Gospel-Centred Submission in Marriage

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August 11, 2024 | Ephesians 5:22-24 | Expository sermon by Sam Kelm.

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Obedience, submission and authority. These types of words generally seem to cause tremendous discomfort for people.
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After all, we're all our own authority really. No one is superior to us.
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No one has the right to tell us what to do. We are submissive to nobody and we're all equal.
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That seems to be the battle cry that surrounds the Christian no matter where he goes.
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Submission and authority were told are concepts designed by man for the sole purpose of gaining uncontrolled power for a select few to oppress and exploit the majority for their own purposes.
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And that especially applies to women apparently. And though there are certainly innumerable instances throughout the history of mankind where man has abused his
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God -given authority, it does not mean that God's good and wise design in establishing different roles and structures of leadership and submission is inherently evil.
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Yet again, that's exactly what we're being told. A never -ending, it seems, number of articles can be found all over the place that suggest things like these.
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One of them said, the list of passages putting down women in the Bible is almost endless.
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Ever since Eve deceived in the Garden of Eden, the Bible has been the chief literary vehicle in the constant oppression of women.
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Or the Bible provides religious and moral norms preventing women from playing a full and equal role.
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I'm afraid that the same way of thinking has made its way into the church.
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We've abandoned God's good design in the differing roles for men and women.
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We've bought into the idea that that equals inferiority. Well, in truth, nothing could be further from the truth.
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And as a result, our marriages have suffered tremendously in different ways.
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And the picture that marriage is supposed to be to the world has been greatly distorted and vandalized.
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Our text today, Ephesians 5 verses 22 to 24, is no doubt one that is often approached with great emotion.
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But in it, Paul reminds us of these distinct roles of man and woman in the context of marriage.
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And what we'll see is that Christian submission, Christian headship is unlike anything that the world understands it to be.
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That its roots extend deeply into the truth of the gospel and grow out of heartfelt obedience and imitation of Jesus Christ.
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Submission is not based on inferiority and neither is headship based on greater worth on part of the individual.
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We need to, we must return to a biblical understanding of biblical manhood and womanhood if we want to live our marriage the way
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God intended it and to display Christ to the world. And so as we work our way through these couple of verses,
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I want us to note some distinct features of gospel -centered submission in marriage.
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And because apparently nobody that steps ever behind a pulpit can count past three, we will see three different things in this text.
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I'd like us to see that submission is firstly obedience to Christ, that it secondly involves
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Christ -like headship, and lastly that it is an all -encompassing submission.
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With that, let's begin and look at our first point, obedience to Christ.
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In our study of the book of Ephesians, we have now come to the section that theologians have called the household code section.
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It begins in chapter 5 verse 22 and it extends all the way to chapter 6 verse 9.
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And in it Paul addresses mainly three different types of relationships found in the Greco -Roman household.
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He begins first with the relationship between husbands and wives and then he moves on to children and their parents and lastly masters and their servants.
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So it's not the only theme. Submission is the central theme within this whole unit and today we get to begin with the section between husbands and wives.
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And what we'll see in verse 22 again is that a wife's submission to her husband is obedience to Christ.
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In verse 22 Paul writes this, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the
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Lord. I'm not sure that in our day there are many more verses in the
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New Testament that have the ability to upset and anger a great number of people as quickly as this verse and the two that follow it.
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To be sure, we are entering highly controversial territory in this passage today.
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And even some of you here today, you read these verses, you hear a statement like that and your alarm bells might immediately go off.
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You instantly feel uncomfortable with this language of submission and authority and obedience.
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And though it may sound like it to us, in a time where confusion in regards to gender and gender roles abounds and we're told that no one in all creation has authority over another and anyone can do what is right in their own eyes, it's not at all a controversial statement for Paul to make.
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The call to wives to submit to their husbands was nothing out of the ordinary for the Ephesians to hear.
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Culturally, in the Greco -Roman world, in the household at the time, wives were actually required to submit or be obedient, if you will, to their husbands.
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That was because women were regarded as existentially inferior to men and so a wife's submission was merely seen as a natural outworking as an expression of her inferiority to man.
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One scholar even notes that Josephus, the early church historian, lived around 37
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AD to 100 AD, that he even claimed that women were inferior to their husbands and ought to be obedient in all things.
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It was simply a common held and understood as fact that women were to be subordinate to men.
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And so in and of itself, this concept that Paul is introducing here is nothing new to his audience.
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But Paul doesn't stop there. He doesn't simply say wives submit to your husband and leaves it at that.
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I think he adds an all -important qualifier and characteristic to this submission.
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He doesn't just take this cultural norm from the time, adheres to it, and sprinkles a little bit of Christianity on top to make it more appealing and less offensive.
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Rather, with Christ as the foundation, as the rock on which a Christian's daily life is to be built, as he's laid out all throughout the book up till now, he says, look, at the end of verse 22, he says this, as to the
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Lord. We have to understand that this qualifier of as to the
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Lord is very much contrary to that evil, this twisted, godless idea of submission that was, in all reality, really just a form of blind, unquestioned submission on the part of the wife to her husband, as presumably the inferior being.
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But as to the Lord is where a wife's submission really begins. What does
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Paul mean by that? It should be obvious to us that under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit, Paul is most certainly not suggesting some form of gross idolatry in violation of the first commandment where the wife makes her husband her
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Lord and God and begins to worship him. Rather, he's saying, wife, your submission to your husband, notice how it also says your own husband, is first and foremost or begins with obedience to Christ.
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He puts it in a similar way, actually, in Colossians 3 verse 18, where he says, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the
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Lord. John Calvin put it very bluntly, he said, wives cannot obey
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Christ without yielding obedience to their husbands. Wives, women, desiring to be wives one day.
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Lord willing, you will be. You have to understand and know this, that in the context of marriage, in the relationship between the husband and a wife, submission to man, submission to your husband, begins with obedience to Christ.
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Submission to man begins with obedience to Christ.
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And so with a culture at the time demanded obedience due to inferiority and where nowadays submission is seen as inferiority,
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Paul presents submission as an act of obedience to Christ.
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This is vastly different. There's not the slightest hint of inferiority on part of the woman in this text.
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The only inferiority that we actually do find is the wife's submission to her husband in relation to her submission to Christ.
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And so we cannot believe the lie that submission and obedience are the shackles and the chains on the hands and feet of the wife that permanently tie her to a life of inferiority and lesser value.
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And likewise men, we'll get into a little bit later, you cannot be deceived and become puffed up and prideful and arrogant thinking that you are of superior worth simply because your wife has commanded to submit to you.
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Submission, Christian submission, does not equal lesser value and neither does authority equal superiority.
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We see this best in Genesis 1 .27, right in the creation account.
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We read that both men and women were created what? In the image of God.
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And that's where man and woman get their inherent value and it is an equal value in the eyes of their
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Creator. And no matter how many times the world tries to tell you otherwise, the worth of a human life, the worth of husband and wife, is not found in their differing roles whether in authority or in submission or how productive they are or beneficial they are to society.
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It is solely found in the being created in the image of their God and likewise in Christ.
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We all know Galatians 3 .28, there's no male and female.
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God doesn't save one and not the other or saves one a little bit more than the other.
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Both have the same standing and are heirs of the grace of life together as Peter puts it in 1st
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Peter 3 as Shane has read. Now if a wife is to put herself under the leadership of her husband as an act of obedience to Christ, as an act of her worship, then this becomes a matter of the heart.
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Wives you cannot simply be concerned with and content with the outward appearance of obedience when in your heart rebellion rages on and paying public lip service to your husband is rather easy compared to the true sincere obedience from the heart that Christ demands of his people.
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If you sit here and you're squirming at the idea that the Apostle represents and maybe your blood is beginning to boil a little bit and you're ready to get all up in arms, if you will not and you say you cannot possibly submit to your husband, if that's the case then you may have to examine if you are really ready and willing to fully obey
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Jesus Christ and if you're willing to obey him on his terms or on yours, you need to face the fact that you are disobedient and in rebellion.
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I'm going to ask you this, do you really believe that Christ who purchased you with his own blood and that God the
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Father who knitted you together in your mother's womb, who created you in his image, has given you in the marriage covenant a hard and burdensome command only to beat you up and live a life in misery?
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Have you not found his commandments to be good, to be a delight to you?
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Do you not joyfully and willfully submit yourself to them and trust that God knows men and women, that he loves his people, that he knows what's best for them and how they can bring the greatest amount of glory to his name?
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Women, submission is not a burden, it is not a way designed by God to pull you down and drown you in the sea of despair and inferiority and misery, but it's a
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God -given blessing, a privilege given to you by God in which you get to daily imitate the gentleness, the quietness of heart and spirit that Christ displayed when he submitted himself to the will of the
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Father and went to die on the cross to save his people. It's a daily means of your sanctification.
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Now it's easy for us to take verse 22, isolate submission and persistently beat the drum of obedience and say, women you have to submit, but when we look at verse 23, we begin to see that submission within this one flesh union of husband and wife is not a one way street.
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It's like a two -sided coin, if you will, with the wife's obedience to her husband on the one side and the husband's
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Christ -like headship over his wife on the other. We see this in our second point,
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Christ -like headship. You cannot have one apart from or without the other and so Paul in verse 23, he writes this, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its
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Savior. The Apostle now grounds, verse 22, in the fact that the husband has been given his head over his wife and just like the previous verse, he again adds an all -important characteristic when he draws the parallel between Christ and a church.
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Now verse 23, this verse specifically has been cause for a tremendous amount of debate and it surrounds
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Paul's use of the Greek term here for head. So it's a very recent debate in the history of the church that only began about 70 years ago, as far as I can tell.
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It's certainly not been without its fair share of controversy and at the heart of the discussion is the metaphorical use of the term.
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Some have suggested that it should be and could be interpreted as first or beginning in the sense of source or even in a sense of preeminence and there do seem to be a couple places in the
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New Testament where Paul uses the term in a sense that could be different from authority.
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However, if we look at our immediate context of the entire passage here in Ephesians and how the individuals in the home are to relate to one another, the sense of authority just fits the flow of the text better than anything else and Paul has also used that exact term by the way already in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 22 where he applies almost the exact same phrasing as we find here in verse 23 when he establishes
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Christ's authority over all things to the church. In chapter 1 he writes, he that being
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God the Father put all things under his Christ's feet and gave him as head over all things to the church which is his body the fullness of him who fills all in all.
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All things are put under Christ's feet and he was given as head over all those things and in the parallel manner as a picture of Christ and his relationship to the church a husband has headship over his wife.
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It ought to be really amazing to us that we believe, we hold to differences in authority in almost every aspect of life.
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Really we believe in the authority of an employer over his employee, the authority of parents over his children and we generally understand and hold to a government's authority over its citizens and in none of these instances we would generally say that authority is a bad thing and we even see a difference in roles, we see submission and authority within the
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Trinity itself. We understand that in the act of redemption the father gives his son, the son was sent by the father not to do his will but the will of the one who sent him.
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It was the son who submitted himself to the authority of the father in order to pay the penalty for our sins and bear the wrath of God on our behalf and we most certainly,
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I trust, we believe in the authority, the headship and leadership of Christ over his bride, the church.
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But there's something that as soon as we begin to speak about a husband's headship over his wife that we depict it as wicked and evil.
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As if headship were this prison, this dark, damp dungeon robbing a woman of all her liberties, putting her at the mercy of this diabolical tyrant that is her husband.
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Now on top of Paul's translation of head it's been suggested that what
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Paul is writing here, he's simply basing on the cultural norm of the day and as a consequence it has little or absolutely no contemporary meaning or implication for our marriages today.
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Again keep in mind the parallel that Paul draws between Christ and his church.
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Has Christ's headship of the church ceased? Was that only applied for the church in the first century?
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Now I don't want to stretch that illustration too far and go beyond its intended meaning but at the very least
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I think it's an implication that the same remains true for us today and I think it finds consistency in the other clearer
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New Testament teaching. For example, when Paul speaks about head coverings and headship in 1st
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Corinthians 11, referring to Eve being formed out of Adam's rib and being created as a helper fit for him because it was not good for man to be alone, he grounds his argument in creation.
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Verses 8 and 9 he says, for man was not made from woman but woman from man, neither was man created for woman but woman for man.
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And in another place when Paul talks about the different authority within the church, the
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Apostle anchors his theology again in Genesis when he writes to Timothy in his first letter, he said,
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I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather she is to remain quiet and here's the reason.
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Verse 13, for Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
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What Paul is writing here is not a case of him being culturally relevant and appropriate.
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These differing roles of men and women, of husband and wife, and the theology of Paul have their foundation in the creation account.
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And so this most certainly applies to us today. And the question then becomes, what does this leadership, what does this headship on part of the husband look like?
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Paul tells us, he gives us this great illustration, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its
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Savior. Christ is the model for the husband men.
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You need to, you must fix your eyes on Christ.
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Just like your wife's submission flows out of her obedience to Christ, your leadership must find its source in imitation of Christ and headship, leadership that imitates
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Christ. It's one that works from the bottom up.
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Jesus gives himself a great example. In Matthew 20, verse 25 to 28, he says this, you know that the rulers of the
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Gentiles lord it over them and the great ones exercise authority over them.
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It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.
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And verse 28 is all important here, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many men with a sacrificial servant -like heart.
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You must lead your family, initiate, set the overarching tone of love in your home.
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Leadership doesn't mean that you have to do everything at all times by yourself and never consult your wife about anything.
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Your headship's not a dictatorship, totalitarian, domineering, abusive. Leadership on your part is no headship at all.
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It's so an imitation of Christ. With gentleness, direct your family.
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Direct them how you can use your finances wisely and for the glory of God, regardless of whether you have children or not.
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Lead family worship. Be the first to say, let's think and pray about how we can serve the local church and then involve your wife in all of these things.
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Allow her, let her use her abilities and give things. She's your helper, your
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God -given support, not your slave. Your leadership in the home should look something like this.
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It's a short account from a pastor in the U .S. He writes this, cooperation between husband and wife is the norm in the
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Christian home. When I felt led of God to leave Mobile for Oklahoma City, our son did not want to leave his friends.
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He asked, mother, do we have to go? She said, well, daddy feels
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God leading him and we will go where he goes. And then he says,
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I did not demand it, she gave it with her whole heart.
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In the one flesh union of husband and wife, submission and headship are to work in union as well.
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The one leads and the other supports with the common goal of imitating Christ's relationship to the church for the glory of his name.
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Know these two foundations established in verses 22 and 23.
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The fact that a wife's submission is grounded in the headship of the husband. Paul concludes by addressing the nature and the extent of that submission in verse 24.
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Look at it, he says, now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
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And we see that submission within the marriage is an all -encompassing submission.
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Naturally, the language of in everything, this implied totality makes us a bit uncomfortable and causes us to ask some questions.
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Is the Apostle saying that wives have to literally submit in everything?
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Is she to submit in the minutest detail, for example, when she can and cannot leave the house, or she's to dress, what she is allowed to buy, what book she's allowed to read or not to read?
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Is she blindly to obey a husband that is obviously wrong? What about an abusive husband that demands her to sin in some form or fashion?
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Some people have suggested that, yeah, that is the case. Though I think the answer is yes and no.
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What do I mean? Yes, as long as the husband's requests are based on scriptural principles that work for her good and the glory of God, she's to submit.
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She's not to submit if the husband demands her to deny or disobey her
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Lord. For example, if a wife has established a sinful pattern, let's say of going out at night during the week to participate in the wildest debauchery and drunkenness with her friends, you better believe that is the husband's duty to steer her away from a behavior that destroys her soul and call her to repentance.
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We could also say, let's say she begins to read and really enjoy some books from well -known false teachers that do not teach the gospel or a false gospel, and she begins to teach her children.
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Again, you better believe the husband ought to step in, defend the gospel, his children, and his wife by correcting their teaching.
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On the other hand, there's no biblical warrant for her to obey when a husband is asking her to blatantly sin, to enter into drunkenness with him, to partake in or commit sexual immorality or deny
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Christ. In everything she's to obey, like every other
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Christian anywhere, first and foremost, her God. The obedience of Christ, obedience to Christ, trumps obedience to man.
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Remember Acts 5, the apostles, they've been preaching and teaching the gospel and eventually ended up getting arrested, and they stand before the council and the great high priest, and they're told not to preach anymore, and what was their answer?
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They said we must obey God rather than men, and so they continue to preach, and likewise
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Christ told his disciples, if you love me you will keep my commandments. If a husband demands his wife to deny
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Christ, disobey his commandments, a wife cannot, women, you cannot blindly obey your husband.
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If he asked you to sin against Christ, deny him and disobey him, and so this in everything, again, is qualified and limited by one's obedience and faithfulness to God.
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So when Paul is using this language, he's speaking about the holistic nature of submission, meaning he's speaking about both the spiritual as well as the quote -unquote secular, because for the
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Christian there really is no such distinction for us to make. A wife cannot claim to submit to her husband only in spiritual matters, but then not submit in others, because the spiritual affects everything else she does.
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Your faith, your theology affects every aspect of your life.
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You just can't separate the two, and as we've seen in verse 23 already, it does not equal unquestioned tyranny on part of the husband.
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Paul is assuming here, when he draws this parallel, that the husband himself is obeying
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Christ's commands. Remember again, 1 Corinthians 11,
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Paul says that the head of every man is who? Jesus Christ.
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The husband himself is under the authority of Christ and has no right to disobey his command.
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He cannot demand, command anything of his wife that Christ himself does not ask of his people, and that's why
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Paul goes on, we'll hear about this next week, to urge the husband to love his wife, love her as he does his own body, because the one that loves his wife loves himself.
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Now if you've been married for even just a second, you'll know that all of this is very difficult to do.
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We understand Genesis 3, 16, when God says to the woman, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
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Wives, I think you know exactly what that verse means. You've experienced it.
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You've likely lost count of how many times you've not agreed with your husband on his plans or suggestions, because it's simply not what you want, it's not what you desire.
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Maybe you feel like he isn't paying any attention to how you're feeling about a given situation, and you think in the same way, husbands, you understand this temptation of simply wanting to to put the hammer down, as it were, and exercise a
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God -given authority simply to get things done, instead of lovingly, patiently, gently leading and shepherding your wife through whatever situation you're dealing with.
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I welcome you to marriage in a fallen world, and though the war against sin will remain in this life, we all know that.
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If submission of the wife is grounded in the obedience to Christ as an imitation of his submission to the will of the
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Father as he emptied himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, and if the headship of the husband is grounded in the self -sacrificial servant -like giving of himself as the lamp of God, slain for the propitiation for our sins, then and only then can a wife joyfully, willingly, lovingly in everything submit to her husband and be the helper and support that she's supposed to be.
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And likewise, only in light of the gospel can the husband lead his wife, exercise his
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God -given headship as a servant and not a tyrant. The gospel really,
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Christ, is at the heart of submission and headship both alike. You desire your marriage to flourish, to be sweet, and most importantly to be
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God -honoring and Christ -exalting? Then wives, imitate
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Christ in your submission. Husbands, imitate Christ in your servant -like sacrificial leading.
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Now we have some of us here that are not married, and it's always difficult to go through a passage, and what do we do?
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What do the unmarried do? What do we do with this? Well, my prayer is that we hold our brothers and sisters accountable, that women encourage other women to persist in their support of their husbands, that men encourage other men to remain faithful and to continue to lead their wives, and that we would apply ourselves even now to be ready to be a husband, to be a wife, and don't wait until the day when you get married.
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So women, clothe yourselves as Shane has read, with respectable and pure conduct.
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Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.
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It is precious in God's sight. And men, single men, let's strive to be a servant -like, self -sacrificial man of God under the authority of Christ and immerse ourselves with all the time that we have and all the resources that God has given us to the service of our
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Master. If you desire to be married, continue to be patient.
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Trust the Lord with his good timing. Marriage is a blessing, but men cannot, for the sake of satisfying their desire, choose a spouse, a quarrelsome wife that is not willing and ready to submit in marriage.
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And likewise, women, you cannot allow yourself to choose a man that has not placed himself under the authority of Jesus Christ.
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I'll close us with this account of a preacher that I think demonstrates a wife's loving submission out of reverence for Christ well.
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He writes this, until the Lord called her home. For over 57 years,
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Francis and I had as nearly perfect a marriage as one could imagine. During her terminal illness, she talked about her view of her role as my wife.
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She always considered her role as being to do what she could to enable me to pursue
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God's call. She expressed to our children and her sister that she had only one concern about her illness.
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She did not want to be a hindrance to my work. She felt I should be out preaching the gospel instead of having to look after her.
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Hearing of it, I told her she was no hindrance. Instead, she had been my inspiration and strength through the years.
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I assured her the same Bible that said to preach the gospel also said that a man who did not look after his household was worse than a heathen.
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Precious, precious memories. I could wish for every couple a marriage such as ours.