Instead, Paul emphasizes that wives should be subject as fitting in the Lord (not because they are inferior) and that husbands should love their wives and not treat them harshly. “Instead of grounding the instruction to the wife in her husband’s authority, power, leadership or status in a hierarchy,” McKnight writes, “the grounding is radically otherwise: it is grounded in the Lord’s way of life.”26 Jesus, not the Roman paterfamilias, is in charge of the Christian household.
