Visible Marriage: Reflecting Christ and His Church Ephesians 5:21 – 33

 

We live in an ever visible age today. So many people post every aspect of their lives on social media. From births to deaths, to a new gf/bf, fiancé, to new jobs and new homes, to weddings and divorces, most things in life are becoming less private, and more publicly visible. But this isn’t new, really. Just stand in the check out line at your local grocery store. How long have they stocked the magazine racks there with tabloids serving the public the freshest, juiciest celebrity gossip?

 

Probably the most visible part of a celebrity couple’s life, is their marriage. Their triumphs and failures, their most joyful moments and their most heartbreaking ones, regularly gracing the front cover of a magazine. The advent of social media, just made it to where that kind of visibility was no longer limited to celebrities, but became part of the majority of American households.

 

As Christians, we’re not immune to posting many parts of our lives on social media, that perhaps we’d keep private if social media didn’t exist. But one thing is for certain, regardless of if you give the world a front row seat to your life or not, “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6). The most visible aspect of our lives must be our faith, our walk with God, and the same holds true about our marriages. The most visible aspect of our marriages, must be our faith, our walk with God.

 

Our passage today from Ephesians chapter 5 gives us the divine blueprint for the marriage relationship, Jesus Christ and His church. Jesus referred to himself through his teachings that he was the bridegroom. And throughout the NT, the church is referred to as both the “bride” of Christ and the “body” of Christ. And we’ll see both references in today’s passage. Let’s read God’s Word together: Ephesians 5:21 – 33.

 

• Transformative Truth – Jesus Christ makes sacrificial marriage possible.

 

Paul wrote to the Ephesians while he was in jail, and this was his most optimistic letter. He wrote about the advantages a believer has in Christ and he instructs believers on how to “live a life of love.”

We see this at the start of chapter 5, where Paul writes, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

 

In talking about how Christians should live, Paul focuses in on the example set for believers by the life and death of Jesus Christ. That example carries on into married life, and we see at the beginning of our passage at 5:21 where Paul writes, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

 

Paul introduces his exhortations to the entire household, beginning with husbands and wives, with a general exhortation to mutual submission. Christians should not be self-seeking, each insisting on getting his or her way. Scripture tells us how Christ, emptied himself, humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death on a cross. Out of reverence for him, our Lord Jesus Christ, believers must follow his precedent of humility, service, and submission. That sets the stage for a marriage that reflects Jesus Christ and His church.

 

• Reflecting Christ and His church involves humble submission.

 

I want to point out that the word submit in v.22 is an addition by English translators. The verb “to submit” is not actually present there in the ancient Greek manuscripts. Paul is expanding on that general Christian submission from v.21 and applying it to wives here.

 

There’s that word again, submission. Submission is not a bad word, not the way the Bible teaches submission. To submit means to take a subordinate role in relation to that of another. This submission isn’t about losing oneself but aligning oneself with Christ’s example.

 

Jesus modeled this so beautifully. He gave the apostles, and us, a great example of humble submission when he washed their feet and called on them to do the same. He displayed humble submission when he asked God in the garden to take away his cup, but above all God’s will be done not his. He displayed humble submission when he carried his cross to calvary and allowed himself to be crucified.

 

 

 

So, what you see here is that Paul is calling on wives to submit to their husbands as they do to the Lord Jesus as part of a mutual submission from both husband and wife. A wife’s subordination is not called for because of some misogynistic, patriarchal idea pushed by society, but rather as the way that she can submit to, serve, and emulate her Lord, the way God has established it. Christian wives’ submission to their husbands is one aspect of their obedience to God, and is a big part of her Christian witness, and the witness of the Church.

 

But submission on such a personal level can be terrifying. We live in a fallen world, and while in a marriage between two believers there should be some sense of security, sin pervades everywhere. There are husbands, even self-professed Christian husbands, that live in a way that no one would want to submit to. (½ a husband illustration.)

 

My wife was the best witness for Christ in my life at that time. Her intentionality in submitting to Christ in how she lived with me, was a constant display of Christ’s love and sacrifice and God used that to draw me to himself in a way I don’t think anyone else could have reached me. This is why Paul writes in 1 Cor. 7:16, “How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”

 

The Bible does not teach women to be doormats, to submit to abuse and assault, to submit to violating God’s law and man’s law (that doesn’t conflict with God’s law), in the name of submitting to husbands. Remember, as Christians, wives submit to God first, then their husbands, and when they do that, they gracefully reflect Christ in their home.

 

The reason Paul gives for this submission is that as Christ is the head of the church, the husband is the head of the wife. This “headship” involves a role of authority, and like I said two weeks ago, with authority comes responsibility and accountability.

 

The husband’s role in the family as a reflection of Christ’s headship in the church is one of authority, responsibility, accountability, provision, and protection. The headship of the husband, which the wife is to recognize, is patterned on the unique character of Christ’s headship over the church.

 

 

That headship isn’t about ruling over your wife, but rather it is about the humility of washing one another’s feet and the humility of submitting to God, together. It’s about being responsible for providing for her, for protecting her, and for being responsible for leading her the way God intends and answering to God for how you did.

 

This is why it’s so important to remember that biblical submission in marriage is part of submitting to God, and Paul makes that clear by repeating himself, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands.

 

• Reflecting Christ and His church involves sacrificial love.

 

Now we get to husbands and here Paul returns to the exhortation he gave back in v.1 where he called on all believers to live a life of sacrificial love. That is what he applies to husbands. Paul does a wonderful job taking his general call to mutual submission and sacrificial love to all believers, and then applying it to the marriage relationship.

 

We’ve all heard it, “happy wife, happy life.” Our culture gladly accepts that lie. That’s what it is, a lie. “My happiness is number; my happiness is most important.” How many married people try to justify divorce by saying, “Well, I’m unhappy in this marriage and I can’t believe God would want me to be unhappy.” What if Jesus had said that in Gethsemane? “I’m unhappy here in the garden, and I don’t believe the Father would want me to be unhappy, and going to the cross would make me very unhappy.”

 

Clearly Jesus knew going to the cross was hard, and he wanted badly not to have to, but he submitted to God’s will and displayed his unfathomable sacrificial love for us. Let me tell you, it is much more important to be holy than it is to be happy.

 

God put you in that marriage to make you holy, guaranteeing not happiness, but holiness, if you respond to it the right way, if you embrace the commitment that you made and embrace the growth and sanctification God is working in you through your marriage.

 

The kind of sacrificial love Paul is talking about finds a more specific application in our roles as husbands. This self-giving love has as its goal the good and care of our wives without expectation of a reward.

Us men are simple folk, and we operate in pictures, so Paul’s illustration is really simple. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. There’s your picture of love, true love, husbands. Christ crucified on a cross is the clearest picture in all of human history of what love really is. That’s the strongest example of how to love, that’s a love that is true, unwavering, and active. That’s how you’re called by God to love your wives.

 

You sacrifice for her. When you enter into marriage, into a covenant with your wife, you promise to sacrifice everything for her, even your own life, if necessary, for the good of your wife. The call for wives to submit is not to be separated from this call to husbands to love sacrificially.

 

This is how husbands mutually submit, this is how husbands lead their wives and families and exercise their headship in the family, not through domineering or asserting themselves as the dominant authority, but through self-sacrifice, by giving sacrificially of themselves to their wives in love.

 

I’m a lot like water, and I think many men are too, we always look for the path of least resistance, the easy way through. We’re supposed to be big strong men, but often our instinct is to avoid the hard stuff, especially the emotional hard stuff. Some of my biggest failings as a husband have been due to taking the easiest path, not the responsible one, not the sacrificial one. It’s human nature, but as Christians we’re called to this radical life of denying our human nature and living according to God’s way.

 

Jesus didn’t take the easy way out, his loving sacrifice did more than just set the example for how to love, it paid the price for our sin, it made his church holy, washing away our sin through the power of the gospel, so that Christ could present his bride, the church to God holy and blameless. There’s depth to Christ’s example, it’s not merely sacrificing for our wives, husbands its sacrificing with a purpose.

 

Christ died to save us from death, to reconcile us to God. Husbands, you are called to sacrifice for your wife’s spiritual wellbeing, her spiritual growth, that is what you’ll be called to account for when the day of judgement arrives.

 

The love Scripture is calling husbands to is a deep and selfless love. It is nurturing, it is protective, and it is life-giving, beautifully reflecting Jesus’ own love and sacrifice. Husbands, when you view love the way Jesus viewed love, it transforms you, your wife, your marriage, your family.

 

• Reflecting Christ and His church involves genuine care.

 

Further driving his point home, Paul then makes the connection to our own bodies. Like Jesus’ teaching on marriage, Paul (who was extremely well versed on the law) reaches back to creation as well when he quotes Genesis 2:24 in today’s passage. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

 

One flesh, and while we might look in the mirror sometimes and not like what we see, no one truly hates their own bodies. That’s how we’re supposed to love our wives, that’s how we’re supposed to care for, nurture, and cherish them as we would ourselves.

 

This exhortation sounds similar to the second of Jesus’ greatest commandments, which is itself rooted in Leviticus 19:18 “but love your neighbor as yourself.” If we’re to love our neighbors this way, how much more important is it that we love our wives that way?

 

It’s natural for us to care for our bodies, to provide for our needs. We’re hungry, we eat. We’re cold, we grab a blanket or sweater. We’re tired, we sleep. We’re thirsty, we take a drink of water. We’re sick or hurt, we seek treatment. It’s our nature to look after ourselves and to meet our needs. We don’t naturally seek to deprive ourselves of anything.

 

That same provision, protection, and care is how we are to love our wives, at our own expense when you pair that outward expression of love with the inward sacrifice that true love demands of us. And again, Paul continues his illustration of Christ and his church.

 

The church is called the body of Christ and Christ died for his church and he nourishes and cherishes his church, of which he is the head of and we are all parts of the body. Here at this point Paul brings together his two major images for the church—the body and the bride—are clearly joined as one.

Paul calls the intimate union between Christ and his church a profound mystery, but it’s a mystery that has been revealed by the coming of Christ. Both the reference to Genesis and the marriage relationship point to the secret that has been revealed, the relationship between Christ and his church.

 

The mystery then is not a deeper meaning of the OT reference, but precisely this meaning of the relationship between Christ and his church. The mystery isn’t any marriage or marriage itself, but the special marriage relationship of Christ and the church. The bride of Christ becomes one body with Christ, the model relationship for human marriage.

 

• Transformative Point – Marriage embodies the sacrificial love and unity exemplified by Christ and His relationship with the church, you are called to reflect that in your marriage daily.

 

Marriage is the most intimate relationship on earth and it reflects our relationship with Christ beautifully. Paul finishes this section by summing up his exhortations to husbands and wives. “However, each of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

 

That is the blueprint for marriage as illustrated by Christ’s relationship with his church, but there is such depth to that. Our marriages must reflect the loving sacrifice, commitment and submission, and abundant grace of God in Christ Jesus.

 

But what about those who are too young to marry, those who remain single, by choice or otherwise, or those who are divorced or widowed, how does this apply to you? You can still reflect the sacrificial love and unity exemplified by Christ in your daily life, in your church life. In fact, you are called to that. We are all called to that.

 

Jesus gave himself for his church to bring them grace and mercy and forgiveness, and I promise you in marriage there will be plenty of room to offer grace. I know I’ve needed tremendous grace from my wife over the years. A godly marriage is the union of two sinners, saved by grace, where they freely give each other the love and grace they received.