Sermon Tone Analysis

Personal Observations:

v. 22-24, Paul’s instructions toward wives

v. 22, Wives have an obligation to serve their husbands as they would serve God

Wives have an obligation to serve their husbands as they would serve God

v. 23, the reason for this service is because the husband has an appointed role as “head of the wife”

v. 23, the relationship between husband and wife parallels the relationship between Christ and the Church

v. 23-24, husbands are called to emulate Christ, whereas wives emulate the Church and emulate her completely.

v. 25-30, Paul’s instructions toward husbands

v.25, Husbands have an obligation to love their wives as Christ loves the church.

v. 25, This love has a sacrificial edge to it

v. 26, on the premise of sacrificial love, Paul notes its purpose for the sanctifying (make holy) of the bride

v. 27, for the sanctifying of the bride, it is for the purpose that she might stand before God in utmost glory, completely cleansed, holy and blameless

v. 28, so because of v.25b-27, husbands need to love their wives with all the capacity they can love them.

Paul says like as the wives were their bodies.

If you love your wife, then you’re loving yourself (this is a build up to oneness language)

Despite the marital context, this notion of loving someone as we love ourselves isn’t new,

v.29, no one who is right in the head has ever hated their body; to some degree we all feed our bodies, we all ensure that it is kept warm, protected, etc., we all take care of our bodies out of a need for self-preservation and this care between us and our bodies models Christ’s care for the church

v. 30, the placement of this sentence seems odd, research

v. 31, Paul proceeds to take his point all the way back to the beginning, quoting

v. 32, is he calling what happened in the beginning a mystery or the relationship between the church and Christ?

v. 33, the overall conclusion is that every Christian husband is to love their wife as they love themselves

(Cut and Paste observations to points of discussion when beginning outline)

Subject: What am I talking about?

Why should husbands and wives love and serve one another?

Complement: What exactly am I saying about what I’m talking about?

Because marriage is needs to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church.

The Big Idea:

The relationship between a husband and wife should reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church

Prayer Requests & Praise Reports

Intro:

So we are continuing onwards in the instructional phase of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians and much of what we have been discussing has been revolving around the preservation of unity amongst the body and Unity with God.

Can anyone give me a quick recap of what we spoke about last week?

Imitators of God (v.

1-5)

Wake Up (v.

6-14)

Understanding the Will of God (v.

15-21)

When we know God’s will, we can please Him by mirroring Him in our living, speaking and thinking.

Every facet of who we are as Christians must be conformed to the reality of who God is.

Today are continuing from that premise and we are discussing a passage that marks the beginning of a set of instructions to various members of the Christian household.

Now before we go any further, it is important to establish some historical context here.

The audience of Paul’s day is entirely different from 21st century American Christians.

That is to say that women are viewed differently in modern Western civilization that in ancient Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world.

For example, one writer said women were the worst plague Zeus made.

Another said, “The two best days in a woman’s life are when someone marries her and when he carries her dead body to the grave.”

One rabbi advised, “Do not talk much with a woman.”

Another added, “Not even with one’s wife.”

By and large, women were viewed as inferior and were given relatively little freedom.

Of course, their status varied in different places and times.

Generally speaking, the farther west one went the better their lot, but even in Rome women were only in a slightly better position than their sisters in the East.

Obviously there were exceptions like in a few places such as Sparta and Egypt women were given greater freedom and responsibility.

In most places, however, if they were allowed to live at birth, women were minimally educated, could not be witnesses in a court of law, could not adopt children or make a contract, could not own property or inherit, and were viewed in every inferior to a man.

They were seen as less intelligent, less moral, the source of sin, and a continual temptation (see ).

Today is a continuation of that discussion, but on a little more specific level.

Respectable women were kept from public life.

Typically, women lived in one part of the house and men lived in another.

In many cases they did not eat meals together.

In larger homes virgins spent most of their time in a section set aside for them.

Conversation with people outside the house was kept to a minimum.

For a woman even to do her spinning in her doorway was scandalous.

Imagine how scandalous some would view the early church where both sexes met together in a house for worship and shared the Lord’s Supper!

When girls married (usually about age fifteen or sixteen), they were expected to take the religion of their husbands.

They were either under their father’s, their husband’s, or some other male relative’s authority all their lives.

As Christians in the 21st we must take into account both this devaluation of women in the ancient world and the problems caused in the early church by the new freedom and valuation women found in the Christian faith.

Now all this said, is what we are reading regarding husbands and wives so historically conditioned, then, that they can be ignored?

Arnold, C. E. (2002).

Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Romans to Philemon.

(Vol.

3, p. 332).

Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

No.

There is no biblical text can be ignored.

The issue is how they should be understood and applied.

They point to a reality about God, humanity, and the relationship between the two that needs to be recognized and followed.

We have seen three important facts about the house codes:

(1) They were motivated by the desire to avoid slander on the church.

()

(2) They provided instructions on Christian conduct within the household.

(3) They addressed the same three groups that other Greek and Jewish writers addressed, but focused more on the responsibility of the husband, father, and master.

(wives-husbands, children-parents, slaves-masters)

(1) They were motivated by the desire to avoid slander on the church.

()

(2) They provided instructions on Christian conduct within the household.

(3) They addressed the same three groups that other Greek and Jewish writers addressed, but focused more on the responsibility of the husband, father, and master.

(wives-husbands, children-parents, slaves-masters)

Snodgrass, K. (1996).

Ephesians (pp.

302–304).

Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Snodgrass, K. (1996).

Ephesians (p.

301).

Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Subjection (v.

22-24)

Love (v.

25-30)

Mystery (v.

31-33)

Subjection (v.

22-24),

After ending his previous sentence with, “be subject to one another in the fear of Christ,” he transitions to the subjection of wives unto their husbands

This notion of subjection shouldn’t be so controversial, as Paul is not really calling wives into doing something that the rest of the body is excluded from.

The only difference is that the context is much more intimate

v. 22-24, Paul’s instructions toward wives

v. 22, Wives have an obligation to serve their husbands as they would serve God

Submission does not imply inferiority, since Christ Himself is submissive to the Father

Peterman, G. W. (2014).

Ephesians.

In The moody bible commentary (p.