Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

“The greatest source of security our children have in this world is a God-honoring, Christ-centered marriage between their parents!”

Last week we introduced and ended our service talking about Paul’s call for Christians to submit to one another.

We saw how the only way that people can submit to one another in any relationship is with the help of the Holy Spirit because submission and putting someone else’s needs above your own is not our natural human tendency!

We desperately need the Holy Spirit to help us in this process and the marriage covenant is no different.

In fact, the current state of marriage is crumbling in our society.

People have no idea what a marriage is or what it was supposed to look like.

David Jones and Andreas Kostenberger had this to say in their book entitled God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation.

“For the first time in its history, Western civilization is confronted with the need to define the meaning of the terms “marriage” and “family.”

What until now has been considered a “normal” family, made up of a father, mother, and a number of children, has in recent years begun to be viewed as one among several options.”

Church, make no mistake about it, we are in the midst of a spiritual war, not simply a cultural one!

The enemy is trying to attack and destroy God’s plan for marriage.

John Stott says that the Biblical idea of marriage is: “An exclusive covenant between one man and one woman, ordained and sealed by God, preceded by the leaving of parents, consummated in union, issuing in a permanent mutually supportive partnership, and normally crowned with the gift of children.”

Our culture says that marriage is an option for a couple in the same way that shacking up or sleeping around us.

Our culture also says that marriage does not have to be between one man and one woman.

The fact of the matter is that Marriage is good and it is also a covenant.

We think of it as a contract often times, but it is much bigger than a contract, it is a covenant.

It is permanent, sacred, exclusive and mutual.

The thing that married Christians must keep in mind, though, is that Jesus Christ comes first.

You might be thinking that as a husband or wife, you are to put your spouse before yourself (essentially putting them first), but according to what we see in Scripture is that you are to put Christ first, your spouse next and yourself last.

That’s not always easy to do, is it?

What we see, though, is that this is exactly what Jesus Christ did and Christian marriage is supposed to be a picture of Christ’s love for the church.

What Paul does in this text is lay out the responsibilities for wives and for husbands.

This is a passage of Scripture that people can get bent out of shape due to one word, however this text is important and extremely timely for our society.

We might say that we will order our marriages however we want to, but from Scripture we see that God has already ordered marriages and given each party responsibilities, rather than going against God’s decree let our prayer be filled with the Spirit and imitate God.

Ephesians 5:22-33

Spirit-Filled Wives

This passage of Scripture is one of the most contested in Scripture because of the idea that wives are to submit to their husbands.

With our culture moving in a direction where submission is a foreign concept and linked with suppressing and controlling someone, even Christians aren’t quite sure what to do with this word.

We looked last week at verse 21 and we talked about how the Christian life is marked by submission.

We are to be filled with the Holy Spirit and we are to submit to one another in the fear of Christ!

The Christian life is all about submitting!

The wife, in this passage, is called to submit to her husband that is willing to die for her!

That is someone worth submitting to, I’d say.

Kostenberger says, “Some may view submitting to one’s husband’s authority as something negative, a more accurate way of looking at marital roles is to understand that wives are called to follow their husband’s loving leadership.”

A Christian husband should be the first to say I’m sorry.

The first to say I love you.

The first person to serve the other.

We get that out of order, sometimes, but it is the order that God has designed from the beginning.

We see this idea all the way back in Genesis, male and female with Adam being the head of the family.

This is a theme throughout Scripture, but we get it misunderstood often times.

We can easily think that it means that wives are less than their husbands and this can lead to all sorts of abuse and hurt feelings.

The bottom line is that we are all equal before God, we simply have different roles within marriage.

Both roles are incredibly important and necessary for a Godly marriage to exist and thrive.

Some of the problem with this passage stems from the fact that we simply don’t like it.

We talked about this during our Wednesday night Bible study through regarding true and false wisdom.

False wisdom says that it’s all about your happiness and that you know better than God.

True wisdom says that God has ordained a specific way for things to work.

True wisdom says that it’s all about His glory - especially a Christian marriage.

We must understand that God is infinitely wise and He works all things together for our good, therefore if His Word says to do something or that things are ordered in a certain manner, we are to follow that order.

Many non-Christians say that Christianity has it backwards and is anti-women because of verses like this, however if we look back in Scripture we see that Jesus was one of the most pro-women individuals in human history.

Paul was as well as he recommended a woman to be a deacon and routinely taught how Christians are one and united and equal in the eyes of God because we are all adopted into the family of God.

There are Christians who reject this passage and instead say that Paul was simply talking about his context rather than a template to be followed by people 2 thousand years later.

If Paul were the only individual who mentioned this, then they might have a case, but again, this is something that is seen all the way back by God Himself in the Garden of Eden.

This is something that has a strong Scriptural basis and is something that we must do our best to understand.

Paul gives some instructions for both wives and husbands, let’s examine the responsibilities given to wives first.

In verse 33, Paul states that the wife is to respect her husband.

In verse 21, we see that we are to submit out of the fear of Christ - it is the same idea here.

The word fear should not be thought of as a fear of violence or a fear of terror.

We do not fear that from Christ, but we respect Him. says that there is no fear in love.

Wives should not fear their husbands, but they should respect them.

Women crave love and attention, men crave respect.

In a study by Psychology Today of 400 males, 74% said that they would rather feel alone and unloved than disrespected and inadequate.

A very similar number of women were found to rather feel disrespected and inadequate instead of feeling alone and unloved.

We are different people with different wirings.

As my former pastor called it, you are 2 sinners living under one roof!

That is going to naturally lead to some problems.

We must understand that we are simply wired differently and that when Paul says that wives are to respect their husband, that is something that a husband desperately needs from his wife more so than anyone in his life.

A husband desperately needs a wife who respects, prays for and loves him.

What we see in is that sin ruined the natural harmony in marriage.

It twisted men from having a humble and loving leadership into being hostile or lazy in some instances.

It twisted women from willingly submitting into being defiant in some instances.

Sin did not create submission and headship, it twisted those terms and the consequences of that first sin is still being felt in our world today!

The next word that we see regarding the responsibility of a wife is submit in verse 22. Again, we see this idea throughout the Old and New Testament (, , , , ) all come to mind.

Let’s look close at this verse.

Does Paul call women to submit to all men?

Does Paul say that women are inferior to men? No.

He says to submit to your husband.

The husband in verse 23 is the head of the wife.

The husband is not the head of every woman.

This is not submission that is done out of fear or danger, but it is voluntary!

This is not a “slavery” relationship or a relationship where the wife has to obey every command her husband says without discussion or questioning.

That is not what this is saying.

Whenever Lindsey and I are at home watching the Cardinals play and Lindsey asks if I want anything from the kitchen (such as a chocolate chip cookie), she does not do this because she is afraid of upsetting me, she does so because she loves me and wants to make sure that I’m not wanting a snack.

There is a close connection between submission and love.

Stott says, “The wife’s submission is but another aspect of love… What does it mean to submit?

It is to give oneself up to somebody.

What does it mean to love?

It is to give oneself up to somebody.”

To submit to someone is to put the will of someone above the will of yourself.

To love someone is to put the needs of someone above the needs of yourself.

These things are almost identical.

In fact, mention both in the same passage.

The reason behind this action is as to the Lord in verse 22.

The reason that a Christian wife would willingly submit to and respect her husband is to glorify Jesus Christ.

Again, this is something that our world does not do by and large.

Other people might see this as “strange” or “odd”, however a Christian sees it as part of becoming more like Christ.

With all of this said, how on earth do we make sense of verse 24?

What are we to do with the “submit in everything”?

Kostenberger rightly notes that there is a difference between a “traditional marriage” and a “Biblical marriage”.