Ephesians - Marriage and the Home - Part 1 - Ephesians 5:22-33

We open the Word of God to Ephesians 5. Let's talk to our Father together. Father, as we study the Word, we realize that there are obligations that we have. Help us to accept them, to rejoice in them, and to realize that in fulfilling our obligations, we are finding our opportunities. You have so much more for us if only we will trust and obey. And so I pray, help us as we study the Word now and apply it to our hearts and to our homes. I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

God has established three institutions in society, and He’s done this for the good of mankind: the home, government, and the church. Now marriage and the home are the only remnants we have of paradise. God performed the first marriage in paradise. And the only thing we have left from paradise, apart from the promises that God gave, the only thing we have left is marriage and the home. And marriage and the home ought to be a paradise. Unfortunately, too often today, it’s just the opposite. Marriage and the home turn out to be a battlefield. We have divorce, we have abortion, we have the awful influence of violent television coming into our homes today. We have so-called sexual freedom. And the home today is under siege. The family is under siege.

Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that there are three essentials for a successful marriage: the will of God, the Spirit of God, and the love of God. The will of God, Ephesians 5:15-17: "See then that you walk circumspectly, carefully, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is." It’s not God’s will that everybody get married. God said it is not good for man to be alone, and God made for man a woman to be a help who was meet for him, that is, suitable for him, something that he needed, and God provided that.

But not everybody is supposed to get married. Jesus made that very clear in Matthew 19:11-12. He’d been teaching about marriage, and He says there are some people who are born not to get married, and there are some people who have been brought to this situation by men, and there are others who, for the kingdom of God's sake, have elected not to marry. We should not think that single people are freaks, strange people. God has a different plan for each life, and we must know the will of God. A preacher friend of mine used to say it's far better to live in single loneliness than married cussedness. What he was saying, of course, was don’t rush into marriage just because everybody else is doing it; you might regret it. The will of God. Find out what the will of God is. Perhaps that girl, that fellow that you are dating is not God's will for your life. Search the Scriptures and pray and seek for the will of God.

Secondly, a happy and successful home requires the Spirit of God. Ephesians 5:18-21: "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is excess, waste, dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit." And of course, you know when people are filled with the Holy Spirit because they are joyful, Ephesians 5:19; thankful, Ephesians 5:20; and submissive, Ephesians 5:21.

The word submit is a military term that means to line up in order by rank. There has to be order in every part of society. Without order, we have chaos. The mayor in your town may not be the greatest person in the world, but he's the mayor. Somebody has to be the leader. Some of the councilmen, your senators or your representatives, whatever, they may not be people you personally like, but they are in office and they have leadership, they have authority. And so we are acknowledging God's order when we submit. Submissive to the Lord, submissive to one another—the Spirit of God. You see, the Spirit of God lives within us, and the Spirit of God produces the fruit of the Spirit, Christian character, which is love and joy and peace—those marvelous qualities that are listed in Galatians 5:22-23. Qualities that you want in your home. The will of God, the Spirit of God. If the home is built on the flesh, it's not going to be happy, successful, or too strong. If the home is built on the Spirit of God, that means glorifying the Lord, spending time in the Word, praying together, then there can be and will be blessing.

Now in Ephesians 5:22, the Apostle Paul applies this submission principle to wives, husbands, and then Ephesians 6 to children and parents, and then to servants and masters. And he’s talking about the love of God. If we're going to have a successful marriage, we must not only have the will of God and the Spirit of God, we must have the love of God. And he talks about this in Ephesians 5:22-33. Three times he says to the husbands, "Love your wives"—Ephesians 5:25, Ephesians 5:28, Ephesians 5:33. The word love is used six times in this paragraph, so the emphasis is on the love of God. Now the love he's talking about here is the kind of love that Christians ought to have for the Lord and for one another. When we experience and share the love of God in our homes, then we will fulfill our God-given responsibilities. He's not laying down a bunch of laws; he's not giving us a list of rules: "Don't do this, don't do that." All Paul says is, look, build your home on the love of God. And when you do that, it takes care of all the other problems and rules and regulations. Love is what God is commanding.

Now the wife has the responsibility to submit, Ephesians 5:22-24. The husband has the responsibility to love and to care. The children have the responsibility to obey. Now there we have it. Here are three responsibilities that grow out of this fullness of the Holy Spirit. We submit to the Lord, we experience the love of God within, and as we share that love, the wives will submit, the husbands will care, and the children will obey. He’s talking about a home that has an atmosphere of love, not an atmosphere of a law court, but the atmosphere of love.

Now let's look at the wife's situation here, her responsibility: "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." This word submit is so grossly misunderstood. If people would only just look into the Word of God and find out what God is saying. It's a military term. The word submit means to line up according to rank.

Now, I was not in the military service; I was too young for World War II, and then I was involved in seminary training during the Korean War, and after that, I don't think they really needed me. But I know this much about the military: there has to be order. There has to be some kind of order, otherwise you have chaos. And so we have buck privates, and we have privates, and we have corporals, and we have sergeants, and captains, and all the way up to five-star generals. Now the five-star general, we trust, has achieved his position because of merit, character, and ability. But you see, here is a lineup of soldiers according to rank. Now the buck private may have a higher IQ than the captain, but he's still a buck private. The corporal may be more handsome than the sergeant, but that doesn't make any difference; he's still the corporal. You see, military rank has nothing to do with personal or private superiority or inferiority. To say that the buck private is inferior because he’s not a private, or that the corporal is inferior because he's not a five-star general, is foolish. In every organization, including Back to the Bible, we have to have rank. There has to be some kind of order, otherwise you have chaos.

Now in the home, it's the same way. Someone has said that everything in the American home is controlled by switches except the children. I don't know how true that is, but there has to be authority in the home. And it has nothing to do with whether the wife is smarter than the husband or the husband is smarter than the wife; it has to do with the order that God has established in the world. I note that there are three areas of submission here: the church should be submitted to Christ, Ephesians 5:24. "Therefore, just as the church is subject"—same word—"to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." The church must be submitted to Christ. Why? Because Christ is the head of the church.

Now he's not talking about some invisible organization somewhere; he's talking about believers right now. And many of the churches met in the homes; they didn't have church buildings back in those days. The church submits to Christ. Believers submit to one another, Ephesians 5:21: "Submitting to one another in the fear of God." The fear of God does not mean that we are cringing; it means that we have reverence for God. We are respecting the order that God has established. Again, it is the military lineup according to rank; it has nothing to do with merit, has nothing to do with the things that the world focuses on. So that no one should think he is inferior. We submit to one another, we submit to Christ.

And this is so important to note that Ephesians 5:21 precedes Ephesians 5:22. Before Paul singles out the wives and says, "Now you submit to your own husbands," he says to every believer, "You submit to one another." That means the husband submits, the children submit. Romans 12:10: "Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another." That's the same thing, isn't it? He tells us very plainly that we are to submit to one another in the fear of the Lord. 1 Peter 5:5: "Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you"—men, women, old, young—"all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud but He gives grace to the humble." Now God has so established the body of Jesus Christ that we need each other and we need to care for each other. 1 Corinthians 12:25: "That there should be no division, no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another."

Wives, submit. Submit to your husbands. It doesn't say submit to all men everywhere. He doesn't say walk around feeling inferior, feeling like a slave. No, what he's saying is you submit to your own husband; you show him respect. Ephesians 5:33: "Let the wife see that she respects her husband." Now the word respect there carries with it the idea of fear. It doesn't mean she fears her husband, that he may hurt her. No, it means show to him the kind of respect, even the kind that you show to the Lord in the fear of the Lord, a reverence and a submission.

Now what's the basis for this? Well, there is a threefold basis for this submission. The first is the lordship of Christ. "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body." The word "as" is used eleven times from Ephesians 5:22 to Ephesians 6:9. Just read through there and mark every time you find "as." Ephesians 5:28: "You husbands love your wives as your own bodies." Ephesians 5:29: "As the Lord does the church." Ephesians 5:33: "Love his own wife as himself." Down in Ephesians 6: "Servants, obey your masters as to Christ. Not as men-pleasers but as the servants of Christ."

Now what's he saying here? He is saying that the Lord must be the head of the home. He must be the head of the husband. Now Paul had no problem with that, in fact he makes that very clear in 1 Corinthians 11:3: "But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." So the man must submit to Christ knowing that Christ is the head of the man.

Now I submit to you that no Christian woman would have a problem submitting to a husband who is submitted to the Lord. The headship of our Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 3:18-21: "Wives, submit to your own husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged." Colossians 3:18 and following is a summary of this whole big section in Ephesians. But the emphasis is this: it's the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Now he's not saying that the husband takes the place of the Lord Jesus Christ. No, the woman is submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ. The man is submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, they have no problem submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord, and they recognize and honor that what they do, they do as unto the Lord.

Now the second basis for this submission is the headship of the husband. Ephesians 5:22, the lordship of Christ; Ephesians 5:23, the headship of the husband. "For the husband is"—not he ought to be, not he should be, not she should let him be—he is. He is the head of the wife. In what sense? "As Christ is head of the church." Now this is not dictatorship; this is headship. The head needs the body and the body needs the head, and the headship of the husband does not suggest the inferiority of the wife. Again I repeat it, and I trust you will grasp it: we are talking here about order. We are talking here about the way God has organized things. And God did it, and we accept it—the lordship of Christ, the headship of the husband.

Thirdly, the fullness of the Holy Spirit of God. Do not divorce Paul's admonitions to husbands and wives from what he had to say to all Christians in Ephesians 5:18-21. "Be filled with the Spirit." Now we're talking here about a spiritual relationship. Marriage is a physical relationship, no question about that. "They two shall become one flesh," Ephesians 5:31. It is a physical relationship. But it ought also to be a spiritual relationship where the husband and the wife minister one to the other for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, filled with the Spirit.

Now when you are filled with the Spirit, we have seen, you are joyful. That takes care of the complaining in the home. Oh, how husbands can complain. We're thankful; that takes care of circumstances and differences. We're submissive. Now this doesn't mean that we give in and say, "Well, you gave in last time, I'll give in this time." There are happy compromises in every home and in every marriage. There are some things I don't especially enjoy doing, like shopping, but there are times you give in and say, "Well, we'll do it." But I should not just give in and say, "Well, I'll endure this evening." No, I should do it as unto the Lord. I should say, "Lord Jesus, for your sake, this makes you happy, I'm going to go and go shopping with my wife." I should so love her and so love my Savior that I'm not going to make a shopping expedition a cause for declaring war.

What is the basis for this submission? The lordship of Christ, the headship of the husband, and the fullness of the Holy Spirit of God. And it results in fulfillment. Where there's subjugation, there's slavery. Where there's submission, there's freedom. When we operate according to God's order, we all know who we are, where we are, what we're supposed to do, and there is growth in an atmosphere of love—speaking the truth in love. And that's why Paul admonishes the wife to submit to the husband in all things. Now when he says everything, of course he doesn't mean if your husband asks you to do something contrary to God's Word, you'll do it. No. What he means is the husband is the head, the wife submits, and he submits, and they both submit to the Lord, and in the fullness of the Holy Spirit of God, they are joyful, they are thankful, they are submissive, and they grow.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Father, for the gifts that You have given to each of us. We're thankful that You have provided for many the mates that they have needed. We pray Your blessing upon Christian homes. Protect them from evil, protect them from the wicked one. We pray for children and grandchildren. Oh, God, bring them to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and help us to be obedient to Your Word, I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.