Supporting Texts: Genesis 1, 2:24, 3:16-19; Daniel 4:34-35; Matthew 26:39; Hebrews 13:4; 1 Peter 3:3-4.
As we have often noted in our previous studies of the book of Ephesians, the epistle takes a dramatic turn at chapter four. Chapters one through three are given to Christian doctrine, whereas chapters four through six are about Christian duty. Now, as we take up the last half of chapter five, the instruction becomes intensely practical as we are given explicit instruction for the Christian home. Here the duties in the home covers the areas of wives, husbands, and at the beginning of chapter six, children and parents.
The exposition of this brief text must be done with measured care, and, honestly, with some trepidation, for several reasons. First, the text teaches that there is a divinely given order in the marriage relationship and uses the word “submit,” which is an incendiary word in today’s western culture. This is the age of liberation and talk about “submission” is today seen as countercultural and suggests for many supposed synonyms like “oppression,” “subjugation,” or “dominance.” In discussing the subject, one runs the risk of being misunderstood and possibly criticized.
Second, because so much of the church has long disregarded the full teaching of the Word of God, many believers find some of its truths to be unfamiliar and even hard to accept. And because the church has been so engulfed in, identified with, and victimized by worldly standards rather than following a biblical worldview, God’s standards seem out-of-date, irrelevant, and offensive to post-modern mentalities. God’s way is so superior and so contrary to the way of the world that it is incomprehensible to many in and out of the church.
Over and over the New Testament calls us to another dimension of existence, a new way of thinking, acting, and living. To “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we have been called,” to be “filled with the Holy Spirit,” and to “put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth,” seems virtually impossible. Yet it is to this high plane of existence to which this context in the book of Ephesians call each one of us.
First, we will establish the biblical worldview that God is in sovereign control of all things, including the past, present, and future governance of the universe; that He has complete control over all things in the human realm, and over each human being. Then we will look at the biblical prescription for Christian wives and conclude with God’s design for believing husbands.
GOD’S UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE. Ephesians 5:21
The Principles of Authority and Submission. God is in charge of all the people and the events that happen. He always has and He always will. I think one of the least understood and least appreciated teachings of the Bible, even among Christians, is God’s complete and total sovereignty. But rather than listening to my thoughts, let me quote to you what a pagan king once said about the One and Sovereign God. When he called God the “Most High,” he meant that He was the supreme and most powerful. This king’s name was Nebuchadnezzar and his words are recorded in the sacred text of Scripture in Daniel 4:34-35, “I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; for His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, “What have You done?” The key words that reflect God’s sovereignty are that “He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth.” God is sovereignly in control of you and me and of everything else.
This biblical fact is also seen in the creation account of Genesis one. That God’s sovereign will is being executed is found every time God says, “Let there be…” “…and there was.” The sovereign God spoke the universe into existence and there was immediate obedience to each one of His commands. When God commanded the waters, it obeyed. Whether God spoke to the fauna or the flora, they immediately responded with obedience and did exactly what the Lord God commanded. On the sixth day God created man in His own image, male and female. Then the Supreme and Sovereign Lord did something for the human race He did with none other. God granted to Adam and Eve a portion of His own dominion and told them to “rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
In His sovereignty, God issued a command to man and woman in which He designated a punishment if they violated His order. When they did sin in rebellion, He did exactly what He promised He would do. He brought enduring punishment on the woman and on the man; a punishment and curse we still feel the effects of today. And they both eventually experienced physical death, a punishment we must all face. Human beings failed to obey God’s authority and paid a terrible price.
The Lord’s Call for Us to Submit to His Authority. God has called every man and woman since the rebellion of Adam and Eve to submit to God’s authority that has been expressed in His Word. Down to this very day, God is still the sovereign authority and we are still called to submit and obey. The Lord Jesus expressed it this way, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:34-36). God still exercises His complete ownership of us and calls us to yield our personal rights and expectations to Him. The Psalmist put it this way, “We are His people and the sheep of His pasture” (Psalm 100:3).
To illustrate this principle given to all believers in Christ to submit to the Lord’s complete authority, we will go into the office of Dr. John MacArthur, who during his many years of ministry in southern California had this paragraph on his desk, “When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and you sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ – that is dying to self. When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence – that is dying to self. When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, and irregularity, or any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus endured it – that is dying to self. When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown – that is dying to self. When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart – that is dying to self.”
The Application of the Principle in the Local Church. Let me draw you back to our study of Ephesians. In chapter five and verse twenty-one, Paul applied this principle of authority and submission. He wrote to all true believers in Christ, “Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” This divine principle that is woven into the fabric of the entire universe is here brought into the church and we are called to obey this truth spiritually and in every other aspect of our lives. The Lord Jesus, the head of the church, has the right of full dominion over each believer and we must yield to Him in all of our thoughts, decisions, and actions.
Paul then sharpened his teaching of authority and submission by applying this principle directly in Christian marriages to both wives and husbands. We are compelled to recognize that Paul connects the marriage relationship of both wives and husbands to the relationship of the Lord Jesus Christ with His church. He is the bride-groom and the church is the bride. He wants our marriages to reflect all the dynamics of His relationship with us.
GOD’S DESIGN FOR WIVES. Ephesians 5:22-24
The Practice of Submission. God’s design for wives is submission. The idea of submission is repeated from the preceding verse where it is applied to all Christians. So, the woman who is married is already supposed to be submissive. Now, her submission is uniquely directed by the Lord. One of the most important requirements for accurate Bible interpretation is to read what is actually written. In these verses, we must first of all recognize that this is not a general principle for all women. Note carefully that it is addressed to wives. These verses are addressed only to the women who are married. Also please note, secondly, that a wife is not being called upon to be subject to all men, but only to “her own husband.”
In the original language, submission means to relinquish one’s rights. It appears here in the middle voice, so it means the willing submission of self. Submission is a voluntary response to the will of God in giving up one’s rights. Jesus Himself expressed this in the Garden of Gethsemane when He said to God the Father, “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). Notice carefully that the wife is not commanded to obey (as are the children). Neither are husbands to treat their wives as servants or a child but as an equal for whom God has given him responsibility for provision and protection which is to be exercised in love.
The Nature of Submission. Perhaps it would be helpful to describe was “submission” does not mean. It does not mean spiritual inequality. Both wife and husband were both saved in exactly the same way – by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and in His death, burial, and resurrection. Both wife and husband have equal opportunities and designs to grow spiritually. Both are called to sanctification and to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Both are called to faithfulness and prayer. There is no inferiority. Wives are not compelled to follow their husbands into sin. Only the Lord Jesus Christ is her supreme authority and the Holy Spirit illuminates her conscience about what is right and well-pleasing to the Lord. True biblical submission of the wife is the disposition to yield in joyful submission in recognition and honor of the husband’s great responsibility to lead the home.
The falling of the human race into sin and rebellion has introduced distortion and corruption into the relationship between husbands and wives. In marriage the husband’s loving, humble headship tends to be replaced by either authoritarian control or passivity. Likewise, the wife’s intelligent, willing submission tends to be replaced by usurpation or servility. The husband’s control on the one hand or passivity on the other are terrible sins against their wives, their families, and the church. In the same way, a wife’s stubborn rebellion – or the opposite – cringing servility is sin. As the Apostle Peter declared, wives and husbands are “fellow heirs of the grace of life” (First Peter 3:7). God intended for them to be companions not adversaries.
The Model of Submission. The great model for the wife regarding submission to her husband is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our text points us to Jesus who is the head of the church. Since the church is subject to Christ, so the wives are to be submissive to their husbands. It would be foolish for anyone to think that the church is head over the One who purchased it with His own blood. A Christian wife and her Christian husband should see their marriage and their home as a partnership. They should pray together and spend time in the Word, so that they might know God’s will for their individual lives and for their home. Most of the marital difficulties I have dealt with as a pastor have stemmed from failure of the husband and or the wife to submit to the Lord Jesus, spend time in His Word, and seek to do His will each day.
GOD’S DESIGN FOR HUSBANDS. Ephesians 5:25-33
The Command to the Husbands: Love Your Wives. Winston Churchill once attended a formal banquet in London at which the attending dignitaries were asked the question, “If you could not be who you are, who would you like to be?” Naturally everyone was curious as to what Churchill, seated next to his beloved Clemmie, would say. When it finally came Churchill’s turn, the old man, who was the dinner’s last respondent to the question, rose and gave his answer. “If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be” – here he paused to take his wife’s hand – “Lady Churchill’s second husband.”
Evidently, Paul had much more to say to Christian husbands than to their wives. The standard he set for them is very high – they are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church. Here, the love of Christian marriage is lifted to the highest level because in marriage Paul saw an illustration between the Lord Jesus and the church. We notice first that this love is sacrificial because Jesus “gave Himself up for her.” In this case He gave Himself up by dying on the cross for the eternal salvation of the husband and wife who have trusted in Him. Since Jesus gave Himself up for the church, the husband must reflect unselfish and sacrificial love for his wife.
This kind of love means that the husband is attentive to his wife. Years ago, there was a story out here on the Great Plains. There was a farmer and his wife who were lying in bed during a dangerous thunderstorm when suddenly the funnel of a tornado ripped the roof off the house and vacuumed their bed up into the sky with them still in it. After several terrifying minutes, the storm set the couple gently down while they were still in the bed. The wife began to cry. The farmer told her not to cry because they were safe. She replied, that she was crying because she was happy. It was the first time in twenty years they had been out together.
This kind of love is purifying. The purpose of Jesus’ death was to make the church holy and pure which He did by cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word. This is not baptismal regeneration for that would be contrary to Paul’s teaching. This is a word picture showing that regeneration is being cleansed by the water of the word, which is the testimony of the Bible regarding salvation through faith in Christ. The ultimate purpose of death of Jesus is to present to Himself the church as glorious, holy, and blameless. The church as the bride of Jesus will be presented to Him at the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb in absolute holy perfection.
This kind of love is caring love. There is something basically wrong in a marriage if the wife is looked at as only a cook, housekeeper, occasional companion or a child-care specialist. She is God’s gift to the husband to be loved, cared for, nourished and cherished. As the church is a vital part of Christ, so is the wife a vital part of her husband. There should be no starvation for love in the Christian home, for the husband and wife should so love each other that all of their needs are met. If both are submitted to the Lord, and to each other, they will be so satisfied that they will not be tempted to look anywhere else for fulfillment.
The Motive of the Husband’s Love for His Wife. The biblical motivation for a husband’s sacrificial, purifying, and caring love for his wife is that it pictures the love the Lord Jesus has for His church. Christian marriage is designed to be a continual illustration of the loving relationship Jesus has for each member of His church. To punctuate God’s command for a husband to love his wife, Paul quotes from Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” This verse shows that marriage is an institution of God’s design, not human.
Paul also tells us that it is a mystery, a truth hidden in the Old Testament but now revealed in the New. This mystery, the glorious picture that no man or woman could discern and that was unknown to the saints of the Old Testament but now is revealed, is great! The husband’s greatest motive for loving, purifying, protecting, and caring for his wife is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in which He purifies, protects, and cares for His own bride – the church. The sacred relationship between Christian husbands and their wives is inextricably related to the sacred relationship between Christ and His church.
Summary of God’s Command for Marriage. Paul brought his teaching on Christian wives and husbands to a conclusion by simply repeating the divine command for husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands.
When Christian husbands and wives are filled with the Holy Spirit, yield to His Word, and His control and are mutually submissive, by God’s grace they are granted much joy, their children are brought many blessings, and the Lord Jesus is brought much honor.
