How Two Become One — Ephesians 5:21–33 | Season 2, Episode 13

How do two people with completely different lives, needs, dreams, and desires actually make a marriage last?

It's one of the most practical questions in human experience — and Paul addresses it in just twelve verses.

In this episode of the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast, host Matt Dawson works through one of the most discussed and most misunderstood passages in all of scripture: Ephesians 5:21–33. Paul's vision for marriage isn't a power struggle or a hierarchy of value. It's a mutual submission rooted in something much bigger — the relationship between Christ and his church.

Matt unpacks the Greek language behind submission, explains why the tiger illustration changes everything about how we read verse 22, and makes the case that what Paul asks of husbands may actually be the heavier call of the two. Loving your wife the way Christ loved the church isn't one moment of heroism. It's a lifetime of waking up and choosing to lay your life down every single day.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt draws on 32 years of marriage, his son's recent wedding, and the love and respect wheel to bring this passage to life — and lands on a vision of marriage as the world's most visible reflection of how Christ loves his church.

This Ephesians Bible study is for anyone who wants to understand what God's design for marriage actually looks like — and why it matters far beyond the relationship itself.

In this episode:

• Why verse 21 — submit to one another — is the foundation for everything that follows
• The Greek word for submission and why it has nothing to do with weakness
• The tiger illustration — what it means to voluntarily surrender strength
• Why the husband's call to sacrificial love may be the greater challenge
• What it means to wash your wife with the word and present her as holy
• The love and respect wheel — and how the two fuel each other
• A closing prayer for marriages that reflect the grace and love of Christ

📖 Passage: Ephesians 5:21–33 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Ephesians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Well, welcome to the Set Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Dawson. This is episode 13 of our podcast, studying and looking through the book of Ephesians. We are in chapter five today, but I want to go ahead and start with this question. How in the world do two people make a commitment to live together, love each other, and spend the rest of their lives together? How do you possibly do that? Two individuals with individual lives, uh, with desires and needs and wants and dreams and goals. How in the world do you bring them together and how do they last? How can they make it last? Obviously, in our culture, we don't think people can tell that it actually works at all, but yet we do know that there is a path to be able to do this. And today in Ephesians 5, we're going to look at how Paul describes that path in just a few verses, in just 12, I think, verses. As always, we're looking at your scripture today through the soap framework. And if you uh don't know anything about that, I put a video together for you about how do you read the Bible every day and get something out of it and enjoy it, right? I also have a free download. If you want to be able to click the QR code or look at the description, the link or in the pinned comments, I can give you a free download on how to do this scripture, observation, application, prayer, and really get something out of the Bible every time you read. It's the framework we use for this podcast. Uh, but before we dive into today's scripture, let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word, the way it challenges us. And today we just pray that you'll give us the observations we need to see and what we need to learn from your word as we apply this together today. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right. Last week I started us off in chapter five of Ephesians and took us to verse 21. But I'm gonna start us in verse 21 because I actually believe verse 21 feeds the next section of verses. And I'm gonna stop in the middle and then read the whole thing. Sorry, stop in the middle, talk a little bit about some of the initial concept, but don't stop listening in the middle of the uh podcast. Definitely finish it so you can hear the whole thing come together. All right. Here we go, verse 21. And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. I'm gonna pause here because, believe it or not, as a pastor and someone who has done several weddings, I actually sometimes have conversations with couples where usually the bride or the bride to be, or in counseling couples with wives, they struggle with this set of verses. They miss verse 21, which is submit to one another out of the reverence we have for Christ. Not because they are worth submitting to, not because they deserve to be submitted to, but there's a purpose in how we submit to one another, and it is specifically stated right out of the gate that it's out of reverence for Christ. But there's also some confusion around this word submit, because specifically when we go right to the section of wives, submitting to husbands, there's this, I don't know, cultural understanding or or belief, I guess, that submission is this sort of doormat, you know, let people tell you what to do, no agency whatsoever, no identity. Um, I mean, it's it's like we take it to its ultimate worst conclusion. And that is not at all what the text actually says. This is definitely what people have put on the text and actually said, oh no, no, this is what I think this is what this means. But when you read it in its context, the Greek word he uses for submit is actually a word that is associated with power. Okay. So it's it's a word associated with you are laying down or surrendering power that you have that exists within you. So this isn't some sort of like doormat situation or uh, you know, just let somebody run all over you because you're weak situation. This is Paul saying for wives, you have incredible power in the relationship, right? You you you do. You have incredible power in every relationship. That's because that's how God designed you and wired you. And he's saying there is something really significant in marriage when you choose to surrender that strength. Does that make sense? So so I talked to I use this example sometimes that a cat, you know, sort of bowing its head to me in respect means nothing. It's a cat. I could smack a cat and get it out of the way. I don't smack cats, but just understand, like it's a little cat. It doesn't mean anything to me to that it surrenders to me. But a tiger face to face with one of the most deadliest animals in the world, if it were to bow its head and submit to me, that's incredible, right? Like that's that is strength surrendered in that moment. And that is the language Paul's using in Ephesians 5 21. It is the strength of what the women bring, what women bring to the relationship that honestly is where he says, surrender that. Why? Because your husband is the head of the house. And he talks about this from a positional standpoint, not from an authority standpoint. It's authority because it's the picture of Christ. But hear me, it's not a value standpoint. Like we we picture this sometimes like the husband's head of the wife, and it's because he gets to tell her what to do, and blah, blah, blah. Again, don't skip out on what we're getting ready to read. This is saying, positionally authority-wise, I've given the husbands the head of the household. I've given them the the the actually you're gonna see later on here, the uh call to lead. And because of that, I'm asking the wife to submit her strength, to submit that power to allow him to be able to do so. Does that make sense? And so it comes off of verse 21. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, not because he's worth it, not because he's worthy of it, not because he's earned it. You're doing it all, verse 21, out of reverence for Christ, and that strength and that power that you bring to the relationship, you are you are intentionally and you are voluntarily putting down and surrendering. Now watch this, because it continues on. This is why you need to read the whole thing, right? He says, this is what it looks like for wives to respect their husband. Then he says, For husbands, this means, meaning, what does it mean? This means. This meaning, what does it look like to submit to one another? This means, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave up his life for her, to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, he will be holy. Sure, sorry, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies, for a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body, but he feeds it, he cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are all members of this body. The call to husbands, I'm gonna be honest, because I've been a husband for 32 years, I believe is probably a little bit more significant than even what he's asking wives to do. He's not asking wives to give up their power, he's not asking wives to give up their strength and just put it aside. He says, You have this incredible strength in the relationship. He is the head of the household just as Christ is the head of the church. I want you to voluntarily put that into submission for his sake and for your marriage's sake. And then he tells the husbands, you're going to love so sacrificially that you would give up your own life for their life. Now, husbands sometimes see this in kind of a macho bravado way, like warriors that go off and fight, and I'll die for you, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll pay the ultimate sacrifice for you. I I don't know if that's more significant than every day choosing to live to serve and love your spouse more than yourself. What do you think? Like one moment of her of heroism to fight for her, to defend her, that's honorable. But a lifetime of waking up every single day and saying, your life has more value than my life. I'm going to lift up your life, right? So much higher than I will lift up my own life, because that's the love that Jesus is calling me to love you. It's sacrificial, fully in its nature, to give up your own life every single day. And I look at the the description of how he says Jesus would uh present the church as something that's holy and without fault. Right? This is this is a description of how do men wash their wives with the word, meaning they're they they they speak scripture, they speak the truth of the word of God over their family and over their wives, so that regardless again of whether she's worth it, she's earned it, or she deserves it, he presents her as holy and without fault. Because it reminds me of the Corinthians passage where he says, Love is love does not keep records of wrongs, gentlemen. Love does not fight to win its own way, love doesn't rejoice when when when bad things happen. Like what does it look like to love your life wife so much and to to speak the truth of the word of God over her so much so that you present her as if you're presenting her to the she's faultless. We know she's not faultless, but you love her so much, and the washing of the word presents her in this way. I'm telling you, it's a beautiful, beautiful picture. And again, if you didn't notice it, this is a lot of uh illustration. Paul's using the the the marriage relationship as again this beautiful illustration, as Jesus said, as a representation of how much he and the church are to submit to one another and to love one another. He says, Look, that's that you do this because he's just like Christ is the church, he's the head of the household. And he's gonna do this because he's going to love you so much the way Christ loves his church so much, you're going to love her sacrificially in this way. And then I love the the sort of the recap as he ends chapter five with this thought. He's going to go on in chapter six and talk about other relationships, other ways in society in which you live out, you know, as we talked about last week, live out children of being children of the light, children of God. But here's what he says to end out the time with husbands and wives. He says, as the scriptures say, this is verse 31. A man leaves his father and his mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. This is a great mystery, but it's an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So I say again, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Let me give you two final observations to this today. One is that uh this past weekend, my son and his fiancee got married on July 4th. So excited. So it's so cool to watch them get married here outside of the church and start their new life together. But I kind of thought about it at the same time, even in their wedding, I'm just like, man, they're so young. Look at them getting married. They're gonna spend the rest of their life just loving and serving one another. Because I just thought about these verses and I thought about how did how did two people get, you know. I mean, my wife and I have made it 32 years, and when I say we've made it, but God's help, we've made it. But like it's just not natural, right? Like, like naturally, we're selfish human beings, naturally we want to look out for ourselves, naturally we want to pursue our own interests, and this marriage relationship completely throws that on its head, and and the husband and the wife live to serve each other. And I, as I watched my son, to be honest, my son, I kind of has said this to my wife and to others before. I said, Look, Thomas has always been someone who wants to serve his future spouse, right? He he sort of dated and lived and operated in such a way when he was dating that he really did want to set that up as an example in his life that he wanted to serve and just really wanted to a life where he could serve that person the way he believes he was supposed to as a husband. And so I've always considered, like, hey, whoever marries him is a lucky girl. Whoever marries him is gonna get somebody. Now, I'm not saying he can't be selfish and wrong and dumb and all those sort of things, because you know, all men, right? But he he really is sort of wired, and early on I think he really understood the the heart of this message. But the second thing I'll say, and there was a great book uh called Love and Respect written many, many years ago. Can't even remember the author of it, uh, but it was a great book around this idea of how love and respect uh fuel each other in sort of a wheel and sort of a circle. That in this crazy illustration of a relationship, how in the world do two full people become one person, one in the sight of God? It's that the respect that she brings fuels his love, sacrificial love, and his sacrificial love fuels her ability to submit her strength to respect her husband, which fuels his sacrificial love, which fuels her respect. You understand what I'm saying in terms of the wheel? It it's this it's this design that God created to help us get to you know 32 years for me. My dad mentioned it the other night. Uh, 67 years married to my mom. 67 years married to my mom. So it's just one of those things that I I asked the question earlier, how in the world does it happen? It can happen. And I believe Paul, again, in these 12 verses, lays out how it can happen. So I'm just gonna ask this before we close out in prayer. I don't know where you are today. I don't know if you're married or not married, or you got a marriage that looks like this, or a marriage that doesn't look anything like this. What is it that God wants you to observe today and pray that you can apply? For men, maybe it's really going back to those verses in 25 through 30 and just saying, I need to know and really pray through how I'm supposed to sacrificially love her. For uh wives, it's verse 21 through 24. We are mutually going to submit, but it also part of that is me voluntarily surrendering my strength, right? Choosing to do so because of the nature of how God designed this relationship. And I might need to learn what that looks like, right? I might need to think about what that looks like. The bottom part to me is a great observation for many people just to understand, guys, marriage is a marriage is supposed to be, okay. Marriage is supposed to be for this world a reflection of how it works with Jesus and his church. Like this one institution, this this sacrament of marriage was really designed to be a reflection to the world. This is how Christ loves his church, and this is how the church submits and loves their Savior. And it's beautiful. Obviously, I think we struggle to be the reflection that God wants us to be, but individually, maybe for you, maybe that's a goal that you need to have in your life. Maybe you're not married yet and you want to be married, or maybe you're married, but you haven't really thought about how is my marriage a reflection of the goodness of God and the grace of God and the love of God being poured out on the church and the church's response to God. I I think as we pray today, just think through those different observations and consider what it is that God might be having for you. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you so much for your word. I do love this passage. It's a fuel to me. Uh, it's not easy, but it is fuel to me to understand the reflection of what you want to show this world in terms of your relationship with your church. And I'm so thankful for my beautiful bride, Tracy, and the way in which she has been an example of this in my life. Um, that she is incredibly strong, that she's incredibly powerful, that her what she brings to the relationship, I feel like is so much even more than I bring to the relationship. And yet, God, she has for years demonstrated humility and uh and an intentionality to respect and submit that strength. And God, I'm so grateful to see and recognize that strength, but I'm also continuing to pray for me that God, I would just continue to get better at loving her the way you love the church, sacrificially laying down my needs, my wants, my desires, my needs to be met. If I just lay all those down sacrificially to love and serve her and to make her holy and without fault and present her even to myself that way. God, just what beautiful words and a challenge to my heart. God, for everybody listening and dialing in today, God, I just pray that you would, through your Holy Spirit, bring about what they need to be praying about specifically and opportunities they might have in their marriage or future marriage to be a reflection that you've called us to be. God, we just pray all this in your name again, Jesus. Amen. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We are uh just a couple episodes away from the end of this second season of our podcast, and I really do hope that you've had a chance to engage through the whole Bible study. Now, if you don't know this, you can listen uh to this any podcast through Apple or uh Heart Radio or uh Spotify. You can go back to season one, all of Galatians. You can go to season two as we've and catch up where we are. I actually also on YouTube, because this is hosted on YouTube, I actually also went back and and kind of put together the first eight episodes of Galatians. It's called part one. It's about an hour and 45 minutes. If you wanted to just binge through, uh, you know, watch it on the TV, binge through. I have a part two of Galatians, so I kind of took the the 14 plus episodes and and split them and put them into one uh big episode. I might even do the whole thing at some point for YouTube just so that you people have it, because sometimes people just want to watch it and and let it run. But I'll probably end up doing the same thing for this study in Ephesians as well. But if you would just to help us get the word out, would you share this with somebody? Would you like this video if you're on YouTube? Would you engage your content with us, engage in the content with us on this video to the pinned question that's in the comments? And again, we look forward to finishing out this chapter together, and we'll see you guys next time.