Introduction: God's Design for Marriage, Eph, 5:21-33

We're going to be delving into a substantial passage here, and as Helmut read for you here, it covers a number of verses, but we won't be trying to cover it all today, and actually looking at it today and four more weeks, because today is going to be kind of an overview, and then we're going to be delving into the details, and then tacking on to the end of that, 1 Peter 3, 1 through 7. the following time, so actually six weeks on God's design for marriage. And then we're going to deal with fathers and their children, so that'll come next.

Now, some of you may be thinking, hey, Vern, I'm not married. So you're wondering how this fits. That may be the case, and so if you're in that position, I would suggest one day you might be married. That would certainly make it applicable, in which case this is great preparation. Another possibility there, you will have biblical insight for interacting with those who are married. That would be also helpful. The other thing to remember is that out of the passage that Helmut read for us, about half of the passage is about the relationship between Christ and the Church. And so that applies, if you're a believer, whether you're married or not.

So there's some material there. In addition to that, there are some words in this passage that are used elsewhere, and so whatever you learn about and gain insight from about those words can be taken to other passages. And guess what? There are some very special words that can be used elsewhere, okay? Mysterion. There are other passages which refer to the husband and wife relationship and use that to illustrate or to convey a point.

And so, here are some of them. There are a number in the Old Testament as well. And that may be the case. Finally, it's all inspired. So, Paul then says, since it's inspired by God, it's also profitable. And so, lots of reasons, even if you might look at it and say, but wait a minute, I'm not married. Lots of reasons why it fits.

Now, one of the things you might have noticed in life is that men and women are different. I would say if you were to represent a man as an electronic device, a man looks something like this. A woman, on the other hand, looks something like this. Now, I noticed laughter of agreement, laughter of understanding. I noticed even the women laughed at it.

Okay. All right. We'll get back to that. And this may also illustrate some of the characteristics of the difference that we need to take note of. All right. So anyway, you get the idea. Now, studies of men and women, of course, in our day highlight that men and women indeed are different in various ways. Some of those are genetic, some of those are things about development, you know, even as babies.

And while all those are really interesting, the point that we want to underscore here is what does God say? Because ultimately we can discover things and they might be very fascinating. But what's going to matter most is what does God say? How did He design us? What did He intend?

And so certainly we want to look at what God said about men and women and the roles that they're to have and the specific relationship that he designed called marriage. Of course, we read in Scripture that God created Adam first and then Eve. That's spelled out for us in the first couple of chapters of Genesis, underscored in a letter that Paul wrote to Timothy. Now, the husband and wife are created differently, but they are intended to be complementary to one another.

Intended is the operative word there, okay? Now, let's drop into the details now. Are you ready? We'll do that. Now, most of your translations and your editions, okay, place a division of sections here between what we just read and then the next part.

I realize I started with and, and Helmut noticed that and said, boy, Vern better explain that. And it's because that he's continuing on this idea that he's looked at and spelled out in verses 18 through 20, and he's continuing on the thought. That's what's happening. But one of the things to note is when Paul was writing, he said, hey, I think this is a great place for a chapter break.

He didn't do that. He didn't even do the verses. The chapter break came around the year 1200. The middle 1500s is when the verses were put in. Titles like marriage like Christ and the church, he didn't put that in there either. He was just writing a letter. You don't put chapter verses on your letters, do you? I didn't think so. Paul didn't either.

And so this is the way this looks. Look at the adaptation here, a little at a time. The Greek text goes like this, okay? Closer together, the title in there, he didn't put that in. So this goes there. So he connected those two together, but we're not done. Be subject in verse 22 is not in the Greek. No, it's not. You can check me out on that in your Greek New Testaments there if you'd like. It's not in there, so we're going to take that out.

Now the other thing is, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ, wives to your own husbands is to the Lord. We're not done though. Be is really being. It is not an imperative there. So it's being subject. So what's happening here is Paul had said, as we studied last week, you must be filled and so here's an imperative But you can't do it. It's done to you. You must be filled with Christ by means of the Spirit. Okay? That's the way we spelled it out there. And how does that look? What does that look like? He describes it in action. Here's what it looks like in action.

You'll be speaking to one another, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody, with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and being subject to one another.

That's the way the Greek spells this thing out here. Now, Paul did not take a class in run-on sentences 101, okay? Many times, and this is an example, Paul just continued on the thought, and this is a case in point. So a lot of our translations, they try to break it up into smoother English, but in this case I want us to look at what is the text saying, and it's saying this.

You must be filled with the Spirit. Here is how that looks. Speaking and singing and making melody and giving thanks and being subject. That's how he spelled it out. Alright, so in verse 18 that we studied last week, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled. The do not get drunk and be filled are the imperatives. Those are the things that you must do. They drive the passage all the way to what we call Ephesians 6-9, because that is what being filled with Christ by means of the Spirit looks like. So it's a long consequence, isn't it? So it looks like this. Don't try to memorize that all today. I'll give you time.

So being filled with the Spirit, here are speaking and singing and making melody and giving thanks and being subject. Being subject, there's five actions or examples of what it looks like. Now, being subject, what does he do? He doesn't just say, be subject to one another. So you know, of course, Mike, that you're supposed to be subject to John.

That's the problem. What does he do? He isn't making a general statement and then just stopping. What he's doing is he is giving examples. Husbands and wives, children and parents, slaves and masters. So that's what he's doing. Wives be subject to your husbands, children obeying the parents, and slaves to the masters. Now there's some distinctions in how he says that, and we'll make those points. Notice also that as we go through it, he doesn't just say, wives be subject to your husbands, children obey your parents, slaves obey your masters. In each case, the one that is being subject to, the one that has the authority, is given a great deal of instruction on how that is carried out. And one of the things we're going to find here is actually in this passage, not that much is said to the women. Not that much is said to the wife. But guys, watch out. Because a lot gets said to the husbands, okay?

So here's how it looks in this passage, all the way through 6-9. Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. And these are the instances. Wives to your husbands, children to the parents, slaves to the masters. So he has this word, be subject to. Hupotasso, that is, to set under, or set yourself under, is what he's saying. Being filled with Christ by means of the Spirit in the case of, and he spells this out to the wives and the children and the slaves, means that they place themselves subject to, they set themselves under. To the children and the slaves, he says hupakuo, it's translated often obey, but it means literally to listen under. to listen under. We'll go into that in more detail as we get there. One other pattern that shows up in this passage, wives to their own husbands, as to the Lord, children to the parents, in the Lord, and slaves to the masters, as to Christ. He keeps making the comparison. Why? Because each of those people has a relationship with the Lord, and he's saying it's comparable to that. there is a subjecting to that is comparable to the relationship with the Lord.

Are you with me so far? Okay. Now, oh boy, page 3. By the way, if you're with us here for the first time, you'll want to take a look here. There's the page number. And I want to just make note here that That page number is to help you track. There's one spot where I'm going to do a little bit of hopping back and forth, and hopefully it's not too confusing, but given that I had to make some of the slides large enough, that was the choice I was given. Now, this is what we're going to be referring to, and I also want you to make one correction. This, for the husband is the head of the wife, should be underlined, and I don't think it is in your handout. Now, that given the case, here's the code.

Once we get past verse 21, the wives are in Italics, blue on the overhead here, the instructions to them, notice that the instructions to the wife are fairly minor by comparison. In fact, they're basically two verbs that apply to the wife. And as we'll see as we go through this, there are, well there's more to it than this, but the husband is told to love four times and in four ways. Okay, so gals, two fingers, guys, eight. If you're short any digits, use something else. Okay, now, so we'll be going over this in more detail, so don't try to memorize it all now, but there's reason for the code here. Now, you do the math. Why am I saying you do the math?

There's a relationship that he's spelling out here, not that one. Okay, this one. The husband is to the wife as Christ is to the church. It's that simple. Let's put this in an even more logical, mathematical statement. The husband is to the wife as Christ is to the church. That's the comparison he keeps using through this whole passage.

And what this does is it guides our understanding of all these relationships. It helps us answer two mucho important, very important questions. How do we know what the husband and wife relationship is supposed to be like, number one? And number two, what does the biblical husband and wife relationship communicate to everybody around them? Now, as we look through the passage, notice this. Husbands, love your wives. At the end there, nevertheless, each individual among you, that's the husbands, is to love his own wife even as himself. These two are imperatives. You must love your wives. And we also have this interesting thing, so husbands ought, and this is an implied imperative. In the Greek it's not an imperative, but it's an implied imperative. Ought sounds like an imperative, doesn't it? Same idea.

So what you have there is love is repeatedly spelled out to the husband, as this is what the husband ought to do. Also note, there are four kinds of love. This is where you've got the four times love is said. Now, four kinds of love is spelled out in this passage. The husband is to love the wives. What's the comparison? Just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, a sacrificial love.

Now, so what you can do, guys, take your finger and write sacrificial on one of them, okay? That's not the one you're cutting off, that's to help you remember, okay? Alright. So that he might sanctify her. Ah, the next kind of love is a sanctifying love. The word sanctifying isn't some word that's intended to be outside of our range of understanding. It's put to the intended purpose, made holy. The husband's love is a sacrificial love, it's a sanctifying love. We'll talk about both of those more in detail in the weeks to come. But get that down.

Now you've got that second finger with sanctifying written on it. Now the third finger, once you write caring love on there, because the husbands are to love their own wives as themselves. So that's the third kind of love. So caring love, you write on the third finger there. And then the last one is a bonded love. And you're right, bonded love on the last finger. Hopefully your finger's large enough.

Anyway. Okay, so there's four kinds of love that he spells out. Each one of those kinds of love is the husband's responsibility to carry out. Each one of those kinds of love are spelled out in living demonstration by Christ and His relationship with the church.

One of the things we've got to ask as we look at that, and we say, isn't Paul just kind of carrying over ideas from his day? I mean, is he giving us something that's just kind of old and antiquated and we kind of need to dust it off or rework it or toss it and come up with something new? Didn't he just kind of bow down to what everybody else was saying? I mean, is this archaic stuff he's given us?

What we do as we look at this, as we examine the culture of the day, we find that this is not at all what people were being told. As a matter of fact, I would guess, I don't know because we don't have the description of how these guys reacted when they saw this, but if they had dentures, they dropped them. If they had glasses, they fell off their face. Why? Because everything Paul was saying here was absolutely shocking stuff in the context of the culture. What? Love my wife?

And the word he used for love is, you've got to be kidding. Okay? So, let's take a look at some of those things here. Roman practice would have the husband in total authority. In New Testament times, just like our own time, there's change taking place and the tendency was shifting towards the father remaining in authority even though the wife is married. How about that? So the father would still come in and call a lot of the shots, even in terms of saying, hey, you're getting divorced from that guy. Yeah.

So that was a kind of a trend that was moving in place in the Greek and Roman culture. Now beyond that, Roman law allowed the father to decide which of, by father I mean the husband, he decided which of his kids would live. It was legal in the Roman Empire to abandon children out into the woods that you didn't want.

A mother might just birth a child, and the mother's voice was not required that it be considered. He could if he wanted to, but it wasn't necessary legally, even if she objected to it. The baby could be abandoned, and there was no legal recourse whatsoever. if the father wanted to sell the children as slaves.

There was no recourse on the part of the wife. The wife's opinion did not matter one bit. The men were told that it is your public duty to have kids and to have a wife and have a home, but basically there wasn't any real obligation to be personally involved. Fidelity to the wife was certainly not an expectation. Absolutely not. It was not the accepted standard in the Greek and Roman culture that you be faithful to your wife. Nah.

To actually love her unconditionally, and this is what was shocking. This is why, by the way, I think Paul at the end of this passage After he told them initially, husbands, you must love your wives, he breaks down into the individual, he says, each one of you must love his wife. So that nobody was thinking, oh, he doesn't mean me. So, he is emphatic on bringing this point home.

Why? The culture would certainly not support it. Love your wife unconditionally, continually, exclusively. Absolutely unheard of. The husband was supposed to provide for the wife so she could manage the home. She'd manage the household, have kids, things like that. But to actually love her and be involved with her, and love her in the four ways that Paul described? Unheard of! Appalling that Paul would say such a thing. Appalling. Anyway, no pun intended. The husband didn't have any obligation to have an ongoing real relationship with the wife. Can you imagine that? Not intended in the culture.

Just talk about, okay, make sure you take care of the kids and make sure they do this and that. We've got to pay to go gas to take care of and make sure the kid gets tutored and that's it. But culturally, no expectation that there'd be really any personal involvement, no intimacy between husband and wife other than the necessary moments to have kids.

Now, you might say, yeah, but what about the Jews? The Jews did things differently. Well, yes, they did. The law did not allow confusion of male and female roles, which was allowed in the Gentile culture. So, for example, you wouldn't have this kind of thing. I don't mean in gender. Okay. Now, enough confusion. I'm just kidding. All right.

In a Jewish marriage, there were requirements of the husband to provide housing and food and clothing and things like that, to give affection. Yes, it was required to give affection. The husband could be fined If he did not give affection to the other items, he would be beaten if he did not provide them. So the husband was required to do these things and to remain faithful to his wife, unlike in the Gentile culture. The wife was required to perform various household duties, and that included things outside the house, like getting the food and getting the water from the well, etc. She also had to remain faithful.

Things had declined from the time of the giving of the law, from the giving of the law of Moses. Moses allowed for divorce, but by New Testament times, Gamaliel, the grandfather of Paul's tutor, said that a man could divorce his wife for any reason, anything that displeased him. I did not like, did not like the matzo balls. Okay? We're getting a divorce. There was anything at all would justify divorce.

The Mosaic Law required both an adulterous man and woman, both of them must be brought forth and killed. But by New Testament times, they only enforce it against the woman. And that explains the account in John chapter 8, where the adulterous woman is brought forward. Why just her?

Because the Jews had moved the man out of the picture. will punish the woman, but the man, he goes away scot-free. A pious male Jew would recite in his daily prayers, thank you that I was not born a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. Can you imagine that? Why? Because a free male Jew had more laws that he could obey. How about that? So he thanked the Lord that he was not a Gentile or a slave or a woman. So you can see that Paul was not going along with either the Gentile or the Jewish culture of his day. Furthermore, we see that the apostles taught a high view of women, Paul himself included.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Neither male nor female, no distinction. Every statement that we've read about in Ephesians and Colossians applies male and female alike in terms of position, right? The position that the believer has, same male and female. When Christ died on the cross, he didn't say, well, female sins, male sins, you know, one way is more than the other.

No. It was grace applied across the board, and gender did not matter. When Paul wrote here, He said, husbands, you must love your wives, and he laid out the love of the Lord as the standard by which that love would be measured, that unconditional love. Love for whom? The wife. That was unheard of.

Ephesians 5.33 says every single husband must love his wife, no exceptions.

As we get into 1 Peter 3.7, we'll see that Peter says something that some of us might think is impossible.

The husband must live in an understanding way with his wife, a joint heir of the grace of life. The aim of the apostles was to have the believers understand their equal position in Christ into eternity. He wanted them to understand that and to have that across the board. not by gender, not by gender distinction. The husband and wife are intended to complement one another in a manner that maximizes the spiritual growth of each, that optimizes the spiritual growth, and for others involved in their lives. That was the intent.

So, we ask the question, shouldn't we kind of tweak it? a little bit, kind of adjust it a little bit, so that we can get things updated a little bit, because after all, this is almost 2,000 years old. Can't we update it to fit with modern times? Well, I would suggest not.

Part of the problem is in our modern culture, lacking any real standard, what do we have? We lack absolutes, and so our culture offers a pendulum swing, and not the same pendulum all the time either. There's a tendency to push towards domination and abuse, Unfortunately, still real common in our culture, and I'm not sure it's getting any better. The other end is gender ambiguity, tug of war, male versus female, or gender confusion, sometimes severe gender confusion. Lots of problems in our culture. The difficulty with updating it is, in one, our culture has nothing to measure anything by.

It's whatever you happen to prefer, instead of what did God intend. Since it's clear that Paul didn't write to fit the culture of his day, we've seen that. What he wrote did not fit either the Jews or the Gentiles of his day. Christ and the Church is the standard, not this is what Paul thinks, or what's the culture of that day. What Paul wrote was inspired by the Holy Spirit for our benefit. So based on that, trying to make adjustments or to tweak what Paul said to fit today's modern ideas would be a serious mistake. After all, we've got what God intended here. You see, we have an opportunity. Maleness and femaleness are certainly something the Lord made for earthly times, and certainly we're spiritual beings. But notice what he does here.

This is a passage where it's revealed like no other place where the husband and the wife have set before them the standard of what? The relationship between Christ and the Church. How long is that relationship? Eternal. We have the opportunity to live out in daily life, to be a living illustration of the relationship, the eternal relationship between Christ and the Church. is phenomenal. Here is this untarnished romance between Christ and the Church, which will extend on into eternity. Husbands and wives, for what time the Lord gives them here and now, get to live that out and be the living illustration, for whatever time we have together, of that incredible relationship. That's phenomenal. That's wonderful stuff. We get to live out this relationship by the Lord's empowerment, by the Lord's energizing, by His doing. We not only have an illustration to live by, we have a power to live it by.

You see, this world has got all sorts of jokes about marriage. Have you noticed that? Everything from cartoons to stand-up comics to sitcoms, joking about marriage. Why? It's because marriage, especially Christian marriage, is designed by God to illustrate something there's no chance the world can even begin to comprehend.

Every Christian husband and wife has a chance to be a living illustration of that relationship between Christ and the Church, and there's no way the world can comprehend it. The husband gets to live out the character of Christ and Christ's love for the Church in fine detail, moment by moment, every day. That's an amazing thing. The wife gets to live out in fine detail the believer's response to Christ, moment by moment, day by day. What we're doing isn't washing the dishes and driving to work and changing tires. No, that's just the superficial part of it. What we're doing is spelling out in daily life the relationship between Christ and the Church.

That's the phenomenal part. We've got to figure that this world isn't going to understand it. We've got to get that to our minds and realize that we can't conform to this world's definition of marriage. It's not going to work. There are some words here.

We've kind of run past time here, so I'm going to leave it to you to go through them. But I do want to get to a question that hits us right at the end here. And that's, how am I going to do this? How am I going to make this happen as a believer? One of the things that's important to recognize is that this is impossible, can't be done, can't be accomplished. And the reason it's impossible is we were not intended to do it ourselves, not by our own strength, not by human effort, not by the best efforts that we can accomplish.

That's one reason why I'm convinced that as they first read what was in this letter that they were stunned, they were shocked. Paul, you must be kidding. This is absolutely shocking stuff. Even in our own culture, this is shocking stuff. It contrasts with the culture of Paul's time, it contrasts with the culture of today.

And the reason is, and we shouldn't get bent out of shape about it, the reason is, is because it was intended to be lived out by the strength of the Lord Himself. Paul had already spelled out in Ephesians 3, 20-21, He is going to accomplish it, all these imperatives, these included, He is going to accomplish it by His power that works within us. He will then be glorified in the Church and in Jesus Christ and in our marriages as we walk day by day. Yes, as we do the things that seem mundane, those are the things that will glorify Him as we spell out in daily life, as we live out the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Let's pray. Lord, this is a phenomenal passage. It is a phenomenal revelation. And it will indeed take a while to soak in for us to understand it. But we pray for insight from your Holy Spirit. We pray that you would teach us and that these words indeed would be brought to heart. That they would be lived out in our lives. We thank you for this marvelous teaching. In Jesus' name, Amen.