Mary and I have come to find that raising grandchildren sure is a lot easier than raising children. And as I look back over the years when our children were in our home, I recognize that there were certainly times when I sure didn’t fulfill my responsibilities as a father very well and I’m sure Mary would also acknowledge that she didn’t always do everything right.
So when some of you with young children come to us and ask for advice in raising your children it is a privilege that we approach with both great enthusiasm and great humility. So before I get started with the message this morning, I’m going to share a piece of parenting advice that Mary reminded me of this week. And I’m not going to charge you any extra for this counsel.
Some of you may struggle with getting your kids to pick up after themselves and someone shared a great idea with us that didn’t require us to yell, nag or badger the kids to do that. We simply had a “Saturday box” that we kept on a high shelf in our bedroom. And every time we ran across some item that the kids should have put away, we merely picked it up and put it in the “Saturday box”. The kids understood that they weren’t going to get that item back until the following Saturday. That worked really well until the kids got older and realized that the later it got in the week, the less they were really worried about picking things up because it would only be a day or two until they got them back.
Now that might be an idea that is helpful for some of you. If you do decide to use it I’d love to hear how it works for you. But frankly, that parenting technique is not nearly important as what we’re going to learn today when it comes to raising godly children.
If you’re like Mary and I and no longer have children at home, or even if you’re not married, the “Saturday box” idea isn’t going to be real relevant for you. But I would suggest that the ideas we’ll develop this morning about God’s design for the home can be applied by all of us in our daily lives. At the end of the message I’ll suggest a few ways you might be able to do that.
Before we get to this morning’s passage, let’s take a moment to review the two aspects of God’s design for biblical manhood and womanhood that we developed from Genesis 1-3. Let’s see if you can help me fill in the blanks:
[Wait for answers]
God’s design:
1. Man and woman have equal worth but different work
2. Man is the head; Woman is the helper
With that background in mind, we’re going to move to what for most of you is probably a very familiar passage of Scripture in the New Testament. But my hope this morning is that together we can develop a deeper understanding of that passage that will help us to live out God’s design for manhood and womanhood in our homes, regardless of what those homes look like.
So go ahead and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 5. As most of you know, the paragraph breaks and section titles that we find in most contemporary English translations are not part of the Bible text. The New Testament was written originally mostly in Greek, which even lacked a lot of the capitalization and punctuation that we see in our English translations. But in most cases, it was pretty simple for the translators to figure out the appropriate way to incorporate those items based on the context of the text itself.
But sometimes the paragraph breaks and section titles can actually get in the way of a proper understanding of the text. And I’m convinced that Ephesians 5 is unfortunately one of those places. I want you to look in your Bibles and tell me where you see breaks between sections as indicated by a section heading or title.
Where do you find the first one? {Wait for answers]. That’s right – before verse 1. In the ESV the section title is “Walk in Love”. I didn’t take time to look at a bunch of other translations this week, but I would guess there are similar headings.
And where is the next section heading? [Wait for answers] That’s right – between verses 21 and 22. Once again the ESV the section heading is “Wives and Husbands”. I’m just curious to see if any of your translations have that break in a different place.
Before we get to the meat of our passage this morning I need to take few minutes to demonstrate to you why that is a really bad place to break up this passage. And in order to do that, we’ll have to start in verse 18. You can follow along as I read beginning there:
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 in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
(Ephesians 5:18-21 ESV)
This section may actually begin a few verses earlier, but by starting here I’ll be able to make my point. In verse 18, Paul gives what is clearly a command:
…do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…
And then he follows that command with five participles that I would suggest to you are the results of obeying that command. Just for those of you, like me, who have forgot most or even all of your high school English, a participle is a verb that has an “–ing” ending. So can you help me identify those five participles? [Wait for answers]
• addressing
• singing
• making melody
• giving thanks
• submitting
The last one – “submitting” – is the one we want to focus on this morning.
I’m really grateful that the ESV has chosen to translate this as a participle consistent with the underlying Greek. Unfortunately, a lot of other translations render this as a command to “submit to one another” or “be subject to one another”. Although in Greek it is possible for a participle to take on the function of a command, at least in all the translations I looked at this week, wherever verse 21 is rendered as a command, the other four participles that precede it are translated as participles rather than commands. So at least the ESV is consistent in it treatment.
Here is why this important. Many of the people who would try to argue against God’s design that we saw in Genesis 1-2 would claim that the command to submit to one another actually makes man and woman equal not only in worth, but in work as well. And it is on that basis that they often argue against the idea of man as head and woman as helper.
As we’ve seen, when men and women are filled with the Spirit, one of the results is that they will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And beginning in verse 22 through the first part of chapter 6, Paul is going to describe what that looks like. We can be confident that the section that begins in verse 22 is connected to the idea of submitting to one another because of the text itself. In Greek, the verb “submit” is not found in verse 22 at all – it is only implied by the connection to the previous verse. If we were to translate verses 21 and 22 literally, we would get something like this:
Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ – wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
So before we get into the meat of our passage, let’s summarize the structure of the last part of Ephesians 5:
• Command: “Be filled with the Spirit” (v. 18) – which results in:
o addressing (v. 19)
o singing (v.19)
o making melody (v. 19)
o giving thanks (v. 20)
o submitting to one another (v. 21)
What submitting to one another looks like in marriage (vv. 22-33)
This is so crucial because it points out that the only way a man and woman can submit to one another in the way Paul describes is that they first have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is not something we can accomplish in our human flesh.
I am not going to argue this morning that there is no mutual submission in the marriage relationship. But what I will show, is that the husband and wife submit to each other in different ways that are consistent with God’s original design. And that kind of mutual submission does not do away with that original design – it actually enhances it.
I know we’ve taken a lot of time to set the stage here, but it was really important for us to do that. So with this background in mind, follow along as I read the last part of Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 22.
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.
(Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV)
In order to make sure we understand accurately what Paul is writing here we need to start from the end of the passage and work our way back to the beginning.
In verse 31, Paul quotes from Genesis 1. That is really significant because with that quote, Paul is confirming that what he is writing here is completely consistent with God’s original design for man and woman that we find in Genesis 1 and 2.
Then in verse 32, he calls marriage a “profound mystery”. As we’ve talked about before, a “mystery” in the Bible is not the same kind of mystery that we normally think about – the kind you would find on “CSI” or “The Mentalist” or some other crime drama on TV. Instead a “mystery” in the Bible describes something that was only partially known in the past, but which God has now chosen to reveal in more detail.
Earlier in Ephesians Paul refers several times to the biggest mystery of all – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Although we can see those events in the Old Testament, they are somewhat obscured there, but now on this side of the cross, we can more easily see those events as we read the Old Testament Scriptures.
Marriage is a mystery according to Paul because from the very beginning it was intended to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. But that deeper meaning wasn’t fully revealed in the creation accounts to the extent Paul is revealing that truth now.
For those of you who are married and who have children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, this concept has tremendous significance for you. I would suggest to you that since marriage is intended to picture the relationship between Christ and the church, the most important thing you can do to help those children to grow up to love and serve Jesus – more important than family devotionals, more important than bringing them to church, more important than serving in ministry – is to have the kind of marriage that is consistent with the principles we find here in Ephesians 5.
I’m certainly not saying not to do those other things because they are all good things. But if you do all those things and don’t have the kind of marriage that is lived out according to these principles, then none of those other activities are going to have any lasting value. So if you’re marriage isn’t all it should be, I would encourage you simplify your life so that you can devote adequate time to work on your marriage. That means, that at least for a season, you may need to get rid of even some of the good things on your schedule so that you can devote your efforts to putting these principles to work in your marriage.
And even if you’re not married, you can still play an important role in building these principles into the lives of your families and friends. I’m going to spend some more time speaking specifically to those of you who are not married in a couple of weeks.
So let’s see exactly how men and women are to submit to one another in the marriage relationship. Even though Paul starts with the wives, I’m going to start with the men, because God has ordained them to be the head in the marriage relationship. And frankly, if we as men don’t fulfill our God-given role effectively, we are going to make it nearly impossible for our wives to fulfill theirs.
Since marriage is to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church, the husband’s role in marriage needs to be modeled after the way Jesus deals with His body, the church. I don’t think any of us would dispute the idea that Christ is the head of His church, just as Paul claims in verse 23. So the key to understanding what it means for the man to be the head of the wife is to understand how Jesus operates as the head of His church.
Let me begin by asking you some questions. Does Jesus submit to the church? Think about that before you answer. After all, if the husband and wife are to submit to one another, then doesn’t that imply that Jesus also submits to the church? But if Jesus does submit to the church, wouldn’t that undermine His headship?
I think we have a hard time reconciling the idea that Jesus could submit to the church and yet still maintain His headship. But I would suggest that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. They key to seeing how both are possible at the same time is to understand the nature of Jesus’ submission.
In verses 25-29, Paul gives a very succinct, but clear, explanation of how Jesus submits to the church. He doesn’t submit to the church by setting aside His responsibilities as the head. He doesn’t submit by doing whatever the church asks Him to do. Instead He submits to the church by putting her needs ahead of His own comfort. He loves the church by serving her needs, most notably by dying a horrible, humiliating death on the cross. So when Paul commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, he is making it clear that, as the head, the man is to love his wife by serving her in the same way Jesus serves the church. So we could put the first part of our bottom line for this morning like this:
God’s design:
Men who love by serving like Christ
Unfortunately in our culture, even within the church, the idea of man’s headship has been used to justify the behavior of men who try to command and control their wives. As we saw last week, that is one of the consequences of man’s sin. The headship that God designed to be carried out by laying down one’s life in servant leadership has often been perverted into something that God never intended.
As Paul points out in verse 28, since the man and woman are one flesh, when the man loves his wife with that kind of sacrificial love, he is not only doing that which is best for his wife, but he also loves himself by leading that partnership in a God-glorifying direction.
Let’s make this really practical. Men, here are some questions that I encourage you to ask and answer honestly about how you’re fulfilling your role as head:
1. Other than my relationship with God, is my relationship with my wife the top priority in my life? Does the way I use my time, my energy and my resources indicate that she is really a priority?
2. What practical, concrete steps am I intentionally taking to lead our marriage in a God glorifying direction? What am I doing to lead my wife and children to grow in her relationship with God?
3. What practical steps can I take to put the needs of my wife ahead of my own comfort?
We could probably come up with several more, but I think that is probably a good place to start.
Now let’s turn to the wives. As we saw earlier, the verb “submit” in verse 22 is implied from the preceding verse. But in verse 24 that same verb is used explicitly when describing the wife’s responsibility to her husband. So this would probably be a good time to define the meaning of the word “submit”. Unfortunately in our English language this word conveys some ideas that are completely contrary to the way Paul uses that word here.
The thesaurus that I use in Microsoft Word provides the following synonyms for “submit”, among others:
• succumb
• acquiesce
• defer to
• bow to
• give in to
But as we’re going to see this morning, none of those synonyms accurately convey the meaning of “submit” as it is used on our passage. The Greek word that Paul uses here is a compound word that literally means “to place in order under”. It was primarily a military terms that described troops that were placed in order under the leadership of a commander.
But in the form that Paul uses it here it denotes “submission in the sense of voluntarily yielding in love” [BAGD]. That idea is certainly confirmed when Paul writes that wives are to submit to their husbands in the same way the church submits to Christ. I would suggest to you that the way Jesus desires for the church to submit to Him is not merely obedience in our actions, but rather a mindset that desires to live in a way that honors and gives pleasure to Him. I really like how Pastor John Piper described this kind of submission in marriage:
Submission is an inclination of the will to say yes to the husband’s leadership and a disposition of the spirit to support his initiatives.
A wife’s submission is certainly not just blind obedience to every wish of her husband. It is actually possible to do every single thing that her husband asks and still not be submissive since submitting is more of a mindset than an action.
So the second part of our bottom line for this morning could be stated like this:
God’s design:
…Women who love by submitting like the Church
That kind of submission is obviously not just giving into or acquiescing to wishes of the husband. Instead, it is the desire to work in partnership with the husband, supporting his role as the head, in order to fulfill God’s original design in which man and woman would together “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28)
Submission does not mean that the woman is to have no input into the decisions that her husband makes on behalf of their family. There are going to be times when even the most submissive wife will sense that a decision her husband is about to make is unwise and she needs to bring that to her husband’s attention. But she needs to do that in a way that respects his God-given role as the head. And a husband who is the kind of head that loves his wife like Christ loves the church will value and consider carefully that input.
Unfortunately I had to learn that the hard way many years ago when I made a decision to run for the school board after ignoring Mary’s input. Although Mary very respectfully pointed out some potential drawbacks to that decision, when I unwisely chose to ignore her input, she never said “I told you so” or otherwise undermined my headship when I actually got elected and experienced exactly what she had warned me about.
So women, let’s make this really practical for you, too. Here are some questions that I encourage you to ask about how you’re fulfilling your role as helper:
1. Do I have a mindset that desires to support my husband’s leadership in our family? Or do I merely do as he asks unwillingly?
2. Do I support the headship of my husband in my own personal spiritual development and in the spiritual development of our children? That certainly doesn’t mean the husband has to do all the spiritual training in the family. But seeing that it occurs is primarily his responsibility.
3. Do I support my husband as the head, by honoring him in the presence of others? If I have an issue with my husband do I discuss that with him in private rather than undermining his headship in front of our children or in public?
Again, there are many other questions that we could ask, but is a good place to start.
So putting together all we’ve learned this morning, we can summarize our bottom line like this:
God’s design:
Men who love by serving like Christ
and
women who love by submitting like the Church
Let’s put that together with what we’ve learned the last two weeks:
God’s design:
1. Man and woman have equal worth but different work
2. Man is the head; Woman is the helper
3. Men who love by serving like Christ and women who love by submitting like the Church
It is clear, from everything that we’ve learned so far, that the roles of men and women, and husbands and wives are not just arbitrarily assigned, nor are they reversible. God has ordained these roles for men and women because in His infinite wisdom He understands that this design results in both His glory and our good.
Because those roles are intended by God to reveal something about His Son, Jesus, and His relationship to the church, whenever we do anything to pervert or undermine those roles, we also distort the way people see the relationship between Jesus and His church. That is why the ongoing debate about marriage in our culture is so important. A marriage between two men or two women not only violates God’s design for manhood and womanhood, but ultimately it leads to wrong ideas about who God is and the kind of relationship He desires to have with us.
And by almost any measure, it is a battle we are losing. I would suggest that may very well be because we have been pursuing a strategy that is doomed to fail. As we saw this morning, the only people who can possibly fulfill God’s design for marriage are those who are filled by the Holy Spirit. No one can do that in the flesh. So if that’s the case, then it seems to me that we are largely wasting our time trying to convince people who don’t believe in Jesus and who therefore do not have the Holy Spirit living in their lives that this Biblical model is what is best for them.
It seems to me that the strategy this passage suggests is that those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus and who have the Holy Spirit living inside of us should yield our lives to the Holy Spirit so that we can live our lives according to God’s design. And when we do that our marriages will be a testimony to the world about Jesus and His body, the church. And the more we are able to do that, the more the world will see that God’s design for manhood and womanhood is the most fulfilling, joyful way to live.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be involved in the public debate about these issues or participate in the political process to try and uphold these values. But I’m becoming more and more convinced that the only long-term solution to upholding God’s design for manhood and womanhood and marriage is to change hearts and not public opinion or laws. And the only way we’re going to do that is to, with the help of the Holy Spirit, live our lives according to God’s design in each of our families and to do everything we can as a body to encourage and assist each other to live like that.
