Mutual Submission: A Wise Way, Eph 5:21-32

Mutual Submission

A Wise Way

Eph 5:21-32

At the end of the last sermon, I quickly mentioned verse 21 of Ephesians Chapter 5. It reads, "submitting to one another in the fear of God.

As we have noted before, The Apostle Paul often goes off on rabbit trails. He is writing about one thing, something related comes to mind--so he addresses it. Sometimes he gets back to the original topic, sometimes he doesn't.

I view the end of Chapter 5 and the first 9 verses of chapter six as one of these trails--but, a blessed and inspired one at that.

I also view this as a further application of the teaching Paul has just given on how to conduct oneself carefully in the Christian life--how to walk in wisdom.

Submitting ourselves to the authority of others is a wise way to live. It is the will of the Lord (5:17). We are always under the authority of others. To submit means to do what we do under the authority of others. In an egalitarian and anti-authoritarian age, people chafe against this idea.

People are trying to do away with bosses in the work place by making everyone a part of the decision-making. I have been told it works well until there is a crisis. Then a strong leader has to step in to make a decision or to facilitate one so things might move on.

General revelation shows us that someone has to be in charge, ultimately. We see it in the creation throughout human societies and the animal kingdom.

There are a number of different names used for the one in authority. In hospitals and healthcare we have words like 'chief' and department head. That's a great word for a boss--the person with the know-how to make decisions or to extract them from others. This image of the head is used in the New Testament for the husbands in a marriage. In the first part of the message this morning, I want to read the passage in Eph 5, then go back to the Book of Genesis to show you why this is so AND how the role of the husband is balanced by the help of the wife.

There have been three basic views of marriage in the Western world. They are Patriarchy where the men rule with all of the authority. The scriptures tell us about the Patriarchs. But, we are never told to be like them. The nation of Israel was never a Patriarchy--by the time Moses wrote the Pentateuch, they were an emerging nation of tribes being formed by the leadership of Moses and Joshua along with the elders and judges as they progressed to the Holy Land. The stories about real marriages among the Patriarchs indicate to us the ways they lived historically. We find many to emulate and they set many godly precedents, but we need to be careful about unrestrained authority, even to husbands and fathers.

The second view is a more modern one--it is egalitarianism--that means everyone is equal. Nobody is over anybody else by virtue of gender. Egalitarianism has an agenda to level all people to the same level. One writer called in controlled anarchy. Anarchy is the tearing down of authority. A lot of the problems we have in society today has to do with the ant-authoritarian perspectives of the 60s and 70s that gave us undisciplined children, teens and finally young adults in the 90s and up to today. Many have been trained to fail due to the bad examples put before them and the bad examples in many homes. Fathers refused to take the authority God has given to them and subsequent generations have suffered. Evidence of this is in the one parent households--that are usually, not always, held together by the mother. Men refuse to take their places, women take over for them, and the result is they each despise the other. WE could look further at the children and how they take this structure for granted and become underachievers at home and in school.

The third view is a common sense view called complementarianism. Husbands and wives need each other to be a complete unit of wise parenting.

Marriage—Christ and the Church

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. ²⁴ Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, ²⁶ that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷ that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. ³⁰ For we are members of His body,^[b] of His flesh and of His bones. ³¹ “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”^[c] 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.³³ Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects herhusband.

 Verse 31 cites Genesis 2:24, let's turn back there for a few moments:

I want to start reading earlier in the chapter.

My First Point is this: 1. Why God made a Woman

¹⁵ Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”.

To whom was Adam expected to submit? To the Lord God. Adam was told the consequences for acting autonomously like an anarchist. You shall surely die….

God surveys the situation on Day 6.

¹⁸ And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”

Eventually, the entire creation was pronounced to be very good. The only thing lacking, or expressed as not good, is the wifelessness of the man. In his infinite wisdom, the Lord God states this wonderful couplet. The situation is the same--it is not good that man should be alone. Marriage is the ordinary pursuit of men because it is not good for them to be alone--even though there are billions of other humans on the planet, there is something about finding a wise spouse and settling in together.

God added to this: I will make him a helper comparable to him. Men have a hard time admitting this--but we are not complete in and of ourselves. Going back to the original creation, we were the only beings in need of something to complete us. None of the animals would do. So God made a woman--just what our first father needed. 

How gracious of the Lord God to do that. Men, we are no different than Adam, we are imperfect, we are liable to err, we need good women, wise women, virtuous women to help us along the way. I'm not saying Adam sinned by being incomplete. It shows he was less than God and liable to sin--even while being upheld in original righteousness.

 ¹⁹ Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

What is the woman called back in verse 18? A helper. What is her place in life? Comparable to him. What is comparable? Let me illustrate. Let's say I have a need for a lamp to light my work space. I go to the store where they sell them. I look at them and compare their relative usefulness considering my need. It is the most comparable one that I obtain to help me.

A comparable woman fashioned by a perfectly wise God for a man who is incomplete in and of himself. And, though the text doesn't say it directly, I look at the rest of the narrative and I see that Eve lacked some degree of wisdom. Therefore, it is only together as man and wife that they can be pronounced as very good. On their own they were incomplete and it is on their own when they interact with the serpent, that they sin.

²¹ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

Woman comes out of man. What Adam lacks in many ways is replaced or given to him is wife. This is what Adam said or sang:

²³ And Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

Verse 24 is an editorial comment supplied by Moses under direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Notice it doesn't use a vague word like partner. It is husband and wife. One of each is God's original plan for marriage.

Because man is incomplete, in order to be complete, he leaves his parents, being joined to his wife, they become one flesh. It's a beautiful thing.

That is why 1. Why make Woman

My Second point is this 2. What went Wrong?

Flip over to Chapter Three:

The foundations of Christian marriage are placed firmly in the Garden.

3 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

A Talking serpent. Eve didn't know there was something wrong with that. She was new to this garden, she was new upon the earth. She was made at full age and function--what sensory overload it must have been. This was all new to her.

Adam was commanded before Eve was created. Somehow and at some time the news about the one forbidden tree was passed on to her.

² And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; ³ but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Eve actually adds something to the command. We aren't told who expanded the word of God with the words 'nor shall you touch it' but, it is an important addition. It puts an extra step in the process trying to buffer the ability to sin. Artificial buffers hardly ever keep someone from sin. They don't deal with the heart.

The serpents bold response:

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to makeone wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

That is what went wrong.

3. God gives a remedy

⁸ And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

⁹ Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Whereare you?”

It's foolish to try to hide from an omnipresent being--oh, they had so much to learn….

¹⁰ So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

¹¹ And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”

Blame-shifting is nothing new.

¹² Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

¹³ And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent:

“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed--for her to have a seed, the man and wife would need to have a family--it is this seed it is said;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”

The history of the world is the story of this strife between the seed of the woman and the serpent. The seed is going to win. That seed is the Lord Jesus Christ.

¹⁶ To the woman He said:

“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”

The desire of the wife for her husband is not necessarily sexual, but authoritative--she will desire to have the authority in the household. She will want to usurp the husband as head in the home. She will overstep her bounds as a helper comparable to him.

Eve may have been early to believe what she was told by God. When the leaves weren't enough, the Lord God went further.

Genesis 3:21 Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.

Animals were sacrificed to cover Adam and Eve. There are other reasons to believe Eve took what God said literally and was looking for the seed promised.

Turn over to chapter 4. In verse 7 we find a closely related phrase. Let me start at the beginning of the chapter.

4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”

A more literal rendering would be I have that man, the Lord. It may be that Eve thought the messiah had been born. She would turn out to be woefully wrong.

 ² Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. ³ And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. ⁴ Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And theLord respected Abel and his offering, ⁵ but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.

⁶ So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Some sin is right there--it is about to enter your house. Its desire is to rule over you, but you must exercise authority over it and keep it under control.

⁸ Now Cain talked with Abel his brother;^[a] and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Such animosity among those who should have done so well together. The world was their's is a very literal way. The only competition they had was each other. I have noted throughout my life, that there can be a lot of strife among those who ought to be the closest and most loving--nearest and dearest neighbors.

Spouses who have been married a long time often have a lot of baggage. Newlyweds often have a lot, too. It is just more general. Spouses can go for a long time without doing what they are supposed to do. The men, to lovingly rule the home, using his helper to be wise. The women, when the husband doesn't do something, they move in. Women grow to despise their husbands and men show acts of love less and less.

That is why the wise instruction in Eph 5 is so important. It teaches what a wise marriage in Christ looks like. It is God's remedy to our natural sinfulness.

Outside of Christ, a couple can only enjoy their life together in one of two ways. Either they copy what God has revealed knowingly or not or they are happily ignorant of what God requires. I say the latter because many unbelievers have varying degrees of happiness in their marriages. Some of them have greater happiness than many Christian couples.

Everyone would have better lives together if they do what God says to do in submission to him and to one another--with each person in their place for the good of the other.

We'll look at the text of Eph 5 next week with this background in mind.