Marriage, Christ, and the Church – Not a Tangent
If you want your marriage to be everything God intends it to be, look to Christ and the church. Let the gospel story become your story, not just in the matter of your personal salvation, but also in the matter of how you live each day. If you’re married, the gospel should form your relationship as husband and wife, even as it should shape all of our relationships both in and outside of the body of Christ.
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Husbands Are Supposed to Do What?!?
The source of this unexpected command is none other than Jesus Christ. Ephesians says: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Christ’s love for the church is revealed, most clearly, in his sacrifice on the cross. This sets a very high bar for husbands, to say the least. A wife, at the same time, is to submit to a husband as he loves her and gives up himself for her. The husband who loves as Christ loves will never dominate or abuse his wife. Rather, he will honor, respect, and serve her, and she will submit by receiving his loving service.
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A Shocking Statement about Authority in Marriage
I know this will sound unsettling to some Life for Leaders readers. That’s why I entitled this piece “A Shocking Statement about Authority in Marriage.” I find what we read in Ephesians 5 and the parallel passage in 1 Corinthians 7 to be shocking. It shocks me to realize that in such a strongly patriarchal culture, the New Testament envisions marriage as a matter of mutual authority and submission. And it shocks me, given my preference for running my own life (including my marriage) as I wish— that I need to be submitted to my brothers and sisters in Christ, including my wife. This is not an easy thing for me, I admit. But this, I believe, is what Scripture calls me to do. No matter whether you see things in this way or not, I ask that you join me in seeking God’s truth from Scripture, even when it’s hard to figure out, and even when it challenges our assumptions about how to live. If we’re never shocked by Scripture, chances are we’re not paying close attention to it.
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The Call to Love
Though the evidence from other passages in Ephesians is persuasive, I still want to look very closely at the text of Ephesians 5 to see what it actually says about what the husband should do as the head of his wife. We get a hint of this in verse 23, where Christ as the head of the church is its Savior. Verse 25 makes clear the implications of verse 23. There, husbands are to love their wives, “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). When Ephesians talks about Christ as the head of the church, the emphasis is upon his sacrificial love and care for the church (see also Ephesians 5:29). Nothing is said about his Lordship over the church in this context, though this is a core truth of our faith (see Ephesians 4:5). Therefore, husbands, living out their Christ-like headship, are told to love their wives. They are not instructed in this passage to exercise authority. Rather, they are told to love in the sacrificial, self-giving way of Christ.
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Submission in Marriage
I expect readers of this devotion will respond in a wide variety of ways to its title, “Submission in Marriage.” Some will be curious. Some will be hopeful. Others might be upset or worried because this topic has been the source of much pain for many people. Few verses in Scripture elicit such powerful and diverse responses as Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”
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Reverence and Submission
We might paraphrase phobos as “awestruck reverence and deep respect” for Christ. The more we are overwhelmed by the grandeur of Christ, the more we will submit ourselves fully to him as his servants. This act of reverent submission to Christ will prime our souls to submit to each other. When we are on our knees together before our Lord, we’ll find it easier to remain on our knees in submission and service to one another. Our humility before our Lord will carry over into humility before each other.
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Moving from Submission to Service
Submission, therefore, involves choosing a posture of humility that leads one to serve others. If I’m in a community of mutual submission, I don’t just wait until a brother or sister gives me an order to follow so I can submit. Rather, I seek out opportunities to serve humbly, to lower myself before other members of the church by serving them as a slave. Thus, I follow my Master who stooped as a slave to wash the feet of his disciples (John 13).
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How Is It Even Possible for us to Submit to One Another?
Yet, no matter whether we speak of submitting or following leadership, Ephesians 5:21 can still be puzzling. How can we submit to one another? How can we follow the leadership of one another? Picture the intersection I’ve just mentioned. We’d have quite a mess if all the drivers and all the pedestrians started to be leaders, giving directions that the others were supposed to follow. Chaos would ensue. The order of the intersection depends on having one person in charge and everyone else following directions. Does Ephesians 5:21 commend a hopelessly confused corporate life, in which everyone is leading and everyone is following all the time, such that the church and the family flounders?
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What Does It Mean to Submit to One Another?
Because we don’t tend to speak of submission or subordination very much in common speech today, the use of the verb “submit” can feel odd, antique, or unsettling. We might not understand what it means to submit to someone, not to mention how to submit to one another. Or we might recoil from the notion of submission, fearing that it leads to unhealthy domination or even violence in relationships. Too often the language of submission has been used by some to keep others in bondage to abuse and harassment. So we’re understandably wary about the language of submission.
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A Disruptive Direction
If Paul had written, “Submit to those in authority out of reverence for Christ,” his audience wouldn’t have been surprised or disturbed. But in verse 22 Paul urges believers to submit to each other! What does this mean? How is mutual submission even possible? Doesn’t somebody have to be in charge in a relationship or an organization if it’s going to function well? If everyone is submitting to everyone else, how will we get anything done? The whole notion of mutual submission would have felt exceptionally disruptive to the first recipients of Ephesians.
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Seeing God Through Cultural Lenses
If you’ve spent a lot of your life reading the Bible, as I have, you might forget that it wasn’t written directly for today’s world. The Bible can seem so familiar to us that we overlook ways in which its world is not like our own. But, if you’re relatively new to the Bible, sometimes it can sound like it was written “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . .” Well, okay, Scripture isn’t always quite as foreign as Star Wars, but certain passages give George Lucas a run for his money. Have you read Revelation recently?
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Your Relationships Matter!
God doesn’t just care about your relationships when you’re in church, having a Bible study, or going on a mission trip. God cares deeply about every part of your life, including your most important relationships at home, at work, and in the rest of life as well.
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Singing to the Lord from Your Heart
Singing to the Lord from your heart is also a matter of choice, an act of will. Sometimes when you gather with God’s people for worship your feelings will be dull or distracted. You sing wonderful words without wonderful sentiments. You may wonder if you need to work up some feelings, to get your emotions in gear. Or perhaps you feel guilty because you’re not sensing much love for the Lord.
When this happens to you – and it happens to everybody at one time or another – don’t fret. You can still sing to the Lord from your heart. How? By choosing to sing to him. By using your heart to focus on the meaning of the words and sing them to God. Sometimes this will lead to an inner warming of the emotions. Sometimes it won’t. But you will still be singing from your heart in the sense intended in Ephesians 5:19.
Singing to the Lord
If we are always singing to each other, we miss out on something essential in worship. And if we’re only singing to God, we’re also missing out on the edification and encouragement that comes when we speak or sing to each other.
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The Real Audience of Worship
If you were to eavesdrop on the conversations of churchgoers after a typical worship service, you’d hear comments like, “I loved the band this morning” or “The choir was glorious” or “The sermon was just so-so.” If you didn’t know anything about Christian worship, other than what you heard from worshipers on their way home from church, you’d figure that worship is a performance. The churchgoers are the audience (or maybe even the critics). The band, choir, preacher, and other leaders are the performers.
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