Walking in Wisdom … With Your Spouse
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Note: This sermon was preached at First Free in Wichita in 2013.
Introduction: It is my privilege and responsibility to teach this morning from Ephesians 5–on a section entitled in most versions, “Wives and Husbands.” I have a personal appeal, that the husbands would focus on what Paul is saying to them, and the wives would focus on what is addressed to them. That is the only way any of us are going to really profit from our time together this morning.
I know, of course, that there are unmarried people here, too, including some who may never marry. Please don’t think this passage is irrelevant to you because all of us can impact the marriages around us through encouragement, counsel, perhaps even occasional rebuke. We all need to know what God has to say on this important topic.
Please turn in your bible to our Scripture text, Ephesians 5:21-33.
… submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Let me stop there for a moment. We don’t normally begin a Scripture reading with a dangling participle. I will explain that in a few moments, but let’s go on).
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Now it’s always important to pay attention to the structure of a passage, but especially in this case.
Structure of the passage
I noted for you that our reading began with a dangling participle, but it really isn’t dangling. If we examine the previous paragraph, it becomes quite clear, as Josh noted last week, that this participle parallels a number of others, all introduced by the command to be filled with the Holy Spirit in verse 18.
Submission is a result of the filling of the Spirit. (18-21) “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
Paul here enumerates five ways we demonstrate the filling of the Spirit, or perhaps better, five results of being filled with the Spirit:
(1) “addressing one another”
(2)” singing”
(3) “making melody”
(4) “giving thanks”
(5) “submitting”
This will become crucial as we are confronted with how difficult the requirements on husbands and wives really are. They are, in fact, impossible without the control of the Holy Spirit.
Submission is a principle all Christians should practice. (21) “Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The verb “to submit” means literally “to arrange under.” It has to do with recognizing the authority of someone in a higher position, as soldiers would acknowledge an officer of superior rank. Since all of us are in a position of authority over someone, and all of us are under the authority of others, I think Paul’s point is simply that all of us should be submissive to proper authority wherever we find it.
However, some interpreters (in fact, a whole segment of evangelicalism known as egalitarians or equalitarians) have turned verse 21 into something far different. They say it teaches mutual submission of all Christians to all other Christians. That would probably not be a problem if all they meant is that we should treat one another with respect. But, in fact, they take mutual submission as the controlling principle of our passage and use it to undermine and negate the specific requirement for wives to be submissive to their husbands.
Here is their argument. Verse 21 teaches us to be submissive to one another. Therefore, a husband must be submissive to his wife just as the wife must be submissive to her husband. Therefore, nothing in the passage can allow distinctions between husbands and wives regarding submission. Voila! They have removed the burdensome and offensive notion that wives are in any way uniquely subject to their husbands. One popular egalitarian scholar writes that “this reciprocity of relationships renders hierarchical distinctions irrelevant within the Christian communities of church and family.”[i] If he is correct, then there is no reason a woman cannot be the head of her family or the lead pastor of her church.
But is that being honest with the text? After all, “submitting to one another” is mentioned only once, while the need for wives to submit to their husbands is mentioned at least three times and the husband is never told to submit to his wife.
I think it is important to recognize that there is no finite verb in verse 22 in the original Greek. The term “submit” that you see there in your English Bible (“Wives, submit….”) must be supplied from verse 21, for the original reads simply, “Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to your husbands.” I think this lends support to the notion that verse 21 is a general principle that Christians should submit to proper authority, and then we are informed that…
Submission is lived out in the Christian household in three primary relationships:
Wives to husbands (5:22-33)
Children to parents (6:1-4)
Slaves to masters (6:5-9)
It is interesting to me that egalitarians aren’t quite as eager to apply their logic of mutual submission to the relationships of chapter 6 as they are to the relationship of husband and wife. If verse 21 is requiring mutual submission of all Christians to all other Christians, then it would seem to follow that not only are husbands to be submissive to their wives, but parents also need to obey their children, and masters need to obey their slaves, for these three paragraphs are clearly parallel. But that doesn’t make much sense, does it? And even egalitarians do not push it that far.
With that evaluation of the structure, we turn our attention now to the instruction the Apostle has for the Christian wife.
A wife should submit to her own husband. (22-24)
Paul’s teaching on submission is routinely viewed in the secular culture and by liberal biblical scholars as chauvinistic, if not downright misogynistic (woman-hating). I doubt if there is anything I can say that would change their minds, but I would hope that if some of you have been influenced by this view, I will be able to explain submission in such a way that you can see it as biblical, sensible, and even beneficial.
What submission doesn’t mean. First, it doesn’t imply inferiority. The mere fact that the same word “submit” is used of Christ’s submission to the authority of the Father (1 Cor. 15:28) shows that it can denote a functional subordination without implying inferiority.[ii] Nothing Paul says here should be taken in such a way as to imply that wives have less honor or value than their husbands. In fact, most of the guys I know, including myself, definitely married up.
I suggest to you that there is an overriding principle on unity and equality in the church, offered in Galatians 3, that must inform our interpretation of every other passage on relationships, including this one: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This verse teaches that all believers are equal in worth and value, equal in spiritual status, and equal in destiny. But, of course, it cannot mean we are equal in every respect, for example in strength, ability, giftedness, position, or authority, for there is also a strong emphasis by the same Apostle on diversity in the Body of Christ. God has gifted all of us differently and He has placed each of us in the Body of Christ just as He desired (1 Cor. 12).
Second, submission does not mean that all women are to be submissive to all men. This passage doesn’t speak to women in the military or in corporations or in government. I find no glass ceilings in the Scripture: Deborah was a general, judge, leader, and prophet; Esther and the Queen of Sheba were rulers; and Lydia was a successful businesswoman—all without criticism from the biblical author.
Submission also doesn’t mean that husbands have all the power in the home. In fact, the NT doesn’t recognize power relationships. It recognizes leadership and authority, but not power. Submission doesn’t mean the husband needs to oversee everything or make all the decisions. In a wise, godly marriage the responsibilities of the home will be divided up according to ability. A couple of weeks ago we were invited to a playoff game between the Cardinals and the Dodgers by some dear friends in St. Louis. Donnie does virtually all the cooking in that family, while JoAnn handles all the finances. If Jan and I tried that, we’d surely be starving and probably be in the poor house, because that’s not the way we are wired. But it works for them.
Nor does submission mean that wives are required to put up with abusive behavior. Paul never hints that physical or verbal abuse is justified in a marriage relationship (or any other relationship, for that matter), and women who are victims of such behavior should seek help from a counselor, from the church, or in extreme circumstances, from the legal authorities.
What submission does mean practically. I suggest to you that it means God has sovereignly appointed the husband as the CEO of the family. Let me explain my analogy. In a corporation the CEO, the Chief Executive Officer, is the one who is ultimately responsible for the welfare and profitability of the company. He certainly doesn’t do all the work himself, nor does he make all the decisions. He probably isn’t the smartest guy in the company, nor even the most valuable. But he wisely gathers around himself experts in HR, finance, production, sales, and marketing, and he gives them the responsibility and freedom to do what they do best. By the way, there are never two CEO’s in the same company. The buck must stop somewhere.
Likewise in the home one person must be ultimately responsible, and God has decided who it should be. We wouldn’t have done it that way, would we? We all know some women who are far more gifted as leaders and administrators than their husbands, so why shouldn’t they be the CEO of their family? Because God said so! Of course, God is never irrational or capricious about his rules and principles, so we can trust that He had His reasons. For one thing, I suspect He didn’t want husbands and wives fighting it out as to who would be in charge, so to avoid bloodshed, He made the decision Himself. But in addition, God is the One who wired us as men and women in the first place, and I assume there is something about our basic wiring (and the wiring of children) that means the family functions best when the husband is the CEO.
Having discussed submission in the abstract, let’s give attention to Paul’s specific rationale for it. I don’t know if you noticed it when we read our Scripture text, but the little word “as” is found seven times in these 12 verses. “As” generally introduces a simile, a word picture. A simile takes an important but difficult truth and paints a picture of it in terms that are more easily understood.
Similes (pictures) of submission. There are three uses of the word “as” in these instruction to wives, one each in verse 22, 23, and 24. First, wives are to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord.” (Verse 22) Now this could mean one of two things. It could mean that they are to submit to their husbands in the same way they submit to Christ, or it could speak of the motive of their submission; that is, they are to do it because they are Jesus followers. I think it is probably the latter. Wives submit to their husbands, not because the husbands deserve it or because tradition requires it, but because Christ asks them to.
The second comparison explains that submission is based on headship (remember the CEO metaphor?): “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” What does it mean for the wife to recognize her husband as her head and the head of her home? Well, in what way is Christ the head of the church? He is its leader, the one in ultimate authority. But He is not a dictator, or an abusive boss, or a tyrant. Christ leads the Church as her savior, shepherd, counselor, friend. Granted, not every husband exercises his headship this way, but he should. We’ll address the situation where he doesn’t later in this message.
The third comparison comes in the next verse: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” Again, Paul is thinking about how the Church should submit to Christ, not how she, in fact, does. The Church is full of fallen, broken individuals, and therefore, it is not all it should be. But when functioning as designed, it submits to Christ, recognizing His authority and refusing to act independently in its own interest rather than His.
The little phrase, “in everything” (as in “wives should submit in everything to their husbands”) may cause some angst, but the point is not that every detail of life is to be scrutinized and controlled by the husband, certainly not that his every whim must be met, but rather that there are no spheres of life in which the wife should view herself as autonomous and independent.
These are profound spiritual pictures of what submission means, a standard so high that it would be impossible to attain without the filling of the Spirit. But we are commanded to be filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit in verse 18. With His help, a Christian wife can fulfill this responsibility if she is willing.
Now most of the rest of our passage is addressed to husbands. This section is three times as long, perhaps because husbands are three times as clueless. Or perhaps the point is that their responsibility is even greater.
A husband should love his own wife. (25-32)
This command is repeated three times for emphasis–in vs. 25, 28, and 33. I find it interesting that even though Paul commands wives to be submissive to their husbands, he never exhorts husbands to rule over their wives. They are never told, “Exercise your headship!” Instead, they are urged repeatedly to love their wives.
Again, we are offered two similes, pictures to explain what this love is all about. The first comparison tells us that the husband should love his wife…
… as Christ loved the church. OK, how did Christ love the church? Three aspects of Christ’s love for the Church are revealed here, all of which I believe we men need to imitate in our relationship with our wife.
1. Christ loved the church with agape love. The Apostle Paul had three other words available to him which describe aspects of love: emotional love, sensual love, and deep friendship. But he ignored those words and chose the word agape. This kind of love is best defined as “love that acts for the best good and promotes the well-being of the other person, demanding nothing in return.” Agape is a love that walks the walk, not just talks the talk. That’s how Jesus loved us. He didn’t just talk about His love, He acted upon it–becoming one of us, dying for us, forgiving us, interceding for us–and He did so while we were sinners and His enemies!
Agape love is a love that one chooses, not just falls into. It is a love of the will, not the emotions. Emotions are simply not subject to commands. The Apostle is not telling husbands to tingle up and down their spines when they see their wives. However, there’s an interesting phenomenon which I have noticed countless times in the marriage relationship. When a husband fulfills the command to love his wife with agape love, it almost invariably rekindles greater emotional love between them.
Agape love is also unselfish, demanding nothing in return. Jesus never loved the Church for what He could get out of her; He always sought only her best good. But think with me, men, about some of the ways we exhibit selfishness in our marriages: taking the many contributions of our wife to the home for granted; making decisions without consulting her or, worse yet, against her desires; refusing to open up about what is going on in our jobs or in our minds; paying more attention to the news or sports than we do to her; expecting physical affection without first connecting with her emotionally. And the list could go on.
2. He loved her with a sacrificial love. (25) It says in verse 25 that Christ “gave himself up for the Church.” The entire Incarnation was a sacrifice, but without a doubt the greatest way in which Christ demonstrated His love for the Church was through His sacrifice on the Cross. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Christ’s sacrifice for the Church serves as an example for husbands–not that we can make the same quality of sacrifice He made, but we need to be willing to give our very lives for our wives. The fact is there’s probably not a man here who wouldn’t agree theoretically to make that ultimate sacrifice for his wife, but few will ever be called to do so. The more pertinent question is whether we are willing to make lesser sacrifices.
For example, when a man marries, he is called upon to sacrifice ties to his parents. Look at verse 31, quoting Genesis 2: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife.” I’ve never seen a healthy marriage where this didn’t take place. It doesn’t mean the man must abandon his parents; it doesn’t mean he refuses their counsel; but it does mean that he puts his wife first. If the time ever comes when his parents force him to choose between them and her, he must choose her.
When a man marries, he must also sacrifice his independence–the right to spend money any way he pleases, the right to control his time, the right to make career decisions on his own. That’s a real sacrifice for some men, especially those who were on their own for a long time before marriage. One becomes used to doing things his own way, but marriage requires a sacrifice of that spirit of independence.
3. He loved her with a purifying love. Our text goes on to tell us why Jesus gave himself up for the Church: “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,” and “to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” The point is that Christ’s love for the Church is a love that cleanses, edifies, and refines. While Christ accepts us just as we are and loves us unconditionally, this does not mean He is content to leave us as we are. He has given us His Word as an agent to cleanse us from sin and moral impurity and to bring us to a place of maturity that us fit for the presence of a King. God is constantly working in our lives to produce growth and holiness.
Likewise, a godly husband longs for growth in his wife’s life. He desires that she become all that she can be. He doesn’t try to hold her down but rather encourages her to use her talents and abilities and to be successful in all she pursues. There is a false concept that is very widespread today. It is the notion of “live and let live,” or “accept one another’s faults and don’t try to change one another.” That, friends, is not how Christ treats us, and it is not a healthy approach to marriage.
Acceptance, certainly, is a trait we must demonstrate; i.e., we must be willing to love despite our partner’s faults. But we must never cease wishing for and even working toward the removal of those faults.[iii] Of course, it makes a great deal of difference how one seeks to remove them. Badgering and harassing are rarely effective. Ridicule never works. Stonewalling seldom accomplishes the goal. Jesus doesn’t purify the church in these ways. But loving encouragement can produce positive change in anyone.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves you! In other words, love her with an active and unselfish love, a sacrificial love, a purifying love.
But there’s another simile that helps explain how a husband is to love his wife:
… as he loves himself. Before developing Paul’s argument here, I think we need to understand one very important point, namely that there is nothing wrong with loving oneself in the sense Paul is talking about here. There is something wrong with doting on oneself, as a proud narcissist might, but there is nothing wrong with a proper and healthy self-worth. Jesus Himself said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If it weren’t proper to love yourself, then it wouldn’t be proper to love your neighbor either. As a matter of fact, people who don’t love themselves generally have a very difficult time loving other people.
So, when Jesus exhorts husbands to love their wives as they love themselves, He is painting a picture that all of us should be able to grasp. When we get hungry, do we ever say, “My stomach is growling again, but I’m just going to let it growl. It’s always wanting something. If it were earning the money, like my hands and brains are doing, then it might have reason to complain. I’m just going to ignore it.”? No, of course not. When we’re hungry, we eat.
When we get tired, do we ever say, “This bod is tired again. I can’t believe it. There’s so much work that needs to be done. I can’t see that it has done anything significant all day.”? No, we hit the sack. When we need a haircut, do we begrudge the fact that we just got one last month? No, we go and get one. When we need clothes, do we complain that there are clothes in the closet that have hardly ever been worn? No, we go and buy them.
I trust the point is established that every man loves his own body. But then Paul quotes Gen. 2:24 to show that the husband and his wife are one flesh. In other words, marriage brings about a mystical and physical union between a husband and his wife which simply disallows each to think of himself or herself independently of the other.
The logic is clear. If you love your own body, and if you and your wife are one flesh, then you really must love your wife. Men, love yourselves. Seek the best for yourselves. Treat yourselves as kings! But don’t forget that the best way to accomplish this is to love your wife.
Now in the last verse of our text we are given a summary of Paul’s instructions to wives and husbands:
Summary: “Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
Here Paul individualizes his exhortation. For the most part he has spoken in the plural to wives and husbands, but now he says to the men, “Let each one of you…” No husband is excluded. The wife, too, is addressed in the singular, but he puts her responsibility in a slightly different form. She is to “respect” her husband. If she can’t respect his character, she is at least to respect his position in the home. I think this is very helpful, because it helps to explain submission. Biblical submission is very close to respect.
Just before we close, I want to return to an important issue I brought up earlier. What if a wife doesn’t have a godly, loving husband? What if he doesn’t love her as Christ loved the church, or even as he loves himself? Does she still need to submit to his authority? What if a wife refuses to submit to her husband as to the Lord or as the church submits to Christ? Does he still need to love her?
I respectfully suggest these may be the wrong questions. Let’s try different ones. Can I trust God enough to submit to my husband and see whether God will use that, along with the Gospel, to change him into the man God wants him to be? Can I trust God enough to love my wife with agape love and see whether God will use that, along with the Gospel, to change her into what God wants her to be?
Conclusion: Bible Scholar Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has stated concerning the concepts Paul has taught here: “The failure to understand and implement the truth of these verses is the cause of most of the problems in the world today.” That may sound like an overstatement, but I doubt it.
Friends, I think we should close this morning with a period of confession and recommitment. Wives, we husbands know we have failed to love you as Christ loved the Church, but we want to do better. Hopefully we have a little more knowledge this morning about how to do that, but some of us are just at the starting gate. We need you to pray for us, be patient with us, and try to help us. But men, it’s not going to happen unless we commit ourselves wholeheartedly to change and unless we appropriate the Holy Spirit’s power to do it.
Husbands, the wives know they have failed us, too. Some have become resentful, distant, independent, and willful. But they, too, want to do better. They need for us to pray for them, be patient with them, and try to help them. But wives, it’s not going to happen unless you commit yourselves wholeheartedly to change, and then appropriate the Holy Spirit’s power to do it. Whatever it takes, it’s worth it, because when the Gospel changes us, our marriages can and will become a display of God’s glory that will impact our children, our friends, and our entire culture.
And please don’t overlook the fact that the Holy Spirit’s power is available only to those who have been born again by faith in Jesus, who died on the cross to pay for our sin. Let’s go to the Lord in silent prayer.
DATE: November 10, 2013
Tags:
Marriage
Husbands
Wives
Submission
Love of husband for wife
[i] Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles, 156.
[ii] Peter Thomas O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, 412.
[iii] C. S. Lewis has expressed this truth in an incredibly perceptive fashion in The Problem of Pain, page 46:
“The Church is the Lord’s bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or wrinkle is endurable. For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasize is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere ‘kindness’ which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost; but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them; but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved…. The loving husband forgives most, but he condones least; he is pleased with (only a) little, but demands all.”