Grace Based Relationships October 13, 2002
“Relationships by the Book”
Ephesians 5:18-6:9
Last week we looked at relationships where grace is not in place
We talked about how when we try to control those around us for our own purposes we are living in the curse that Adam and Eve received when they sinned. (And though you may desire to control your husband, he will be your master.” Gen. 3:16 NLT with footnote) And we are trying to take over God’s job – to shape and mold people according to his good purpose.
We talked about how we are born with a “Holy Spirit shaped hole” in our hearts, and in order to fill that emptiness, we often concentrate on the exterior, performance orientated areas of our life. After awhile, we realize that no amount of success or sin can fill that hole, so we go looking for someone else to fill the hole – usually a mate or family member. They look good on the outside, but because they are just as empty on the inside as we are, they can’t fill our emptiness, and we cannot fill theirs. So we start to try to shape them into the type of person that can fill our emptiness.
We talked about how this is idolatry. Whenever we go to another person or thing to do for us what only God can do for us, we are treating them as another god, and it is idolatry.
If we are to go to God to have these needs met, how do we do it and how does it affect our relationships?
To answer those questions, lets turn to Scripture.
Ephesians 5:18-6:9
Why this passage? – Because this passage has been the most misused passage in scripture in family relationships. It has actually been used to control, manipulate and shame family members rather than freeing them to experience the grace that God is offering them.
I have often taught about this passage and pointed out that there is an incorrect division in the translation. You cannot read verse 22 outside of the context of verse 21 – in fact this whole section is an out working of verse 21. Paul tells all Christians to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ, and then he gives specific example of how this way of relating too one another works itself out in the family and in the workplace.
This letter was originally written in Greek, and Greek is a very economical language. If one sentence has the same verb as the preceding sentence, they feel no need to repeat the verb, they just borrow it from the preceding sentence.
So a closer translation of these two verses would read “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ: wives to your husbands…”
But, knowing the original language also makes us realize that you cannot read verse 21 out of the context of verse 18. In this section, the only command is “do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit” The rest of the verbs are participles – “ing” verbs
– Be filled with the Spirit, speaking in psalms, hymns, & spiritual songs, singing and making music, giving thanks, submitting to each other…
What Paul is saying is this is how you will look if you are filled with the Spirit: you will speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, you will sing and make music in you heart to the Lord, you will always give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our lord Jesus Christ, and you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ!
Our submission to each other is an outworking of the Spirit’s filling of our lives.
Be Filled With the Spirit
Filled With the Spirit! (Page 81)
"Filled" is the Greek word pleroma, which has a couple of meanings that apply here. First, it could mean permeated. Permeated is what happens to your cup of coffee when you put sugar into it. It becomes permeated. After you stir, there is no part of the coffee that doesn’t have sugar in it.
Pleroma is also the word that would be used to describe a sail when it is full of wind. A filled sail is what empowers or propels a sailboat. (Now this is where what I learned in high-school physics comes in handy.) It is not the wind in the sail that propels the boat – the bout is not pressured forward from behind. In fact, the wind creates a negative pressure - a vacuum - in front of the sail. This vacuum is the force that attracts the boat forward. So being filled with the Spirit does not mean being power-driven through the Christian life, as if the Holy Spirit were a locomotive-wind behind us. Rather, it means being drawn into godly living by the Holy Spirit, who is in front of us, focusing us on God. I guess God knows about physics, too.
We can learn even more about the meaning of a word by looking at its Greek form. In the case of "be filled…" it is in the present, passive, imperative form. That might sound like just a bunch of grammar mumbo jumbo that I learned in Greek class way back in seminary, but each of those aspects simply enrich the meaning.
An imperative is a command. The one commanding assumes that you have the power to carry through in your own power. But this command is given in a passive voice, which means it is not something you can do, but something that must be done to you or for you. Paul did not write, "Get (yourself) filled," or, "Fill yourself," which is an active imperative. Instead he wrote “Allow yourself to be filled,” which is a passive imperative.
The easiest way to understand the present tense is to simply think of the phrase "whenever it is now." Thus, one literal rendering of "be filled with the Spirit" is this: “Allow yourself to be continuously filled with the Spirit.” It is not something you should, or even can do. It is some- thing you should and can allow to be done to you, whenever it is now.
I have heard many people call themselves a Spirit-filled believer." In light of what we have just learned, there is no such thing as a Spirit-filled believer. If we remain true to God’s Word, it is accurate to say that there are believers who are allowing themselves to be continuously filled now… and now… and now…
Therefore it seems that Paul is instructing Christians to enter the fight that is the essence of the Christian life: “Get your life from God. Remain in a continuously dependant relationship with Him in order to meet your needs. Do it! In fact if Adam and Eve had remembered to do this we wouldn’t be having this little talk right now.
How this affects our relationships
He fills the emptiness
Remember how I said that we are born with this innate emptiness, a yearning for something that is larger than ourselves? This is Paul’s prayer for us that tells us how God does this.
Ephesians 3:14-21
14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family[1] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
The prayer is for:
Strength in our inner being
Christ dwelling within
Power to grasp the Love of Christ – the width, the length, the depth, the height - it surpasses knowledge!
Filled to the measure of all the fullness of God! – all the fullness of God – the one who created all that there is – there is nothing that exists that is not God that God did not create, and he goes on creating – the universe continues to expand, we see new life all the time! Paul prays that you would be filled up to the measure of His fullness!
All the things that we do to fill that hole, from attempted success, to sin to relationships just don’t match up. How could mere human love come anywhere close to the love that Jesus has for us?
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, spread His praise from shore to shore!
How He loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore!
How He watches o’er His loved ones, died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth, watcheth o’er them from the throne!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every love the best!
’Tis an ocean full of blessing, ’tis a haven giving rest!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, ’tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee!
How could our little successes, or the successes of our loved ones come even close to the accomplishments of God?
It is only God who has the boundless resources to fill our emptiness – he can fill me, and fill you and everyone else that calls on his name and still not be the least bit depleted!
And just incase we wonder if God can actually do this…
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Our own parents my have tried to feel filled up through us their children – either through expecting far more of us than we could ever imagine, or by abusing us to try to control us, instead of leading us to the one who could fill us up, our hole just got larger. We have the original Holy Spirit sized hole, but we add to that hole that yearns for proper parenting.
The Holy Spirit fills that hole as well, because he connects us to the true parent who can be to us all of the things that our own parents could never be.
Ro 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
Ga 4:6 Because you are his children, he sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
It is only God by his Holy Spirit who can do this – nothing or no one else can fill us like God can.
So if we as Christians a called to “Allow yourself to be continuously filled with the Spirit.” How do we do this?
Prayer to be filled – by others
By yourself
“If the Spirit is the wind, then prayer is the sails”
Obeying the Spirit’s leading:
Sailing with the wind is a sure way to have your sails full
Spend time with the God who will fill you.
When we depend on God to meet our needs, it sends ripples through every relationship we have: Speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hear to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for every thing, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
It is extremely important to remember that “speaking to one another, singing and making music, giving thanks and being subject are not imperatives. Paul is not commanding us to do these things, as much as he is saying that these things will be the result of being filled with the Spirit. Even the command to Submit to one another is best read in the original language as a result of the filling of the Holy Spirit.
When we are filled with the Spirit, and living our lives by the power of the Spirit, we no longer need to look to others to fill our emptiness, and we do not have to manipulate and control them so that they will fill our emptiness!
So because we are strengthened in our inner being by the Holy Spirit, we have the strength to submit to one another!
It is one of those Christian paradoxes – God gives us strength, not so we can rule over, but so we can serve! Jesus gave us this example – when he know that God had given all things into his hands, he took off his outer garment, wrapped a towel around his waist and proceeded to wash his disciples feet!
We are filled by the very presence of God himself. So we can submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.
The Greek word for “submit” has the meaning of coming underneath someone. Do you see the huge difference her between living by the power of the Holy Spirit and coming underneath your loved ones, and living by the curse that says “And though you may desire to control your husband, he will be your master?” In the Blessing of the Spirit we come under each other to support, in the curse we try to rule over each other to control.
The details
Listen to your own commands first.
Remember that the scriptures do not say “Husbands make your wives submit.” Nor does it say “wives, make your husbands take leadership.” We are not to control the people around us to please ourselves or even to please God – that is between them and God – we’ll talk in later sermon about how to support those we love in obeying God, but we can’t make them do it.
Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord
The reason he gives is a bit hard to swallow – because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the savior.
You see the men see this verse, and they think that it means that they are in charge, and the family has to do what they say. But we forget that it says that the husband is the head in the same way as Jesus is the head – Later on we see that Jesus is the head, not by forcing his way on the church, but by serving her and giving his life up for her.
And we as the church do not submit to Christ because He placed himself over us, but because we have placed ourselves under him. In the same way we are to voluntarily come under each other in marriage relationships as well as all other relationships.
Men, love your wife
Although this passage has been used in the past to keep women down, it actually comes down hardest on the men! It uses different language, but we too are to come under our wives and support them to be all that God wants them to be. We do this through self sacrifice – giving up our own self interest in the interest of our wife, not as a position of weakness, but out of a position of strength, being filled with the Spirit of Christ who gave himself up for us.
What an amazing picture that we have her of Jesus giving up his life for the church so that the church can be the perfect bride, and so the husband must give up his life for the wife.
It is the world’s way to control, manipulate, and lord it over or wives – it is the way of the curse. It is God’s way, the way of grace to make personal sacrifices so that our wives can be the people that God has made them to be. Even if it looks like our wives are getting further ahead than us, they are more successful than us, we can do this because we are filled to the very fullness of God!
Children and Parents
The relationship between parents and children are to be the same – fueled by the filling of the Spirit so that we can place ourselves under each other.
Children are to place themselves under their parents voluntarily, as a student places themselves under a master teacher – and the promise is a good and long life.
Parents are to place themselves under their children – looking out for their best interests, not so the children can bring you glory, but so they can bring god glory – but you know what, if they bring God glory, they will be your glory as well.
We do this by not exasperating them, and not by leaving them to their own devises, but by bringing them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord. The next time I speak, I’m going to deal with this verse solely – how not to exasperate you kids, and how to build faith into them.
What a fantastic and strange picture of how Christian families are supposed to function. What a huge difference from the people who talk about having religion shoved down their throat as a child. Instead of Shoving religion down our loved ones’ throats, we come under them and lift them up to God!
But we cannot do this without the filling of the Spirit. It is not even that God helps us to live in relationships based on grace – we need more than help – we need him to work through us to accomplish even more than we could ask or imagine. We need to constantly allow ourselves to be filled, and constantly inviting the Spirit to come and fill us. We need him now, and we will need him when we go home, we will especially need him tomorrow morning!
Lets’ pray to that end
Invite people to come forward to be filled with the Spirit.
