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.
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.
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