What’s Love Got To Do With It?

You can listen to this sermon here:-

https://www.npbc.org.au/podcasts/media/2024-09-01-what-s-love-got-to-do-with-it

Ephesians 5:21-33

“What’s Love Got To Do With It?”

Message

With it being Father’s Day a text which speaks into the theme of such a day is Ephesians 5:21-33. It is a passage which focusses on marriage and relationships.

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do 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 Saviour. 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 their own body, but they feed and care for their body, 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.

These verses are written by God.

The God who put the first married couple on the earth – fully naked – and said “this is very good”.

The God who put a book in the Bible called Song of Songs – which is basically a book celebrating redeemed sensuality.

The God who saw the brokenness that sin brought to relationships – and so sent His Son so that relationships between husbands and wives can be redeemed.

This God inspired Paul to write these words to Scripturally and spiritually equip those who are married, or who are hoping to be married.

When these words are applied in a marriage then it will be the case that married couples can have relationships which are strong, safe, healthy, dynamic, respectful, blessed, serving, growing, honest, peace-filled, nurturing, forgiving, passionate, full-filling, communicating, faithful, relaxed, committed, exciting, sacrificial, and lasting till death do us part.

That’s the purpose of these verses.

That is the relationship all married couples can have when they, as a couple, live in obedience to these Scripture verses.

But here is the problem.

There are times when women and men read these verses and it doesn’t make them feel safe, or strong, or secure, or at peace, or excited … and all the other outcomes which these verses are intended to produce.

What can happen instead is that women and men read these words in Ephesians 5:21-33 and the result is … fear.

Not fear, as in the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of all wisdom.

But fear, as in being afraid, having anxiety, trepidation, apprehension and unease.

On one side there are fear-filled women and wives.

Why? Because of these words.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands

23 For the husband is the head of the wife

24 Wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Submission.

In this context the word “submit” means:- To voluntarily arrange under.

It is sad to say but obedience to submission has become a place of fear.

A wife who is just a door-mat and fears to have an opinion.

A woman who fears she will become nothing and completely loose her identity.

Wives who fear the next words of their authoritarian husbands.

It isn’t what God intended, but it is understandable why this fear arises.

Especially when these same verses have been used around a bed in a hospital where a woman lies with a black eye, a bruised face, and three broken ribs. Those around the bed are saying to her, you need to go back to your Christian wife-beating husband – that is what a wife who submits to her husband in everything is called to do.

Yes it is true that the call to submit is not conditional upon the loving response of her husband. However, her submission is obedience to the Lord, not obedience to the sinful demands of her husband. A man who beats his wife is a man who is making sinful, ungodly demands.

Ultimately, if submission is being applied in such a way that it results in fear-filled women, then somewhere along the line these verses are being applied in an unbiblical manner.