Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Ephesians 5:22-33 | Date: June 7, 2015 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

I have to tell you, if you have not been blessed this morning by the songs and the singing, your blesser is broke. It’s good to be here this morning, and I want to give thanks to Rebecca for singing that song this morning. I asked her to do that one. It was one of our favorites written by D.A. Carson. It’s one that our daughter Gina used to sing and play a lot, and so I asked her to do it, and it’s just a great song and she did it wonderfully. Thank you.

Ephesians chapter 5. I wanted to mention also we have several visitors with us today, and one in particular I will mention by name: John Randolph is here with us. John is a friend—raise your hand, John, so everybody knows who I’m talking about. I can go embarrass you. John is a good friend of ours; he was a pastoral intern that served with us at Cornerstone Church some years ago, went off to Southern Baptist Seminary, graduated, and now is pastoring in North Carolina, doing a great job, and we’re thankful for him and his faithfulness and his friendship. It’s great to see you again, John. Thanks for coming.

We come to the passage now, making our way through Ephesians, the passage beginning with verse 22, where Paul begins to speak of the relationship of husbands and wives. And any time I come to this kind of subject, I am reminded of a comic that we’ve had at home for some time. It’s a picture of a pastor in his car driving home. It’s clearly after church. His wife is in the car with him, and he says to his wife, “Honey, my sermons on the home would be much more effective if in the middle of them you didn’t say, ‘Ha!'”

And I have to say that I have come to this point now with a good degree of frustration. This passage, as you know, begins speaking to wives and then speaks to husbands in a more lengthy way, beginning in verse 25. And my first thought was, I really don’t want to preach just to the wives without getting around to the second part, dealing with the husbands, because, well, really, it’s the husband’s part that makes the wife’s part so much more easy. And so my thought was to handle all of this passage in one message. I asked my wife this week, while I was thinking through it all, “Is it okay, you think, if I just preach to the ladies this week and then preach to the men next week?” She gave me her permission.

And then this morning—Sunday mornings are always filled with much meditation, thinking through the passage that we’re going to expound—and she laughed at me as I came out of my study, muttering, “What in the world was I thinking, thinking that I could cover the wives’ part of it in just one sermon?” So ladies, all that to say that I think this week and next we’ll be dealing with yours, but I promise you, I promise you we will get to the husbands. And I have asked my wife, “I want you to be here this week and next, because I’m preaching to you next week.” I would just as soon you’d be sick the following week; it’d make it a lot easier for me.

This is, of course, a very delicate theme in our society today, particularly with events as they are in our news this week and currently as well, in the larger scene as well. And so I want to take our time, and before I really get into verses 22 to 24 today, I want to spread the table a bit and deal with the larger cultural and theological framework in which we need to see all of this. So you can keep that in mind as we begin to work our way through. Ladies, if you would, please keep in mind that we will get to the rest of it in the weeks to come. I promise you we will get there unless the Lord takes me away first. We will get there. So please listen to your part as God would have you. And then husbands, I promise you your time is coming. Hopefully my wife will be sick that day.

Let’s begin our reading, verses 22 and following:

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound. I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. However, that each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we rejoice in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are thankful for our Savior who has given himself for us. We’ve been instructed in your word many times over that our lives are to reflect this gospel that we have embraced and in which we stand. And here we learn that in our marriages as well, we are to reflect the love of Christ for his church and the love of the church for Christ. Lord, we pray that you will take this word and own it to our hearts. Give us a clear understanding of it in a day when our society is so confused on these matters. We pray especially that you will give us clarity of thinking, give us lives and homes that honor the Lord Jesus. We pray in his name. Amen.

The Cultural Context of Gender and Roles

Well, as I say, we come to a very sensitive subject now of wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. You will remember that not long ago, Pastor Boyd preached through a series of messages on the responsibilities and the roles of women in the home and in the church. You might also remember that he touched on this passage. And when he was on this passage, his point at that point in the series was to deal more with what submission is not and what male leadership is not, lest it be abused, which of course is very needed. And when we were talking about it afterwards, and I mentioned that he didn’t deal a whole lot with what submission is, his response was his usual loving concern and said something to the effect of, “Yeah, that’s much more dangerous. I’m leaving that for you.”

Ephesians 5 was coming up. And of course, we have finally gotten here now. But it is a very sensitive subject, of course, especially in our society today. In our society—if you’ve seen the news at all this week, you’ve been reminded of it—we don’t even know the difference between male and female. We don’t know what it means to be male or what it means to be female. Gender and sex is no longer tied to physiology or biology. Anyone can be a woman; anyone can be a man. And so children can have two moms, even if both are male. And there is just complete confusion as to the identity of male and the identity of female. And the terms male and female have come to be in our society terms that can almost be used interchangeably.

And if we have a world that doesn’t know the difference between male and female, then certainly there’s no category for understanding distinctive roles of men and women in the home. And to suggest that there might be distinction in roles, to dare to breathe the word “submission” or “order and structure” in the home—well, there are not many heresies left in this world, but that’s one of them.

So it’s essential for the Christian, I think, and we’ll begin on this level—and I want to take it in its widest context here—it’s essential for the Christian in all of this to recognize the subtle equivocation that has taken place in a public discourse in our society. We want very much—and I mean this sincerely, and we will see more of this as we go along—we want very much to affirm the equality, the equality of the genders, male and female. We want very much to affirm equality, and we’ll see more of that as we go along. But in our discourse today, equality has come to mean sameness. To be equal, we must be the same. We have lost the distinction between male and female, and with that we’ve lost the distinction of roles and functions between male and female in the home.

So now we have to pretend, with this erasing of the distinction between male and female, we have to pretend today that it’s perfectly natural for Susie to compete with Johnny on the gridiron. That’s normal. And we have to pretend that Susie is just as constituted as Johnny for combat. Or for that matter, that Johnny is just as constituted to be a mom. Or for that matter, that Johnny could be Caitlin. And what we have to see at the very outset of all of that, whatever else may be going on, when we see, as we have seen this week, our society celebrating this kind of thing, we have to see it, first of all, as a society in rebellion against the Creator who has created us not only in his image, but he has created us in his image as male and female.

Humanity is made to image God not as androgynous creatures, but we are made to image God as male and as female. It is the way God has made us. And the fact is, even if we cannot and haven’t thought to carefully articulate what it means to be male, or if I can’t articulate exactly what it means to be female, our maleness and our femaleness are inescapable aspects of our personhood. The idea of gender or sex permeates what we are. It permeates us to the core of our being and we all recognize it intuitively. It conditions every aspect of our lives as persons so that this awareness that I have of “I” and “me” is not generic, but it’s always awareness of “I” or “me” as “him” or “her.” And the awareness that I have of you is not generic, but it’s an awareness of you as him or her.

It’s a part of what we are; we’re constituted that way from the creation. And it remains true even if we don’t want to admit it these days. It remains true that just as Adam himself found, a man needs a woman to complete him and vice versa. It remains true that he needs her and that she needs him, that each was made for the other. This is just the created order. We’re asked to believe today that masculinity and femininity are mere social conventions. They’re culturally learned. These are not notions that are created intuitively for us, but these are notions that have been imposed upon us by our culture and our society, and we should rebel against that and we can be what we want to be. A man can be a woman, a woman can be a man, and these notions of a man naturally wanting to lead or of a little girl naturally wanting to be a mother or a homemaker or anything domestic are rejected as anything of natural instinct or created order. These are cultural norms that have been imposed upon us. We’ve got to rebel against it; we can be what we want to be. And so men can be moms. Women can be anything that a man is. And in fact, in our society, a woman ought to be anything that a man is. It’s utter chaos.

And yet, with all of this screaming for equality, sameness, and all of this gender confusion that we have, it’s fascinating this week—and I read a report of a woman who was a feminist and agnostic. She had no biblical ax to grind at all. A feminist and an agnostic broke up with her boyfriend. Not because they’d had fights or anything like that. The relationship had gone well. They were considering marriage now. But when it came down to it, she said he just wasn’t a good enough—get it—leader for her. When it came time to go out, he had to ask her where they’re going to go. When it came down to it, for all of her screaming for sameness and equality, she wanted her man to lead.

Feminist and agnostic, yet for all of the feminist logic and rhetoric that she would profess, she wanted her man to lead and to provide. Now, certainly not all would admit that much, and many may have convinced themselves otherwise. After all the screaming for equality, so-called, women still expect something of their men. They still want to be treated with chivalry. They still want to be treated as a woman. They still want him to pay the bill. They want their guy to be a guy. And after the success that they have had in screaming for equality and all of that, after the success that they’ve had in it, they have the gall to complain of a shortage of real men. Here was a woman who would profess she doesn’t need a man to take care of her; she would never have a man who couldn’t. She still wants her man to provide, to protect, and—let’s say it—lead. Could it be, could it be that this is the way we’re made?

The Impact of the Fall on Marriage

Well, now the question comes up—and we’re still not getting into verse 22 yet, but the question comes up then, and I do want to deal with it in its larger framework because of society’s confusion today. So we’re just taking our time with it. I’m sorry if it’s too slow, but I think it will be helpful. But the question comes up: if we’re created this way, with men and women to have these complementary roles, why is it so difficult? Why the friction? Why the problems? Why doesn’t it just work that way? And of course the answer is very obvious if you’ve read your Bible at all. It traces back to a garden. In fact, let’s go back there. Genesis chapter 3.

You remember the episode, I’m sure. Satan comes to Adam and Eve who have been created with their respective roles. Satan comes, tempts the woman. She takes the forbidden fruit. The man does as well. And then God shows up on the scene, and he starts pronouncing judgment. First off, verses 14 and 15, he pronounces judgment on Satan. Wonderful gospel promise there. Now verse 16: “To the woman, he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.'” And of course then next, verse 17 and following, judgment upon the man and upon the entire created order.

But notice verse 16. We have in the first part of the verse judgment upon the woman—pain and childbearing and all that goes with that. “In pain you’ll bring forth children” and all of those problems that come from being female. Notice the last one: “Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” There’s been a lot of ink spilled over exactly what does that mean, and it’s pretty well agreed now that the most obvious meaning is to understand the expression as it appears in the very next chapter. If you look over at chapter 4 in verse 7, where God is speaking to Cain who has killed his brother, and he says in verse 7, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.” And here’s our expression: “Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Same expression we have in chapter 3, verse 16. And very clearly in chapter 4 and verse 7, the meaning is: sin will want to dominate you, but you must rule over it.

And so in chapter 3, verse 16, “your desire shall be for your husband,” that is, you will seek to rule him, but he will rule over you. And so now we have a situation in which, where what was before the order of a perfect creation—she made for him to be his helpmeet and so on—now it’s going to involve a spirit of competition. And we have the battle of the sexes begun. Marriage now is marked by sin and a curse, each jockeying for their own prominence, each determined to win this argument. “I’ll show him.” “I’ll show her.” At the end of this argument, I’m going to stand taller. There are those digs and those jabs, saying things that hurt. We may say afterwards, “I didn’t mean it,” and it might be true, we didn’t mean it, but we meant for it to hurt. Attempts to manipulate: “I’ll change him.” And on his side, “She’s gonna grovel.” Or the silent treatment: he’s angry with something about her, so he’s just quiet. And she thinks, “Well, I can play this game better than he can,” so she’s quiet. Nothing is said—well, at least not out loud.

It should not surprise us that marriage also has been affected by sin, deeply affected by sin and a curse. Pride in the human heart, there’s a spirit of competition between us, and it’s all part of living under and reeling from a curse that began at the outset of human history. That’s why it’s so difficult.

And yet, when we come to Ephesians 5 and passages like this in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul approaches the question of relationships in the home with a complete sense of confidence. “Okay, here’s how it’s gonna work. You want to find fulfillment? Here it is.” And he lays this out as though he’s speaking for the Creator giving instruction how those faithful to the Creator can find fulfillment in their homes as they were designed to have. You want to find happiness and fulfillment in your marriage as it was intended by God? Here it is. Paul approaches, and throughout he has that air of confidence—not arrogance, but an air of confidence. Speaking for God, he can tell us how we can find the happiness and the fulfillment that we want in our homes.

Well, this shouldn’t surprise us either. Paul has been, as we’ve seen now, expounding at length the gospel of reconciliation. First of all, we are reconciled with God, brought at peace with him, but because of that, that peace has worked its way out now on every level of human society. On the individual level, our relationships—our relationships in the church. On every level, we find the gospel working its way out, and we’ve seen that now as we’ve worked through Ephesians. And it shouldn’t surprise us now as we come to this passage; Paul’s going to tell us the same, that this is the way the gospel is going to show itself in a Christian home. In fact, in a supreme kind of way, marriages ought to be putting the gospel on display. Only when a man and woman are brought together in loving union in Christ, displaying the love of Christ for his church and the loving union between Christ and his church, only then will they find the fulfillment and the happiness they look for in their marriage.

Of course, sin has affected marriages, and we should say at this point now, then, well of course the gospel has hope for marriages as well. So we come to chapter 5, verses 22 and following. We have here then what God has—God’s ordering for the home and how he has set out in Christ to restore the home and marriages through the gospel of Christ. Restoring the original companionship, restoring the original complementarity in marriages in order that the husband and the wife can find fulfillment. Not only live peaceably, but find fulfillment.

And we should also remind ourselves of the context here. As we pointed out last time, verse 22 is very clearly an extension of the thought of verse 21 and a specific application of the thought of verse 21. And that is an outworking of the command that he gave back in verse 18: “Do not get drunk with wine but be filled with the spirit.” And that in turn is an outworking of what we saw in verse 15: “Walk not as unwise but as wise.” Here’s what it is to walk in wisdom. We walk in wisdom, understanding what the will of the Lord is, understanding how to please God, and the provision we have is the fullness of the Spirit. That’s the great blessing of this age, that God has provided his Spirit in an abundant way for all of his people to carry out what he requires of us. And now the application comes, verse 22, to the home. Wives, husbands; chapter six, children, masters, slaves—and he works it out all one by one. So God has set out to transform humanity, not only in an individual way, individually, but also in our homes.

Where Does Paul Get This Idea?

And what he addresses first now is wives. Verses 22 and 23: “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Why? Because the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” All right, the focus of Paul’s command, as he plays it out again in verse 24, the focus of his command is submission. And I think we will deal with more of that next time, but let’s keep a couple of things in mind here before we move ahead, giving the larger theological context for this.

His focus is submission. Before we begin looking at what that means specifically, let’s take a couple of things in mind. Number one, where does Paul get this idea? Is this just bare command? Is this just specific revelation that has now newly come to the apostle? Where does Paul get this idea that the wives should submit to their husbands? Well, very clearly, as I’ve already mentioned a few times now working up to this, Paul is getting this from the very created order, where God made man and woman, male and female, not just with a distinction in terms of sex, generally with a distinct order as well between husband and wife.

We find that in the Genesis narrative itself. God creates Adam. Adam recognizes his loneliness, his incompletion. And so God says, “I’ll make a wife for him. I’ll make a helpmeet for him.” Before he does that, he brings all the animals before Adam, and Adam names all the animals. And at the end of all of that, Adam has learned that a dog really is not man’s best friend. He still needs somebody better to complete him. So God puts Adam to sleep, takes out a rib, makes a wife, and Adam says, “Yee-haw! This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Here is one on my level. Here is one like me. Here is one that I can communicate with on the deepest level.” Another of me, woman taken from man. She’s named Ishah because she was taken out of Ish. So ladies, you can tell your husbands that they are Ish.

Alright, there’s the Genesis narrative. Now I want you to see a couple of places in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul reflects on that. Look at 1 Timothy chapter 2. Here Paul is writing to Timothy concerning how to keep order in the church. And so again, this matter of distinction in roles for men and women comes up, and we’re not going to take the passage as a whole in that regard. Pastor Boyd has gone through that. But I just want to point out again something that the Apostle Paul stresses here. Verse 12, 1 Timothy 2, verse 12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet.” Why? Here he gives his explanation: “Because Adam was first formed, and then Eve.”

Now here we have Paul’s comment on the Genesis narrative, and he’s telling us the fact that Adam was created first was not just a historical accident. It was God’s declaration from the beginning of His position of leadership in the home. Adam was created first. He goes on in verse 14 as well, and also besides that, Eve sinned first. I’m not going to get into all the complications of that passage; you can talk to Pastor Boyd about that. But at the very least, he’s saying here that the order of creation was from the beginning God’s intended announcement of an ordering in the home. Why the man in authority over the woman and not the other way around? Answer, at least part of the answer: because man was made first and then the woman. That was God’s announcement from the beginning.

Notice this was not something that is a consequence of the fall. This is not something that’s merely the consequence of sin entering in the home. This was God’s announcement from the beginning, pre-fall. He was made first, and that was God’s declaration of the ordering and structuring in the home.

Look back to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Here we have a similar thought, but it’s just a shade different. Here again, Paul is dealing with the roles in the church. Specifically now, he’s dealing with the head covering question, which again, you can ask Pastor Boyd all about that. But notice how he explains his instruction. Verse 8: “For”—here’s an explanatory conjunction again—”for man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.”

So here, not only is he saying that man was created first and then the woman, but he is saying that the woman was made from the man and not the other way around. And that was God’s declaration from the beginning of this order and structuring in the home. It was not just a historical accident. “Well, somebody had to be made first.” No, God specifically made the man first for that purpose. That’s what Paul says. Then he says in verse nine, “Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” Where does he get that? Genesis narrative, right? “I’ll make a helpmeet for him.” Whatever else is entailed in that, we have to notice that that is something that is not said of the man to the woman. She was made as his helpmeet, and it is not said the other way around. And Paul draws the observation that not only was man made first, not only did the woman come from the man, but the woman was made for the man. And all of this is God’s announcement from the beginning of this ordering and structuring in the home.

Now we have another clue to all of that in the Genesis narrative as well, and that is that Adam named Eve, which of course is a function of authority. So for all of this, we see in the Genesis narrative—pre-fall, pre-curse—that this was God’s intended structuring in the home. This ordering of the home is not a convention that has merely evolved with society. It’s rooted in creation. It’s rooted in who we are. It is rooted in how God has made us. We are not meant to have identical roles. That was God’s declaration from the beginning.

Why Does He Think This Is So Important?

Now, I said two things before we get into what submission means. Number one, where did Paul get this idea? Answer: he got it from the creation account. Number two, why does he think this is so important? Well, we’ve already answered that in one respect. It’s important because it’s the way we’re created. Why would you rebel against creation, the way things are? It would be silly. It’s only going to bring heartache. Of course, of course. So in one respect, this is so important because it reflects the created order itself.

But Paul stresses here something further than that. Keep a marker here; we may come back to 1 Corinthians 11 here today. But look back to Ephesians 5 again, and just glancing through the passage, you’ll see Paul’s answer to my question. Why does he think this is so important? Answer: because of what it pictures, because of what it reflects. And all through verses 22 through 33, Paul stresses that the home, the relationship of husband and wife, is to put the gospel on display. We are to manifest in our relationships of husbands and wives and the way we relate to one another as husband and wife—we are to reflect the gospel of Christ. He is to be like Christ. She is to be like the church in her response to Christ.

That in a nutshell is why Paul stresses this is so important, and he goes on and on and on in this passage to work that out in several different ways. We’ll see more of that as we go through the passage next time. Here we have it then: the husband as Christ in the home, loving his wife as Christ loved the church. I’ve never forgotten it. Before Kim and I were married, my dad sat down with the two of us to give us some premarital counseling. And I remember his coming to this passage: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.” And he looked at me and pointed his finger as he always would: “Fred, that’s a lot of loving.” Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the church. We’ll work that out in a couple of weeks.

The wife, in turn, is as the church itself—the bride of Christ—in love, willingly giving herself to her husband, affirming his lead and following. The point here is that at the outset of human history, God brought the first woman to the first man. It was intended as a picture of what he would do in bringing his fallen creatures back into fellowship with himself. He would express his love for his people by giving himself, sacrificially loving. And in turn, his rescued creatures would respond in love, loving his lead and willfully, willingly giving themselves to him.

So in short, there is something about this ordering of the home that the Apostle Paul is enjoining on us here. One, that reflects the way we were created. And number two, that reflects and displays the gospel itself. And so our responsibility is to ask: “How can I best reflect in my marriage this role for which I was created? Number two, how can I best reflect in my marriage the gospel of Christ that I profess to believe?”

Brothers and sisters, given our fallenness, given the sin and pride that has infected all of us, that’s going to take some deliberate effort on our parts. Give some attention to your home. How can I best reflect the way I was created? And how can I best reflect and display the gospel that I profess? And in that, we’ll find fulfillment that we seek in our marriages.

I think that’s as far as I can go this morning. Next time we’ll pick up with the nature of submission. We’ll try to work this out in ways that are honoring to the Lord and fulfilling for us in our homes. In the meantime, take this as a deliberate thought: how can I work out the created order? How can I work out and live out the gospel in my home? Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, we recognize our fallenness and our sinfulness. Lord, we need your help, and we praise you for the grace that you’ve given us in Christ and through him the fullness of your Spirit to empower us to do what you require of us. Give us, Lord, that grace needed to war against our own pride and sinfulness. Help us to see that as we fail to live out the created order, as we fail to live out the gospel in our homes, we do so only to dishonor you and to bring about our own unhappiness. Lord, give us the grace to pursue your will and in pursuing your will to find the happiness, the joy, the fulfillment in our homes that you’ve provided for us. In Christ’s name we ask, amen.

In conclusion, let’s turn in our RBC hymnals to number—oh yes, 52. And we will have an offering. So do we have ushers to take the special offering for the VBS? Remain seated as we sing this last song, number 52, as we sing the gospel song together.