The Marriage Covenant

Dominion, Covenant, Love, and Patience with Each Other

What Does “Submission” Mean?

This article was published on October 8th, 2025, and linked in another recent article about the dangers of inverted order in marriage. I present it one more time, with a few updates, as the clearest statement of my faith in the biblical doctrine of marriage, aware that in our fast times of hasty words, it is easy to read into many things.

Because our age rewards haste and projection, it’s easy for the meaning of words like submission to be lost. I offer this reflection as a positive statement of faith. Scrollers are often quick to speak, unable to listen, and glad to measure with a sliding ruler. My purpose is ever to stand firm in the storm, trusting in the grace of our risen Lord, Jesus Christ, and trusting that the “Word of the LORD are pure words, Like silver tried in a furnace of earth, Purified seven times.”

May the peace of Christ guard our hearts and minds, and may all our homes be filled with fathers and mothers whose hearts are turned to their children, according to our Baptismal promises, which cannot fail.

Torah is Logos

The Law is not a ledger but a living rhythm, a covenantal pattern woven into creation itself. When Moses said, “You shall not cause the land to sin,” he did not legislate a petty statute; he gave voice to the truth that sin is cyclical dissonance in the created order. The land, the marriage, the body, and the soul all move by the same covenantal law of fidelity and fruitfulness.

Legalism mistakes the map for the terrain. It treats every precept as a negotiable contract—tit-for-tat, broken and remade by technicalities. But biblical law never functioned this way. The Torah’s heart is ontology, not bureaucracy:

Law exists because covenant exists, and covenant exists because God Himself is faithful.

Thus every “commandment” is a spoke on the wheel of faithfulness. When the prophets cried that adultery defiles the land or that unjust blood pollutes it, they spoke as guardians of harmony, not as clerks of punishment. They saw that when covenant fidelity is broken, the wound reverberates through soil and soul alike—the land bears guilt because creation itself is moral.

To reject legalism, then, is not to cast off the Law, but to remember its first form: Genesis 2, the man and his wife, naked and unashamed, bound by consent and covenant before their Maker. From that union flows every other law—each statute a restatement of the same truth: that faithfulness preserves life, and treachery consumes it.

Therefore, when Christ said that not one jot or tittle shall pass away, He confirmed what Moses taught—that the Law, rightly read, is wisdom embodied. Its meaning was never annulled, only fulfilled. The letter without the spirit kills; but the Spirit without the letter is shapeless.

Law and mercy are one pulse.

So the one who would walk in covenant must learn this balance:

• Reject the counting of sins as coin.

• Uphold the rhythm of fidelity as breath.

• Understand that breaking the Law is not technical but relational—it disrupts the cycle of faithfulness by which heaven and earth cohere.

The Law may be misunderstood and still well followed. Thus we do not serve the Law to be justified. We uphold it because it is just. Not to earn favor, but to walk in harmony with the faithful God whose covenant holds the stars. Every ordinance remains, because every ordinance is truth refracted through circumstance.

The Origin of Order

Before there was sin, there was order. Before there was commandment, there was headship.

“Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground… and He took one of his ribs and built the woman.” — Genesis 2:7, 22

Dominion, biblically speaking, is reign. It is right rule for the sake of life.

Man was formed first and entrusted with dominion (Hebrew, radah) over the garden — to serve (avad) and to guard (shamar). The woman was built from him and for him, not as lesser clay but as living complement, drawn from his side that she might walk beside him.

Her origin reveals equality of essence, but distinction of role. The divine chain of command was clear from the beginning:

God → Man → Woman → Creation.

This order is not a ladder of worth but a flow of trust. To invert this order is to dissolve the cosmos. To honor it is to dwell in peace.

Covenant as Dominion

When the two became one flesh, their unity was not a contract of equals, but an ordered harmony—a living reflection of heaven’s own hierarchy, where equality of being coexists with distinction of authority.

“Let them have dominion (“right rule for the sake of life.”)” — Genesis 1:26 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife…” — Genesis 2:24

Right rule for the sake of life is not tyranny. It is upright reign. It is stewardship, not exploitation. It is loving agency on behalf of those submitted to care by protection.

This is the definition of the Kingdom of God. This is the work of Christ, our King.

The word’s Latin seed, dominus (lord, master), and domus (house), tell the same story: there can be no n-ation without domus-ation, not abuse but “governance,” “reign,” “agency,” “rule,” exercised as God designed it.

There can be no house without a head; no peace without a word that is believed.

Thus, the man’s headship in marriage is, then, not an afterthought of patriarchy but the very architecture of creation rooted and redeemed in the resurrection of Christ, the ever righteous Husband and King to us all. His Love is covenantal, not coercive; lawful, not legalistic; disciplinary, not despotic.

Thus, when the Old Testament says, “He shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights” Exodus 21:10 — and “Any vow of a woman… her husband may establish, or her husband may make void.” Numbers 30:13 — these are not permissions of cruelty, but assignments of wisdom for an age of desert dwelling — covenantal lordship assumed to put all mankind under the Higher Lord, where command and care are one act.

The goal of a Christian is not to apply these words “to the letter,” but to draw for the Spirit of the matter into the fullness of beautiful texts like Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3.

The Image of Yahweh and His Bride

Throughout Scripture, God identifies Himself as Husband, never as wife. Israel is the bride, the responder, the one who reflects His fidelity.

“For your Maker is your Husband.” — Isaiah 54:5

“I was a husband to them.” — Jeremiah 31:32

“I will betroth you to Me forever.” — Hosea 2:19–20

Here lies the holy asymmetry:

• Yahweh initiates, Israel answers;

• Yahweh calls, Israel follows;

• Yahweh protects, Israel flourishes.

This pattern is the soul of marriage. To erase headship and reject the beauty of “submission” is to erase the mirror of the covenant itself. For the man stands as dominus of the home just as the Lord hangs as Dominus of the world on the cross. The wife, in her faithfulness, crowns this dominion as cherished glory, finding in herself the treasure that he guards.

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.” — Proverbs 12:4

In this, obedience is not humiliation; it is high exaltation in order. Submission gives shape to love received, just as creation gives body to the voice of God, “Let there be light!”

Law and Natural Order

The statutes of Torah assume this hierarchy because it is ontological. When a man and a woman join, they form the smallest unit of the Kingdom — a covenantal nation in seed form. The Law therefore governs their fidelity, inheritance, and purity not as ritual minutiae but as safeguards of divine architecture.

“Do not cause the land to sin.” — Deuteronomy 24:4

Sin here means disruption of covenantal order. When the cycle of dominion, obedience, and faithfulness is broken, the land itself is wounded. To “bring sin upon the land” is to normalize rebellion—turning covenant breach into custom. But to keep the order rightly is to sanctify the soil; to make the house and field alike reflect heaven’s peace.

The Positive Natural Law of Marriage

Marriage is the divinely witnessed covenant of dominion between one man and one woman, whereby the man bears headship as priest, protector, and lawgiver, and the woman answers as helper, glory, and crown.

Together they image the order of creation—Authority without tyranny, Submission without servility, Unity without confusion. Their union is sealed in flesh, ordered toward fruitfulness, and bound by fidelity that mirrors the steadfast love (Hebrew, ḥesed) of God.

Fulfillment, Not Abrogation

When Christ said, “Not one jot or tittle shall pass from the Law until all is fulfilled” (Matt 5:18), He was not discarding Torah’s structure but perfecting its heart. The Law stands not as chain but as chord—its melody heard fully only when played by love.

“The head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.” — 1 Corinthians 11:3

Thus the same chain of command that formed Eden governs the Church. Christ fulfills Adam; the Church fulfills Eve. Headship is not abolished in grace; it is transfigured into sacrificial rule.

Final Salvo: Against Legalism, For Law

Marriage is not a tit-for-tat contract but a covenantal rhythm. Its wisdom is not in bureaucracy but in being itself. Every statute breathes from the same heart: fidelity, fruitfulness, and faith.

To follow Torah legalistically is to miss its melody; to reject it is to despise its Composer. Therefore we reject both antinomianism and scholastic tyranny. We uphold the Law because it is the architecture of peace. We keep its order not to earn favor, but to live in harmony with the faithful God whose dominion is love.

Marriage is the covenant of dominion: Instituted by God, governed by hierarchy, sanctified by faithfulness, fruitful by design, and prophetic of Christ and His Bride.

The man rules in service as dominus; the woman answers in trust as glory; together their house becomes a living tabernacle of honor in the Kingdom, under the Headship of the Husband who cannot be shaken.