Wives Submit to Your Own Husbands | Ephesians 4:31-32

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Salvation in Christ Alone and the Coming Judgment

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words,.

They will act upon them,.

And when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Ephesians 5:18 and the Spirit-Filled Life

Today we're going to be speaking on Ephesians 4, 31 -32, and in order to set the context for what we're going to be talking about today, I'm going to first talk about Ephesians 5, 18, and then we're going to be reading Ephesians 21 -24, Ephesians 5, 18.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of his church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Now, when you think about a passage like this, one of the things to realize is that this really is probably one of the most offensive passages that you could think to even talk about.

And I say that to a church of people who, for the most part, I mean, I believe that most of you believe these things. We've talked about these things over the course of our ministry here. I believe that most people in the church today believe that these things are true.

And yet, as I've been a Christian over the course of my life, I've been to churches, I've been to a wide variety of churches. We grew up and moved around to a variety of different places, and then during my college years, I visited a lot of different churches, and I've had many different conversations about this topic in general.

And one of the things I've realized is that there are many rules to how you're supposed to speak about this topic that are very clear. I mean, the rules about how you're allowed to talk about this are very clear, and they're the kind of rules that I've seen pastor after pastor after pastor follow.

And yet, when you think about why these rules are there, it's a little less clear, okay? So the way that you're supposed to talk about this topic is that you're supposed to basically never really mention these things very directly at all.

And then if you do, like if somehow you're forced to mention them, and we happen to be in this passage here today, if somehow you're forced to mention them, then what you're supposed to do is spend your whole time apologizing for the words that are here.

So that's what you're supposed to do, particularly as a pastor. You're supposed to say, hey, I'm supposed to stand up here today and say, hey, guys, I'm sorry. This is here. This is not me. Don't shoot the messenger, that kind of thing.

I didn't make it up. Don't get mad at me, but it's here, and we need to kind of do something about it. And so that's the way you're supposed to talk about it. You're supposed to talk about it in a very apologetic way, like as if you're apologizing the whole time.

And then when you get to these passages themselves, what you're supposed to do is then you're supposed to spend the entire time basically trying to talk about all the ways in which this can be abused and all the ways in which this thing can be perverted or distorted, and then spend very little time actually talking about what it means and why you should do it.

But then when you read the passage, one of the things that you'll realize is, I mean, you can go ahead and read it while I'm talking about it right now. And when you read the passage, one of the things you'll find is that Paul never seems to apologize for anything that's there, and he doesn't seem to do all the qualifications that you've come to expect pastors to do along those lines.

And he doesn't even seem to be remotely embarrassed about the fact that it's here at all. He just says these words in a very plain, straightforward way, as if they're just obvious. And not only are they obvious, but then they're good.

Now, over the years, what I've said is I know that we're living in a culture that's very hostile to these ideas. I mean, that's obvious. I mean, you can just look at the culture you're living in right now, and these are words that are just absolutely hated and despised.

And, I mean, you see this, Harrison and I see this, with our interaction on the Internet. There's no easier way to get a bunch of people insanely mad at you than to say some of these things in a fairly straightforward way without apology.

But, I mean, that's just, like, this is an area that our culture absolutely despises. But then what I'm trying to say is it's not just that our culture despises these things. The church also despises these things in their own way.

And this is very obvious, too. Now, I mean, I've tried to test this out over the course of my life to demonstrate that this is true. And what I've done over the course of my life is, you know, I want to be the kind of guy who's promoting marriage and promoting children.

And over the course of my life, I've tried to figure out how to word this, like this passage, in a way that is not going to sound offensive. But the issue is it's very hard to do that. So, I mean, as I've, you know, spoken to unmarried young women over the course of my life, particularly when I was single, and, you know, I would go up to unmarried young ladies and I would just ask them questions.

And you can imagine the kind of responses that I would get. So, you know, I've done this about the most, like, anything related to a woman's role. If you were to ask a young woman if she's excited about anything, like getting married so she can do anything related to a woman's role, you're going to get the same kind of reaction no matter how you ask it.

And I've tested this in every way possible multiple times in multiple ways with Christian women who actually say that they believe these things. So if I were to go up to a Christian woman, and I've done this, and say, hey, are you excited about getting married so you can have kids?

I might get an okay answer on that one. That one's kind of like 50 -50, right? So sometimes they'll get really mad at me if I say, hey, so are you excited about getting married so you can have kids? You can imagine what the answer would come back with that.

It's like, you know, who says I want to have kids? I might get that half the time, that kind of who says, like, why do you assume I want to have kids, you know, that kind of thing. Is that all you think I am is some kind of baby maker or something like that?

These are Christian women who supposedly believe these kind of passages. I may get that half the time, and then the other half the time I might get a, like, hey, I'm really excited about that, right? But if you were to go up to a Christian woman and you were to say, hey, are you excited about getting married so that you could have a husband to serve?

What do you think the response that you would get with that is? I've never gotten a good response to that one, okay? I've literally never gotten a good response to that. And you can imagine what comes back from that.

You know, what comes back from that is, oh, you're just a misogynist. You just hate women, you know. You're just a chauvinist or whatever or ha, ha, ha, ha. That's very funny, right? But then imagine if I were to say, hey, are you excited about getting married so you can have a man to submit to or follow?

You have a man to follow. Isn't that fun? Isn't it a, are you excited about finally having someone to be subject to? I mean, you all laugh, you all laugh, but then the issue is, now think about what's happening there.

So think about, I'm not trying to tell a joke. Imagine if I were to ask it the opposite direction, and I have. Hey, guy, are you excited about getting married so you can have a woman to lead? Do you think they pitch a fit?

Do you think they get offended? Do you think they call me names for saying that? And the issue is, like, what's happening there is, what's happening there is actually pretty profound. Like, the issue is that I'm not doing something inappropriate.

What's happening is that we're living in a culture and society that has trained people to instantaneously be offended by these concepts. And that's what we do. Like, we respond to these concepts in offense.

And not only do we respond to these concepts with offense, we think that it's normal to respond to these concepts in an offended way. And the reason why is because we know that these things are in there.

We know that they're in the text, and we can't argue with that. So I'm talking about Christians who, on paper, believe these things. We know that they're there. But then we've been so brainwashed by this pagan culture that we lived in that has trained us to think that this is somehow demeaning and this is somehow degrading and somehow that we should be insulted by this that we've come to a certain set of rules that basically say, hey, I know that this is in there, but we need to be really careful about how we talk about it.

And we probably never need to talk about it at all. And then we're definitely not allowed to treat these things as if they're a good thing and something that God designed for our good and for our blessing.

And what we need to do is basically just kind of be secretly embarrassed of these things. And then we'll say that, hey, yeah, we're committed to all that, but we just don't want to get too carried away and we don't want to take it too far and we don't want to be too excited about it.

But what I'm trying to say is that all that goes to show is that you're living in a culture and society that hates these things and you're not allowed to talk about them as if they're good. And in that kind of society, I'm not convinced that we're the best models of what these things actually mean.

I mean, it's very hard to, like, excel at something that you secretly have been brainwashed to think is really secretly kind of tyrannical and oppressive and insulting and degrading and everything else.

And so if we're going to have any, like, here's the point. If we're going to have any success in honoring the Lord with these ideas, we do have to become the kind of people who aren't so embarrassed by them and who love these ideas and want to show the world what they look like in a God-honoring way.

Now, when we talk about this passage, as I said, I'm starting out by talking about Ephesians 5 .18. And the reason why, and I'm not going to belabor this point because Marcus has talked about this over the past couple weeks, but if you could imagine an outline on your paper of the passage itself, this is kind of the heading.

Ephesians 5 .18 is the heading. So you don't get drunk with wine for that debauchery, but you're supposed to be filled with the Spirit. So if you're reading through Ephesians 5 .18, do not get drunk with wine for that debauchery, but be filled with Spirit.

What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, you can basically just look at the rest of the verses and you can see a list of things. So what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, the Spirit-filled person is going to be the person who's addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in your heart.

The Spirit-filled person is the one who's going to be giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. And then the Spirit-filled person is also going to be the one who is submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

And then what you're going to have is, if you want to think about the way the passage works in general, is this submitting to one another out of reverence of Christ, this is going to be the heading that's going to be filled out through the rest of the book.

But then, as I said, we're starting out talking about Ephesians 5 .18, and what you see here is that submission, and we're going to talk about wives' submission to their own husbands in particular, and there's a reason why we're doing that.

But this submission, wives' submission to her own husband, this is going to be the result of a Spirit-filled life. And as I said, you're living right now, you're living in a world that utterly hates this concept.

You're living in a world right now that utterly despises this concept and is hostile to this concept. I mean, it's not just the world, it's the church, okay? I mean, I could give you example after example after example of situations where, you know, as a church leader, I've sat in denominational church meetings and encountered people who are absolutely embarrassed by these words, absolutely ashamed by these words, demand that you talk about them as if you're, you know, walking on eggshells and everything else.

But then the issue is, like, you're living in a culture, society, a world, a church that hates these ideas. And it's obvious. It's obvious in every single show that you're going to watch and every single movie that you're going to watch.

It's the main thing. If you have eyes to see and if you have ears to hear, you can look at pretty much every single form of entertainment that you can possibly think to watch. And one of the primary themes in almost every episode of almost every single show and almost every single movie and almost every single song that you listen to is going to be open, defiant opposition to the idea that God made men and women different and that those created differences are good and that he had different roles for them to actually perform.

That's going to show up in every single show that you watch and every single movie that you watch in a wide variety of ways. It's going to show up in the commercials that you watch over and over again.

You can't even, I mean, I was shocked and I haven't watched a lot of TV, but I was shocked and scandalized by seeing commercials lately. I don't watch a lot of TV and seeing the kind of things that are in commercials.

You're living in a world that's openly hostile and hates every single thing that the Bible talks about, particularly one of the biggest battles that you're going to see right now is over gender roles and gender differences between men and women.

We're so confused about this to the point where we can't even tell the difference between a man and a woman anymore. You're living in that kind of world, and what does the Bible say here? Don't get drunk with wine for that's debauchery, but be filled with spirit.

What is the evidence of a spirit-filled life? The evidence of a spirit-filled life is going to be showing the world a picture of individuals who know, like in the beginning, God made them male and female and God's given men and women different jobs.

If you want to shock the world and you want to scandalize the world, you want to show what it looks like to have the spirit of God living inside of you, then it's very simple. Particularly if you're a woman in the room, and this is a message addressed to women today.

I'm not going to pretend like this is a lesson addressed to men today because it's not. This is a message for you ladies. If you want to show the world what it looks like to have the spirit of God residing in you, the way you do it is you embrace these ideas.

You learn to love them, and you learn to excel at them. Instead of just giving lip service to the idea that, yeah, on paper I agree with those things, but let's just never talk about them because that's a little bit uncomfortable.

You want to show the world what it looks like to have the spirit of God inside of you, show them how to do it. Show them what it looks like to have a person who loves these things. As I said, all of this is being put in that context of this whole talk on submission is being put in this context of being the result of a spirit-filled life.

Wives' Submission as the Exclusive Role in Marriage

Now the second thing we see when we're reading through this passage, which it may not be intuitively obvious to you that this is what we see, but I'm going to try to explain. The second thing that we see here is that submission is a wife's exclusive role in marriage.

So a wife's submission to her husband is her exclusive role in marriage. Now as you're reading through this verse, we're going to start reading in verse 21. I'm going to read it in English first, and then I'm going to show you how the Greek looks, and I don't know, maybe my Greek diagram is already on the screen, and that's fine if that's the case.

But then as you're reading this in most of your translations, what you're going to find is something like this, okay? So verse 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, period. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

Now what you should see on the screen right now is you should see a diagram of this actual passage in Greek. And I know that these Greek words, they don't mean anything to you. You probably don't have any idea what they're saying at all, and that's fine.

So what I'm trying to do with this is just to show you the logic of the passage in general. So the first word that you're going to find there, that big word, hypotasomenoi, that's a word that means submitting, okay?

So hypotasomenoi, I know that's Greek to you. It's all Greek to you. That means submitting, right? And then the second word is alelois, and that means to one another. So Greek and English, they don't often have the same number of words to express the individual concept.

But think about the flow of thought here. You have submitting. Hypotasomenoi means submitting. Alelois means to one another. In phobokristou, so out of reverence for Christ. So that's the idea, submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

Now notice what's next. Hygounikes. What does that mean? The wives. That word hy is the word for, it's the article, I guess, the definite article.

It means the, right?

The wives. Tois ideois anderson. To your own husbands. Hos to koryou, as to the Lord, okay? So submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. Here's the flow of thought. Submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

The wives to your own husbands as to the Lord. What does that mean, right? So we're talking about the result of a spirit-filled life. What is that going to look like? The church is going to be submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.

The wives to their husbands. And then as you keep on going in the passage of Ephesians, what you're going to find is these are, like this idea of submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. First it shows up the wives submitting to her husbands, okay?

And then second it's going to show up and just turn your Bible over or flip your screen. Ephesians 6 .1. Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. So what you have here in verse 21 is a heading.

Submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. The wives doing that to the husbands. The children obeying their parents, right? And then you keep on going. Ephesians 6 .5, what do you find? Bond servants, what are they supposed to do?

Obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, right? So what you have here is, these are called in theological terms, this is the household codes. So if you want to know what it looks like to be spirit-filled, the church is going to be submitting to one another in reverence to Christ.

What does that mean? That means the wives to the husbands. That means children to parents. That means bond servants are going to submit to their earthly masters. That's how it works, right? So submission is part of the Christian life.

So now when you think about it as it relates to our passage right now, where we're at, we're in the section which is talking about a wife's submission to her husband. That's going to be the result of a spirit-filled wife.

So what you see, though, is this. I mean there's no sense. Here's what you see. There's no sense in which a husband should ever, under any circumstance, submit to his wife at all, period.

Okay?

So there's no sense at all, ever, under any circumstance, that a husband should ever submit to a wife. And if you were inclined to think that that should ever happen, as if submission should be mutual, as if both should submit to each other in some ways and then maybe a wife submits to her husband in a special way, then the issue is we don't actually know what this word means at all.

So submission is a word that we use. It's a word that we throw around. It's a word that is used so often in Christian culture, but then I'm afraid that we don't even know what it means.

Okay?

I think we use it in such a way that it's a very empty concept that is devoid of almost all meaning. And in the minds of common people, you know, and I've done enough counseling to know that this is basically how people think about this word.

Like when you're thinking about the word submission, what you're thinking is that maybe a wife should, in rare occasions, you know, not get her way, you know, and let her husband have the tie-breaking vote.

You know, in rare occasions, in big, like this is the way we think about it, like in rare situations, big decisions, you can't come to some sort of agreement, then maybe the husband should be able to tell his wife in those situations the decision that they're going to make.

But he really needs to be careful about doing that, and that should probably be really rare and almost never happen because if he actually loved her like Christ loves the church, then he would never ask her to do anything that she doesn't want to do or that she feels strongly against.

Right? So that's the way that we talk about submission in general. That's what happens in every single counseling situation between a man and a woman I've ever been in is that among people who believe that submission means anything, it basically is this hypothetical white unicorn kind of idea that you should basically never apply, you know?

Like really if you, like in honesty, if you're a man and you love your wife likes Christ, loves the church, you should probably like want her to be happy, right? You want to be happy. And so you shouldn't ask her to do things that she's utterly and totally against or think are unwise.

And so, you know, but you may have to, you know, I know. You may have to in rare occasions, and no one knows why you would ever have to do that because, I mean, like she's just as good a leader as you and has just as good ideas as you.

And after all, she's put on this earth to be your helpmate, right? So she's put on the earth to be your helpmate. So functionally this is something that should probably never happen. And if it's happening all the time, right, where your wife is having to submit to a husband, it's probably because you're a bad leader and, you know, you're asking her to do things that she doesn't want to do and everything else.

And so that's kind of the way that we talk about it. You understand? But then that doesn't reflect an understanding of what the actual word means.

Okay?

So like the word, like this word, that I mentioned, it's not a word that is meant to be understood like that, like a rare tie-breaking vote kind of thing. Like that's not what we're even talking about at all, right?

So what we're talking about is something very different. So when you think about this word, what I'm trying to say is we're talking about a wife's exclusive role in marriage as it relates to the marriage relationship itself.

There's no sense in which a husband should ever under any circumstance submit to his wife, period. But then, you know, you also have to understand that submission is not unique to women in that every single person in this room as a spirit-filled believer is going to have a wide variety of situations where we're responsible to submit to other people.

Meaning, like as I just went through the list, and I'm not going to do a sermon on each one because we're going to go through the passage of Ephesians and talk about different ways in which we submit to other people.

And this is not even comprehensive, right? Meaning, like everyone, as a Christian, we all have a responsibility to submit to God because He is our Lord. And whatever that means, so think about this. The way you submit to God is not meant to be some sort of rare tie-breaking vote that God has that He should probably be sensitive about and never really ask you to do anything that you don't want to do kind of thing.

That's not what it means there, right? So all of us, we need to submit to God. Our children, I know we live in a time right now that there's so many child-centered homes that it's ridiculous, right? Instead of parents telling their kids their expectations for their behavior, they have to have a conference, set up a conference meeting with them and ask them their opinion on whether or not they should go to nap or not, or something like that.

But as it relates to children obeying your parents, like that's an obvious application of submission for everyone. But then the Bible tells men and women to submit to your church leaders, right? So obey your leaders, submit to them for they're keeping watch over your souls as those who are given accounts.

Every single Christian has a responsibility to submit to their church leaders, to submit to God when their children submit to their parents. Every single one of us in here, I mean, I don't know that there's many people in here who have self-employed businesses, but all of us have bosses that we have to submit to on a regular basis.

And the best way to get fired would be to go to your boss and say, hey, I know you're asking me to do this, but I don't know if you're taking into account all of my ideas and what I have to offer and how that makes me feel, what you're asking me to do.

The point here is just to say submission is a concept for all of us in one way or another. Men submit to their bosses, men submit to government, men and women submit to government, children submit to parents, every one of us submit to God, regular Christians submit to church leaders.

It's a comprehensive idea that happens in a wide variety of ways, but then in this passage itself, the emphasis is on the wife's exclusive role in marriage, submitting to her husband. Now, one of the things I said is that this is a word that we've kind of emptied of all content, but then when you think about what this word actually means, like this is a word, hupotasomenoi, it's a word that means voluntary subordination.

Now, when I say that, I know that we're predisposed to be triggered by that, but then the issue is that's exactly what you find when you look the word up in a Greek lexicon. So the Bible is written in Greek, this is a Greek word, you look it up in a Greek lexicon, and what you're going to find is that this word, hupotasomenoi, it means subject oneself, be subjected or subordinated to obey, like that's what it means, right?

So to subject yourself to be subordinated, to be subjected, to be obeyed. Now, when you look at that language, it's very clear, like that language, like the issue is we've taken the word submission and we've emptied it of meaning.

We say, hey, yeah, I'm going to submit. We don't actually know what it means, but what it actually means is be subject, be subjected, be subordinated to obey. So when you think about it that way, then what you realize is this is king language, right?

So you think about it that way. This is like the language of kingship, meaning like what is a wife's role? Well, her role isn't simply just like on rare occasions provided that she agrees, provided that her husband is not asking her to do anything that she finds particularly uniquely burdensome or whatever else, or just in big moments or whatever else.

Like that's not really what the idea is here. I mean the idea here is to say that for a wife to be submissive to her husband, it involves her viewing him as if he is in a position of authority over her.

So this is a language that we naturally use and we use in relationship to kings, right? So you have a king and then you have subjects, right? And so the subjects are subjected to the king. They're subordinated to the king, meaning they're subordinate in rank, right?

They're subordinated in rank, meaning he's of different rank. So the king is higher rank than the citizens of the country, right? So when you think about what this word actually means, it means to subject yourself, to be a subject of another person.

So if you're going to follow what this says, what that means is you have to look at your husband as if he's actually a ruler over you. That's what it means, to view your husband as if he's a ruler over you and respond to him as if he's a ruler over you.

Now, in every other passage, think about every other passage I mention, they're all using the same language in every other context, right? So think about this. God is our ruler. You know what that means to say that God's your ruler.

What does it mean? It means he gets to tell you what to do, right? What he says goes. That's what it means. God's your ruler. It means what he says goes. He gets to tell you what to do. He's the one who calls the shots.

He's the boss, right? When you come to the Christian life, submission is part of the Christian life. That's what it means. So I say confess, Jesus is Lord, right?

Jesus is Lord.

And if Jesus is Lord, then what he says goes. And he's in charge. I don't get to say to him, I'm only going to follow you if I think what you're saying is reasonable. And if I agree with it. And if I don't think it's too much for me.

And you probably shouldn't ask that because you haven't considered how I feel about it, right? That's not really how you relate to God. So think about it that way. What does submission to God look like?

What does it mean to be subject to God? What does it mean to view him as your Lord? You know what it means there. You know what it means there. What does it mean for children to view their parents as rulers over them?

That means that when your parents tell you, hey, here's what I would like you to do, this isn't the time for negotiation, right? I mean, this isn't the time to say, hey, you know, I don't know if you considered my needs and how I feel about having to clean up my toys right now, right?

That's not, I mean, that's, you know what it means there. So what I'm trying to say is for children to do the same word to their parents, to obey their parents. You know what that means. For people to be subject to God, you know what it means there.

You also, look, you also know what it means as it relates to like bond servants being subject to their masters. You know what that means there too, right? Every single man in this room, like look, every single man in this room, you have a boss.

You know what it means to be subject to your boss. If you don't know what it means to be subject to your boss, you probably don't have a job very long, right? That's the way it works. So we all know what it means in every single area, okay?

Like you know what it means as it relates to your relationship with God. You know what it means as a child's relationship to a parent. You also know what it means as a servant's relationship to their master.

You know what that means there. And what I mean is like there's something about each one of those relationships that's all the same, okay? There's something about it that's all the same. There's differences in those kind of relationships.

There's not the same kind of relation. They're not exactly the same kind of relationship, right? But there's something about each one of them that's the same. And what's the same about it is the concept of submission is present in every single one of them.

Do you understand? It's the same concept in every single one of them, meaning you have an inferior in rank submitting their will to the superior in rank, right? That doesn't mean as it relates to human beings that just because I go to work that my boss is a better person than me.

It just means that he has a higher rank or station than me, and I better place myself under that rank or I'm going to get fired. That's what it means, right? If I want to get fired, the best way to get fired is to pretend like we are the same rank.

And if I pretend like we're the same rank, what's going to happen is I'm going to lose my job and we're going to be homeless, okay? So what I'm trying to say is this word, we know what it means in every single other context.

And then what we do related to a husband and wife context is we're trained by a society to be so hostile to these ideas. We're trained to be so hostile to these ideas that we basically empty the word of all meaning.