Looking at Marriage (Ephesians 5)

Zane discusses Paul's teaching on marriage at the end of Ephesians 5.

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What's up, Clear Path family? Just Zane here today. I'm just sitting here in my living room and I keep rereading Ephesians 5. And uh actually read Ephesians, the whole book of Ephesians last week. And my apologies to you guys, I missed doing a podcast on it. But uh, if you weren't there on Sunday, I actually did maybe a longer form podcast, if you will, for the sermon on Sunday. So you can go listen to Sunday's sermon, and I talked all the way through the book of Ephesians in one particular line of thinking that I felt like God was drawing me to. So you guys keep up with the readings if you can. But I felt compelled, I think, by the Holy Spirit to come back to Ephesians 5 for you guys today. And I want to just read and discuss starting in verse 21, and we actually get some teaching here on marriage. And I feel like God wants to talk to us a little bit today about marriage. Now, an important part of this context is that a lot of the teachings that happen here on marriage are also in within a bigger teaching on what it is like to be part of the church. And so unity is clearly one of the main driving points of this whole book. And Paul is telling the church how to be in unity with each other. And so we start with a comment that I think applies to everyone, not just the married people. Chapter 5, verse 21. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And so everything we talk about within this discussion of marriage comes within that first statement. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And I think this is a call to all of us that unity is found among us whenever we consider others higher than ourselves, whenever we don't consider ourselves to be overly important, or that our opinion must always be right, and that we give preference to one another, that we show each other honor, that we show each other love and submission, regardless of who has what position of authority or questions like that. This is just to everyone. Submit to one another, not because out of some kind of rules, but out of reverence for Christ. Because Christ loved you so much and was showed you such humility and showed you such a sacrificial life, you should do the same for each other, to every person around you. And so within that context, I'm going to keep reading verse 22 through the end of the chapter. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church. For we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. I love how he finishes that section of writing. Husbands, you must love your wife, and wives, you must respect your husbands. This is actually teaching us how to submit to each other. This is teaching us how to be united, how to participate in this profound mystery. Just as Christ would become one with his church. That was Jesus' prayer that the people would become one together and that they would be one with him as he's one with the Father. And so this is us participating in the profound mystery that Christ prayed for, of unity within the church, unity within his people. It's actually beautiful. We get to be a symbol to the world and to each other of Christ's love for the church. That it doesn't just have to be this mystery thing out there that no one can put their finger on and no one has any understanding of. But we're actually given something that we can see and experience in order that we might be able to have a little bit more understanding. So if we if we want to understand Christ and this church well, then we need to understand marriage well and we need to participate in marriage well. So, you know, obviously it makes it clear here that husbands and wives are meant to submit to each other, but are also meant to have different roles. And I'm not out on this podcast to get really deep into the theological discussion of um hierarchical roles of males and females in marriage. I will say that, you know, I don't know that many women who I feel like kind of dominate over their husbands and are kind of rude and harsh to their husbands and don't show them much respect. I have encountered it along the way, and that's kind of an ugly thing to watch. And so I but I think that Paul deals with that very simply here. He's talking to a culture of people where the wives are used to submitting to the husbands. That's already baked into their culture. And so he really leans into how much she should respect her husband. And I think that that's super important. So if you're a wife listening to this, I just encourage you to examine your heart and just determine you don't primarily need to be determining how much respect your husband deserves, but actually we're told to submit to each other, not because of how much someone deserves that, but because we have reverence for Christ. And so I want to encourage you to just look deep in your heart and even just find a deeper level of respect for your husbands. Well, husbands, I want to spend a little more time talking to you today, probably because I'm a husband and I've made plenty of mistakes in uh in being a husband over the last almost 17 years. And so, man, the level that this calls husbands to is such a high bar. It says to give your life up for your wife just as Christ loved the church and gave his own body for the church. That is such a high bar, and I'm always convicted by this when I read it because I love my wife very much. But when I start comparing my level of love to the way that Christ chose to come give his life, man, I just I'm not at that level of sacrifice yet. And this is such a call into sacrificial love. I think that's the call for husbands and wives. I think that's the call for all of us toward each other in the church. But it is such a requirement and an expectation and an invitation into sacrificial love, not forcing your spouse to go along with your wishes. Uh, 1 Corinthians 13 comes to mind when it says, it says love does not insist on its own way. And I think a lot of times we have husbands and wives kind of fighting back and forth in life of one of them wants things this one way, one wants things on this other way. And so submission means not fighting for your own way, but actually wanting to give yourself, wanting to give your life, wanting to give preference to your spouse. And so I just want this to be a real challenge today to let the Holy Spirit examine your heart right now and determine: am I giving preference to my spouse? Is there some way in which I am fighting for my own desires, fighting for what I want, rather than giving preference to my spouse out of the love of God, and so that I can mimic the love of Jesus to this world and to the church? Another thing that jumps out to me here as I read it, even just right now, is it says, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. So it actually says that this is how husbands are supposed to love their wives. And I want to expand this, and I'm sure Paul would agree with me here and say this is also how dads are supposed to love and lead their kids. That I do believe that husbands have some call, specially, to be a leader of their household and to be one that is championing through their own life and through specific regular moments of leading their families into prayer and into worship and into a discussion of scripture. That husbands and dads are supposed to lead their families into becoming sanctified. And that's what Jesus did for the church. He gave himself up for her to not only for forgiveness, but for sanctification, that through his sacrifice we actually receive access and power through which we can be changed and sanctified. And I believe that husbands, uh, wives also for their church, but especially, there's especially a call to husbands specifically to make your wife and to make your family presented to God as holy and blameless. And so I just want to call all the husbands up and say, we need a great amount of intentionality. Put it on your schedule. Figure out, sit down with your wife and figure out how to put these moments on the calendar where you can lead your family into God's presence, where you can lead your family into another level of sanctification that your wife and your kids are not just being taught when they're at church. They're not just being taught by other faithful people that they're being around, or even just groomed by being around their peers, groomed by being at school, groomed by friends. But we need some intentional pouring into our families for the prop for the purpose of sanctification, not in a harsh way, but in a gentle, guiding way. And God just keeps teaching me this, and I'm He's He's sanctifying me, He's pulling me more and more into this over time, that I learned to lead my family in a way that doesn't allow for compromise, but is gentle and is caring and is loving, shows a great amount of love. Hopefully, we learn more and more to lay our lives down for each other, but toward the goal of our families being fully devoted to Jesus and being sanctified and being holy. Because we are members of his body. We are those who, with Christ as our head, get to perform the works of his ministry, get to make it evident in this world what Jesus is really like. And the place where that most often starts, probably, is within our households and within our families that we develop a culture and an attitude and humility of relentlessly pushing forward through into sanctification and into a self-giving love. And look, husbands, wives, I'm not giving, I'm not giving permission to not respect your husband when he doesn't act perfectly. But husbands, if you want to make it easy on your wives to respect you, man, lay your life down for them as Christ laid down his life for the church. If you receive that kind of love, how could you not respect the person who's giving it to you? And if we want to have a good relationship with our kids, if we show them that kind of love, that they know that they have our life, that they know that we're humble before them and not trying to exasperate them as some fathers do, but trying in love for their own good to lead them into sanctification, that they may have the best, that they may receive the best that God has for them. Then I think that we will always keep better relationships with our kids, and they will always know that they can come to us with problems, with difficulties for advice, and that that will be a lifelong connection. So, for everyone who's listening to this, you are a call to submission to each other and an over-the-top devotion to love and to respect. And I hope that wives and husbands, you'll turn your hearts more toward each other right now. You can even think about it. Say something to your spouse after you listen to this, and that our hearts will be turned more toward our families, that we could be an example to the world. Just like I discussed on Sunday. Go back and listen to that sermon if you missed it, so that you can get the full thoughts here out of Ephesians. But we are an example to the world of what heaven is really like. So, God, will you please speak to our hearts today, convict our hearts, encourage our hearts. That we could be good spouses, that we could be good members of your body, that we could learn what humility and a life laid down in humility and self-sacrifice is really like. I'm gonna give 30 seconds of quiet right now just for the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart about how you can respond to this scripture in humility and love. So I'm gonna give 30 seconds right now. I hope God spoke to you in that time. And I want to say that I love you all, and let's keep being on a pursuit of Jesus individually and together this week. Hope the Holy Spirit will continue to speak to you on this topic, and that you will continue to be open to receive, to listen, and to put into action the things that He speaks to your heart. Bless you guys. Amen.