge about pastoral care, but slowly reflect on Baxter’s counsel, seeking wisdom as to how to apply it in our own situation (Should we add phone calls to in-person visits? Should we have Zoom calls for those living far from the church?). The book is also best read in installments because the chapters read more like essays on overlapping themes. Baxter is much more concerned about being thorough than being concise — for he returns more than once to motives for pastoral care, objections to pastoral care, and practical how-to tips for visitation.

The tips that Baxter offers are gold nuggets with which to stuff your pockets on your next visit. How can you make your questions maximally friendly? Unintimidating? Clear? Baxter will tell you how, supplying sample dialogues and detailed suggestions.

“For our own good, we sometimes must do the work that only God can see.”

Of course, it is not merely our words that will prove useful. Baxter understood that when we use our time like this, when we invest in people’s lives, we are at some level purchasing their affection with what is very dear to us — our time and convenience. Baxter’s first biographer (other than himself!) wrote that “his unwearied industry to do good to his flock, was answer’d by correspondent love and thankfulness.”2 Nor is the good intended in visiting the flock the only good reaped, for this kind of ministry can also protect our hearts: Baxter comments, perceptively, that the “pulpit is the hypocritical minister’s stage,” as is the press.3 For our own good, we sometimes must do the work that only God can see.

For Current and Future Pastors

I first read Baxter’s book for pastors 25 years ago, and have regularly reread sections ever since. I first started having pastoral interns in 2006, and every intern was required to read part or even much of the book. In later years, I’ve been serving as a seminary professor, and every class on pastoral theology has to read Chrysostom and Gregory the Great. They have to study the works of the Protestant Reformers on pastoral ministry and the best of nineteenth-century manuals on pastoral care. But above all, they must read Baxter.

Baxter always had an eye out for young men being called into pastoral work. He wrote letters matching up godly teachers with godly students, and he kept an eye on the progress of those students over time.4 I find him ideal reading for pastors in the making. But Baxter wrote his book for working pastors especially — pastors who are wondering how to reach neighbors who don’t know Christ, pastors who find that people are going out the back door as fast as they are coming in the front, pastors who discover that the people who do stay don’t seem to be learning.

Non-pastors can benefit from the work too: the woman who would later become my wife read this book as a new Christian, and I can see from her marginal notes that she learned from this book how better to pray for pastors. Indeed, a slip of paper left inside these pages, one that escaped my notice until now, reveals that it was while reading of Baxter’s care for his congregation that Emily understood that she needed to become more involved in a local church.

This is wonderful providence, because the book is not really intended for new Christians. Indeed, the original title signifies that this was intended to be a tough read. Gildas Silvianus is a reference to two church fathers whom Baxter admired for their outspoken style. He respected one for his courage in exposing the faults of the British, and the other for his rebukes of the Romans.5 Baxter considered their work and his work as examples of plain speaking. Truth be told, sections also serve as examples of his well-known legalistic streak. Certainly, along with his invaluable counsel, he could have offered some more encouragement to ministers seeing their pastoral failings and needing grace and forgiveness.

What Edition?

What is the best version of the work to read? The 1656 edition, expanded in 1657, was abridged in 1829 and later reprinted by the Banner of Truth. The abridgement is sensible, although something is lost in the flattening of Baxter’s style (I think we lose something in changing Baxter’s description of pastoral care from “so happy a work” to “so great a work”!).6

“Read the book carefully, consider Baxter’s counsel prayerfully, and begin the work joyfully.”

A more recent abridgement, at once more sympathetic and more severe, is found in the recent edition produced by Crossway under the expert editorship of Tim Cooper. As I wrote in the foreword to that book, “In assigning sections of Baxter’s Reformed Pastor I always felt like I was coming to the text with a cleaver, butchering the book by assigning chunks here and there.” By contrast, “Dr. Cooper has approached his task with a surgeon’s knife, giving the book the slimmer look that most bodies don’t need but which some books do. In this case, when sewn back together, the effect is impressive.”7

Whatever the edition, the main thing is to read the book carefully, consider Baxter’s counsel prayerfully, and begin the work joyfully, for the pastor who does this humble work is the man the King delights to honor.