My mentor and friend, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, who almost four years ago was called home to be with his Lord, credited his 57 year marriage to his wife Gloria to the grace of God and the book of Ephesians.
Now, Charlie was a world famous speaker and author. He spoke to audiences of thousands, and tens-of-thousands around the world. When he was introduced, he would inevitably interrupt the person introducing him and send him or her off stage. Then he would start telling you what the guy should have said if he was going to be introduced properly.
“He would tell you that my wife Gloria and I have been married 57 years.” People would start to applaud. “Wait, wait, WAIT!… It hasn’t been that good!”
“People often ask me how we have stayed married for 57 years? Now you women aren’t going to like this,” he would say, “but I’ll give it to you anyway. I taught Gloria to be totally submissive. Now, I knew you wouldn’t like it! Why just this very morning Gloria came to me crawling on her hands and knees and said, ‘Charles come out from under that bed and fight like a man!'”
Charlie was, of course, referring to Ephesians 5:22, which is part of our text for this morning. Today we are going to look at Ephesians 5:21-33 (NIV).
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit to your husbands as 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 to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 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. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
The Holy Spirit creates a well-spring in the Christian’s heart that flows with love to God and neighbor. While there may be many differences in how that love expresses itself depending on the relationship in question, there is a common bed in which the Christian’s love flows; and that bed is a loving submission to one another. Verse 21 is the lynch pin to understanding this whole passage and to the first 9 verses of chapter 6. In the rest of our passage, Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul is fleshing out how submission to one another through reverence for Christ looks like in marriage between husbands and wives; and in chapter 6 he goes on to explain how it looks between parents and their children, and between slaves and masters.
Here Paul lays out how submission to one another flows between a husband and wife using the relationship between Christ and the Church as the example. Paul wants the Ephesians to know that if they want to know how marriage is supposed to work—and if you are married I know this is still a question you have—you need to look at the ultimate husband-wife relationship: Christ and the Church.
Verses 22-24 outlines how this looks in wives. As the Church submits to Christ in everything since He is the head of the Church, wives should submit to their husbands because the husband is the head of the wife.
Verses 25-32 outlines how this looks in husbands. As Christ’s love and devotion to His Church drove Him to give His life for her, that she might be holy and blameless, husbands should be no less devoted in love to their wives.
Verse 33 serves as a summary of this picture: husbands are to love their wives and wives are to respect their husbands.
The point of this passage is clear. If we want our marriages to work the way God intended for them to work, husbands and wives need to pattern their marriage after the relationship between Christ and the Church.
In this discussion on marriage Paul first points to the example of Christ and the Church and then gives an application in light of that relationship. What I want to do is to look at each of these in turn and then give some application for us.
Before I start, I want to say that I am very sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of single people that read my blog. I am even more sensitive to the fact that there are people reading this who have experienced or who are experiencing the pain of divorce.
If you are single and planning to get married or married again someday, what Paul says here can be very helpful in understanding how marriage works…and how it doesn’t.
If you are not thinking about getting married, remember that the Church is patterned after the family. What Paul says here relates to how we are to relate to Christ. After all, we are all part of the Church and therefore are part of the Bride of Christ. So what we are going to talk about here will be helpful in deepening your relationship with Jesus. And as that relationship deepens, so will your love for one another.
Wives are to submit to their husbands. The reason for this is given in verse 23, 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. What does that mean? You can kill a marriage by misapplying or misusing this verse. To understand this correctly, we need to understand what it means that Christ is the head of the Church. Paul in this verse specifically cites two ways in which Christ’s headship of the Church is like the headship of the husband to the wife.
First, Christ is the head of the Church, because it is His body. Christ has so closely united Himself with the Church that it, we, are called His body. As Head of the Church Jesus uses all His authority and power to, skipping ahead to verses26-28, 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. It is from Christ’s love and care that the Church gets its holiness. As Christ is the loving caregiver to the Church, husbands are to be the loving care givers of their wives.
Second, Christ is the Head of the Church in that He is its Savior. As Paul writes earlier in Ephesians 1:21-23 (NIV), this is one of the reasons the Father made Christ ruler over all things—so He could save, care for, and provide for the Church. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. As Christ’s leadership is focused on providing for the good of the Church, so the husband is to use his leadership to provide for the good of his wife.
In these two ways the husband is the head of the wife—in his loving care for her and in his leadership on her behalf. It is in acknowledgement of this love and care that Paul says wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.
What that submission means will be the subject of tomorrow’s post….
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 