The Church, Submitted and Loved

There is a story about an elderly couple that was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a party to which all of their friends and family had been invited.

They all had enjoyed cake and ice cream, and the gifts had all been opened, and by now, everyone was just sitting around and talking.

At some point, one of the younger people on hand to celebrate the occasion asked the question that is always asked at such celebrations. Anybody want to guess the question?

That’s right. What advice do you have for young couples? To what do you attribute the longevity of your marriage?

As an aside, have you ever noticed how the people who usually ask such questions are the ones who pay the least attention to the answers?

It’s a good thing to be known for asking the right questions, but it’s an even better thing to be known for recognizing wisdom when you hear it.

Anyway, someone knew the question should be asked and so they did: What advice do you have for young couples so they might also celebrate their golden wedding anniversary one day?

“Well,” said the woman, “on our wedding day, I decided to make a list of 10 of my husband’s faults, which I would then overlook for the sake of our marriage.”

Sensing an opportunity to have a little fun at the expense of the woman’s husband, one of the guests asked her to name some of the faults on her list.

“Well, I never actually made the list,” the woman said. “But in all the years since then, whenever he has done something that made me hopping mad at him, I’ve just said to myself, ‘Lucky for him that was one of the 10.’” [Roderick McFarlane, Reader’s Digest, December 1992.]

Now, I’m not going to encourage you to go and find Annette after the service today and ask her for her top 10 list. In fact, I’ll tell you that, if she has a list, it’s probably a Top 25 list, or maybe even a Top 50 list.

What I will say to you, though, is that this woman’s approach to marriage sounds very healthy to me. There is no doubt in my mind that one of the keys to a healthy marriage is the ability to look past your spouse’s faults.

Obviously, this is much harder for Annette to do than it is for me to do.

Today, as we continue our series on “The Church — Revealed,” we will look at the second of several metaphors the Bible uses to describe the Church.

Last time, we talked about how the Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and the church is the flock of those sheep that have heard His voice offering salvation and peace and responded to His call by following Him in faith.

Today, we will consider the metaphor of Jesus as the Bridegroom and the Church as His bride.

This is an image that we see in the Old Testament prophets. It is an image John the Baptist uses in the Gospels. It is an image we will hear the Apostle Paul describing in detail in his letter to the church at Ephesus. It is an image with its roots in the Garden of Eden. And it is an image Jesus uses Himself in the Book of Revelation.

But before we delve into this metaphor, a word of acknowledgment. Just as with every human institution since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, marriage today is but a shadow of brokenness, compared to what God intended.

When our first parents rebelled against God by eating from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what they had hoped to achieve was to put themselves in the place that God alone should occupy.

They wanted to be able to determine for themselves what was good and what was evil. In other words, they wanted to set themselves in God’s rightful place.

The curse that resulted from their sin was death. It still is. If by no other means, we know that there is still sin in the world, because there is still death.

Sin brought physical death into the world. Sin also brought spiritual death, the separation of mankind from fellowship with the perfect and holy God who created us in His image to BE in fellowship with Him.

And sin causes death in lots of little ways that we never really acknowledge. It destroys friendships. It destroys peace among nations. And it destroys marriages.

And I want to acknowledge this morning that every marriage here has been damaged to some degree or another by sin.

Even the strongest of marriages is not what it could be, because we are all tainted by the stain of sin. We all, to some degree or another, are selfish and self-centered.

Just as Adam and Eve did when they sewed fig leaves together to cover their loins after they had sinned, we are all, to some extent, hiding our true selves from the ones who are closest to us.

This was never the way it was supposed to be. And I want to acknowledge this morning the hurt that sin causes within marriage and the brokenness it leaves behind.

But I also want to remind you that there is a Bridegroom who loves so perfectly and so selflessly and so sacrificially that He gave His very life for those who would follow Him in faith, for those who would become His Church, His bride in Heaven.

You may have been hurt by a spouse. Maybe you’re even hurting now.

Perhaps you never experienced the peace and comfort of life in a family where both parents loved and respected one another. And so, you may find it hard to imagine such a thing in this world.

Let me give you hope: Jesus said, “Take heart; I have overcome this world.”

In His death on the cross, He overcame sin, bearing the just punishment that we all deserve for our sins, for our rebellion against God. And in the empty tomb on the third day after His death, he overcame death itself.

In His resurrection, we who follow Him in faith have hope that we will likewise be raised into incorruptible bodies, joining Him in heaven for the marriage supper of the Lamb.

On that great day, the church will be presented to her Bridegroom. The Apostle John saw this event in a vision revealed to Him by Jesus. An angel came to John as he stood in heaven and said,

Revelation 19:7–8 NASB95

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Now, this passage from the Book of Revelation describes the church in heaven, the Church as it will exist when all those who have put their faith in Jesus have been raised and given their glorified bodies — bodies without the blemish of sin or the wrinkle of inner temptation, bodies clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

But that is not the Church that exists today. As with every other human institution, the Church today is marred by the presence of sin in its members’ lives. The church today is hardly without fault.

But what strikes me about this passage is how much it reminds me of the story I told a few minutes ago about the woman on her 50th wedding anniversary.

What we see here is Jesus looking past the faults of the Church that existed when John wrote this account. Here is Jesus looking past even the faults of the Church in our day.

Here is Jesus choosing to look past the faults of the broken Church to see the bride He has chosen, the bride He Himself is preparing to be spotless and beautiful for her wedding day.

The Apostle Paul describes this process, this relationship, in great detail in Ephesians, chapter 5, and as he does so, he gives good advice to husbands and wives on how to have a strong marriage that honors God.

As you are turning there, let me give you some and context.

One commentator summarizes the message of this letter to the church at Ephesus like this: “Ephesians reveals that the church is part of God’s eternal plan, and it grows as a result of God’s power working through believers’ lives, overcoming their spiritual enemies.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003).]

Paul spends some time at the beginning of this letter reminding the Ephesians of the work that Jesus has done for us at the cross.

Then, he spends some time urging them to walk in a manner that is worthy of His calling — to do the good works that God has prepared for us to do and to lay aside the corrupt old self, while putting on the righteousness of Christ.

We are, he writes, to be imitators of God, walking as children of Light and exposing the deeds of darkness.

And then, beginning midway through the fifth chapter, Paul describes how the Christian life should look when it comes to various relationships.

First, there is the marriage relationship we will consider in a moment. Then, there is the relationship between a child and her parent. Then, there is the relationship between a slave and his master.

And it is interesting to note that in each of those relationships, there is a call to submission and a call to care and concern — even love.

Let’s read together verses 22-33 of chapter 5.

Ephesians 5:22–33 NASB95

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 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. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. 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. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 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.

Now, in our present day of women’s liberation and so forth, this has become a contentious passage of Scripture. Indeed, there are those who firmly believe that it no longer applies because of that first line: “Wives, be subject to your own husbands.”

But our God is never changes. And His Son, Jesus, who is described by the Apostle John as the Word of God, never changes.

Hebrews 13:8 NASB95

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

WE may change, and society may change, but if we desire to live by the word of God, we cannot go into His word and begin striking out the parts that might not fit our worldview.

How much better to dig in and understand what He meant and pattern our lives according to His revealed word.

And as we do that, we must look at the culture in which His word was written, attempting to understand the message that was intended by God’s Holy Spirit-inspired human authors and discerning how to apply that message to our lives.

So, the first thing we must understand is the situation that existed for women of the Greek and Roman world when Paul wrote this letter in the first century A.D.

Women in that part of the world during that time were seen as second-class citizens without the rights of men. A Jewish husband, for example, could divorce his wife by simply writing what was called a “bill of divorcement.” Women did not have that right.

And so, in calling for husbands to love their wives sacrificially, Paul was actually raising the bar for the treatment of women during his time.

But everybody gets caught up in that word “submit.” So let’s take a look at it for a moment. First of all, you’ll notice on your sheets or in your Bibles that it’s in italics. That means it doesn’t exist in the Greek manuscripts from which we have our translations.

Now, this doesn’t mean that some man simply decided to add the word “submit” to the verse in order to keep women subservient. To see what’s going on, you need to look at the previous verse, verse 21.

Ephesians 5:21 NASB95

and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

The verb in verse 22 has been borrowed from verse 21. Remember that there was no punctuation in the Greek language of this time, and the subheads you may see in your translation were not part of the inspired word; they were added later by translators to help with navigating through long passages of Scripture.

So, the original Greek would have read something like this: Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ, wives to your own husbands as to the Lord.

And so, what we should recognize is that Paul isn’t just calling for wives to be subject to their husbands, but also, in some sense, for husbands to be subject to their wives. In fact, all of us who are saved by grace through faith are to be subject to one another.

Paul also isn’t saying here that women are to be subject to ALL men or that women are inferior to men. And he isn’t saying that wives are to be subject to their husbands to the same degree that they’re subject to the Lord.

What he’s saying is “that her submission to her husband IS her service rendered ‘to the Lord.’” [Harold W. Hoehner, “Ephesians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 640.] Submitting to their husbands is one of the ways wives serve God.

But what does it mean to submit? Submission here doesn’t imply being blindly passive or obedient.

What it means is “that she recognizes that her husband is the head of the home and responds to him accordingly without usurping his authority to herself.” [Harold W. Hoehner, “Ephesians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 640–641.]

This is a picture of a wife choosing to place herself under the godly authority of a loving husband in those things that are not contrary to God’s word.

It chafes our modern sensibilities to think of one spouse being considered to be the one in authority, but that’s just what we see as far back as the Garden of Eden.

After Eve had given Adam the forbidden fruit and they had both eaten it, who was it that God addressed first?

He came to Adam and said, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” God considered Adam the responsible party, because Adam had been given the responsibility of being the authority in that relationship.

And Adam revealed the depth of his sin when he responded by saying, “Well, the woman YOU gave to be with me — she gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

Was this a loving response? What would a loving response have looked like there?

Probably it would have looked like Adam taking responsibility for his OWN sin. Maybe it would even have included him taking responsibility for allowing Eve to be tempted in the first place. That would have been sacrificial love in action.

And that’s just what husbands are called to demonstrate — sacrificial love.

That word that’s translated as “love” in “Husbands, love your wives” is the Greek word agapao. It refers to a choosing and sacrificial love that seeks the highest good for the other person.

Jesus Christ, who is the head of the church, demonstrated this kind of love by giving His own life for the church at the cross, so that those who follow Him in faith might be cleansed from their sins and become part of the church, ready one day to be presented to Him holy and blameless, “in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”

Similarly, husbands are to love their wives sacrificially, setting aside their own desires, and even their own rights, in order that their wives might become more like Jesus, holy and blameless.

Friends, this is the primary purpose of Christian marriage. If you are married and are not working each day to help your wife or your husband to become more like Jesus, then you are quite frankly failing in your primary calling in life.

And if you are not yet married and thinking that one day you may BE married, let me urge you to look for a husband or wife who will be completely committed to this end — that you BOTH will become more and more like Jesus.

The love that Paul writes about here is one that would restore the relationship that existed in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned.

God had created Eve out of Adam’s own flesh, and Adam himself described the marriage relationship they had by saying, as Paul recounts in verse 31, “the two shall become one flesh.”

In the godly and Christian marriage relationship, two different people become one organism. They become one body.

And as most men would not want harm to come to their own bodies, we husbands should ever be looking to nourish and cherish our wives, who are now members of our own body, just as we in the Church are members of the body of Christ.

“The mystery is great,” Paul writes in verse 32. Indeed, if you’ve ever lived with a roommate who was not your spouse, you’ll recognize just how unusual it is to live in the harmony that Paul writes about in this passage. Maybe you’ve even seen how hard it is to have that kind of harmony within your marriage.

But in a godly marriage, in which both partners are submitted to one another in submission to Jesus, something mysterious and wonderful takes place. Two organisms become one flesh. Two hearts find themselves turned toward one another as they are turned to Christ.

One submits to or respects the other as a demonstration of her love for Jesus. And one loves the other sacrificially as a demonstration of his submission to Jesus.

This really ISN’T the world’s picture of marriage. The world says, “Let’s fall in love and live happily ever after.” But Jesus says, “Choose to love her as I chose to love you. Love her even through her faults, as I loved you and gave my life for you while you were yet sinners.”

The world says, “There is no one in authority over you except yourself.” But Jesus says here, through the Apostle Paul, “Respect him and be subject to him, because I will hold him responsible for helping you to become more like me.”

This is a counter-cultural message we have heard in today’s passage, and it may well be one that ruffled a few feathers.

It’s counter-cultural, because it was never intended as a message for the world. Rather it is a message for the church, for those who have placed their faith in Jesus as their only means for being reconciled to God.

If you have turned to Jesus in faith that He is the Son of God and that in His life, his death, his burial, and His resurrection, He paid the debt that you owe to God for your sins of rebellion against Him, then Paul’s message here is especially for you.

If you are a believer, then this message from the Book of Ephesians is God’s prescription for a strong and godly marriage. And a strong and godly marriage is the picture of how the relationship between Jesus and His Church should look.

But perhaps you’ve never made that step. Maybe you’ve never confessed that you are a sinner unable to save yourself and desperate for a Savior.

Perhaps you have never placed your trust in Christ alone for abundant life in the present and eternal life in the presence of the one who created you for that.

If you haven’t done these things, then even the very best marriage you can create is simply a dead end. You may have years of happiness here on earth, but that is where it all will end. Your eternity will be one of suffering and loneliness.

Jesus said He came so that we could have life — and that in abundance. He came offering peace to we who were enemies of God. He came with the promise of true life in eternity for those who follow Him in faith.

He came promising to be the loving groom to whom we can freely and voluntarily submit, because we know His love always seeks the very best for us.

He knows you. He knows you better than you know yourself. There is not one hidden sin in your life that He isn’t aware of. And yet He loves you.

Do you know Him? Have you submitted yourself to Him? Have your given Him control of your whole life, secure in the knowledge that He is your Savior and Lord, that He is the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep and calls them by name?

You can do so this very day. If you’re ready to take that step, come to me during this next song, or after the service, and let’s talk about it.