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Hey, you're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the north side of Indianapolis.  My name is Claire Kingsley.  And I'm Dan Breitwieser. Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message.  Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation,  and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening. Hey Jeff, good morning. um Welcome back to Cut for Time. It's been like two months really. feels like a while since we've recorded one of these. So, yeah, we take a little break in Advent  just to try and encourage people to slow down the pace and be more reflective and try and have a  more simple, quiet Advent. But I'm glad to be back to Cut for Time and talking about the passage together. And it's a two for one special because we're going to cover last week and this week. So um yeah, Mark wasn't able to um do comfort time because he flew back to Kenya the next day. um Which is not a comment on  how he did preaching and her handling the text. Yeah. I wish it would have worked out. It just did it. And that's OK.  Yeah, pushing.  So we're going to just talk and chat about both last week's focus and this week's focus  on this Ephesians 5  section. So before we do, Why don't you just give us a review from this passage as a whole? Yeah. So, uh, we reminded ourselves that, uh, coming in the  coming into this passage,  beginning of chapter five, Paul has been talking to us about how we live out,  what it means that we're new in Christ and all that he has done. And he calls us to, to walk in wisdom, to walk in the light, to to walk uh in love  and then this commanded verse 21 to submit to one another out of reverence or Christ, which  I  really do strongly believe. think it is a heading for it both summarizes that flow of where he's been in chapter five and is as an introduction to this whole next section that we, you know, it's typically called like the household codes.  How does Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ get worked out  in marriage and in parenting  and uh even in slave master relationships, which were the reality at the time. So Paul in this section that we spent a couple of weeks looking at is talking about how does being new people in Christ affect how we relate to one another as husbands and wives.  And  he calls  in the context of mutual submission, calls wives to submit to husbands and husbands to lovingly, sacrificially lead, just like Christ has led the church.  And I think it's significant  just as Christ relates to the church. And in fact, he even draws this parallel between  Christ and the church and husbands and wives inside marriage and  talks about this as kind of a mystery.  I think in a sense, the thing that I was trying to highlight  last Sunday that  would also maybe be a summary even for what Mark was getting at is the gospel center of marriage reflects Christ's character.  That's Paul's intent that as husbands and wives, as we're living out this unique relationship with each other, that together we're imaging what it means to look like Jesus and how we fulfill the unique roles that we have inside marriage. And it's not unique roles  that Paul even really specifically defines. And it doesn't follow along traditional lines of like, well, you know, women are supposed to raise children at stay at home and be homemakers. Not that that's wrong or bad, but that's not where he goes. And it's not, he's not saying like, and men go out and, you know, provide for their wives.  And he does say that in other places, but here he's really talking about the, the dynamics within the marriage of how   the husband as a head of a wife exercises that headship. What does that role look like? And it's defined as  sacrificial, self-giving love for the good of the wife.  And Paul highlights that in  extensive, like he has a lot more to say to husbands than he says to wives.  That  just as Christ, uh in fact, I think at the center of the passage, as Mark was pointing out uh the week before, at the center of the passage, the focus is on Christ's sacrificing himself to give himself for the church, to sanctify her, to make her glorious and beautiful and whole and holy. And  his argument is that in some ways that's  what husbands are called to do. We're not saviors in our families in that sense, of course, but we're called to lay down our lives and our preferences in order to   sacrifice ourselves for the things that will build up, that will bring life and joy and wholeness and flourishing and spiritual growth to our lives. And in that context, wives are called to reflect at the same time, the submission of Christ to the Father. Wives are called, just as Jesus said, to say, my will, but your will be done, which of course can be open for a lot of misunderstanding and potential abuse. But if husbands are actually leading sacrificially and loving their wives for their own good, wives are also imaging Christ  in saying, okay, I'm entrusting myself to this person that God has put in a position of leadership in the home. And as husbands and wives do that together, we are picturing what Christ actually looks like in a way that affirms Submission is not just a cultural role or a societal expectation, but it's actually a reflection of what Jesus is like. And  the gospel itself reframes how we think about authority. Authority is not about getting to be in charge so that I can get my way, which is something I think we all struggle with. Authority in that sense and leadership is about dying daily to ourselves for the sake of others.  in a way that safeguards each other and looks for the dignity and the flourishing and the  good of each other. Because our identity fundamentally together is in Christ and not in these roles as husbands and wives, which,  you know, we didn't even,  if something was cut for time.  reality is, I mean, we get these hints that marriage in some sense maybe doesn't even exist in the eternal state, that marriage is kind of a a temporary relationship here that certainly impacts us.  but the Jesus and his apostles sort of hint that like in heaven, there's not going to be giving and taking in marriage. So  yeah, that's a whole other big discussion that we don't have time to get into. But in the context of this covenant relationship that we enter into both husbands and wives are partners  in  reflecting Christ like identity and how we relate to one another in submission and self giving loving leadership. And that as we do that, we're actually picturing to the world what the gospel is like. So I'm going to ask you to as simply as you can fill in the blank or finish the sentence that I start for you. Okay. All right. So based on this text and our study of it the last two weeks, How would you finish the sentence? Biblical submission is? Willing surrender of my rights  to the loving leadership of another. Okay, so in that, didn't hear you say anything about a man or a woman's role or anything like that. You're saying this is mutual. Yeah, because as part of what I tried to point out too is we're all called to submit. One, just even in verse 21. As members of the congregation, we're called to submit to those who are in authority over us.  We're called to submit to governing authorities. We're obviously all called to submit to the board. So submission is not something that's just  at all about women or about wives. It's  a fundamental character of what it means to reflect the image of Jesus. Okay. Okay. How about this one? Biblical headship is? Loving self-sacrifice.  were the good of another. That's how Jesus exercises authority in the church because Paul brings that out.  When he highlights that Christ is head, he's saying  as savior, this is how Christ's headship gets worked out in relation to us. Is this specifically for men? Because you said for another again, so I'm just  asking and clarifying, is this  mutual or are you saying this is for a man?  Oh, yeah.  Well, in the marriage covenant, yes, it is. um And I think we had a question that came in too about, uh is this about men and women in general or about just husbands and wives? And Paul's pretty clear, he's talking about husbands and wives in this covenant relationship. Because remember, he's going back, as we saw in the passage, all the way to Genesis to say that two become one.  So. That's not true at all of just male female relationships in the church, right? Like that's a unique joining together of lives and identities  in marriage that is not parallel in other ways. So  in that relationship, yes, the husband exercises headship as loving sacrifice and leadership of the family of wives and children.  in a way that reflects Christ's self-giving of himself for the church. But that's not generally true. Like I'm not the head  of you, Claire, or any other woman in the congregation. I'm the head in a uh mysterious,  unique sense of my wife Amelia,  as I'm called to lead by lovingly sacrificing for her good. Right here. Okay. What about this one? Biblical headship is not. Oh yeah, biblical hitch up is not getting my way. It's not demanding my rights. It's not simply asserting my preference for things. It's not certainly not domineering. It's not demanding. It's not imposing. Because think about again, how does Jesus lead his church? And we looked at the passage in John 13 where Jesus stoops down to wash his dirty, dung-covered disciples' feet and says, yes, I am your teacher and your Lord, and  I'm showing you what it means to be in a position of authority.  I think Paul is drawing very clearly on all these things that Jesus has told us before.  James and John come and they want positions of authority in the kingdom, and Jesus is saying, Guys, you just, you don't get it. Like my kingdom is inverting all of our worldly ideas about authority and leadership.  It's not about being on top of the pyramid so that people underneath me are subject to my command. It's about  loving and serving and giving.  The  least shall be the greatest in the kingdom and your servant shall be the greatest among you. Jesus says that he's telling us clearly what headship and leadership looks like in the kingdom. And I think we just, we all struggle to wrap our heads around it because we just don't see it in the world. There's just, it's not modeled for us well. And that's why Jesus is calling us to a different kind of authority and understanding of headship.  In Mark's  message last week, he said something like, there's awesome stuff going on grammatically, but I'm going to leave that for Jeff. What was he referring to? And did you have time to, uh, you know, expound upon that this past Sunday? Yeah, you kind of, you kind of set me up for that, right? Uh, so one, yes, I think he, he marked it a great job, I think. And I referenced it a little bit, the, the, this chiastic structure, the, you're going to envision the letter X where you, the arrows are kind of pointing in towards the middle at the center. And the center is often where the most important idea is. And that's that idea of. Christ giving himself up willingly for the sake of loving, saving, and sanctifying his bride. I think that is really the core argument of this passage that helps us make sense of headship and submission. There's also a couple of other interesting, just linguist-saking grammatical things going on. I touched on it briefly, I think maybe in second hour, maybe not as much in first hour, but even the command in verse 24 about a wife should submit to their husbands is not an indicative command.  It's not a, says the Lord grammatically, it's a, this is what should happen. This is what I'm calling on wives to do, it doesn't have the same force as kind of a direct, inscribed on stone for Mount Sinai kind of command.  And then thirdly, it's interesting and significant that Paul does not call wives to obey their husbands in the way that we're going to see this week that children are called to obey their parents. And that's significant because I think Paul's again,  underscoring this idea of partnership, going back to Genesis and being one flesh together.  And we're united together as husband and wife in a way that, you know, I think Paul would say, how can we even think about  domination or surrender in the context of being one flesh? We're one new entity together. doesn't even,  the concept of like control and who gets to decide doesn't even make sense if we're one together in this unique relationship. So I think that's, you know, there's some things there that Paul is doing grammatically and textually that point us in that direction too. Yeah.  Um, you know, the, just going off of what you said, um, just being one flesh, it kind of, um, oh is interesting then when we talk a lot of our conversation in this passage ends up somehow with the debate between complementarian and egalitarian, which how would you explain this debate and where does faith church fall? Oh, Well, OK. So one thing to recognize is this passage Paul's talking particularly about the relationship in a marriage. covenant, right? He's not talking about roles in the church.  He does talk about that in other passages, but I think it's important for us to even just recognize this passage is not talking about roles in the church.  It's talking about a husband and wife and how we're imaging Christ together  in marriage, particularly. uh So yes,  that's a perfectly valid question. uh just the short answer is in the EFCA, we would say we hold to a complementarian position in the sense that of complementarian in terms of certainly in terms of church roles and structure that we think Paul is clear in saying that men are called to be elders and pastors. And that's not a role or a function that God has entrusted to women for whatever reason. But in a sense, maybe it does parallel kind of the marriage relationship in the loving sacrificial leadership and the willing submission that we're called to.  How do we make sense of the complementarian, egalitarian?  I think,  I mean, I understand the egalitarian argument because Paul is saying also in Christ, there's no male or female, and we have equal worth and value in Christ. That's absolutely true. And we absolutely affirm that.  I certainly affirm that, and I believe it. And I think  God wants to encourage us to see that women are equal recipients of God's grace. They're equally gifted and called for ministry. but those roles and functions may work out differently for men and women in terms of how God structures his church and even how God structures the home, for example.  I think part of the problem is, and I touched on this a little  on Sunday,  we've kind of framed the debate for ourselves as complementarian and egalitarian, and you have to choose one or the other, and which side do you fall on? And I'm not sure those are really the best reflections of what Paul is getting at here. ah I mean, I understand  why,  historically, sociologically, theologically, why we've sort of defined things that way.  But I'm going to argue, I'm not even sure that those are, we're kind of coming to the Bible  with an argument that we framed ourselves and asking Paul or Jesus to line up with us. I'm not sure that-   Complementarian or egalitarian,  either one really best describes what Paul is picturing here.  I'm a complementarian,  I mean, because practically  we have to make decisions about who gets ordained and who's an elder.  So  yes, I affirm that a complementarianism for sure in that way. But  I think it's also the arguments missing something uh bigger and broader and more kingdom focused and more uh gospel reflective, then  kind of we want to boil it down to putting putting people into a box. So  when it comes to marriage  and this  complimentary and egalitarian, do you think that this is something that  a marriage relationship should define or probably have other people defined it? Or do you think it's not super important?  No, I think it's very important and I think it is going to look different. for individual couples within a range though.  And the thing to keep in mind  is, okay, doesn't, Paul's not saying there's no distinction  and  anyone can do whatever they want, obviously,  but within  those boundaries of husbands being called to  step into this role of headship  as  self-sacrificing leadership and wives being called. Even though we're submitting to one another, wise being called  to reflect Christ in the willing submission to the Father's will.  If those are the guard rails or the boundaries in a sense, there's still a lot of freedom and flexibility that couples have in terms of how that works out. But it doesn't mean uh literally, you know, anything goes because yeah, I mean, I think there's an argument that  on the one hand, we can see maybe directions in culture and maybe even the church that  People are just some even legitimately saying, yeah, we need to get back to more intentional patriarchy and men need to just  drive and be in control and tell their wives the way things are going to be. And I don't think that's what Paul is saying at all. I mean, that doesn't reflect mutual submission or  loving self-sacrificial leadership. On the other end, I don't think we say, well, you know, it doesn't matter  because that can tend towards sort of male passivity.   maybe women in some ways taking on a role of leadership in the home that they're not called to.  It's meant to be in the context of husbands and wives submitting to each other, calling each other, encouraging each other to live out these roles  with confidence and faith and trust in each other.  And, you know, when you get down to the  details of like, who's, you know, going out and earning a living and who's caring for kids,  I think that can look like different things, right? Like I think within biblical headship and willing submission, you could legitimately have a husband say like, I think God is calling me to lead my family by staying at home and raising our kids. If my wife feels also called that  she's been gifted and equipped to go out and  earn the living for the family.  I don't think that's,  you can't just...  automatically say that's not authority and submission.  I think it comes that could be an option  if both partners are in agreement with that and they're both recognizing this is what headship and submission looks like in our family. Neither one is demanding that. Neither one is drawing a hard line in the sand.  So  I think there's plenty of ways that it can get worked out. I think the main thing is that both partners are trying in their own way and together to talk through and work out how are we going to reflect  loving sacrificial leadership for the husband and willing submission on the part of the wife. And if that's the attitude,  if that's the heart posture and the attitude  that the partners have together, it can look like so many different things.  And that's where I think we've got to be careful not to  fall into you know, just easy answers of, well, headship and submission means men always do this and wives always do that.  I think it's  I think  that's where complementarian and egalitarian maybe don't help us so much because they tend to fall into flattening out uh the richness and the variety  and  that God has in the body of Christ and how we're gifted and called. There's a dance  in which one partner's leading and another partner's following, but we're dancing together.  And  the goal is that we're operating together  well to reflect something beautiful in a way that's life-giving and honoring for both of us, reflecting our gifts and abilities within the context of husbands being called to self-sacrificial leadership  and wives being called to submission to that kind of leadership that the husband is giving.  Well, Jeff, we are cut for time. So  if there's anything else that you uh want to leave us with, you've got approximately one minute.  Oh, man. ah Yeah. So here's the answer to marriage and roles  in 30 seconds or less.  No, I think it's if anything, maybe  leading off to the last thing I was just talking about, which is that the most important thing is for husbands and wives to be talking about this together and,  uh, sincerely  working with each other. And sometimes, you know, of course conflict is going to happen in marriage and particularly around  how these roles get worked out. And we're part of the body of Christ to help each other in those ways. I'm thankful that we have a lot of godly people here who've been married a long time and we have a lot of younger couples and we have a lot of people have been married decades and we're still trying to figure it out.  one is  don't overlook the  blessing and the resource that we have in the body of Christ of being able to talk with others about how this gets worked out.  Let's recognize it's not going to look the same for all of us. And the most important thing is for us as husbands and wives together to be  talking with each other and intentional about how we're trying to pursue those roles within marriage in a way that is building unity and reflecting  what Jesus is like as he's transforming us together. right. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for your time today. Thank you, Claire. It's been fun.  Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time.  If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon,  you can email them to podcast at faithchurchindie.com  or  text them in to our faith church texting number  and we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode.  If this conversation blessed you in any way,  we encourage you to share it with others.  We'll be back again next week.