Reversing the Curse

Introduction

We are continuing our series through the book of Ephesians, which we are calling Union: God writes Heaven on our Hearts. When you put your trust in Jesus and are saved by him and for him and you join the community of other saved people, whom we call the church, God says you are a new creation. And that doesn’t mean that you are physically different, or that you are no longer human; but at an essential level, that which makes you, you, is different. What defines you, what sums you up, what you live for is different. And the difference comes directly from the source of your life, which is no longer you or any other created thing. The ruler over your life, in other words, is not of earth, but of heaven. The source of your life is no longer of earth, but of heaven. And so you now exist as this new type of creature in this new creature society called out of the world and into Jesus (the church) to live differently.

You live different because you are different. Your life becomes the window through which the world sees heaven.

The Household Code

Today we’re beginning a short, four-week trek through something called the household code. Every so often in the New Testament letters this code shows up, usually on the back end. A household code gave sort of the expectations for what relationships looked like in a society. It set the guidelines for healthy boundaries in marriage and family and work. Our society has these same codes for how men and women should treat one another, how children are expected to relate to their parents, and how bosses should treat their employees. And back in 1st century Greco-Roman culture, these codes were common. So it’s not surprising that Paul would include one here. What is surprising is how he goes about it. Because the household code of the new creation subverts everything. It redefines to the culture what it means to be valued and loved and honored. And it starts with this little phrase in Ephesians 5:21, and that’s where we’ll start today.

PRAY:

The Source of Life

A couple weeks back, Don taught on the Wise Way of Walking, all about how God is working to line you up with his way of good life, compared to foolishness, which is walking apart from God and his ways. And at the end of that passage, it mentions how, rather than getting filled up with wine and drink to satisfy you, be filled with the Holy Spirit instead. And then Paul tells us what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit:

Ephesians 5:18–21 (CSB)

Be filled by the Spirit: speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.

Speak to one another with attitude of Jesus worship

Remain in a constant state of gratitude

Submit to one another as you live under the reign of Christ

Now, I want to make an observation here, and I hope you see it with me. I believe that when Paul speaks of this filling of the Spirit, he wants to draw our minds all the way back to the first time the Spirit fills a person with his animating force. Do you know where that is?

Genesis 2:7 (CSB)

Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath [ruach, Spirit] of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

The very first human creation was Adam, meaning mankind, who was created adamah, from the ground. God makes man from the stuff of earth and pours his own Spirit into his body and give him life. The first union of heaven and earth happens right here. Earthly body, plus heavenly spirit, equals soul (nephesh, being). That’s the essential make up of human, according to the first pages of your Bible.

And this point in the old creation story (see what I did there?), things are going great. Adam looks to God for everything. God places him in a garden full of life and give him a job, to tend the garden and care for it, to name the animals and rule over the creatures. And to help the man, he forms a woman from the man; they are of the same flesh, the same bone, one in nature and body. And Adam and Eve (meaning life) work side by side in the garden, both male and female commissioned together to tend the ground and rule together as one. This is the original Spirit-filled community life.

Now, why did we jump back to that? Why are we back in Genesis again? Because new creation life is meant to mirror the first creation life. The original union of heaven and earth is not so different than ours right her and now. To be filled with the Spirit today ought to look eerily similar to that first moment, when God formed body and filled Spirit and made life. And that life looks like worship, gratitude, and mutual submission.

Yes, mutual submission. I think most of us are probably okay with the worship and the gratitude part. We’ve been conditioned pretty well in the church to at least practice the first two new-life habits every so often. But that third one—what do we do with that?

This is where everything starts to come together. And it’s why Paul’s household code would reframe everything that people knew to be true about marriage and family and work. And it all comes down this one word: submission. Submission is the most Christ-like posture you can have in the world today. If you can live a life of willing submission, the world will know Jesus through you.

I get that’s a bold statement. Especially when submission is kind of a dirty word. So I want to clarify it, redeem it, and set the stage for the next week, where we start with marriage.

The Secret of Submission

First things first: what is submission? If you don’t get that, none of this will work for you at all.

Submission in Greek is the word hupotasso, meaning “to place under.” That’s not especially helpful. But’s imagery, so let’s work it out. When I come under someone in a helpful way, my goal is to lift them up, to support and encourage, to put their good ahead of mine. That’s the true idea of submission. Paul paints this picture of a Christian community, filled with the life of the Spirit, that goes around building people up, serving one another, acting humbly and graciously toward one another, to bring about goodness and beauty and life in Jesus. In this new society, we are all gardeners, tending to the life of the other, toiling patiently to bring about more flourishing.

Submission means putting myself in a position to bring about your greatest good.

Now when you think of submission, you are more often thinking about subjugation, which is a little different. Subjugation means putting someone under you for the sake of your good. It’s taking the right to rule over another. When I subjugate another, it’s not a willing partnership, and it’s not necessarily mutually beneficial. And in the first-century, subjugation was the norm. Husbands ruled over wives; Fathers ruled over children; Masters ruled over slaves. The common household codes at the time never spoke to the role of women, or to children, or slaves—only to the authority of men, their right to rule, and how they should work that out. If submission is all about giving life, subjugation is all about taking life.

This pattern of subjugation didn’t start with us, and it didn’t start with Rome. Can you guess where?

Surprise! Genesis again.

Man and woman are paired up, in total unity, partnered together to carry out God’s vision for the world and peace with one another and with God. But then chaos strikes. This creature approaches Eve and suggests to her that instead of submission, instead of bringing about life and goodness, she should rule for herself, define good and evil as she chooses, and become her own source of life. She chooses to take life for herself, and then she offers that same choice to her physical source, Adam, and he also takes for himself.

Mankind chooses the ground over the Spirit. And the community breaks.

God approaches man and woman, who have hidden themselves in shame from one another and from God. And God in his infinite wisdom, acknowledges the curse they have brought on themselves.

Genesis 3:16–19 (CSB)

He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort.

Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.

And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’: The ground is cursed because of you. You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.”

Children will take life from their parents and resist their rule. Wives will seek to consume their husbands; their desire will be to destroy. And man, rather than serve, will take dominion over his partner. On and on the cycle of subjugation continues, until man is finally ruled by his source, the ground, and he returns to dust.

That’s the curse of humanity. Taking instead of giving, consuming life instead of encouraging it. And instead of the Spirit-filled community of peace, we have the dust-filled community of war. Excluded from life with God, excluded from life with one another.

But the new creation life means the curse has been reversed in us. We no longer live with the desire to take life. Instead, we seek to give. The life of submission means we are no longer trapped in the cycle of subjugation. Instead, we model something different. Because we filled anew.

So now, as you have been filled with this new life, live differently. Willingly, actively, put yourself in a place where you can bring about the good of others. You have a role to play in that. Not just husbands and fathers and masters, but wives, kids, slaves. Everyone in this new society works together to encourage and support and love. And when you think about the very life of Jesus and the work that he did to bring about your life, doesn’t that make sense? Isn’t that exactly what we should be all about as well, if we are truly the body of Christ, the hands and feet of Jesus in our community?

What this means is that every aspect of our society should be saturated with submission. And that starts with your own home. And your home starts with your marriage. Next week.

PRAY