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You're listening to audio from Faith Church Indy.  This fall we're studying the book of Ephesians,  learning about the new life that we find in Christ.  Now here's the teaching. And so. stand with me as express unity  and attention,  but also respect for this word. reading this morning from Ephesians 5 verses 21 through 33. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 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 and I am saying that  it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. When we are in Kenya,  we miss you.  the body of Christ is an amazing thing. My name is Mark Dunker. With my wife Alyssa, we live in Nairobi, Kenya, and we have been there training pastors. We've been training pastors in East Africa since 2005. And so we are thrilled to have been sent out by this body as missionaries.  We teach at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School  of Theology, uh NEXT,  and  we've been training pastors for a long time.  And we  really love uh doing this.  One of the classes  that  we started teaching years ago was a class on marriage and family,  and this  has become, for me,  the most significant uh part of my ministry there, uh but I'm not doing it alone, thankfully. This is actually a class that my wife and I  teach together. And Ephesians five, that passage that you just heard, that is uh something that we cover. We actually spend about three hours  in Ephesians five, so I hope that you had a good breakfast, because we'll be here for a while. We actually, if you notice that passage is quite long, and just so you know what's happening, Pastor Jeff said, it's too much for one week. So there will be two weeks on this passage. I'll be talking to you husbands today, and Jeff will be speaking with, or focused on what Paul says to to  wives. But when Ruth read the passage, she started with that word submit. And I know that for  many of us, when we think about this passage and the idea  of uh wife, submit to your husband, automatically red flags, right?  We can just throw this whole thing out,  Clearly, Paul was speaking at a different time. ah And yes, he was. He was speaking at a different time. But when we think about a wife submitting or a husband being the head,  I'm not sure that  our understanding or thought about what this passage is  is  really what Paul was trying to say. Now,  as a husband,  I wanna know how to husband well. I wanna know what I'm supposed to do, how I'm supposed to live. And so I come to a passage like this  and  I'm told, okay, yeah, the husband's the head. Well, what  does the head mean? There are so many things that we are taught about marriage. Some of it's really good. Some of it not so much. Now in Kenya we don't have a car. We've chosen not to have a car. Uber's really easy. So  one Sunday after church, get in the Uber and the Uber driver's listening to this guy teaching. And he's kind of going off  on young men who are being passive. I was, yeah, okay, this is good. But then he said this. said,  guys, if you don't have a vision, Don't start dating. If you don't have a vision for your life, you cannot get together with a woman. Why? Because if you get married, what's your wife gonna do? How is she gonna help you fulfill your vision if you don't have a vision? I thought, wait a minute. Is that all a wife's good for? Helping the husband to  achieve  his vision.  And this is one of the few times that the Uber driver was a woman. And I just thought, you've got someone. from a biblical perspective, at least that's what it was supposed to be, from a biblical perspective saying, woman, you have value if you help your husband to achieve what God has called him to. I think God has something much bigger than just that. So as we look at this passage, and again, this whole idea of  submission, a couple things. First, some of you, you're not married. You're like, this passage isn't relevant. Well,  I hope we'd see that it's relevant, and  a couple reasons, but probably the biggest thing is because marriage is so important. And  our  community here as a church  is going to be stronger when our marriages are stronger. So it's kind of important that we get this thing right. But another thing, unfortunately, this is  one of those passages that people have used as a weapon. The idea that a woman,  she needs to submit, and the man is the leader. And Paul told us this in Ephesians five, so  we know what it's supposed to be like. And so, if you have ever been told, whether directly or indirectly, that you have less value. because you need to submit and your husband or the man is the leader,  I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that that's the way that this passage has been used. That's not what Paul's talking about here. This is not a passage about hierarchy. Paul's doing something  different here,  and I think as we look at this passage, we're going to have a better understanding  of a gospel-centered marriage. So again,  if you haven't turned there yet, Ephesians five is where we're at. I'm gonna be jumping over some things,  because  the exact same passage is going to be preached uh next week with Pastor Jeff. uh But I'm gonna be focusing on you husbands, husbands to be. um Not that I don't care about you ladies, but that's just  the way this got separated. um But if we're gonna understand what Paul was saying here, we need to go back into the context. Now, if you're a guest here, you might not know, but the church has been preaching through the book of Ephesians.  jumped out of it for a few weeks over Christmas. The church recently went through, and if you look in chapter five, verse 15, Paul writes, look carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. So we are supposed to  live in a way that's wise, uh not being foolish, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.  I don't wanna be a fool. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna be a fool. And then,  Right here in verse 18, and this is key, Paul writes, don't get drunk with wine, don't allow alcohol to control you, instead be filled with the Spirit. So as we look at this  teaching to husbands and wives, we need to remember that the context is  men being led by the Spirit of God, women being led by the Spirit of God. Because if I'm acting out in my flesh, my selfish desires,  then I can turn to this passage and try to use it to get what I want. But if I'm being led by the Spirit, then hopefully I'm allowing God to  lead me  in how I husband, how  I function  as  a  husband. So we see in the context here in this passage, this teaching to husbands  and wives comes in the context of being filled by the Holy Spirit, allowing God's Spirit to lead us. But there's another context that's going on, and  the context of the Greco-Roman world,  this world that Paul was writing into, what people  thought, this idea of  head, people talked about head. The husband has head, the emperor was the head. People  understood this. ah And there's actually this, uh a genre, kind of like a template ah that Paul is using here. It's something called the Household Codes. The Household Codes. Many ancient philosophers, including Aristotle, wrote  with this kind of template, and here's what it was. You free men.  To know how  to live right and to be the dominant authority, you need to know  how to interact with the weak people around you, your slaves, your children, and your wives. Okay? So,  as head, as head,  make sure  that you are relating to these  weaker people in a way that's going to  build yourself up. and make sure that you stay on top. When Jesus came. Jesus showed us something  different. He changed our understanding of leadership. So now in the church sometimes we say, oh yeah, Jesus came. Now we're supposed to be servant leaders, right? Servant leadership, have you heard that? That's not in the Bible. It's actually a business concept. Jesus didn't just come and say, hey, take leadership and what you've thought and just change it just a little bit. No, leadership becomes servant. completely  turned around. Paul's doing the same thing here. And Paul's doing the same thing when he talks about head, but one of the ways that we can see that he's doing something really different is that he  did something here that nobody in history has ever done. He spoke to those weaker people, slaves, children, wives. He spoke to them  as people.  who have  value. So  I just really wanna encourage us as we dig in, if you've got some baggage, which  is probably legitimate, if you've got some baggage around this  passage, I'm really sorry. And one thing though,  I'm gonna skip the whole submit thing. So if that's where the baggage is, you're gonna have to come back next week  and uh Jeff will discuss that. But when we ask our students in Kenya, what does it mean to be the head? I think the answers are probably similar to what we would get here. Well, the head means the husband's the leader. He's the authority, he's the decision maker. May I ask you question? Where in this passage do you see that the husband gets 51 % of the vote? Or anywhere in the Bible, do you see that? Well, but here's the thing, every structure, right, there has to be a hierarchy, because without a hierarchy, there's chaos. So, okay, maybe wives are valuable, the way God put the men on top, as the leaders, as the authorities, the women below, and so, yeah, you can decide things together, but if you ever disagree, well, he's got 51 % of the vote.  Here's what one of our students actually in Tanzania said. When a couple has a communication problem because they have different priorities, the husband takes a shortcut. He becomes a dictator. Now we probably wouldn't use the word dictator, but if ultimately my vote is the only one that matters.  Maybe there's a problem there. Maybe this idea of head,  maybe this isn't exactly what Paul meant. Now if we just look at the context,  what we see in the passage here, think Paul's telling us something different about head, not the idea  of the one who  self-exalts. but someone different. Verse 23, 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. So we see that Paul connects the idea of  husband as head with Jesus as savior. I shouldn't have to say this, but this is not saying that the husband in any way is a savior to his wife. uh The roles,  They're compared, but they're different. Only one Savior, Jesus Christ. But we see,  we see when we think about Jesus as savior that he came, Luke chapter two, right? A child is born, a savior.  He didn't become the savior when he died on the cross. He came as savior, right? And so we see then that Jesus lived a sinless life,  went to the cross,  died because of his love for us, for the church. So emperor in the Greco-Roman culture, the emperor as head, he was on top and the body, it was their job to protect the head. Paul flips that whole thing upside down and we see that it's the head's job to protect, to love, to die for the body. So when we get this idea of husband as head, our first thought, we go to leader and authority, but  I don't see that in this passage here. Now what does this mean? Does this mean that As a husband, I need to die for my wife?  most of us probably, husbands, we probably won't die for our wives.  You're probably ready, hey, someone comes in, I'm gonna jump in front of that bullet and save my wife. I'm sorry, Honda, I guarantee you I'm not fast enough to jump in front of a bullet, right?  But that's how we want to live, right? That I would sacrifice myself, my life for my wife. But when I'm listening to my book or reading some article on the phone and you walk in and wanna talk, I'm not sure I really have time for you right now because I'm busy doing my own thing. It's really easy to think about the big kind of dying. But what about the day to day, choosing  my wife first? Jesus. He's God, he could have said, eh, actually I'm not really interested in the cross. I'd rather just be the leader, no, he chose to do something hard because of his deep love for the church. That  is the call to us  as husbands. jumping down to  a  little further, let's go to verse 28. And I'm skipping a lot, I know I'm skipping a lot. uh I encourage you to dig into this passage  on your own. But in verse 28 it says, the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies, he who loves his wife loves himself. I think this is really interesting, Paul was doing something where it  says, should love their wives. uh They should. To be honest? don't necessarily always feel loved. But Paul doesn't say, if you're feeling the warm fuzzies, that's awesome. No, Paul says a husband should love his wife. This is what I'm supposed to do. So if I'm struggling to love my wife right now because of that argument we had on the way to church or. because of that thing that happened years ago and I'm still struggling about,  I don't need to love her based upon who she is or what she's doing.  I am called to love her because she's my wife and I should love her. Now, we might say, okay,  I get that, but basically what we see is the husband is the head and one of the ways that he's the head is that he's supposed to love her. I don't think that's what Paul was doing. I don't think the focus was on the headship of the husband. Why? Because this is a chiasm. Isn't that awesome? My wife said yes. Do you know what a chiasm is? Now, it was a long time ago that I went to school, but I had to learn how to write an essay and how to write a paragraph. What do you do in a paragraph? The first sentence is what? The topic sentence. This is your most important sentence. And all of the other stuff, it points to that. So in our type of literature, generally, what comes first? And also what comes last, this is most important. But  in a chiasm, and this is something we see it in the Old Testament, it's here in the New Testament, ah but a lot more in the Old Testament, chiasm becomes  the word for X, uh but it's kind of like an arrow. Kind of like an arrow, and the way a chiasm works, what an author would do is says something at the beginning and says something at the end that are balanced or connected, and you see that. But then  as you move, through that passage and you see that balance? It's again like an arrow pointing to what's most important. So let's quickly go through this. If you look at verse 21, look at verse 21, it says submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. I know this is really small, but it's a long passage. And I've cut some things out. I'm not trying to be loose with the text, but I just, you know, trying to focus us here. But Paul starts this passage with the word reverence. And he ends it with the word respect. Well,  they're actually the same Greek word. So he's showing us that these things are connected. Then when we move to  the next verse, uh into verse 23, we see Paul's talking about husband and wife and Christ and the church. And down in verses 31 and 32, we see the same thing, man, wife, Christ and the church. Okay, let's dig in a little deeper.  And  the next verse it says,  where it talks about Christ being the head of the church, his body. Body's an interesting word, but we also see down in verse 30 that we are members of his body. Okay, let's go in one more. And we see here that the church submits to Christ, okay, Christ and the church, the church. We see the same thing here in verse 29 about Christ and the church. And so all of this, this balance is kind of pointing us to the middle. What does verse 28 say? Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. So  us Westerners, we don't necessarily see  that structure, but Paul's readers would have seen  that what Paul is emphasizing here, sorry, Jeff, I know you're not here today, but I'm kind of taking a little bit of your thunder from next week, because that's not as important as this right here. Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. and he who loves his wife  loves himself. That's the call for husbands, sacrificial love. Sacrificial love is the key in marriage. This idea of  loving their wives as their own bodies, he who loves his wife loves himself. Now that second part there, he who loves his wife loves himself. Does that sound familiar  to you, anything there? Someone came and asked Jesus, what's the most important commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart. soul, and strength. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Here's a question. Who is your closest neighbor? That's that person that you're sleeping next to every night. Right? Our spouse is our closest neighbor. Now,  Jesus wasn't saying, hey, here's two great commandments, you know, try to do one or the other. think what Jesus was saying is,  we are called to love God, and  as you are loving God, what's gonna happen? You're gonna love your neighbor. Love for your neighbor is going to come from that, but I think it's also connected, looking at the other way. If I'm not loving my neighbor, I'm showing that I'm not truly loving God. And so if I'm not loving my spouse, I'm not loving God. So  how a husband treats his wife is central to his relationship to the Lord. And I think that's pretty mind blowing  as we look at that here. Jumping down to verse 34, and you see the quotation marks here, is Paul is quoting from Genesis chapter two, and it says, it says,  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 and I'm saying that it refers to Christ  and the church. So going back to  that Genesis two passage of husband and wife leaving,  becoming united,  and becoming one flesh,  what God was saying back in Genesis, but what Paul is emphasizing here is you've got that man, you've got that woman. Two people, they come together and something new is formed. This thing called a marriage. You've got now this  marriage. It doesn't mean that I'm not still me and my wife's not her, but I am  now different and the way I live my life needs to be different because of my  marriage, my relationship with Christ. The two becoming  one flesh. And I think this is fascinating that it's connected to this verse 32 that this mystery is profound, the two becoming one in a marriage. This mystery is profound. Mystery doesn't mean mysterious. Mystery in the Bible means God had this truth that was hidden for a time  until he's ready to make it known.  And so the mystery is profound. I'm saying it refers to Christ in the church. My marriage, your marriage, is supposed to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. So when people look at us as Christians,  and they look at our marriages, they are supposed to see Christ. They are supposed to see his  faithful  love for his bride, the church. And friends, this is one reason why adultery is so damaging. It's damaging for many reasons. But when we commit adultery, what we are saying  is that faithfulness of Christ,  that's not important because I made this commitment to my wife, but now, I wanna do something else.  What if God acted that way towards us? Yeah, I called you, yeah, I saved you, but, eh You're annoying me, I kinda wanna  go find someone else. No,  that's not who God is. That's not the way God acts. So for us as husbands, we can't act that way either. We have one bribe. and how we love her.  speaks to the world  of who  God So I need to be really careful. I need to evaluate my own life and say, how am I living  as a husband? And if I'm just gonna act in my flesh, to be honest, I'm gonna make a lot of decisions  about how I'm going to be happy, how  I'm going to get what  I want. Because that's kind of the way we go. But remember the context here is people who are filled by the Holy Spirit  because we have a relationship with Christ. Unfortunately, there's a lot of  marriage advice out there, and whether it's a book like uh His Needs, Her Needs, or Love and Respect,  or the five love languages, I'm... There may be some helpful things in some of these, but here's the problem. As a sinful person,  when I read something like this, we see it here in verse 33, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Okay, my wife needs to respect me, right? The book Love and Respect, the love she most desires, the respect he desperately needs. So if this is what I need, then if I don't feel I'm getting it from my wife, there's a problem. And if she's not respecting me the way that I think I deserve, that I need, then I don't need to love her the way that she desires. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with us? When we choose our own  selfish desires and even use God's word. so that we can get what we want instead of saying, hey, what have I been called to here? I've been called to love my wife like Christ loved the church. Paul didn't say love your wife like Christ loved the church  as long as she's submitting to you,  as long  as  she's respecting you. The call to us as husbands, men or future husbands, The call to us  is to love  like Christ loved the church. It's not to love depending on who she is  and what we think. God's  sacrificial love for us was simply because He  chose to love us and it's not based upon  our goodness or holiness.  If it was, we'd all be in trouble. So the call to us as husbands is to sacrificially love our wives because sacrificial love is the key in marriage. So we see that Paul here has redefined headship. This passage is not about being the leader or authority. This passage is about being the lead servant, the one who is going to  sacrifice and love  just like Jesus. Maybe you're feeling some tension, husbands, like, wait a minute,  but I'm called,  I keep being told I need to be the leader. I'm not speaking against  that right now, but I don't think this idea of being head  speaks about being the leader. The idea about being head speaks about how we are supposed to love like Christ. We're not all husbands here, I get that. Okay. I didn't go into it, but there is a special call for wives to submit to their husbands. That's verse 22. But in verse 21, we see submit to one another. There's a wider call in the body of Christ to submit to one another. I think the same thing is happening here. There's a special call for husbands to sacrificially love their wives. But we know as believers, we are all called to love one another. Loving one another as Christ loved the church is not  only something for men, even though there's a special call for that. Back to husbands here. As you think about yourself, do you look more like the Greco-Roman husband or the emperor who is on top and expecting the body to serve you while you keep your dominance? or more like Jesus. Christopher Ashe wrote, the shape of marriage for the husband is the shape of the. if we want to love God well. We are going to love our wives. like Christ loved the church.  Let's pray. God forgive me,  I make so many decisions  based upon what works for me. God, I want to love my wife and I want to love others  the way you loved. God, I pray that this church would be a place where marriages are strong, where wives are protected, where  the community can look and see,  God's doing something there because I see it in their marriages. God, you alone are worthy of our worship. We love you and pray this in Jesus' name. Thank you for engaging with our community by checking out this podcast.  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