Gifts of Grace: Unexpected Help

Memorial Day: for some, it is a day to remember America’s fallen soldiers; for some, it is a long vacation weekend, the unofficial start of summer; for some, it is a day to reflect on where America is going as a country;

Politicians will make speeches. Some will invoke God’s name. Some will claim that God is on our side. Some will claim that our righteousness makes us mighty—that right makes might. Some will claim that we are a Christian nation, that we have a divine calling as a country. What if they have it wrong?

Isaiah 40:10-31

Commentary

v10-11 There is no justice, no reward, apart from God. There is no "living happily ever after" in the absence of God. What if the relationship is the reward?

v12 Here we have the first of a series of rhetorical questions (v12, v13-14, v18, v21, v25, v26, v27, v28) which collectively argue for the complete transcendence of God. Simply put, we cannot understand how God operates, and our attempts to define how God works will inevitably fail (Isaiah 55:8-9). v12 testifies to a divine order for all creation established by a Creator who is so vast that he can comprehend the incomprehensible.

v13-14 These verses go from the sublime to the ridiculous—given the vastness of the Creator in v12, how ridiculous is it to assume that he needs our advice on anything?

v15-17 The images in v15 refer back to v12—God is not just in control of the natural order, he is in control of human affairs as well. The scales imply a divine judgment—a judgment of what will last. Nations, all nations, are instruments of God; God can use pagans, evil-doers, and the devout to accomplish what he purposes to do. However, the kingdom of God is not found in nations! The kingdom of God is found within us, within our hearts, and minds, and spirits.

v18-20 Jesus said, quoting Deut. 6:16, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test: (Matt. 4:7). However, the Bible is full of places where God wants to be tested against false gods as a way of drawing people to him (1 Kings 18:21-39; Isaiah 41:21-29; 43:9-12; 44:6-20). Again going from the sublime to the ridiculous, God invites comparison of himself to a man-made idol (compare v18-20 with Isaiah 44:6-20).

v21 This is the only one of the rhetorical questions which legitimately should be answered, "No!" Humans do not know God adequately unless he chooses to reveal himself to them. Even then, the bane of humans is that they forget the mighty acts of God that they have seen.

v23-24 An important reminder for Memorial Day and the politicians who say, "God is on our side!"

v25-26 Again God invites comparison between him and lesser powers. On Memorial Day, the charge is to remember our fallen soldiers. Here the inference is that God—who not only created the stars, but calls them all by name and remembers them—has not forgotten us.

Go to any cemetery and look at the gravestones eroding away. Ultimately the gravestones crumble and the names are obscured and forgotten. Which is more important—that we should remember those who came before, or that God should remember them (and us)?

v27-28 The point of all of the rhetorical questions is to get to this climax, this summary of all of the questions.

v29-31 The question of whether God is on our side is rendered moot; the real question is who is on the Lord’s side? Who belongs to him?

Points to Ponder

What is wrong with calling a nation a Christian nation? What would Isaiah say is wrong with that?

Immanuel Kant in a lecture at Königsberg (1775) said, "The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend—and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective." Is Kant right or wrong: if God is incomprehensible, can we talk to him, or not?

Let us finish as we started (v11) with the illustration of the shepherd. Are the needs of the sheep disregarded by the shepherd? Do the sheep comprehend the mind of the shepherd? Although the sheep can never understand the workings of the shepherd, they know of his care for them, and they know his voice. "All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them ... I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me." (John 10:8,14) The reward is the relationship.

End Notes

1 - A black preacher introduced a guest speaker with the following: "The man we have speaking to us is a man who knows the unknowable, can solve the unsolvable and can screw the inscrutable."

2 - Recently John McCain rejected the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee after discovering that Hagee said that God used Hitler to get the Jews back to Israel. Hagee misinterpreted Jeremiah 16:14-16. However, in other places the Bible speaks very specifically of God using rulers to achieve his ends; e.g. the king of Assyria (Isaiah 8:1-3) & the king of Persia (Isaiah 45:1-3).

Gifts of Grace: A Do-Over

Apologies for posting late! This is the report from the annual meeting on 5/18. Next week, I'll be back to Ephesians (and hopefully, back on time with the blog updates).

Isaiah 40:1-9

Comfort, comfort my people,

says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,and proclaim to herthat her hard
service has been completed,that her sin has been paid for,that she has received
from the Lord's handdouble for all her sins.

A voice of one calling:

In the desert preparethe way for the Lord;make straight in the
wildernessa highway for our God.Every valley shall be raised up,every mountain
and hill made low;the rough ground shall become level,the rugged places a
plain.And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,and all mankind together will
see it.For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

A voice says, "Cry out."And I said, "What shall I cry?"

All men are like grass,and all their glory is like the flowers
of the field.The grass withers and the flowers fall,because the breath of the
Lord blows on them.Surely the people are grass.The grass withers and the flowers
fall,but the word of our God stands forever.

You who bring good tidings to Zion,go up on a high mountain.You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem,lift up your voice with a shout,lift it up, do not be afraid;say to the towns of Judah,

Here is your God!

Commentary

There is a break in the story of Isaiah between chapters 39 and 40. In chapter 39, King Hezekiah receives a prophecy that his kingdom Judah, the last surviving tribe of Israel, will be conquered by Babylon. Some of Hezekiah’s descendents would be "eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon" (Isaiah 39:7) although peace and security would last through Hezekiah’s lifetime (39:8). However, by the opening verses of chapter 40, it sounds like the Babylonian captivity is in the past, or at least is fading away—Israel’s hard service has been completed (40:2).

The verses are a call for preparation for the coming of a king. In a land without highways, if a king traveled somewhere with his entourage, typically a road was created for the express purpose of the royal trip. The verses instruct the reader to remove barriers to the Lord’s coming. The verses are a call to repentance. Specifically, the barriers to the Lord’s coming are usually found in the human spirit. The verses are a call to a change of perspective. Specifically, humans fight to maintain the status quo when God says all human endeavors will end; only the word of God will remain. Therefore, the charge is to trust in God—and by doing so glorifying him. In this manner one is prepares for the coming of the king.

These verses are alluded to by John the Baptist as part of his gospel of repentance. Mark 1:3 quotes Isaiah 40:3, referring to John as the voice crying out in the wilderness (or desert), "Prepare the way for the Lord."

Where We Have Been

Have we been through a time of hard service—either as a church community or as families and individuals? I would say, "Yes!" Over the past few years, most families in the church have struggled with financial woes, parent/child issues, marital tensions, health problems, etc. At the same time, the church community has struggled with financial woes, disciplinary issues, tensions between members, ministry "burnout", etc. Many of us have been forced to live with the tension of the way things are versus the way we thought things ought to be.

Perhaps you have seen and felt none of this. God bless you! My question for you then is "How involved are you in the life of the church? Could it be that your preparation for the coming of the king might involve you taking a more active interest in those around you?"

The last few years have been a time of hard service for me as a pastor. I have been licensed by the C&MA for over 11 years. Seminary and preparation for ordination can teach one many things, but it cannot teach how to handle adversity and failure. Among other things, seminary typically teaches how to organize and manage a church, but it cannot teach humility and perseverance during times of trial, it fails to teach how to manage a church when all the church growth programs fail. By temperament and training during my former career as a programmer, I am analytical. I like looking at numbers and tended in the past to use numbers to tell me where I was—report cards, financial statements, attendance, membership rolls, etc. During the last few years, most analytical ways of looking at church were dismal, and numbers became a crushing burden.

Perhaps you have seen and felt none of this. God bless you! Someone told me recently that they thought my sermons had become humbler. All I know is that my own preparation for the coming of the king involves trusting God more and trusting myself less (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Where We Are

Something changed along the way this year, I think. I cannot put my finger on it, because it started changing even when everything still seemed dismal. I felt it when I preached baseball-themed sermons last summer. (Some may have thought those were dismal, but most of those sermons were about grace—grace that is realized once we realize that we’re not always going to get it right, that we’re not going to hit a home run every chance we get.) I felt it when I stopped wearing a tie, and occasionally wore jeans, to church. (Some may have thought that was dismal, but I got to the point where I figured, "If my survival as a pastor depends on what I wear to church, then it’s time to go.") I felt it when I read about a church movement called the emerging church, which had the audacity to say that established churches are spending more time propping up church programs than they are participating in real kingdom-of-God living. I felt it when I began preaching through Ephesians and felt the seeds of the gospel of unity of the body begin to germinate and grow in the body of believers here in Casco.

However, the real change was in the first signs of fruit—dare I call it fruit of the Spirit? I felt it in the mood change during communion, when sometime during the past year our interactive communion time became mellower and more personal. I felt it in the Wednesday night service, which somewhere along the way become an established little community of quiet seekers of peace and holiness. I felt it when people I had not seen in church in a long time returned to church. I felt it when—out of the blue—people asked about becoming members of the church. (I had repented of taking pride in the membership numbers and had resigned myself to not pressuring people to become members.) I felt it when—somehow—we ended the fiscal year in the black after being thousands in the hole at the end of the summer.

The temptation after any trial is to go back to our pre-trial habits. Dieters return to eating junk food. Addicts out of rehab go back to their junk. Foxhole Christians go back to their sinful lifestyles. God says, "Your sin has been paid for." Now, why would we wish to go sin again? God is on the move here, and I believe that he is taking us, as a congregation, to a new era in the life of the church. I don’t know what that means, but God knows. Are we willing to trust in God more and trust in ourselves less?

Where We Are Going

All men are like grass,and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.The grass withers and the flowers fall,because the breath of the Lord blows on them.Surely the people are grass.The grass withers and the flowers fall,but the word of our God stands forever.

We assume that church and church programs are evidence of the kingdom of God. Frequently this true, but ultimately the kingdom of God is found in the heart, the Spirit, and the enduring word of God. Church and church programs are like the flowers of the field. When we glory in those instead of in God (like when I glory in the numbers at church instead of the Spirit at work in church) it is time for the breath of the Lord to blow on them, time for the Lord to do a new thing.

I have no set agenda, no plans to bring any new radical program changes to church. However, I believe that God has brought us through this time of hard service, God has brought us together to a place of greater unity, for a reason. I doubt that God’s plan is for us to go back to the way things used to be.

I have no set agenda, but I will note several places to watch and pray about in the months to come:

Women’s ministry: At this moment, the leadership for the women’s ministry is TBD. I believe that a change is in the works (I believe it, because the women tell me so) but nobody knows what that change may be. I am certain that maintaining a program, or a certain form of a program, for its own sake is to glory in a flower of the field.

Children’s ministry: Likewise, at this moment, the leadership for the children’s ministry is TBD. Again, I believe that change is in the works. Churches all over the country are experimenting with different forms of children’s ministry, including changing the focus to ministering to parents, recognizing that parents are more influential in their children’s lives than any other adult.

Discipleship: I am hoping to begin teaching a serious Bible study in the fall for those committed to learning how to read the Bible. Also, we have many men and women involved in mentoring others in the church; I believe some of those being mentored need to pray about beginning to mentor others.

Missions: The Williams are leaving shortly for Cambodia; God willing, they will return to us in four years. Thus we be learning how to support the Keses and the Williams with prayer, money, & time. At the same time, we are renting out the parsonage with the hope of sending the profits form that enterprise to Cambodia.

While the direction of these ministries may be uncertain, if God is calling us to greater unity of the body (and I believe more personal responsibility for our own spiritual growth) what might that look like? Can we commit to praying all summer about the direction of these ministries?

Like grass, churches and church programs will come and go. The litmus test for any church, any program, is not fidelity with the past. Rather, the test for us all is, "Is God glorified by this? Has God called us to this? Is the kingdom of God at work in the hearts, in the spirits, in the lives of those who claim the name of Jesus?" I pray that we will be united in making that our criteria for whether we are going in the right direction.

I close, as I usually close my annual report, by saying, I may not yet be the blessing God has called me to be, but by his grace and mercy, I pray that I will become that blessing to you and to this community.

Gifts of Grace: 1+1=1

Happy Mother's Day (albeit late). These are the sermon notes for Moather's Day; I was just a bit late getting them posted to the blog. Sorry!

This is part 16 of a sermon series on Ephesians. Ephesians 5:21-6:9 is a series of related passages about mutual submission to one another—wives and husbands, parents and children, and masters and slaves. Many of these passages have fallen out of favor. Nobody would suggest that the verses about masters and slaves should be taken literally, for example, since slavery is something that we want to relegate to our past as a country. Many children struggle with the command to honor their parents.

Last week we tiptoed around the politically incorrect verse, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord" (Eph. 5:22). The conclusion was that the verses were about commitment and trust. Paul would not have thought of intelligence as residing in the head; therefore, when he said, "The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church" (Eph. 5:23), he was talking more about direction-setting than decision-making: as goes the husband, for better or worse, so goes the marriage.

Husbands, today the charge is to put your wives’ needs above your own needs—not just for her sake, but for your own sake as well. Wives and mothers, I pray this message will be a gift for you.

Ephesians 5:25-31

Commentary

v25 Gave himself up: The word can mean anything from "delivered" to "betrayed" (you can see both uses in the same verse: 1 Cor. 11:23). The sense of the word in either case is giving over without strings attached. This is reinforced by the word for love used here, agape, which has nothing to do with romance, or sex, or even friendship. Agape means essentially giving the other’s needs priority over one’s own needs.

v26 Compare this verse to Titus 2:11-14 & Titus 3:5-7. v25-27 elaborates on what Paul says in v23: "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." Theology dices salvation into a whole bunch of distinct terms (e.g. justification, regeneration, adoption, sanctification, glorification, etc.). However, generally speaking, all of these terms are a part of salvation. [1] How many acts of salvation are described in v25-27?

v28-29 The basis for Paul’s argument here is v31, which quotes Genesis 2:24. In reality, it’s not clear that men are good at taking care of their own bodies. We tend to delay seeking medical help and abuse our bodies—but then we delay caring for our wives and neglect them as well. The comparison of wives to our own bodies works both positively and negatively.

v32 The mystery refers to v31, the union of a husband and wife, but then Paul reverts back to his parallel analogy: Christ and the church.

v33 The word translated "respect" here is translated as "reverence" in v21.

Application

Why does Paul tell the husband to love the wife? Why not tell the wife to love the husband? Many men are just like big Golden Retrievers, ready to do anything, if shown a little affection … so why not tell the wife to love the husband?

A high-sounding theological answer is that wives loving husbands would mess up Paul’s analogy of the marriage of a husband and wife and the marriage of Christ and the church. If the wife’s mandate were to love the husband, then the church’s mandate would be to love Christ. Our piety then would be measured by how much love we could muster up—no doubt there are some churches that do measure piety that way. However, Paul says the church’s mandate is to submit (i.e. commit to and trust in) Christ. It’s not that we don’t love Christ; rather, our love grows out of our commitment and trust as the Spirit of Christ works in us. (To play on Paul’s words, this is a profound mystery—but I am talking about husbands & wives.)

A simpler, more down to earth, answer is that husbands tend to be guilty of reductionism, i.e. over-simplifying a complicated situation. Reductionism is the attempt to understand a complicated system thing by reducing it to a set of pieces that are easily understood. Reductionism can also try to reduce a complicated system to a simpler system. Men do this all the time. The typical argument between a husband and a wife is invariably gets to:

Wife: You are not listening to me.

Husband: Yes I am. You said,

Wife: But you don’t get why I’m upset.

Husband: Yes I do. You’re upset about .

Wife: !!!!!!!!

The point of the sermon is not to solve this argument—husbands, you’re on your own—but to look at the peril of reductionism elsewhere in the marriage: how the husband understands the mandate to love his wife. Men are masters at taking various parts of their lives and reducing them down to something that is easier to understand. Work, play, faith, family, health, etc. are all reduced down to easy to comprehend statements, like:

My health is OK as long is I don’t have a heart attack.

or

Church is OK as long as I get to church on Christmas and Easter and it doesn’t interfere with hunting and fishing.

Guys, where are you guilty of reducing your marriage down to something that is easy to understand? Fill in the following for yourself:

My marriage is working as long as .

Paul says marriage is more complicated than that! The tip-off to the complexity of marriage is the quotation from Genesis 2:24, "and the two will become one flesh." When we talk with the youths about pre-marital sex, I read this verse and ask the youths, "When have you either seen two people absorbed together into one mass of flesh like some weird monster? Either this verse in the Bible is wrong, or we’re reading it wrong." We are complicated beings—mind, body, and spirit—and Genesis 2:24 makes more sense if we look at what is going on in the non-bodily dimensions of the marriage. What is going on spiritually? What is going on mentally? Sadly, guys tend to reduce the health of a marriage down to the body—one aspect of the body: sex—and ignore everything else.

Men, is it any wonder that our wives are frustrated? As men age, their doctors start saying things like, "You need to start listening to your body more instead of working to death." Today I say the same thing about your marriage, "You need to start listening to your marriage more—especially the mental and spiritual parts." For you to listen to your wife about her fears, her needs, her hopes, her joys, her pains—not reducing, not trivializing them down—and responding compassionately to what she has told you is an act of healing, an act of cleansing, and (dare I say it?) an act of salvation.

Points to Ponder

In action movies, typically the hero rescues the damsel in distress. Where in your marriage does you need to listen (and respond) differently? (Hint: if you don’t know, ask your spouse!) Could that be an act of rescue for a marriage in distress?

A final word on v25: husbands, your charge is to love your wife. After God, your #1 priority is not your job, your play, your money, your toys, or even your family. It’s your wife. After God, can you love her with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Can you love her in body, mind, and spirit? What would have to change to that to be a reality?

End Notes

1 - In theology, these various terms can come up in a discussion of ordo salutis, or "the order of salvation"—the progressive steps one goes through during the process of being saved. Different faiths, e.g. Reformed and Arminian, may debate the order—e.g. does faith come as a result of being called by God? Some Protestant faiths talk as if salvation is simply the act of being saved, that to do so is an example of reductionism (as discussed later in the sermon). The very name "order of salvation" implies that salvation is the name of the whole process.

Gifts of Grace: Where the Rubber Meets the Road

This is part 15 of a sermon series on Ephesians. Last week we looked at Ephesians 5:17, “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is,” and I said that foolishness referred to a willful lack of knowledge, or being clueless. We might not know God’s plans for us perfectly, but that alone doesn’t make us foolish. Rather, if we refuse to consider what God would have us do, if we know that place in our lives where God wants to work with us and we ignore him (or worse yet, play dumb): that’s foolishness. That kind of foolishness will be the end of us, if we let it.

There are those places where God’s plans require work or sacrifice, places where God’s will is not politically correct, places where we almost instinctively resist following God’s call. Those are the places where we are likely to make foolish decisions, and we are hitting one of those places today.

Ephesians 5:21-24

Commentary

v21 In the Greek, v21 is not a full sentence, as it appears in the NIV; rather, v21 is the final clause of v18-21—one sentence, one complex thought, in Greek. I think that’s why the NIV puts v21 in the section with the previous verses, even though it seems more closely related to the verses that follow. I encourage you to read v18-21 and v21-24 (or better yet, v21-33) and decide for yourself where v21 fits best. [1]

“Submit” is certainly a key word in the text. Submission means “come into line” or “place under.” Submission does not mean obedience; however, obedience may result as a fruit of submission. (See the text box for how the NT uses the word elsewhere.)

v21-22 In order to counterbalance the apparent demands for obedience that the word seems to imply, it’s important to know that the Greek in these verses does not command submission. A better translation of v21-22 might be:

… submitting yourselves to one another out of respect for Christ, [2] wives to your husbands, as onto the Lord

The point is that submission is the fruit of something else: Spirit-filled living. Here submission is not the main spiritual act but rather something that happens as foolishness is put aside in favor of seeking God’s plan for our lives. Submission, therefore, is here perhaps better understood as a spiritual discipline rather than a moral demand.

v23 The other key words in these verses are “head” and “savior.” These words are used here in a parallel construction: Christ as the head of the church helps us understand Christ as the savior of his body (the church) and vice-versa. We will look at savior next week as a part of a husband loving his wife even as he loves his own body. (Mothers, can I put in a plug for coming to church next week? The main point is going to be, “Husbands, love your wives!”)

Headship is a very misunderstood term. In the 1st Century, intellect & emotions were thought to originate from the heart, the diaphragm, and the guts; nobody would have thought of the head as “the brains of the body.” Therefore, when husbands claim to be the spiritual head of the family, they err if they believe that they get to make all the decisions. Headship, rather, denotes the lead, or cutting edge. The prow of a ship was called its head, and the Hebrew New Year celebration was called the head of the year (“Rosh,” as in Rosh Hashanah, means “head.”) By this logic, Christ is not the brains of the church, but the prow, the leading edge of the church—does that fit?

v24 The NKJV is a better translation inasmuch as this conclusion is not a moral command as much as a descriptive analogy:

Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Application

I am not comfortable preaching on this topic. I am not comfortable, because these verses have been preached badly and have been used to justify all sorts of evil: domestic abuse; male chauvinism, and the like. I am not comfortable, because—much as I can argue about the interpretation, much as I would like to twist the words to a form that I can stomach—nevertheless I am constrained to preach what I understand the words to say. I am not at liberty to call black, white. I am not at liberty to skip a portion of Scripture that I wish did not exist.

In my mind, women & men are equal. Genesis says of the original order of things, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male & female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). In my mind, in the ideal world, today’s verses cause no problem, because we are all supposed to submit to one another out of respect for Christ (v21). In the ideal world, this would simply work, and we all know of marriages where the couple cares for, and submits to, each other so tenderly that we wish that it could have been the same for us, or our parents, or our children.

We resist the straightforward interpretation of today’s verses because they are politically incorrect and because we know the perils in this world of submitting to anybody: governments, masters, parents, husbands. And yet Paul says submit to the established order of things.

The good news is that today’s verses don’t mean quite what we think they mean. Let’s see what we can conclude and agree on:

1. In a fallen world, nothing—neither governments, masters, parents, nor spouses—are 100% trustworthy. In a fallen world, authority is prone to because abusive. Paul is not advocating staying in an abusive relationship. Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus. One must assume that his audience is genuinely interested in realizing a Spirit-filled life. Healthy submission and authority can only arise from that lifestyle. Even so, we are human and will stumble at times.

2. Headship has nothing to do with brains & decision-making. Headship has more to do with the direction, the tone, or the leading edge. After Adam & Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil—the tree from which God told them not to eat—God said, in part, to Eve, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Gen. 3:16b). This was not so much a curse as a description of what a fallen marriage would look like. So where the husband, the head, is on straight, the marriage will tend to go in the right direction; where the husband has his priorities wrong, the marriage will tend toward spiritual ruin.

3. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul instructs Christian women not to divorce their non-Christian husbands and for Christian couples not to view celibacy as more spiritual than marital intercourse. In a marriage where one spouse is more spiritual than the other, the temptation is always to scorn the lesser spouse, to wish they were more enlightened, and even to consider divorce as a way to be free to live an unfettered Christian life. I wonder if Paul isn’t advocating something like that here. Submission, then, becomes:

1st, an act of commitment (versus divorce),

2nd, an act of support and building up the other (remember all those verses
about building up the other parts of the body?),

3rd, an act of trust, both in the husband and in God—that God is in control, and can even use a lame-brain, or a poor provider, or a boor to care for the wife, and

4th, an act of love, caring for the husband as if caring for Christ.

We talk about—in Christ—loving the unlovable, and in the abstract that’s easy. However, marriage is where the rubber meets the road and the abstract becomes concrete. Wives, speaking for husbands everywhere, I know that we can be pretty unlovable—we can be uncaring, self-centered, boorish, blunt, and autocratic … and that’s on a good day. Submitting to a spouse is a spiritual act of worship … of God, not of us (Romans 12:1)! (Oh dear, please don’t worship us—we are not worthy!—but please don’t scorn us either.) Speaking for husbands everywhere, most of the time we do not want to be the head; we would just as soon remain, like Peter Pan, forever a boy; we know we are not to be trusted, we do some of our vilest work when you trust us … and yet we want the chance to love you and serve you and be worthy of your trust.

Notes to husbands:

If you are smart, do not try to go farther than that last paragraph. Too much evil has been done in the name of spiritual headship. Even Jesus—the head of the church—doesn’t presume to call the shots: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." (John 5:19)

Next week we will look at how you are to love your wife. The bar, the standard for you to meet, is much higher than the wives’ standard. They only have to submit. You have to lay down your life.

Points to Ponder

What comes to mind when you hear the word “submit”? Where has submission to government, parent, or spouse … or God … been a problem for you?

Usually we have little problem submitting to an authority that we respect. Consider 1 Cor. 12:22-23:

Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty.

Could it be that submission to a less-than-perfect husband is an example of according him special honor in order to support him, to build him up, to bring him along in becoming what you’d like him to be?

End Notes

1 - When I laid the sermon series out way back in December, I read all of Ephesians in English and sat down with a calendar and laid out a series of sermons for 5-6 months. In seminary, part of developing a sermon is to determine where a particular topic starts and stops—sometimes it’s not always clear. Personally, I think v21 is more the introduction for 5:22-6:9 than it is a summary for 5:18-20, but your opinion might vary. Interestingly, the punctuation in the King James Version for 5:18-21, does match the original Greek, showing it all as one long sentence. The KJV is usually a good translation for preserving the word order and punctuation found in the NT manuscripts from which is was translated. However, over time, as the English language, grammar, and vocabulary has changed, the KJV is not the most readable; also, since the manuscripts used for the KJV translation are not the oldest and most reliable manuscripts, one is left wondering of a faithful but hard-to-read rendering of a 12th-Century manuscript is better than a readable rendering of a 3rd-Century text.

2 - Actually, literally “out of fear for Christ,” but mentioning that above would have been a distraction. Biblically, fear frequently means something like “reverential awe” or “healthy respect.” When I work on the electrical wiring of my house I fear—I have a healthy respect for—the power that I am playing with. So it is when we approach God.