Transcript

If you have your Bibles please turn with me to Ephesians 5.

Steven James writes this: I’ll never understand my wife. The day she moved in with me after we were married, she started opening and closing my kitchen cabinets, gasping, “You don’t have any shelf paper! We’re going to have to get some shelf paper in here before I move my dishes in here.”

“But why?” I asked innocently. “To keep the dishes clean,” she answered matter-of-factly. I didn’t understand how the dust would magically migrate off the dishes if they had sticky blue paper under them, but I knew when to be quiet.

Then came the day when I left the toilet seat up. “We never left the toilet seat up in my family,” she scolded. “It’s impolite.” “It wasn’t impolite in my family,” I said sheepishly. But I started putting it down from then on.

In addition to these lessons, I also learned how I was supposed to squeeze the toothpaste tube, which towel to use after a shower and where the spoons are supposed to go when I set the table. I had no idea. I was so uneducated.

Nope, I’ll never understand my wife. She washes dishes before sending them through the dishwasher, and sorts laundry into different piles before throwing it into the washing machine. Can you imagine?

She has a coat that makes her look like Sherlock Holmes. “I could get you a new coat,” I offered. “No. This one was my grandmother’s,” she said, decisively ending the conversation.

Then, after we had kids, she acted even stranger. She began carrying around a diaper bag the size of a minivan, talking in one syllable paragraphs, singing nursery rhymes at all hours of the day, and taking pictures constantly.

She carried our baby everywhere—on her back, on her front, in her arms, over her shoulder. She got up at all hours to calm the kids, she cleaned up spills, changed dirty diapers all just matter-of-factly and hardly without complaint.

One day a friend of mine snickered at the bumper sticker my wife had put on the back of our van: “Being a Mom Is a Work of Heart.” But I didn’t mind.

On another day, in a thoughtless moment, I said something that sent her fleeing to the bedroom in tears. I went in to apologize, knowing what I said was hurtful.

“I forgive you,” she said. And you know what? She did. She never brought it up again. Not even when she got angry and could have hauled out the heavy artillery. She forgave, and she forgot. Nope, I’ll never understand my wife.

And you know what? Our daughter is acting more and more like her mother every day. And if she turns out to be anything like her mom, someday there’s going to be another luckiest guy in this world, who is thankful for the shelf paper in his cupboard.

The role of wives is a special one. Contact paper may not mean much to us, but in guiding their house it means a lot to them. And it’s okay if we don’t always understand it or them or the reasons for all they do. But husbands should be thankful for their wives for all they are and what they mean to their lives.

The Bible has a lot to say about wives and their role within the marriage relationship. God has designed the home for order and harmony. And we are wise to carry out our marriages God’s way and in the roles He has created within them.

Ephesians 5:21 says, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”

For everyone in the Body of Christ, God desires a spirit of submission and humility toward one another in the Church. Like Christ, God wants us to put others first, to seek the welfare and good others before ourselves.

This is similar instruction to what Romans 12:10 teaches: “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another.”

Submission in the Church speaks of a voluntary desire to serve one another and a humble willingness to be under others and put others first in order to work together as one.

Submission in the Church is also about giving deference to another’s wishes and opinions and not a stubborn desire to hold to your own, in order to get things done for the Lord.

Paul says here that we are to humbly submit to others as we humbly submit to God in reverent fear of Him and His will. This kind of spirit produces the unity and oneness Christ desires for His Body.

In the context of Spirit-controlled Body members submitting to one another in their service to the Church and for the harmony and good of the Body in verse 21, Paul then reaches into the home and speaks of submission there also.

Ephesians 5:22 says, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

Robert Russell writes: I saw a cartoon some time ago in which a preacher had prepared the pulpit area like a fortress. He was peering through the crack of a machine gun nest. And the caption read, “Today my text is ‘Wives submit to your husbands.’”

Our text here today is that wives are to submit unto their own husbands. Now this goes against the grain of the thinking in the world.

This is not a surprise, because so does most of God’s Word. But its instruction is infinitely higher and greater and wiser than the ways and thinking of the world.

Submission of wives to their husbands may not sound politically correct but it’s biblically correct. It may sound irrelevant or outdated for today’s world, but God’s Word is never out of date and it is always relevant and it is always right and true.

And the Biblical calling and roles for husbands and wives must be captured if we are going to make the mark God wants us to make in our homes for Christ and for us to have the closeness and harmony that God desires in the marriage relationship.

God is very intentional about how He structured the family and He is specific and clear about the roles in the husband and wife relationship. And the Apostle Paul by the inspiration of the Spirit clearly spells that out for us.

God is a God of order. He has given government authority over the people they rule. He has given church leaders authority over their congregations. He has given husbands authority over their wives. To parents He’s given authority over their children, and to employers He’s given authority over their employees.

Submission simply has to do with order. The word “submit” is a military expression meaning to line up under, to put oneself under.

The roles God has for marriage are not male superiority for the sake of putting down the female. Submission as defined in the Bible does not mean many things: it does not mean that God is giving man the label of being superior over the woman.

Submission carries no thought of inferiority or lesser degree of worth or value or being second class, less intelligent, and it does not cancel out equality.

It does not mean she does not have a voice or opinion, it does not mean servanthood, slavery or subjugation; it does not mean she is inadequate, it does not mean she is not allowed to have a personality. It does not mean she becomes a doormat.

It does not mean you lose your identity. Submission is not to be about cringing and cowering before your husband. Submission does not mean she has to quietly endure abuse and risk her health or even her life.

It doesn’t mean to submit to something illegal, wrong, dishonest, unethical, or evil on your husband’s part. A wife’s submission to God takes precedence in such cases.

Submission simply has to do with order and responsibility in the home. It is a divine calling to honor, support and affirm her husband’s role of leader and head of the home before God and to help carry it out.

If submission by the wife doesn’t happen it doesn’t change anything in God’s view of who truly is the head of the home.

God says submission is the best arrangement for a happy, fulfilling marriage. And there is nothing degrading and belittling about submitting to authority or accepting God’s order for the home.

In 1 Cor. 11:3 Paul says, “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”

With the instruction of submission in marriage, Paul is giving us a chain of command in the home before God. He’s not saying anything about the equality of any party in the chain with regard to another.

Paul says “the head of Christ is God.” Now is Christ inferior to God in any way because God is His head? Is Christ somehow less adequate? Is Christ any less equal to the Father? No! Christ Himself said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:39).

Christ is God. The Father and Son are co-equal, co-eternal. There is order in the Trinity and there needs to be order in the home. God’s order is the head of the home and the woman is the husband, and the wife is to willingly place herself under his headship.

Genesis 3:16 says this, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

It’s been said that “Love is blind, marriage is a real eye opener.”

Paul says in I Corinthians 7:28 “But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh.”

Genesis 3:16 is the first hint of the “trouble” and conflict that would enter into the marriage relationship. God’s Word says in marriage you will “have trouble.”

It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Marriage is one imperfect person marrying another imperfect person. And so there will be problems.

It is hard enough for a person with a selfish, old nature to live with themselves, let alone with another person with a selfish, old nature.

When two people are bound together in marriage the problems of sin and the old nature are multiplied, so there are twice as many problems!

Close living allows us to see and learn everything about our spouse, both the good and the bad. Marriage solves some problems but it can cause others. And some personal, emotional, or spiritual difficulties are intensified in marriage.

Marriage presses two people together in the closest possible ways. The two become one, but they are still two personalities, two distinct people with their own likes and dislikes, their own characteristics, emotions, temperaments, and wills.

Each person has some degree of anger, selfishness, pride, forgetfulness, and thoughtlessness. This is true even of the best marriages, & these things lead to conflict.

The instruction to wives to “submit” does not come automatically. If it did, the Scripture wouldn’t have teaching for the wife to do this. God knew from the beginning this would be an issue.

Following the fall, God here is pronouncing the curse upon the serpent, the woman and the man. God tells the woman about the pain of childbirth and also how her “desire” would be “to thy husband,” or literally “against thy husband.”

The woman is told that she would face the pain of pregnancy and child birth and also the pain and challenge of submission to her husband.

Because of sin and the curse, the man and the woman face struggles in their relationship. Sin turns the harmonious system of God-ordained roles into struggles of self-will. As a result, husbands and wives need God’s help in getting along.

The woman’s “desire” will be to lord it over her husband and to rule over him and to not submit, but she is told the husband will rule by divine design.

1 Timothy 2:12-15 says this, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

“For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

Paul tells the woman to not “usurp authority over the man,” and uses the creation order and the deception at the fall as reasons why.

But he curiously states in verse 15 “she shall be saved in childbearing.” The word “saved” does not always mean eternal soul salvation, and must be qualified by its context. The word “saved,” simply means “delivered.”

The woman is saved or delivered from something here, and very simply in the context she is delivered from the desire to usurp authority over the man.

And she is delivered from this by “childbearing,” or literally “child-rearing.” So the desire of the woman to rule over her husband should be directed toward her children.

So the wife is to use her desire to rule, but to use it to rule over her children in rearing, raising, guiding, and training them up in the Lord.

This will help deliver her from her desire to rule over her husband, this along with what we should all be doing in the Christian life in continuing to grow spiritually by the Word “in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

Ephesians 5:22-24 says, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the church: and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”

An eager young wife once said, “I want my husband to be the head; I want him to be the leader. I just want to make sure that he makes decisions in keeping with what I want.” That’s probably an honest portrayal of a wife’s feelings sometimes!

God knew someone had to be in charge. In marriage there will come moments when disagreements arise. And stalemates happen. When someone has to make the tough decisions, the husband is responsible to do it before God.

If a decision must be made, the wife is called upon to submit and defer to her husband, trusting God to guide him to make a decision out of love for her and the good of the family as the responsible head of the marriage.

The word “submit” in the original Greek is in the middle voice, and speaks of a willing and voluntary placing of oneself in submission. It is not a command. God is after a willing choice on your part. God is after a heart attitude here, not coercion.

As you’ve submitted your heart to Christ and His will for your life, God wants this submission to the husband to be done from a willing heart, to make the choice to voluntarily submit, because it’s what God desires in the marriage relationship.

Paul adds that the wives are to submit to their husbands, “as unto the Lord.”

A wife’s submission to her husband is service rendered to the Lord, and is to be done for His glory, knowing He knows what’s best for marriage. Submission to Christ and His Lordship over your life is needed before there is submission to the husband.

But then as the wife renders submission to the husband, yielding to the Lord’s instruction for her role in the marriage, it is actually submission rendered to the Lord.

Paul says “the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the Church.” The marriage relationship between husband and wife is set as a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Christ is our living Head and our Savior, and we the Church willingly and rightly submits itself to Him and we place ourselves under His loving authority and leadership.

And just like the Church to Christ, the wife is to willingly submit and place herself under her husband’s loving authority and leadership.

Thus the wife’s role also, like the husband’s, is a divine representation of higher truth: of the relationship between Christ and the Church.

God is honored when the Church submits to His authority for their lives. And likewise God is honored when the wife submits herself to Christ and to her husband.

Skipping ahead a little in Ephesians, verse 33 reads, “Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence [or respect] her husband.”

A couple on their 50th wedding anniversary, summed up their long & happy marriage. The husband said, “I have tried not to be selfish. After all there is no ‘I’ in marriage.” The wife responded, “For my part, I’ve never corrected my husband’s spelling.” God’s instruction is for loving support from the wife for her husband in marriage.

Paul restates and emphasizes what is most essential for us to remember at the end of the chapter.

He wants us to live in the God-ordained roles and responsibilities of the husband and wife for the marriage relationship: love by the husband, respect by the wife.

Paul makes it real personal with his words “let every one of you in particular,” which means “each one of you individually,” or “you each, one by one, you, you, you…”

God wants the wife to willingly place herself under her husband’s leadership and to “reverence” or respect his position in the home and responsibility before God.

In headship, God gives husbands a tremendous responsibility. It is the man’s responsibility to place himself over the wife and family to protect them and to provide for them both physically and spiritually.

And when he fulfills God’s role for them, he should be respected.

And God has created that within man that husbands have a deep need for respect from their wives in the marriage relationship. And so out of love for her husband, the wife should look for ways to show her husband respect.

Dr. E. V. Hill a dynamic minister who served as a senior pastor of a church in Los Angeles, lost his wife, Jane, to cancer a few years ago. At her funeral, Dr. Hill described some the ways she had made him a better man.

As a struggling young preacher, Dr. Hill had trouble earning a living. He came home one night and found the house dark. When he opened the door, he saw that Jane had prepared a candlelight dinner for two.

He thought that was a great idea and went in to the bathroom to wash his hands. He tried unsuccessfully to turn on the light. Then he felt his way into the bedroom and flipped another switch. But darkness prevailed.

The young pastor went back to the dining room and asked Jane why the electricity was off or if a fuse had blown. She began to cry.

Jane said, “You work so hard, and we’re trying. But I didn’t have enough money to pay the light bill. I didn’t want you to know about it, so I thought we would just eat by candlelight.” Dr. Hill described his wife’s words with intense emotion.

He added, “She could have said, ‘I’ve never been in this situation before. I was reared in a home where we never had our lights cut.’ She could have broken my spirit; she could have demoralized me. But instead she said, ‘Somehow or other we’ll get these lights back on. But tonight let’s eat by candlelight.’”

That’s showing the selfless support and respect for a husband that God desires in the marriage relationship.