Honor Marriage
Ephesians 5:21-33
Great Expectations
Matthew Sullivan
Do we have any couples in the room who’ve been married for 50+ years? Even if your spouse is now deceased, go ahead and stand up if the two of you were married this long. Now, if you’ve been married 40 years or more, join the ones standing. If you’ve been married 30+ years, stand up. Wow! Let’s give all these folks a round of applause! These are the examples to follow, church.
“And it was good.” With these words God gave commentary over all of creation. That is until he created man and in Genesis 2:18 God says that “it is not good for man to be alone.” As a result God created woman and brought her to the man and performed the first marriage ceremony.
The Lord Jesus Christ said, “At the beginning the Creator made them male and female…Therefore what God has joined together let man not separate” (Matthew 19:4,6).
As a result the marriage institution is the institution that all other institutions come. The earliest education was done in the home, as mothers and fathers instructed their children to eat, walk, speak, work, and do many other things. From this basic and natural responsibility have come all formal centers of learning. The earliest health care was developed in the home. Then came hospitals, clinics, and hospices. The home was the earliest center of human government. So if marriage is allowed to decline then other institutions will decline as well. If you contribute to the decline you are sinning against God.
Walter Maier “…Throughout history red blotches of warning mark the final record of devastated nations that forgot the divine origin of marriage and holiness.”
Marriage is under assault. It is spiritual warfare. It is not just selfishness on the part of man. God invented it and the assault will be spiritual in nature.
This is why Paul’s discussion of marriage is where it is. In between the urgings of a spirit filled life and the discussion of the Christian Soldiers defense against Satan found in Ephesians 6:10-20.
The attack on marriage is coming from all over. No fault divorces and the availability of pornography not withstanding. We are me first people. We are pleasure oriented, materialistic, and we demand instant gratification. The world can take the blame for that. The Misuse of Television and internet can be blamed somewhat.
But what worries me more is the assault on marriage coming from within the church. As a Church we are adopting the worlds thinking of marriage and that is where Satan is the most deceptive. Many of the churches leaders have adopted the world’s view of marriage.
There is a list of respected Christian leaders who have left their wives, many for other women and are still leading as if nothing happened. We have encouraged divorce way too quickly. And treated it as if nothing happened.
There are now many writers who have stepped up to the plate lately to help win this battle. Many of them declare from the housetops that marriage is a holy institution. Mary Pride, Ed Wheat, Mike Mason, and others are telling us the way out of the divorce malaise back to happy, permanent, marriages is for a couple to openly acknowledge that marriage is an irrevocable covenant and is therefore, until “Death to us part.”
This is the way Paul approaches this in Ephesians. These Christians had been pagans not long before the writing and there are marriage problems among them as there is among us.
Now we turn our attention to today’s text. But first some background:
William Barclay: “No one reading this passage in the twentieth century can fully realize how great it is.”
Barclay notes that through the years a Christian view of marriage has come to be accepted. We fail to live up to it in the Western world; we do accept God’s standards for marriage as proper. However, when Paul wrote these verses that view of marriage is seen as radical.
The Christian Scriptures are written to three ancient cultures: Hebrew, Greek, and Roman. The Hebrew culture had the highest ideal of marriage. This is too be expected but by the time of the writing of the NT the Bible’s proper ideal of marriage had been undermined and virtually destroyed. At the time of Christ a Jewish woman was not a person but a thing. She had no legal rights and could be dismissed at will.
The two schools, shammai and Hillel disagreed on the interpretation of Dt 24:1 the chief divorce law in Israel. It was said that a man could divorce his wife if he found “something indecent about her” (NIV). Shammai said this was adultery only. Hillel said this meant anything that might displease her husband such as burning his dinner. This is a major difference. Both were recognized so you can imagine which one prevailed.
A woman had no right to divorce. A man could do it with just a written statement and as a result marriage was in peril. Barclay says that many Jewish women would not marry because of how uncertain it had become.
Marriage was even worse in Greek and Roman Cultures. Demosthenes has said, “We have courtesans for our pleasure, concubines for daily cohabitation, and wives for the purpose of having children legitimately and having a faithful guardian for our household affairs.” In Greece a married woman had no part in a mans life. She was not even a true companion to her husband. She was to run his home and care for his children. A Greek husband was expected to find companionship elsewhere.
Rome was the sewer of the ancient world. For the first 500 years of the republic divorce was unheard of. But at the time of Paul Seneca said, “Women are to be married to be divorced and divorced to be married.” Martial tells of a woman who had ten husbands, Juvenal tells of one who had eight husbands in five years. Jerome tells of one Roman matron who was married to her 23rd husband and she was his 21st wife. Sexual perversion was rampant and recklessness was everywhere.
Barclay, “It was against that background that Paul writes. When Paul wrote this most lovely passage he was not simply restating the view that every man held. He was calling men and women to a new fidelity and a new purity and a new fellowship in the married life. It is the simple fact of history of the world with the single exception of Children…owes more to Christ than women. It is impossible to exaggerate the cleansing effect Christianity had on everyday ordinary home life in the ancient world.”
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
The best place to begin this part is to remind ourselves again that Marriage is God’s idea and that it is a good idea. The idea comes from God and God never has a bad idea.
God’s creation of the woman was the completion and perfection of his creative acts. Marriage was the great good that topped creation. So it follows that marriage is good no matter what we make of it. And when marriages fail it is not God’s fault but ours.
These instructions have been commonly referred to as “House Codes.” This also applies to similar texts in Colossians and 1 Peter that also refer to Slaves, Masters, Children, Husbands, and Wives.
Christians treated these subjects because their views on freedom, love, and following Christ was seen as destroying society. The Christian “house codes” are unique in that it focuses on everyone like husbands and wives, children and Slaves and Masters. Most ancient house codes were only addressed to slaves, women, and Children.
Duty of Wives Submit
Paul begins with the duty for all of us to submit to Christ. Submission has nothing to do with the order of authority but rather governs the operation of authority, how is it given and how is it received.
Often Jesus tried to teach his Disciples not to throw around their weight or to seek to be great at someone else’s expense. They failed to learn and at the last supper they are arguing over who will be the greatest. But when Jesus washed their feet he showed them that the greatest is the person who uses his authority to build up people and not, like the Pharisees, to build up authority and make themselves important.
So Paul tells each one to submit to Christ and wives to submit to husbands. This must be put into the context of last week when Paul spoke of being “filled with the Spirit.” He talks of speaking in Psalms and Hymns. Singing and making melody in our hearts. And giving thanks. So we see submission in this context as something Christian Men and Women do.
So why is Paul saying this? I think Submission is important here not just in this verse but also in leading up to the part about Spiritual Warfare.
Paul offers three submissions: Wives to Husbands, Children to Parents, and Slaves to Masters. Not all are equal. Wives and Children are not slaves nor are women to be childlike. The one thing they all have in common however is, “submitting in reverence to Christ.”
I realize that this is a much abused text. Paul is not talking about anyone being subordinate n the home. All people are made in God’s image and Galatians tells us we are equal. Also it is voluntary. No one forces anyone to get married in most cultures. If the husband is the head of each home here it is because it has been allowed to happen.
Women rail against it and men give them just cause. There have been many wrong turns on this text. Too often men have seen women as theirs to control.
These verses have been used as a club and keep women down and that is sinful. Christians and Non-Christians alike have used “Wives submit to your husbands” and “the Husband is the head of the wife” even if they never read Ephesians 5 before. These verses have been misinterpreted to mean that wives always have a subservient role and that husbands always make the decisions. Women have been viewed as property that husbands may treat as they wish.
It has only been that long that men and women have exchanged rings at a wedding ceremony. Only the woman at one time wore a ring to show ownership of the husband.
I have seen this in town. I was working a visitation one night and the minister came in with his wife and signed the book. He signed their names as Rev ________ and Wife. That says volumes about his attitude to his wife. I know another man who tells his wife when she is allowed to take communion.
I know of a Christian church in this state that disfellowshipped a couple because they disagreed on a discipline issue and the wife didn’t automatically submit to her husband’s idea.
Even abusive behavior by husbands has been justified by this text. Preachers have been willing accomplices by telling women they have to submit and sending them back to a terrible situation.
. A judge in Canada was recently removed from the bench because he was sending women back into the home with their abusive husbands after reading to them this text
James and Phyllis Alsdurf have written a book called Battered into Submission. The books speaks of this tragedy. Studies have shown that 18% of Christian wives report abuse of some sort and 5% suffer physical abuse. Men in more conservative churches with traditional views are more likely to abuse their wives.
Such misuse of Ephesians 5 is Scandalous and cannot be tolerated. Churches must speak out about against this problem forcefully and must be willing to confront, instruct, and if necessary to discipline members who are abusive.
However the truth even in the midst of the arguing and railing is that every single survey of both Christian and Non Christian Women is that no woman wants a man she can boss around. She wants a man she can look up to, whose judgment she can respect, and whose leadership she can respond to.
Duty of Husbands Love
Since wives are told to submit one might think it logical that Paul would instruct the husband to rule. Instead it asks husbands to love their wives and give them the same self giving love that Christ had in giving himself for the Church. Both of these commands to submit and love are specific commands that have already been given to all Christians.
There is not a lot in Ancient Sources about husband loving their wives. In the ancient world husbands only obligation was food and shelter. They were free to do as they pleased and the wife was responsible to do whatever her husband told her. These words changed that picture dramatically. Rather than being guided by self interests, husbands is asked to place the well being of his wife first and to give himself to caring for her.
Ephesians 5:28 takes the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18) specifically to the wife.
However, love is not enough. Love is not confined to feelings but to choices that express discipleship to Jesus Christ. The love required is Christologically defined. Christ love motivated his to give himself for the good of the church. Husbands must follow the same pattern and love enough to give themselves for their wives.
When Jesus Christ’s love is the standard no woman will have trouble submitting to her husband. No good woman will struggle against a man who she knows would die for her.
In talking about the husbands duty toward his wife Paul used five verbs drawn from Christ’s action toward the church.
1. Christ “loved” the church (v. 25). Love is the key word here. This is not a verb to be taken lightly. What does it mean? I like this definition given by Walter Trobisch “Let me try to tell you what it really should mean if a fellow says to a girl ‘I love you.’ It means: You, you, you. You alone. You shall reign in my heart. You are the one whom I have longed for, without you I am incomplete. I will give everything for you, myself as well as all I possess. I will love you alone, and I will work for you alone. And I will wait for you…I will never force you, not even by words. I want to guard you, protect you, and keep you from all evil. I want to share with you all my thoughts, my heart and body—all that I possess. I want to listen to what you have to say. There is nothing I want to undertake without your blessing. I want to remain always at your side.”
Love that blesses and makes home stable can only be learned at the feet of Jesus. Do we love like that? Do we as men even understand what that is? Not many but that is the standard. I Peter 3:7 Peter tells husbands that if they do not love like this God will not even listen to their prayers: “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.”
Why should God listen to a man who can’t treat his wife properly?
2. Christ “gave himself up” for the church (v.25). The full measure of Christ love for the church is in that he died for her.
We are told in one of the Greek histories that the wife of on of the generals of Cyrus, ruler of Persia, was accused of treachery and was condemned to die. At first her husband didn’t know what was taking place. But as soon as he heard about it he rushed to the palace and burst into the throne room. He threw himself on the floor before the king and cried out, “Oh my Lord Cyrus take my life and let my wife go free.” Cyrus, who by all historical accounts was a noble and sensitive leader, was touched by this offer. He said, “Love like that must not be spoiled by death.” The he gave the husband and wife back to each other and let the wife go free. As they walked away happily the husband said, “did you notice how kindly the king looked at us when he gave you the pardon?” The wife replied, “I had no eyes for the king. I saw only the man who was willing to die in my place.”
That is the picture the Holy Spirit paints for us in this great chapter in Ephesians. The husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, giving himself for her. In fairness to husbands most of us will never have the chance to prove that. But we do have countless ways to show our love daily.
One wife rightly told her husband, “Dear I know that you are willing to die for me; you have told me that many times. But while you are waiting to die, could you just fill in some of the time by helping me dry the dishes?”
3. Christ goal is “to make (the church) holy” (v. 26). Holy means to be set apart and this is what Christ desires for his church. That she might be set apart wholly for himself. Husbands should have their spiritual development involved.
4. Christ is “cleansing” his church through the word (v. 26). God will hold men accountable for the spiritual growth in their home.
5. Christ will “present” the church as a radiant bride without blemish (v. 27). John Stott says that “a husband should never use his headship to crush or stifle his wife, or frustrate her from being herself. His love for her will lead him to an exactly opposite path. He will give himself up for her in order that she may develop her full potential under God and so become completely herself.”
C.S. Lewis in one of his writings speaks of all of us being eternal beings with eternal souls and that those who accept Christ will become a dazzlingly beautiful creature one that will overwhelm us. With this in view it could help us as husbands if we could see our wives as on the way to becoming that dazzling creature, which she will be in Heaven in her resurrected body. If we could realize that and that we are partly responsible or that transformation it would help how we looked at our wives.
Duty of Both True Union
When Paul writes about Christ and the church he is giving grounds to apply everything about that relationship to everything about the relationship of a man to a woman and a woman to a man in marriage. But it is important to not that the point at which Paul actually brings this comparison in is when he is talking about union of two persons in marriage and as a result they become one flesh (v. 31). There are three great mystical unions in the Bible: the union of the three persons of the Godhead, being one God, next the union of the two natures of Christ in one person, and the union of the believer with Christ. Marriage illustrates the third of these unions which is why Paul calls it “a profound mystery.” It is not incomprehensible, but it is something that taxes even a sanctified mind.
What this means is that a man and woman are to be united to each other in marriage as they can never be united to anyone else, not even to their closest friends and family. Nor is any other closeness in life comparable. Just as God is a trinity God made us a union of body, soul, and spirit.
Our Union is to be on these three levels. It must be if the marriage is to attain to God’s design for it and be lasting.
1. It must be a union of body- there must be a valid sexual relationship. It is a vital part of marriage. The husband nor wife is to defraud the other of sex. The quickest way for the marriage to be in trouble is for the wife to go to bed with a headache every night or for the husband to lose interest in his wife romantically and spend his nights elsewhere. Sex must be a regular expression of the relationship. Not just about sex because that will bring trouble as well.
2. It must be a union of Soul- the intellectual and emotional side of a person’s nature. This needs to be worked towards. It does not come naturally. Why is this important?
What do we think of each other when we first get married? The wife thinks of a romantic figure, an intellectual figure, her father, some James Bond and sense of humor.
Husband- Victoria Secrets Model meets Betty Crocker. What happens when reality hits? Either we change them or we seek to love them as they are. Under God we seek to conform as best we can at times.
3. It must be a union of Spirit- for this reason only Christian marriages that can be the kind of marriage God expects. Husband and wife must be Christians. If you are not a Christian there is a vacuum in your life that you have to fill and if you don’t fill it with God and the other is it will pull you apart. Only Christians can be married in the full sense of the word, which means body with body, soul with soul, and spirit with spirit. In this type of union a man and woman experience the fullest measure of earthly blessing and most fully illustrate the mystical union of Christ and the church.
When God created marriage it was not simply that God considered marriage to be a good idea, it is, or even because God thought it would be a good way to have and rear children, it is. God created marriage to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the Church.
The relationship of a husband to a wife in marriage is to illustrate the relationship of the Lord Jesus Christ to those he would one day redeem from sin’s slavery. The relationship of wife to her husband is to illustrate the relationship of the people of God, the church, would have to Jesus Christ.
That is why the name of Christ occurs 7 times in this great passage
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Let me say it again, the basis for this submission is found in what Christ did for us! Wives, he says the way you submit to your husband is patterned after how the church submits to Christ. If your relationship with your husband was the only indicator to someone else of how the church should follow Christ, what would they think? What are you teaching? Likewise, husbands, the Bible is saying that the way you love your wife is to be patterned after how Christ loves the church. If your relationship with your wife was the only picture someone had of how much Jesus loves the church, what would they see?
Many of you grew up in a time when traditional marriage was very much the norm in our culture, and you saw very few divorces. But I’m afraid that more and more, this message is becoming very unpopular. I’d even venture to guess that I’ve probably made someone mad this morning. And that’s the reason I encourage you to bring your Bible and study with me. See for yourself what God is teaching us.
There may be some husbands and wives here this morning who are struggling in your marriage. I want to encourage you to return to that love you first had for each other – in the days when you’d do anything to please the other person. I hope you’ve heard God this morning say to you, “Hang in there! Keep working on your marriage! Don’t give up!” Maybe you need to make a commitment that you’re going to work on your relationship. Say to your spouse that your marriage is too important for you to give up on it! Maybe one of you needs to swallow your pride and say, “I’m sorry.” What is it going to take? You’ve got to be willing to do WHATEVER it takes! God wants to restore your marriage. And he wants to strengthen ALL of our marriages.
Maybe you’re a young person, single and wonder what this has to say to you. You’ve not even thought about marriage. I hope this message will emphasize to you the importance of building ANY relationship you have on the foundation of Jesus Christ. If you’re dating someone right now who is NOT a Christian, who has no desire to pattern their life after Jesus Christ, that’s a huge red flag! You need to ask yourself, “Do I really want to spend the rest of my life with someone who doesn’t see the need to accept the Lord as his/her Savior? This message should encourage you to make sure that the person you decide to marry is already first and foremost “married” to Jesus Christ. This world is a harsh place, and I’m just not convinced that you have much hope for a strong marriage if you both aren’t committed to God FIRST!
If you need the prayers and encouragement of your church family, we’d love to pray with you. Or if you’ve never accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, you’re going to get that opportunity.
