"Stand Firm!"

Premarital pregnancies, troubled marriages, no-fault divorces, overbearing or abusive husbands, “women ’s rights” wives, and families caught in the crossfire of the war between the sexes—these are just a few of the reasons why this portion of God’s Word is so important and applicable to life in today’s Christian congregations. Of all the advice offered by secular counselors, newspaper columnists, and talk-show hosts, none compares to the marriage guidance which God gives in his Word. Who can better define the roles of husband and wife than he who created them in the first place?

Here in this evenings text our Lord God gives us a heavenly model. His model is found in the relationship of Christ to the church and of the church to Christ. In that model, marriage is seen as a way of serving or helping the marriage partner. The Lord teaches the husbands how to love their wives and teaches the wives how to respect their husbands.

Reverence for Christ

Reverence for Christ is the catalyst that transforms marriage for a Christian from a way of getting to an opportunity for serving. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,” the Epistle reads. The Greek word that is translated “be subject” means to stand under. Each person in marriage is to place himself or herself under the partner. St. Paul puts it plainly in his letter to the Philippians: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3).

Where there is no reverence for Christ, marriage is self-serving. Examples abound:

Pressed with the expenses of maintaining her own apartment, a young woman marries so that her husband can help pay the expenses. A lonely man engages the bar scene in an effort of finding a woman who will give him some attention. A girl wants status and position so she marries a man who has these things. A man is looking for sexual gratification, so he marries a girl for that reason.

All of these are self-serving reasons for marriage, and almost guaranteed to fail. The Christian marriage is to be different. So Paul explains that difference in this way:

1 Thessalonians 4:3–5 NIV84

3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;

Reverence for Christ transforms marriage so that it is seen as an opportunity for each spouse to serve the other. Christ’s life was one of service. All that He did, He did to serve people. Among us, friends do helpful things for other friends. But Christ’s way of serving was unique. He served people who were not His friends, but His enemies. And His enemies included all people, including you and me. Our selfishness, our self-serving attitudes and actions, pits us against God. Paul explained that “the sinful mind is hostile to God” (Rom 8:7). But, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

God sent His Son into the world to serve us, who in our sinfulness are His enemies. He frees us from the hell where our self-service put us by suffering the punishment of hell in our place. He died for our sins and was raised again to new live in order that our life might be new and right and spotless before God. Jesus Himself tells us that He came into the world not “to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

That is the way He wants husbands and wives to live with each other in this world. Those who reverence the Christ who loved them seek to follow His will. Husband and wife serve one another in accord with their reverence for Christ, for when the husband loves his wife in this manner, the wife respects her husband.

Husbands Subject to Wives

The husband is subject to his wife by loving her as Christ loved the church. Christ's love for the church moved Him to give His life for her. At an army basic training camp in Camp Roberts, California, an instructor was teaching a company of soldiers the proper way to throw a hand grenade. He pulled the pin and held the handle tight against the grenade as he drew back his arm to throw it. As his arm came forward, the grenade fell out of his hand, rolled off the platform, and trickled, fully armed among the trainees seated on the ground in front of him. Pandemonium broke loose. Some went flying away from there as fast as their legs could move. Others threw themselves down as flat to the ground as they could, seeking shelter behind a bench, a tree, or another person or in a depression in the ground. One trainee sat on the bench hesitating. He started for the grenade to fall upon it so that it would not kill anybody else, but then quickly turned away and instead threw himself down on the ground where another's body would shield him from the fragments.

To love another enough that you are willing to give up your life for that person is almost impossible when the chips are down. Yet that's the measure of Christ’s love for us. He knew our condition. He knew that without His death we would all be destroyed by sins fragments. Yet, He covered that grenade of sin with His own body, thereby saving our lives. We can lay NO CLAIM to His love. But, He loved us that much anyway.

A husband is to love his wife in the same manner, willing to give up his life for her welfare. He demonstrated love for her not because she is pretty or brilliant or polished, but because she is his to care for and to serve in his vocation as husband. She is joined to him. She is, so to speak, part of his own body. He is the head and she is his body, just as Christ is the head of the church and the church is His body. The head does not exist for itself but for the body. So the husband out of love for his wife is willing to spend himself for her sake.

This kind of love means that a man sees his wife as someone special. He lets her know constantly of his love for her. He would certainly want to tell her of that love, but the greatest way be can show bis love to her is to forgive her as Christ Jesus has forgiven him. This means that he holds nothing against her. He does not keep a record of wrongs. His wife knows that she is accepted by him as one who is cleansed from all wrong — not only cleansed but special, set apart from all others for her husband alone. She knows that she is the person for whom he is living and dying, and there is no other.

This kind of love prompts a husband to per his wife’s interests above his own, to help her to be the best kind of person she can be. It might mean that goals he at one time had for himself in life are never reached. But when one’s goal is to love his wife as Christ love him, other goals pale into insignificance, and if they get in the way, they are automatically discarded. That type of love is not always going to be understood by others, or even by one’s own wife, just as Jesus’ love for the church is not always understood. But Christ’s call to husbands is simply to love whether that love is understood or not.

Wives Subject to Husbands

The wife is subject to her husband by respecting him. St. Paul makes that clear in the last verse of this evening’s text: “The wife must respect her husband” (Eph. 5:33). There are two ways in which this respect manifests itself.

The wife submits to her husband as the church submits to Christ. The church submits to Christ; that's a reality. It's the nature of the church to submit to Jesus Christ. The church is all people who believe in Jesus—not necessarily all who go to church or are members of a specific congregation, but all who believe in Jesus as their Lord and· Savior. They look to Him for everything. They acknowledge Him as Lord and Master. They recognize that He rules the world and that they are His servants. They obey Him. Paul calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ. Those who are part of the church know that in Jesus they have a Lord, a King. They proclaim Him to be Lord of lords and King of kings, and they are grateful to be His subjects, His slaves.

In similar fashion the wife is to submit to her husband. She submits “as to the Lord” (Eph 5:22). This is not a forced submission but a willing one. It is won by love, a Christ-like love. In submitting to her husband, the wife shows her respect for him. In trusting him to care for her, she shows her respect for him. In obeying him, she shows her respect for him. Acknowledging him as her lord and master shows her respect for him. By the same token, any kind of disrespect, such as belittling him or speaking ill of him to others or deliberately disobeying him destroys him in his role as husband and will eventually destroy the marriage.

The second parallel is that the wife acknowledges that the husband is her head just as Christ Jesus is head of the church; He governs and directs the church. But He can do so only if the church acknowledges Him as its Head. If the church should acknowledge someone else as its head, then Christ Jesus is no longer be directing or governing it.

In the same way the wife is to respect her husband as head. If she does not give him that respect but shows submission and respect to another man, then the husband has lost his position of directing and guiding, for that role has been given by the wife to another, and that other person now in effect becomes the wife’s head. Her husband is to be the wife’s head. He is the one to whom she is to give deference and respect. She is not to give the honor of being head to any other person. Nor is she to usurp it herself and be her own head.

Christ Jesus’ love prompted Him to leave the Father and be joined to His bride, the church. A husband’s love for his wife prompts him to leave father and mother and be joined to his wife to care for her, and if necessary, to die for her. The wife’s respect for her husband prompts her to submit to him and to acknowledge him as her head. Marriage, for a Christian, is a call — a vocation — to two people to serve one another with love and respect.