Being Subject to One Another
Subject to One Another • Sermon • Submitted
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· 6 viewsWalking wisely requires that we submit to one another.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Christianity is backwards. It’s backwards from the world.
The world says you win by killing.
But Christianity says the victory has come through sacrifice.
The world says we should stock up on worldly goods.
Christianity says that we should store up treasure in Heaven.
The world says that happiness is found in satisfying one’s self.
Christianity says that happiness is found in denying one’s self and subjecting oneself to others.
Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “Our selfhood is the root of our sorrow.”
This morning Jesus calls us to happiness but not as the world would. He doesn’t call us to be happy by satisfying the self. He calls us to be happy by subjecting ourselves to one another.
[READING - Ephesians 5:21-33]
21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. 22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.
[PRAYER]
[CONTEXT] Those who walk wisely redeem the time, understand the will of the Lord, are filled with the Spirit, make melody to the Lord, give thanks for all things, and they subject themselves to one another in the fear of Christ (Eph. 5:15-21).
[TS] Let’s notice three COMMANDS this morning…
Command #1: Be subject to one another (5:21)
Command #1: Be subject to one another (5:21)
21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
[EXP] The word ‘subject’—as in ‘be subject to one another’—is most often translated as submit. It means to place the needs of another ahead of your own; to be in service to others rather than in service to yourself. Many without Christ look to use one another. Christians look to served one another.
This idea of bowing before one another in humble service is found throughout the New Testament.
13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;
5 You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Listening to those verses we find at least three necessary ingredients if we are going to be subject to one another as Ephesians 5:21 commands.
One ingredient—perhaps the primary ingredient—is humility. We will not subject ourselves to someone else if we are proud. If we are proud, we will think everyone should be subject to us.
But we might ask the question, “How do I get humility?” Well, in order to get humility, you have to get humbled, and the Gospel does that.
The Gospel is the Good News of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ, but why do we have to be saved? Because we are sinners.
God is holy, holy, holy. He has no sin, no unrighteousness. He can’t tolerate sin at all.
And yet we sinned against Him by breaking His righteous commandments.
He said, “Don’t lie,” and we lied.
He said, “Don’t steal, and we stole.
He said, “Honor your father and mother,” and we didn’t.
He said, “Have no other gods before me,” but we put ourselves before Him.
That’s bad news for us because the price for sin is death, but the Good News is that God sent Jesus to pay that price for us on the cross.
We didn’t earn what Jesus dead for us in His death and resurrection.
We didn’t qualify for it somehow.
It was all by grace!
Now, if you believe this, you will be humble because it takes humility to admit that your a sinner—that before God you’re no good.
If you believe this Gospel, you will be humble because it takes humility to admit that you can’t be the hero of your salvation story.
You can’t tell people you worked hard and figured it out and finally trusted Jesus.
No, if you believe the Gospel, you know that it was all by God’s grace—His unmerited favor.
Grace will humble you.
And grace will lead you to love your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s another ingredient necessary for us to subject ourselves to one another.
Again, Galatians 5:3 says that through love we are to serve one another. Paul connects the ideas of love and being subject to one another through service.
Love is warm affection for brothers and sisters in Christ.
Love is communicated by saying, “I love you.”
But love also serves. It works for the good of others and not just for the good of self.
The Apostle John also connected these ideas in 1 John. In 1 John 3:18, John writes…
18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
John is telling us believers that our love shows up in what we do even more than what we say because love leads us to subject ourselves to one another through service.
So, if we are going to subject ourselves to another as Ephesians 5:21 says, then we have to have had the experience of God’s grace leading to humility and love, which demonstrates itself in service, but there is another ingredient necessary, and we see it at the end of Ephesians 5:21 where is says, “in the fear of Christ.” We subject ourselves to one another in the fear of Christ.
There are two types of fear when we talk about fear of God, fear of the Lord, or fear of Christ.
One type of fear is ‘servile fear,’ which is based upon the threat of divine punishment. This can’t be the kind of fear that Paul mentions here because he is writing to Christians and Christians are under no threat of divine punishment.
Jesus has taken our punishment upon Himself on the cross, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The other type of fear—the one that Paul does refer to here—is ‘filial fear’. Filial fear is the kind of awe or reverence that children might have for their parents or younger siblings might have for older siblings.
Because we revere our older brother, our Lord Jesus, and want to be like Him in everything we do, we subject ourselves to one another just as He subjected Himself to the cross on our behalf.
[ILLUS/APP] Besides the cross itself, I think no other story captures so well Jesus humbly submitting Himself in loving service to others as when He washed the feet of His disciples.
In John 13, the Creator of heaven and earth, very God of very God, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, Emmanuel-God with us, the resurrection and the life, the Word made flesh poured water into a basin, wrapped Himself in a towel, and washed the nasty feet of His disciples.
When He was finished, He asked, “Do you know what I have done to you?” Then He said…
13 “You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. 14 “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 “For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.
Jesus humbly submitted Himself in loving service to us.
Out of reverence for Him, we must do the same toward one another.
[TS] …
Command #2: Wives, be subject to your own husbands (5:22-24)
Command #2: Wives, be subject to your own husbands (5:22-24)
22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
[EXP/APP] God created man and woman in His image, male and female (in only two genders) He created them. In the beginning, He gave Eve to Adam as His wife, his helpmate, and He gave Adam to Eve as her husband.
This is what marriage is—and it isn’t anything else—it’s one man and one woman in covenant commitment before God until death do them part.
But just as a wife is given to her husband as a helpmate, a husband is given to his wife as a little-H head or little-R ruler or little-L lord.
The Christian husband is the primary representative of Christ in the home.
Jesus is the capital-H Head, capital-R Ruler, capital-L Lord, and capital-S Savior of the church, and the true church submits to Him in everything.
In the same way then, the wife ought to submit to her husband in everything because the husband is the head of the wife just as Jesus is head of the church.
Now, a few clarifications for you wives…
One, your Christian husband is your Christian husband and you all called to submit to him. You are not called to submit to all men.
Two, your Christian husband is not Jesus, so he is not going to be perfect.
Three, because your Christian husband won’t be perfect, there will be times when you will have to submit to him despite… him!
But, four, you never submit to your Christian husband when your “Christian” husband is leading you to rebel against God.
[ILLUS] A few years ago, Cheryl and I heard a Christian speaker who said that she had recently been counseling with another Christian wife whose marriage was in shambles.
The marriage was a little shaky and both husband and wife knew it. They weren’t having fun together anymore, and they seemed to fight more often.
Then this supposedly Christian husband had a suggestion: he though he and his wife should watch pornography together.
Now, obviously this was sin that his wife should never have agreed to, but she did and rather than help their marriage, it pushed it even closer to ruin.
Sin always ruins. It never helps.
So, when Paul says that Christian wives ought to be subject to their Christian husbands in everything—he obviously does not include sinful things in that ‘everything.’
But the crux of this command stands: godly wives ought to be willingly (even happily) submissive to their godly husbands.
[ILLUS] I said at the beginning of the service that Christianity is so backward from the world, and on this point about wives being submissive, Christianity sure does appear to be backward to the world.
The world thinks that women aren’t to be submissive in the home. They’re to wear the pants in the home. They’re to run the show.
Many men are happy to let them do so, but God isn’t happy about it.
The world thinks that the idea of a woman humbly serving her husband in love is oppressive.
In the very first wedding I ever performed, the bride told me, “I don’t want anything about serving him in the vows.” So, I made sure to put something about serving him in the vows.
“Do you take this man to be your husband, to live together in the holy covenant of marriage; do you promise to love him, serve him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, to be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”
She said she did.
She still does 10 years later.
[APP] Let me tell you what I think helped that young bride who didn’t like the idea of her serving her husband. It’s right down in the last part of Ephesians 5:33, “the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”
There was no doubt that the young bride I told you about respected her husband, so when it came right down to it, she didn’t mind submitting to him, serving him, or following him in any way.
She didn’t mind because she respected him.
She did it willing because she revered him.
That word ‘fear’ in v. 21 and the word ‘respect’ in v. 33 are the same word. I personally like the translation of ‘reverence’ for both uses.
Just as we gladly subject ourselves to one another in reverence for Christ, so you wives must gladly subject yourselves to your husbands because you revere them.
[TS] …
Command #3: Husbands, love your wives (5:25-33)
Command #3: Husbands, love your wives (5:25-33)
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.
[EXP] The wife submits to her husband as the church submits to Christ. The husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? He gave Himself up for her.
In Ephesians 5:2 Paul wrote that Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us.
Christian husbands are to love their wives by giving up themselves for them.
What does this mean?
It might means laying down your life for your wife if necessary.
It more likely means putting her desires ahead of your own, considering her as more important than yourself, practicing patience and understanding with her, always being satisfied with her.
Paul uses Christ and the church as an example in this passage on husbands loving their wives just as he did in the passage on wives submitting to their husbands. In that example here, he give two reasons why husband must love their wives in this way:
One reason is sanctification.
You saw that in vv. 26-27 it says that Jesus loved and gave Himself up for the church to sanctify and cleanse her so that He could present the church to Himself in all her glory without spot or wrinkle but totally blameless.
Now, Christian husbands cannot love their wives to the point of making them perfect before God, and there would be no need to—Jesus’s work on the cross has made our believing wives perfect before God.
But the love of a Christian husband is to be a sanctifying love—a love that drives our wives to Jesus.
Do you love your wife with a sanctifying love?
How could you begin to love her with a sanctifying love today?
The other reason is preservation.
You’ll notice in vv. 28-32 that Paul says that husbands should love their wives as they would their own bodies.
We nourish our bodies.
We cherish our bodies.
We ought to nourish our wives by providing for their physical needs.
We ought to cherish our wives providing for their emotional needs.
Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31…
31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
Husband and wife are so intimately connected, so closely entwined, that they are in effect one. So, when the husband loves his wife, he loves himself.
This is what Jesus does for His body, the church. This is what marriage was always meant to represent—Jesus and the church so closely connected, so intimately one that in loving the church, Jesus loves Himself.
That’s the mysterious ‘Why?’ of marriage now revealed in Christ and the church.
Husband, love your wife as Christ loves the church.
Husband, love your wife as yourself.
[TS] …
Conclusion
Conclusion
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “He who cannot obey is not fit to rule: he who has never learned to submit will make a tyrant when he obtains the power.”
Husband, don’t be a tyrant in your home.
Learn to obey Christ.
Learn to submit to Him.
Thomas Watson wrote that a good husband fills up his marriage with love.
Husband, what are you filling your marriage with?
Thomas Watson said, “The husband should show his love to his wife by (forgiving sins); by avoiding occasions of strife; by sweet, endearing expressions; by pious counsel; by love tokens; by encouraging what he sees amiable and virtuous in her; by mutual prayer; by associating with her, unless detained by urgency of business.”
He gives this illustration, “The pilot who leaves his ship and abandons it entirely to the merciless waves, declares that he does not value it or reckon there is any treasure in it.”
Husband, how are you showing your wife that you love her?
Husband, do you treasure her as Christ treasures the church?