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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. reading of God's Word from Ephesians chapter 5. This is the exact same text that we had last week. It's a uh big enough one, an important enough one to give two weeks to.  so Pastor Jeff will continue with that after we read the passage. Hear  God's word, would you? It's on page 1162 if you're using the Bible provided. Otherwise, you're on your own. uh Hear God's word. Submitting to one another, beginning verse 21, submitting 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're 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'm 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. This is the word of the Lord. You know, there are  some passages of Scripture that are difficult for us, not because they're unclear, but maybe because they're actually too familiar. We think we already know what they say. I think this passage in Ephesians 5 is one of those kinds of passages of Scripture.  Many of us hear it and we immediately rush to either defend it or dismiss it or ignore it or downplay it or  soften it or survive it. For some of us,  the passage has been used  carelessly and hurtfully. For others, it's just been ignored. This morning I want us to slow down and  hear this  word to us from the Lord again, particularly Paul's word to wives  and to hear it as the way his first hearers would have heard it. And when we do,  I think we may be surprised not by how restrictive Paul is, but actually by how radical and life-giving his message is.  We're used to hearing this passage to going to it in the middle of a long loud debate in our culture complementarian versus egalitarian and  power versus equality and authority versus rights  But Paul is not writing into our debates. He's writing actually into a profoundly  male-dominated hierarchical society  and Into that world Paul does something It's actually  surprising and a little revolutionary. He addresses wives  directly, not through their husbands, not as dependents, but as moral agents, as people of worth, people who are able to understand the gospel and respond in faith and order their lives to follow Jesus. And that alone should slow us down.  encourage us to reconsider what we maybe are bringing into this passage. But the passage is not primarily even about wives.  Last week,  Mark Dunker took us through  the later part of this section, looking primarily at God's word to husbands. But we're going to look today at God's word to wives. And yet the context  is really about something bigger. It's about how the gospel reshapes marriage. Now,  let's give ourselves a little bit of context, quick refresher.  The first half of Ephesians chapters one through three, Paul has really focused on what God has done for us in Christ. And now in the second half of Ephesians chapter four through six,  Paul is talking about how we live in response to that, how we live as God's people who have been made genuinely new, how we live out that identity in Christ. In chapter five, in the beginning, remember, Paul has oh called us as followers of Jesus to walk in a way that reflects that we are new people, to walk in love, to walk as children of light, to walk as wisdom. And all of that comes together in verse 21. And in our ESV, it's sort of written as ending a sentence, but  the command there is essentially to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Verse 21 is the summary of what Paul has just said, but it's also the introduction to what's going to follow. This whole long section of instructions on how we live out our discipleship to Jesus, our following Him in the context of ordinary, everyday relationships, and how our faith in Jesus transforms those relationships. I think that's what Paul is getting at here. If we could summarize it, I would say, Paul's point is that gospel centered marriage  reflects Christ's character. Gospel centered marriage reflects Christ's character. And that's true for both husbands and wives as we're going to see.  But let's jump in. If you haven't turned there already,  we're in Ephesians chapter five on page 24 if you have your Ephesians journal.  First thing,  Paul is saying this. Submission is a Christ-like response, not a cultural role. Submission is a Christ-like response, not a cultural role. He starts out in verse 22 saying, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now before we either get our defenses up or want to rush into defining submission, let's pause and notice something more important, namely that Paul addresses wives directly. Household codes were well known in the ancient world. Aristotle wrote them, the Romans adapted them through their cultures, Jewish writers in Jesus' time  put them into their own cultural context. But in  every case, instructions were written  only to the male head of the household about what they were to do, what they were to demand, what they were to expect. Wives were spoken about. They were never spoken to. Their obedience was assumed. not encouraged or nurtured. You know, there's a big difference between being spoken about and being spoken to, right? Maybe you had the experience of uh a workplace meeting happening in which maybe your job or decisions that are going to affect you are being discussed, but you're not part of the conversation. Or maybe there's been a family discussion going on, things that are going on that your life is discussed or decisions are going to affect you, but you're not part of the conversation. That can feel threatening, can feel demeaning, it can feel exclusionary. But we know the difference when someone turns to us and says, hey, wait a minute, you're part of this conversation, you matter. That's what Paul is doing. In a world where women were often managed, but readily addressed, Paul looks at wives and says, you matter. You matter to Christ, you are accountable, you are capable, you are moral decision makers. In verses 22 to 24, fact, or 22 doesn't even have the command to submit, it's implied from verse 21. Paul just says literally in verse 22, wives to your own husbands as to the Lord. In verse 24, when he says, wives should submit, grammatically it's in the passive voice, which is saying it's not even a direct command. It's an implied ideal. It's the goal that we are working towards. It's an encouragement. This is not insignificant. I mean, this is profound theology here. Paul is saying that wives are responsible hearers of God's Word. They are capable of voluntary thoughtful obedience, that they're not morally passive, they're full-fledged disciples and participants in Christ. Paul is not just giving rules, he's reshaping identity. He's speaking to women as people whose first relationship is belonging to Christ. Their lives are not defined by cultural expectations  or a husband's desires or demands. or fear but by their identity as followers of Jesus. So submission is not obedience that is extracted by force. It is a response of faith to what God has done and who I am in him. That's why Paul says submit as to the Lord. It matters that he doesn't say submit because your husband's your authority or your husband deserves it or  society demands it. He grounds submission in a wife's relationship to Jesus, ultimately, not fundamentally to her husband. And that's crucial, see, because Paul is not diminishing women by calling them to submission. He dignifies them by calling them  to a Christ-centered agency and power over their lives. There's a difference, you see, between laying something down or offering something and having it taken away. One is an act of giving and the other is an act of harm. Jesus did not have his life taken from him. He laid his life down voluntarily. No one takes it from him. That distinction matters. And Paul is not calling wives and to disappear, be silent or to be passive, he's calling them as disciples to order their lives. In submission, Christ-like submission. And that word submission, yes, maybe it makes our hackles rise and there's no getting around the reality, the good reality in fact, that submit means  to place oneself under the authority or leadership of another. It's a calling that all Christians share. Paul has just told us to submit to one another. We're called as  members of the church to submit to those in authority over us. We're called to submit to the governing authorities. It's a regular pattern for being a disciple of Jesus. Submission is a Christ-like  act because it follows the pattern of Jesus who said to his father, my will, but yours  be done. Jesus submitted without being demeaned or less than. And in our debates, see the problem is submission often gets framed as a loss of dignity or a defensive hierarchy.  But submission is not about who matters more. We import our modern categories like rights and power and equality into a text that Paul  is really trying to reshape with kingdom categories like unity and belonging and self-giving love. We want to know who's in control, who gets to make the shot, who holds the steering wheel, who makes the final decision. It sounds a lot like the people coming to Jesus with things like, tell my brother to split the inheritance with me, or should we obey God or Caesar,  or can a man divorce his wife for any reason? What if Jesus isn't interested in  those ways we frame the question, and he's instead inviting us into a different way of being in the world with one another. A different way of relating that isn't about winning and losing. Paul's not asking wives to erase themselves or become less than because they're not. He's calling to locate their lives inside Christ's redemptive order for marriage. Gospel centered marriage reflect Christ's character because submission is a Christ like response, not a cultural role. The other thing that Paul's doing here is he's showing us how the gospel reframes the way  we think about authority. The gospel reframes authority. Look in verses 23 and 24. The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself his savior. And as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Now, Right? is where tensions rise. This is where maybe we get a little uncomfortable. Again, we want to listen carefully, not selectively. Paul is not defining headship in our human categories or terms. Paul defines headship in relation to Christ. He defines it theologically.  Christ is  Lord and God, and head does mean authority. It absolutely means authority. But what Paul focuses on here is not Christ's lordship, but his headship of the church as  savior. And that matters. Because Paul is saying Christ's exercise of headship is not domineering, it is life  giving, it is self  sacrificing.  Christ does not exploit the church. Christ does not. domineer and devalue the church. He loves the church. He gives himself up for the church. He speaks peace to his people. He rules by a love that bleeds and sacrifices.  Any headship, any authority that divorces itself from rescue,  love,  and self-sacrifice has departed from Jesus' understanding of headship. And again, we hear this exhortation though for wives to submit to their husbands  in everything. And we need to maybe have a few clarifications here. When Paul says in everything, he's  obviously not endorsing abuse  or sinful acts or subjecting a wife to immoral or dangerous circumstances. No husband may ask a wife to violate her conscience. I mean the same Paul who wrote this wrote in Romans, we don't even have the right to judge one another's consciences, much less demand that they submit their conscience to our judgment. This is not an appeal  again for  women to  submit to men in general or even to husbands in general, but a wife submitting to her husband in the context of a marital union that Paul's going to explain later.  Paul is not picturing subservience, but a wife's participation in a marital unity that's shaped by trust and love and mutual understanding. Gospel centered marriage reflects Christ's character because the gospel reframes authority. Paul's going to go on to talk about what that looks like in this next section where he talks about how the gospel transforms marriage. Verses 25 to 30. And though our focus is on wives, we don't want to ignore Paul's message to husband because it clarifies what submission means and what it doesn't mean. We can verse 25, husband love your wives  as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now, Mark Dunker did a great job last week taking us through the bulk of this section and he noted Paul spends a lot more time talking to husbands than he does to wives.  I mean, some commentators have, you know, sort of half jokingly said probably because men need more help dealing with this. I think maybe more seriously, it's because power is the problem.  God in his wisdom has structured and placed authority in male leadership in marriage. That means men need a lot more instruction to make sure they're exercising that authority and leadership in godly ways. Yes, men are called to lead. And if we're not leading, we're not reflecting Christ in our marriage. But he redefines what leadership looks like through the cross. The husband's calling is not to rule, but to die daily in love. Husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. I was thinking about this this morning as I was out scraping the ice off of my car in the driveway. We have a two car garage. Half of it is full of a bunch of stuff because we've got all kinds of projects going on in the house. I told my wife, no, your car goes in the garage. I love telling this story because it makes me sound great, right? Like I'm the self-sacrificing husband who goes out and scrapes the ice off of his car so her car stays clear.  I'm a lot less proud of telling about how, you know, over times in our marriage, Amelia has had to say, Jeff,  I'm really carrying way more than I can bear. I need help doing all this stuff to make the house work.  I need you to step up and sacrifice yourself to serve me and to help me in in running our household together. The call to husbands is not a cop out, it's not a power play, it's not empty words, it's not something easily done. The call to wives  to submit  is also not about demanding something, it's not about asserting superiority. The call to both husbands and wives in marriage is to order one's lives for the good of the other in reverence for God. That's what Jesus is like. That's what Jesus does. And so Paul's word to husband actually safeguards the dignity of wives. In the Roman world that Paul is writing into,  and maybe it sounds really different from ours, but if you think about it, it's not that different. Power and authority always flowed down from the top. The emperors at the top, and then the nobles, and then the freed men, and then the mass of  slaves, and the... urban poor. And in the home,  the husband was a little emperor who sat at the top of the pyramid. And  the home life was totally ordered around the husband's comfort and pleasure and honor and what the husband desired. Paul takes those cultural assumptions about male priority and he reshapes them through the cross.  Christ's love for the church is not  some theoretical idea. It's costly, it's visible, it's self-emptying. He gave Himself  up for her. That phrase would have absolutely stunned Paul's hearer. The idea that a husband would live for his wife was totally radical. Notice what Christ's love does for the church. Verse 26, sanctifying her, washing her of water with the word to present her in splendor and glory without spot that she would be holy and without blemish. It seeks her flourishing. This matters deeply for how we understand Paul's instructions for husbands and wives. Submission cannot mean being devalued or commanded or made less than because Christ's love does none of those things to his people. Submission exists within a relationship that is  oriented towards the wife's good, towards her joy, towards her life towards her spiritual flourishing.  Mark Dunker pointed out last week there's a good argument that Paul's actually structured this section  to highlight that  the central point is here in verse 27 and  the focus of Christ's love and his goal for the church. That marriage in the same way is about seeking the growth and the glory and the good of one another. The husband by loving sacrifice, the wife by willing submission to his leadership.   Men, that means that we're called to lead and serve our wives in ways that lead to their growth and flourishing as followers of Jesus. Are we leading and guiding our wives in pursuing Christ? Are we sacrificing our time and our priorities to make sure that our wives have time and opportunities to get together with other women, to be in Bible study, to be in community with one another, to be mentored, to use their spiritual gifts.  That's what it means to lead our wives like Christ loves the church. Paul is not reinforcing, you see, a cultural hierarchy. He's reshaping it  according to the kingdom law of self-giving love. In the kingdom, authority is not something that we take to enforce over someone else. It's something  that we spend for  one another. Jesus gives us the pattern of this. You remember in John 13, He stoops down to wash His disciples' dirty dung-covered feet. And you remember what He says? Do you understand what I've done? You call me teacher and  Lord,  and that's what I am. Now that  I, your teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. I have given you an example that you should do as I have done. That's what  authority looks like in Jesus kingdom. Submission is a response to  covenant love and self-giving leadership, not a surrender of worth. Gospel centered marriage reflects Christ's character because the gospel transforms  marriage. And that means submission then is shaped by identity, not inferiority. Submission is fundamentally a reflection of our identity in Christ.  Look at how Paul goes back to the beginning in Genesis, in verse 31. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one  flesh.  There's no way  that we can read this.  about a husband and a wife becoming one flesh and fit it into categories of rank or priority or value. Two people become  one  new thing together in marriage. It's a statement about shared life, shared vocation, shared identity,  shared purpose. In a culture where women were often an afterthought, Paul is  reaffirming this  biblical teaching that Wives,  women are  equal reflectors of God's image and that  marriage creates something new when we come together.  A new single, united entity.  This is empowering  for wives in particular. Paul is not saying lose yourself, submit yourself, he's saying  you matter, you  value, you belong, not as property, not as an accessory, not as an afterthought, but a covenant part. in a union that reflects something cosmic and eternal.  I think there's an argument to be made that as Paul is putting together these dynamics of self-giving love and submission, he's paralleling the fundamental reality of who Jesus is and what he does. A wife submits as Jesus submits to the Father and the husband  leads in self-giving love as Jesus lays down his life. and the two of them together as husband and wife are imaging what God looks like. That's what marriage is supposed to be. That's why we can't read the passage through modern categories of authority versus equality. Paul is putting this in a totally different framework, you see. He's placing marriage within the story of God's kingdom. where love defines leadership and belonging  precedes hierarchy. Submission is not a denial of personhood, it's an expression of trust  within a shared life that is oriented towards Christ. And there's a lot of freedom for us as husbands and wives and how decision making, for example, gets worked out in that context. Every Christian parent wants their kids to grow up to love and follow Jesus, but... Husbands and wives don't always know the best way to do that or even agree with each other about how to do that, especially when it comes to education. At different times in our kids' lives, they have all spent time in a variety of homeschool, public school, and Christian school. Because my wife Amelia and I, at different seasons, had to prayerfully consider what was best for our kids,  based on our gifts and our calling, our opportunities, what was realistic, what... what would promote harmony in the home, what would be best for them, what would be best for our marriage, what we could sacrifice, what we couldn't sacrifice. And all of those decisions required sacrifices from both of us and mutual submission. There was no, you know, this is the way or I refuse to do that. That's what Paul is picturing here. That the husband and wives are coming together to seek one another's good and promote unity.  in the relationship. Paul goes on to say it's a profound mystery, but he's really talking about Christ and the church. And I think this is  the theological climax of the passage. Paul is saying marriage is not ultimate. Christ is. Christ is ultimate. But marriage bears witness to the gospel. The way husbands and wives relate to one another says something true about the way Christ relates to his church. And that again says that wives are not just recipients of instruction, they are participants with their husband in proclaiming what the gospel looks like as it gets lived out. Through their faith, through their... willing, loving submission to their husbands through husbands' loving sacrificial leadership in their marriage, husbands and wives display the gospel to the world. This is not marginalization, this is elevating women. There's a mystery here, Paul says, something deep and profound that we can't work out just by reason or logic.  Marriage binds two people together  in unseen, almost indefinable ways. Physical union is more than just  joining two bodies together, right? It's about intimacy, it's about vulnerability, it's about being  united, which is why it belongs in marriage. that two people can be in a  one flesh union and become something together is unique and mysterious. And Paul says that this is ultimately about Christ and the church.  And so there's something going on here. He's saying that that physical one flesh union between a husband and wife and marriage in some ways is a mirror image, a reflection of our connection to God, the intimacy,  the union, the connection, the trust. That's why marriage, Paul says, is mysterious and why it reflects the Gospel. Verse 33, let each one of you  love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. A summary  of what he said here, the husband is to lead his home  with love, with sacrificial love. Men are called to reflect the self-giving love of Jesus and wives are called to respect, to honor, to esteem, to value, to show deference even to their husbands in their self-sacrificial leading. Gospel centered marriage reflects Christ's character because submission is shaped by our identity in Christ and how we reflect him. It's not  about inferiority. Now, some of you may have heard this  passage over the years with pain. Some of you may have heard it misused. Maybe you've lived under a version of submission that felt more like compulsion and control than anything life-giving. Listen, that is not what Jesus intends. That is not what Jesus intends marriage to be. Paul's call to wives assumes dignity. agency, identity in Christ, spiritual maturity,  and a life  shaped by Christ-like love and covenant with a husband. Now, others may feel defensive, maybe worry that emphasizing the dignity of women somehow undermines male leadership, but Paul doesn't share that fear. He strengthens the call to mutual submission by  grounding it in theology. not by accommodating it to cultural expectations or desires. And so for all of us, men, women, young, old, married, single, the passage calls us to reexamine  how deeply the gospel is shaping our ideas about love and value and what it means to exercise our rights or have authority. Gospel centered marriage ultimately doesn't focus on the specific roles of husbands or wives. It focuses on Christ and living out our calling to Christ inside that relationship. Christ has given himself for his church, his bride.  All of us,  all of us, male and female together are pictured as the bride of Christ. And Jesus loves us through Sacrifice dignifies us as he draws us into relationship with him. And so Paul is reaffirming wives are not objects to be managed or things to be used, but as beloved disciples to be formed into Christ likeness. It's a passage that's not meant to frighten or divide us. It's meant to renew us because Paul spoke into a word, a world that was defined by hierarchy and power and threats and fear and control. Maybe not too different from our world. And into that world, the gospel speaks a word shaped by Christ's love. A very different message. A word that honors women as disciples. A word that places responsibility on sacrifice.  A word that sees marriage as a picture of God's grace to us. And for some of us, maybe this message calls us to trust Christ more deeply, to believe that his way of love really does lead to life. For some, maybe  it offers healing and reminding us that what may have been used to wound us was actually meant to lead us into life and wholeness. And for all of us, it lifts our eyes beyond marriage to the one that marriage points to, to Christ himself, to the one who is  our  bridegroom, the one who loves us and has sacrificed himself to  sanctify us and make us holy and glorious in his sight. And the one who sends out his spirit to empower us to live this kind of life. So may we hear this word, not with defensiveness or fear, but with faith so that our lives, our homes, our relationships would reflect the beauty of Jesus. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank you for your word, which does not leave us as we are, but renews us,  grows us, changes us. We thank you for Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us and who now reigns as the good and faithful and loving Lord of our lives. Father, where relationships have been shaped by fear or misuse of power or hurt, bring your healing. where we struggle to trust, to love, to submit, to lead well. Give us your spirit's faith and strength. Help us to live in reverence for Christ that our homes and our lives would reflect the gospel of his self-giving love in submission to you, Father. May we be a people renewed by your gospel and bear witness to your grace in all that we do. I ask it in the name of Jesus, our Savior and Lord. 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