In a survey done last year by the Barna Group they found the likelihood of born again Christians getting divorced equal to those who are not born again. In their interviews, they found 35% of born again believers have been divorced along with 35% of non born again Christians. George Barna commented, ““Among born again adults, 80% have been married, compared to just 69% among the non-born again segment. If the non-born again population were to marry at the same rate as the born again group, it is likely that their divorce statistic would be roughly 38% - marginally higher than that among the born again group, but still surprisingly similar in magnitude.”
Some of you have been married and divorced and married again. Some of the divorces reported came before people became Christians. Today I want to deal with the marriage relationship of believers as defined in Ephesians 5:22-33 so we can move beyond the past and insure our future stability. Three points Paul makes concerning marriage.
1. Wives are to be Submissive. Ephesians 5:22-24, “22 You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything.”
Ladies, how many of you cringe when you hear the word submissive? Unfortunately there are some men who think the letters in the word wife stand for washing, ironing, food and entertainment.
Submitting is a choice. It is not something which the husband can or should demand, but the wife willingly give. Not in the response of being lorded over but in the act of being lovingly cared for. In Christ, there is no male nor female, both are one and on equal footing. In marriage there are different roles.
Understand, if there is violence and abuse in the relationship, get out, seek professional help but do not continue to be abused. Submission is willingly giving and no one should be asked to do or participate in anything which goes against their moral and spiritual convictions.
Submit, as you would to Christ, fully giving yourself to your husband. Submission is a hard thing, isn’t it? We also want to be in control. A Christian marriage acknowledges the need for leadership just as Christianity acknowledges the leadership of Jesus Christ. They say two many cooks spoil the broth and two heads is a deformity, unnatural so in marriage we wives are called to submit to the leadership of the husband.
One example we can draw of submission is found in Philippians 2:4-8: “Don’t think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing. Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross.”
Ladies, you are not doormats. In fact, these words from Paul were revolutionary in his day since that is how women were treated, as property not having the ability to make a choice, lorded over and help not in submission but in slavery. While Women’s lib groups may chafe at the word submission and call out against the church for using it, it was in fact Jesus Christ who lead the first women’s liberation movement so you would not be subjected to barbaric behavior which is not submission at all.
So what about men, what is their position in the Christian marriage if it is not as dominating lord? Paul teaches
2. Husbands are to love their wives.
A couple had been married for 45 years and had raised 11 children and were blessed with 22 grandchildren. When asked the secret for staying together all that time, the wife replies, ’Many years ago we made a promise to each other: the first one to pack up and leave has to take all the kids.’
I think there is something more than just the kids that keeps people together and in a healthy relationship. Paul said husbands are to love their wives. Interesting to note, Wives are not told to love their husbands, but husbands are told to love their wives. Women have a problem with submission it seems, and men, with love. I read the best way to get a man to remember his wedding anniversary is to get married on his birthday. There might be something to that. Could that be why I married Laura? Our birthdays and anniversary all fall in September. I’m kidding. I married her because I love her.
Helping us along in understanding how we as husbands are to love our wives, Paul provides us with three examples, patterns of life to follow. Husbands are to love their wives as
1. Christ loved the church. The first part of Ephesians 5:25 states, “And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church.”
Paul did not come out and say, hey guys, I just told your wives they are to submit to you, looking for high fives from the group. No, he begins by explaining sacrifice to them. Love your wife like Christ loves the church. How did He love the church? He gave his life for her.
Self-sacrifice. The ability to say no to your wants and needs finding the means to please your wife. The only way for it to happen is to be grounded as a believer or else, you will find yourself self-serving instead of serving her. The greatest relationship I have in life outside the relationship I have with God, is with my wife. She is the joy of my life, and I find myself always seeking ways to please her. This past Christmas I saw a foot massage at the mall, and I know how she likes to have her feet massaged after a hard day at working standing on her feet, so I did not hesitate to secure one for her. I know how much she likes to be pampered, and ladies, when girlfriends went to get a pedicure, I know from what Laura told me, how that makes her feel so men, if you heard how your wives responded to the pedicure, get them on a regular basis to the salon for manicures and pedicures. When they are pleased, you know it.
Self-sacrifice, I care more to please my mate then pleasing myself and I will find a way to accomplish the task because of love, the same love Christ demonstrated toward the church.
Paul then, at the end of verse 25, into verse 26 writes, “He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s word.”
Marriage sets a man and a woman apart from the crowd, they take on a personal identity with each other that is different from others. Although I am concerned and feel for the needs of other people, I am more centered on Laura’s needs over all others because when we each said I do to each other almost 35 years ago, we agreed that together we would stand through the storms of life and enjoy the rich blessings which come. In that commitment to love and cherish, I also, as a believer in Jesus Christ, accepted the responsibility of insuring Laura would remain pure and I remain pure, holy before God, washed by the baptism and word of God, keeping our faith strong.
The problem today becomes men have failed in their duty. Church’s are more populated with wives than they are with husbands and in this, husbands fail in their commitment to keep them holy and clean, into the word. In addition, they set an example for their children concerning importance, that is why most adolescent boys stop attending church in junior high, they find their fathers example telling as to what is important to them and as they seek to immolate the male example in the home, they fall into the same unfortunate pattern. Men, you cannot keep your woman pure and holy, washed in the word, unless you continue to keep yourself baptized in the power and word of God.
Thirdly, Paul tells us concerning the relationship of the husband to the wife…
3. Christ will someday present the church to Himself without spot or wrinkle.
There should be no spiritual decay, no impurity, no sin which the husband brings to his wife. Husbands, if our wife sins, it should be such a pressure upon us to want to seek to bring immediate restoration, and woe to us if that sin is a result of a wrong caused by us. That is why we must maintain our own purity so we don’t lead her into impurity, so that when the Lord comes, she will be found ready and waiting for Christ.
How does this all play together? Last point…
3. Husbands are to love their wives as they love themselves.
There are people who struggle with self image, they have features they don’t like about themselves. If you have a problem with yourself, you will certainly have a problem with others. Negative people easily point out the flaws of others. Husbands, love yourselves and then show that same love to a greater degree toward your spouse.
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on this passage in Ephesians said, “The wife being made one with her husband (not in a natural, but in a civil and in a relative sense), this is an argument why he should love her with as cordial and as ardent an affection as that which he loves himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, v. 29-(no man in his right senses ever hated himself, however deformed, or whatever his imperfections might be); so far from it that he nourishes and cherishes it; he uses himself with a great deal of care and tenderness, and is industrious to supply himself with every thing convenient or good for him, with food and clothing, etc. Even as the Lord the church: that is, as the Lord nourishes and cherishes the church, which he furnishes with all things that he sees needful or good for her, with whatever conduces to her everlasting happiness and welfare. The apostle adds, For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones, v. 30. He assigns this as a reason why Christ nourishes and cherishes his church-because all who belong to it are members of his body, that is, of his mystical body. Or, we are members out of his body: all the grace and glory which the church has are from Christ, as Eve was taken out of the man. But, as one observes, it being the manner of the sacred writings to express a complex body by the enumeration of its several parts, as the heaven and earth for the world, evening and morning for the natural day, so here, by body, flesh, and bones, we are to understand himself, the meaning of the verse being that we are members of Christ.—For this cause (because they are one, as Christ and his church are one) shall a man leave his father and mother; the apostle refers to the words of Adam, when Eve was given to him for a meet help, Gen. 2:24. We are not to understand by this that a man’s obligation to other relations is cancelled upon his marriage, but only that this relation is to be preferred to all others, there being a nearer union between these two than between any others, that the man must rather leave any of those than his wife.—And they two shall be one flesh, that is, by virtue of the matrimonial bond. This is a great mystery, v. 32. Those words of Adam, just mentioned by the apostle, are spoken literally of marriage; but they have also a hidden mystical sense in them, relating to the union between Christ and his church, of which the conjugal union between Adam and the mother of us all was a type: though not instituted or appointed by God to signify this, yet it was a kind of natural type, as having a resemblance to it: I speak concerning Christ and the church.
After this, the apostle concludes this part of his discourse with a brief summary of the duty of husbands and wives, v. 33. "Nevertheless (though there be such a secret mystical sense, yet the plain literal sense concerns you) let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, with such a sincere, peculiar, singular, and prevailing affection as that is which he bears to himself. And the wife see that she reverence her husband.’’ Reverence consists of love and esteem, which produce a care to please, and of fear, which awakens a caution lest just offence be given. That the wife thus reverence her husband is the will of God and the law of the relation.
Looking at these passages, how many of you would say, I have some work to do? There are areas of my life which are not quite up to par with the call of Paul regarding my marriage. Ladies, do you struggle with being submissive? It is time to let go of what the world teaches and get hold of what God says.
Men, have you struggled with your love relationship toward your wife, is self-sacrifice a hard thing for you? Get real today and ask God to show you His way, walk in the purity of his path so you can share that path with your wife.
I want to close with a time for couples to come to the altar so Laura and I can pray for you, for the strength of God to transform your life in a powerful way from this day forward.
