Should husbands submit to wives? There has been a lot of discussion in the news lately about the passage in Ephesians 5:22 instructing wives to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord. But no one ever seems to bring Ephesians 5:21 into the discussion which tells us to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

How do we reconcile the two? Doesn't Ephesians 5:21 apply to husbands and wives?
Husbands are not called to submit to their wives.  That doesn't mean he uses his authority over her in a domineering way.  In fact, Paul goes on to describe how a husband should love his wife, which would include how he uses his authority.  That is, he should love her like Christ loves the church.

Paul relates the submission of wives to the way the church submits to Christ:


  Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands (Eph 5:22-24).


Note the key word "For" at the beginning of verse 23.  Its a grounding word and indicates that what comes next is the purpose for what is before it.  That is, wives should submit to their husbands because the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.  If the husband is the head, the wife cannot also be the head.  Someone has to lead the marriage and God calls men especially to that role.

If you are going to say that husbands should submit to their wives, then using Paul's logic in the above verse (and therefore God's), you would also have to be saying that Christ should submit to the church.  Is anyone willing to make that argument?  Then you should be careful when arguing that husbands should submit to their wives.

The main problem with the mutual submission argument is an incorrect reading of the text, missing the intention of the original Greek word and context:


  So what reason can people give to argue for the "mutual submission"
  interpretation in Ephesians 5:21? Their argument is based on the
  expression, "one another" (the Greek pronoun allelous). Here
  interpreters say that the pronoun must mean "everyone to everyone"
  (that is, that it must be "exhaustively reciprocal," which means that
  it refers to something that every single person does to every single
  other person). To support this view, they quote a number of verses
  where allelous does take that sense: we are all to "love one another"
  (John 13:34) and "be servants of one another" (Gal. 5:13).
  
  But here is the crucial mistake: interpreters assume that because
  allelous means "everyone to everyone" in some verses, it must mean
  that in all verses. When they assume that, they simply have not done
  their homework-they have not checked out the way the word is used in
  many other contexts, where it doesn't mean "everyone to everyone," but
  "some to others."


That quote comes from Wayne Grudem: http://www.rockvalleybiblechurch.org/ResourceLibrary/MythOfMutualSubmission.htm  See that article for a more thorough explanation and discussion of this topic.

I understand men have often abused their authority and their wives under the pretext of the authority given them in this text. There is no excuse for their behavior and they will have to give an account for their actions.  But, nothing is made better by gutting the meaning of this text.  The meaning is clear, wives should submit to their husbands, and not the other way around.  If you don't like that, ok, let's discuss that.  But let's not try to make the text say what it doesn't say or prevent it from saying what it does say.