Sermon Tone Analysis

-33

Instructions for Christian Households

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 Savior.

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[a] her by the washingwith 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 wivesas 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.

Introduction: Adjusting to Marriage Video - Ask the Kids for Advice for this Couple.

Is there a Not-So Good News Marriage?

http://christandpopculture.com/drew-barrymore-celebrity-marriage-after-divorce/

Our World seems to be re-defining marriage in a whole variety of ways, I am not just talking about the more recent moves to legalize same-sex marriage in our culture, but all marriage is often being conceived of in ways that fit our desires.

When I talk about Not-So Good News Marriage, I am talking about conceptions of marriage that differ from the Gospel’s vision of marriage is.

To be sure, there are some fantastic marriages out their that are not of a believing couple.

Paul’s context is, however, similar, and in some ways very different then ours.

The Household Code of Aristotle

Of household management we have seen that there are three parts–one is the rule of a master over slaves, which has been discussed already, another of a father, and the third of a husband.

A husband and father, we saw, rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs, the rule over his children being a royal, over his wife a constitutional rule.

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 elder and full-grown is superior to the younger and more immature.

But in most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all.

Nevertheless, when one rules and the other is ruled we endeavor to create a difference of outward forms and names and titles of respect, which may be illustrated by the saying of Amasis about his foot-pan.

The relation of the male to the female is of this kind, but there the inequality is permanent.

The rule of a father over his children is royal, for he rules by virtue both of love and of the respect due to age, exercising a kind of royal power.

And therefore Homer has appropriately called Zeus ‘father of Gods and men,’ because he is the king of them all.

For a king is the natural superior of his subjects, but he should be of the same kin or kind with them, and such is the relation of elder and younger, of father and son.

(Politics, Book 1, XII)

Now, it is obvious that the same principle applies generally, and therefore almost all things rule and are ruled according to nature.

But the kind of rule differs; 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 an of them, they are present in different degrees.