The Definition of Love

How do you define love? If we all lived according to love, what would our relationships look like?

When we come to a passage like this one we all need to confess we are reading in a 21st century, Western, post-enlightenment, biblically illiterate context. Context guides our understanding and application of the Bible.

Part of our context is a history of people in the church who have taken our passage out of context and used it as justification for abuse of women, children, and slaves. Jesus and Paul both would find this reprehensible. But we all struggle to read it without that history coming to mind. Worse than that, for some it’s not history, it’s a present reality.

How do we put this passage back in context so that we can understand it properly?

Literary context: Paul has instructed Christians to imitate God, to walk in love, light, and wisdom, to be filled with the Spirit in a praise-song-singing, thanksgiving way, and in a submitting to one another in the fear of Christ way. And if we put verse 2 and verse 25 together, Paul defines love, and we can’t imitate God and be filled with His Spirit and misunderstand love.

Cultural context: Paul is writing in an ancient near eastern culture in which everyone’s identity is defined by the household of their father (bet av). The only “single people” were widows, orphans, and immigrants, which Paul addresses in other letter. His expectation is that everyone reading this letter would identify with one of the household categories he addresses. (This is not true for us in our culture.)

And he is writing to a church in the Greek/Roman city of Ephesus. Greeks in that city worshipped the goddess Artemis, which created a temptation for Christians toward a corrupt sexual ethic and to pagan conceptions into the church. Also, the broader Greek culture was built on “household codes”, that look something like Ephesians 5:21-6:9, but are very different in tone and content. Paul is going to overturn their preconceptions by teaching them to walk in love, according to their identity in Christ, imitating God, filled with His Spirit.

But there is one more context with which we want to begin. The context of Biblical theology: The Bible has a lot to say about love and marriage before we ever get to Paul’s letter.

Understand the Purpose of Marriage

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God’s purpose for creating the human was oneness with Him. This oneness would result in shared dominion and fruitfulness with humans. Fill the earth and nurture it with God. But you can’t fill the earth with only one human. So,

Genesis 2:18 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

The word helper here is not a person who makes you a sandwich kind of helper. The word is someone who comes to help you when you are helpless. It is a strong deliverer. The man needed someone to be his partner and his strength when his strength fails.

Genesis 2:21 ESV

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

The word rib should be better translated “side”. Half of Adam was surgically removed to build a woman. Thus,

Genesis 2:23–24 ESV

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

“Therefore” means, “here’s the punchline. Marriage is God’s picture to the world of oneness on the human level. So, even if you aren’t a married person, the institution of marriage is important and meaningful because it is the primary way humans have learned about God’s desire for union with us.

It is also the school in which humans learn virtues that lead to fruitfulness, like love, humility, kindness, and grace. It is learning to give up your freedom by binding yourself to another person who is different in kind from you in order to care for their needs above your own, and bear the fruit of children, in whom you cultivate love and fruitfulness and teach to care for creation.

This is why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage. There is no difference in kind in that union. The picture is off. It looks more like self-love. The picture is important. But just as important, there is also no fulfillment of the first commandment to be fruitful and multiply. But lest we be accused of targeting one sin above all others, let’s keep going. God’s purpose for marriage is also why God hates divorce. Divorce does violence to fruitful oneness (see Malachi 2:13-16). And lust, fornication, and adultery are abominations because they are self-seeking versions of sexual union void of any self-giving commitment in binding myself to the other for their nurture and fruitfulness. They erode and destroy oneness, and so are corruptions to learning oneness with God.

Why would God create such a fragile, narrow way for us to learn His desire for oneness? If there are so many pitfalls that have captured so many, where is the hope? We have never achieved true oneness with one another, let alone God. As soon as God gave us the plan, we chose to make our own way, and from the garden we have been ashamed, hiding, and blaming.

The hope is not to fix the world by rushing out to get married to the next person of the opposite sex that you can. Entering the union of marriage will not suddenly make you a virtuous or faithful person. And God doesn’t call all of us into that union anyway, because that’s not the most important union for a human. You can be a complete person, serving God, apart from the union of marriage. Our Lord Jesus Himself was never married, and He was the most complete human that ever lived. Because the purpose of marriage is not to be fulfilled or completed by another human. What is the purpose?

Paul sets marriage in the context of the gospel of Jesus. This is why Paul begins and ends his version of a household code with Christ.

Ephesians 5:21 ESV

submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5:32 ESV

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

The purpose of marriage is to lead us to Jesus who grants us oneness with God by his sacrifice and teaches us to love one another, submitted to His authority.

What we corrupted in our sin, God has redeemed in Christ. All those sins that the Bible names, and I named a minute ago, that offend God’s purpose for marriage and sexuality are atoned for by Jesus in one act of sacrificial love that fulfills God’s purpose for marriage.

Paul puts it this way,

Ephesians 5:25–27 ESV

...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.

Jesus sanctifies all who are united with Him to be His bride. And being His bride, we are one flesh with him, as Paul reminds us we learned from Genesis 2, which he quotes in verse 31.

Ephesians 5:31 ESV

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Don’t rush to get married. Do become one with Christ Jesus. There’s the biblical theology. Now, let’s see how Paul’s instructions would have been read by those who received this letter.

Submitting to One Another in the Fear of Christ, Wives do that at Home

Paul is teaching wives to apply their newly acquired identity in Christ at home as much as in the church.

The Greek readers may have learned the household code of Aristotle, who taught:

“The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle of necessity extends to all mankind . . .

“Of household management we have seen that there are three parts—one is the rule of a master over slaves,... another of a father, and the third of a husband. A husband and father rules over wife and children, For although there may be exceptions to the order of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female, just as the older and full-grown is superior to the younger and more immature

“The freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature. So it must necessarily be with the moral virtues also; all may be supposed to partake of them, but only in such manner and degree as is required by each for the fulfillment of his duty. . .”

How is Paul answering back this kind of philosophy? Aristotle's focus is the free man of the house ruling well. But a husband ruling over his wife is not God’s purpose, it was part of the curse of sin. The Christian code begins with Jesus, who taught that in His kingdom, those who want to rule must be servants of all, imitating God and walking in the love of Christ, who defined love on the cross. So, the code begins with

Ephesians 5:21 ESV

submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

In a Christian home, the husband does not rule. As a fellow member of the body of Christ with his wife, I submit to Christ in her. For example, the Holy Spirit has given my wife a gift of discernment that I don’t have. She can tell me when there is something a little “off” about a person or a situation, and to be careful. I have learned she is always right. So I let her lead sometimes when I’m ready to dive headlong into something I shouldn’t.

Then, notice that Paul doesn’t only address the master/father/husband. He gives the wife agency.

Ephesians 5:22 ESV

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

She is not inferior or less fit for command. She is made in the image of God, she shares the king-priest role for which humans, male and female were created, and redeemed to that role in Christ. Created out of the side of Adam, she is the strength of her husband, able to help him when he is in need. So, Paul is saying to the wives, when you willingly obey “submitting to one another” at home with your husband, you are taking agency to walk in the love of Christ with your husband, who may or may not be a Christian. On the outside, that may look the same as every other Greek wife. But her motive is different. She is doing it out of reverence for Christ.

And more than that, when she submits to her husband, she is completing a picture for the world of Christ and the Church.

Ephesians 5:23–24 ESV

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.

This doesn’t mean obeying everything your husband says. But it does mean submitting to anything that creates oneness in your marriage. Because that looks like the picture God uses to teach the world to know His desire for oneness with us through Christ.

The picture is important. Paul uses the word “head” in both of its senses. Head can mean “source”, like the headwaters of a river. And “head” can mean the determinative member of the body, the leader. I still believe, contrary to some people’s view, that there are differences between men and women. God, in creating woman out of man as her source, gave a picture to the world of the Church being created out of the body of Christ, cut apart on the cross. Also, in the same way that the church follows the Christ as head, when a woman follows her husband’s lead, she demonstrates the picture of Christ and the church, and the message of the gospel, to the world.

Which leads us to husbands,

Submitting to One Another in the Fear of Christ, Husbands Nourish Your Wives

Ephesians 5:25-27 gives us the definition of love Paul demands of husbands.

Ephesians 5:25–27 ESV

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.

The husband, as the head in the relationship with his wife, does not replace the authority of Christ. He is not her ruler. In fact, he does not replace Christ in any way. A husband is to love her in a way that helps her grow closer to Jesus. She does not belong primarily to her husband. She belongs to Jesus.

How does a husband love his wife as Christ loves the church? A husband cannot redeem his wife with his love. But he can still love her in a self-giving, sacrificial, spiritually nurturing, cherishing way. When a husband comes home from work every day, tired and maybe discouraged, ready to serve his wife in some way that helps her grow in her union with Jesus Christ, he is loving his wife, according to this definition of love. My love for my wife should help her grow in the love of Christ for her.

Paul uses our biblical theology of marriage to illustrate how this love works. Marriage is a picture of oneness with God through Christ.

Ephesians 5:28–30 ESV

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.

What’s the lesson in this picture? A husband is one flesh with his wife, so he should nourish and cherish her to the degree he would be nourished and cherished himself. A husband grows in Christ to the degree that his wife grows in Christ as fellow members of the body of Christ. So, husbands who are smothering, domineering, abusive, bossy, belittling, chauvinistic, or narcissistic, keep their wives from growing freely and fully in the love of Christ. If you are playing video games while she does the dishes so that neither of you are drawing near to Christ, you don’t understand love.

This is God’s purpose for marriage: it is an invitation to the world to enter union with God through the love of Christ. When a Christian marriage demonstrates the love of Christ for His bride, the church, and the submission of the church to Christ’s nurturing leadership, there is fruitfulness in that marriage. And it bears gospel fruit as the world understands God’s desire to redeem them into oneness.

How do you define love? It would have to be the self-giving sacrifice of Jesus Christ that provides oneness with God. What that looks like for us is Paul’s summary:

Ephesians 5:32–33 ESV

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.

Apply the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ at home. Wives, trust Christ in your marriage. Submit to Christ by strengthening your husband to become more like Christ in every way he is willing.

Husbands, clean the toilet and do the dishes and whatever else you can so that your wife gets time with Jesus. And lead by example, not by command. When your wife sees you submitting to Christ, learning to walk in His humility, kindness, grace, and love, she will not be able to help herself but to come along side to strengthen you in that.

But if you are not married, here’s why this message is still valuable and important. Marriage is a picture of oneness with God through Christ, but it doesn’t complete you as a person or as a Christian. Find every way you can in your relationships in the church to submit to brothers and sisters to learn to trust Jesus who grants us oneness with God by his sacrifice and teaches us to love one another, submitted to His authority. Jesus is the one that nourishes and cares for His body by offering Himself for us and to us. Come to Jesus, and help others come to Jesus.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

What kind of family did you grow up in? What lessons did you learn from them?

What do we learn about God/Jesus in our passage?

What is God’s purpose for the church? How does submitting to one another help accomplish that purpose?

What do we learn about ourselves in this passage?

What makes submitting to others hard?

How can we help nourish others in their relationship with Jesus?

How will you respond to this passage this week?

Who can you share this passage with this week?