Ephesians 5

CHAPTER 5THEME: The church will be a bride; the engagement of the church; the experience of the church; the expectation of the churchThere is really a mixing of metaphors here. In chapter 4 the church is called a new man, and now the church is to be a bride. The emphasis of this chapter is on the futurethe church will be a bride. The church is not a bride today. The church is a new man walking in the world, and the church is espoused (engaged) to Christ but is not yet wedded to Him. The wedding hasn’t taken place yet.

The church will be a bride with Christ after the Rapture. “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…. And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (Rev_21:2, Rev_21:9). On this earth we are to walk as a future bride. We are engaged now. This is what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “…for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2Co_11:2). When a girl is engaged and preparing for her wedding, she doesn’t have time for her old boyfriends. She won’t be going out with Tom tonight and with Dick tomorrow night and with Harry the following night. She is engaged, and she has no interest in them anymore. How can we who are engaged to Christ live as the world lives? We are going to be presented to Christ someday. We are going to live with Him throughout eternity, and He is going to be our Lord and our Master.

Ephesians 5:1

THE ENGAGEMENT OF THE CHURCH"Therefore" connects this section with the preceding where the walk of the believer is under consideration and continues the injunctions for Christian conduct. These injunctions have a definite bearing upon the church which will be presented to Christ without spot or blemish. Such a high and lofty goal, which is entirely the work of Christ, is a compelling dynamic for chaste conduct here and now. We have learned that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer and seals every believer, but that we can grieve the Holy Spirit. If we engage in those things mentioned in chapter 4, verse Eph_4:31, it means we will grieve the Holy Spiritbut it does not mean that we are no longer children of God. It does mean that the unsaved world won’t believe that we are the children of God. We are, however, sealed by the Spirit of God until the day of redemption, the day when the Spirit of God will present the church to the Lord Jesus. This goal should lead us to chaste conduct. The believer is to be an imitator of God, especially in the matter of forgiveness. However, this applies to all aspects of the Christian walk. The Gentiles who formerly walked on a very low plane are now lifted to the high level of love. They are now called “dear children” or beloved children. The plane of love to which they are lifted is the love which Christ exhibited when He loved us enough to give Himself as an offering and a sacrifice for us. “And hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” is a clear-cut reference to the Cross. It makes the death of Christ more than the public execution of a criminal. The Cross was the brazen altar where the Lamb of God was offered as the burnt sacrifice. That sacrifice takes away the sin of the world. It identifies Christ with every sacrifice that was offered in the Old Testament by God’s command. They all pointed to Him. It is in view of the substitutionary, vicarious death of Christ upon the Cross that the believer is to attain to such an exalted plane of love. The believer cannot walk with a grieved Holy Spirit, for only the Spirit can bring forth this fruit in the life. Remember that love is first on the list of the fruit of the Spirit in Gal_5:22.

Ephesians 5:3

The sins described here are those which are prevalent among unbelievers. These are the common sins in the world today. All of them have to do with low forms of immorality. Paul is saying that the child of God cannot habitually engage in these. Even a slight indulgence brings about a revulsion and agony of soul. I have made this statement many times, and I repeat it again: If you can get into sin and not be troubled or bothered by it, you are not a child of God.

I do not think there is any other alternative. But if there is conviction in your heart, you can rise and go to your Father as the prodigal son did. You are a son of the Father, and only sons want to go to the Father’s house. I have never heard of a pig that wanted to go there. The sins listed here are low sins which characterize the ungodly person. When you as a believer go to God to confess your sins, you don’t just bundle them up and hand the bundle to God. It is not a wholesale affair. Rather, you spell out each sin to Him. For example, if you have a biting tongue and are a gossip who hurts people, tell Him that is your sin. When you go to God in confession and name the specific sin, it restores fellowship with Him. These sins are sins that believers drop into sometimes. When they do, they are to confess them to God. Fenelon puts it like this: Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself as to others. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration, just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God. The great need of all believers is to go to God and tell Him what is really in our hearts. Someone may say, “It is just unbelievable that Christians would even commit such sins as are listed here.” Friend, if you had been a pastor as long as I have, you would know that they do fall into these sins. Many Christian people feel that they have committed an unpardonable sin, but they have not. There is a way back to God! “Fornication” is accepted by the world as a norm of conduct. It is a sin that is looked upon as not being very bad. When the gross immorality of the hour started creeping in, it was called the new morality. Some time ago many of us were shocked when we heard that in the college dormitories the boys and girls were in the same building but on different floors. Now it has changed so that boys and girls are roommates. When I went to college, the boys could visit in the living room of the girls’ dormitory.

And I still think that is the best way to do it. I’ll stick with the Bible. Fornication is a sin. Regardless of where you are or who you are, if you are living in fornication today, you cannot be a child of God. Someone may say, “Wait a minute. You said a child of God could confess a sin and come back into fellowship with God.” That is right, but a child of God cannot confess a sin and then persist in living in that sin.

That is a dead giveaway that such a person is not a child of God. “All uncleanness” includes all forms of immorality. “Covetousness” is a grasping desireand not just for money or material wealth. It may be a desire to be mentally superior to someone else. It could be coveting a home or a position. Some people love to be president of something. Of course, it also includes the covetousness for money. It has been said that the miser thinks dollars are flat so he can stack them, and the prodigal thinks they are round so he can roll them. Whether one stacks them or spends them, covetousness means gaining everything for your own selfish ends. Some people try to garner together all the honors of this world. I know ministers who would never be guilty of trying to get rich, but they surely are after position. They want a position in their denomination or in their community. Covetousness is a rotten sin that is in our old natures. “Let it not be once named among you.” This means they are not to be spoken of with approval or desire. Obviously, I am naming these sins with neither approval nor desire. “Filthiness” speaks of the utmost in depravity. These are the low-down, dirty things one hears today. “Foolish talking” means to gloat or brag about sinning. Have you ever heard men or even women boast about how much they drank at a party? Have you heard them boast of their conquests in the realm of sex? That is foolish talking. “Jesting” does not mean good, clean humorI’d be guilty of jesting if it meant that. Jesting means to make light of sensuality and immorality. It means telling dirty stories. “But rather giving of thanks” is to be the context of Christian conversation. I would often play golf with a very wonderful Christian layman whom I loved in the Lord. Sometimes an unsaved man would join us. He would make a few bad shots, and then he would lose his temper. He would ask God to damn the golf course, the sand traps, his golf clubs, and anything else he could think of. My friend would always say, “Praise the Lord, bless the Lord.” The unbeliever would ask, “Why do you say that?” The Christian would ask, “Why do you take God’s name in vain?” The reply would be, “It’s a habit.” “It’s also a habit with me,” my friend would say. “Every time I hear a man ask God to damn something, I praise and thank Him for something.

I sort of want to balance the budget down here.” On several occasions that stopped the cussing. And it is good for us as Christians to make a habit of giving thanks.

Ephesians 5:5

It is clearly understood that the unregenerate man who practices these sins has no portion in the kingdom of Christ and God. If a professing Christian practices these sins, he immediately classifies himself. No matter what his testimony may be on Sunday or what position he may have in the church, such a person is saying to the lost world that he is not a child of God. To live in the corruption of the flesh is to place one’s self beyond the pale of a child of God.

Ephesians 5:6

In view of the fact that the wrath of God will be poured out on the unregenerate because of these sins, it follows that the child of God cannot participate in them without incurring the displeasure and judgment of God. If such a person is really a child of God, God will judge him. He judged David, you may recall. When David slipped into sin, God put the lash on his back and never took it off. “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1Co_11:31-32). If you can sin and get by with it, you are not a child of God. Do you know why? Because God would have to condemn you with the world, which would mean that you are not saved. If you are a child of God and do these things, God will chasten youHe will take you to the woodshed right here and now. If God doesn’t chasten you, you are in a frightful condition. It means you are not His child, because God does not spank the devil’s children.

Ephesians 5:8

Paul reminds the believers of their former state prior to conversion. They were not just in darkness, they were darkness. We speak of the unregenerate as being in darkness, but it is worse than that. When I went alone to play golf on one occasion, I was teamed up with a man who was unsavedin fact, he was a bartender. As he talked, I realized that he was not only in darkness, he was darkness. My, what a life that man had! “Now are ye light in the Lord,” which means we are to reflect Him who is the Light of the world. Paul identifies the fruit of light. He marks out those characteristics which always accompany light: “In all goodness,” which means kindness; “righteousness,” meaning moral rectitude; and “truth,” referring primarily to sincerity and genuineness. The believer is to prove or test his life in this manner to see if he is in the will of God and therefore well-pleasing to Him. You will remember that 1Jn_1:7 speaks of walking in the light as He is in the light. Someone asked me what it means to walk in the light of God. Here we have a description of it from the Word of God: walk in kindness, in goodness, in righteousness (moral rectitude), and in truth, which is sincerity and genuineness. And this is to be our walk seven days a weeknot only on Sunday. And it means twenty-four hours of those seven days and sixty minutes of every hour.

Ephesians 5:11

We are to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.” A child of God simply cannot go along with the “works of darkness” as light and darkness cannot mingle in the physical world. For the things done in secret by them are even shameful to speak of. We are not even to talk about them. Rather, we are to “reprove” or convict them. This does not mean that the believer is to become a reformer. It does mean that by the light of his life he is a rebuke to the works of darkness. Light reveals what the darkness conceals. Darkness is not driven away by preaching at it; darkness is dissipated by the presence of light. There are too many Christians who take the critical method or the preaching method. They try to correct an unsaved person by saying, “You shouldn’t be doing that.” My friend, that is not the way to approach the darkness. You are to be light. You cannot preach to people about these things. You cannot tell them what to do and not to do. I constantly get letters from people who are telling me that I should preach against certain sins.

No, my business is to turn on the light of the Word of Godthat which God calls right. You see, you are not able to win a person to Christ by lecturing to him and telling him what is wrong. You are not to try to get the unsaved man to change his conduct; he cannot change his conduct. He needs to be born again in order to change. You are not to shake your finger under his nose and say, “Don’t do that. Don’t be a bad boy.” You are to be light, and light will always affect darkness. I remember a very dear lady in my congregation when I was a pastor in downtown Los Angeles. She was a dominant character, however. She came to me and told me that her husband was unsaved and asked me to remember him in prayer. I did so faithfully. Then she came to me and told me that he was coming to church but would never accept the invitation to receive Christ as his Savior. Then she told me this: “At breakfast I talk to him with tears about receiving Christ.

Again at dinner I talk to him and cry.” I got to thinking what it would be like to have two meals a day with a crying woman. So I told her absolutely never to mention the subject to him again. She should fix him the nicest meals possible and be the sweetest person she knew how to be. “Oh,” she said, “that wouldn’t work. We are supposed to witness.” You see, she didn’t really understand what it meant to be a witness. Anyway, she did try the plan. She quit blubbering in his presence, and she stopped lecturing to him.

In less than six months that man made a decision for Christ. He had been listening to the wrong preacher before that. She had been preaching to him when she should have been a light. Remember that darkness is not dissipated by lecturing or by preaching. Darkness is dissipated by light.

Ephesians 5:14

Here is a command which is humanly impossible to obey. How can a person awake from the dead? How can a person awake out of spiritual death? Only God can awaken us. I think what Paul means here is that the believers who have fallen into a spiritual stupor are to wake up.

Ephesians 5:15

My own translation is: “Look carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but be as wise men, buying up the time, because the days are evil. On this account become not senseless (foolish) but understanding (being prudent) what the will of the Lord is.” This is another injunction regarding the walk of the believer. He is to walk wisely. His walk is to reveal the urgency of the hour and the importance of living for God. The entire objective in his walk is to stay in the will of God. He walks in the will of God as a train runs on the track. His walk in this world demonstrates that he belongs to Christ. When you walk into a place of business, you will find the salesman in there on his toes: he is dynamic. If a man is a child of God, how does he act when he is not in his place of business trying to make a dollar? Is he on his toes? Is he dynamic? Is he living for God? The believer is to walk in this world as though he belonged to Christ. There is a saying that you never ask a Texan if he is a Texan. If he is a Texan, he’ll let you know it without your asking. If he is not a Texan, you wouldn’t want to embarrass him! My friend, a Christian ought to walk in such a way that you know he is a child of God without asking him. We all need to look carefully how we walk.

Ephesians 5:18

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE CHURCHEach real believer should have an experienceI believe in experience. Now notice what is to be his experience: My translation puts it like this: “Be not made drunk with wine in which is riot (dissoluteness), but be filled with the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” This is not just a dry discourse against the evils of drunkenness, even though drunkenness was the besetting sin of the ancient worldand it is still the besetting sin of the hour. It may actually be the sin that will destroy America. But this is not a lecture on drunkenness. Actually, Paul is making a comparison. Don’t be drunk with wine. Why not?

Because it will stimulate temporarily: it will energize the flesh, but then it will let you down and lead you in the direction of profligacy and dissoluteness and will finally eventuate in desperation and despair and delirium tremens. That is not what you need. Now it is true that people today feel a need for something, which I think explains the cocktail hour and the barroom. They turn to hard liquor to fill that need. If they are not children of God, they have no other resource or recourse. However, the child of God is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

This is to be the experience of the believer. What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? We can find the analogy in the man who is drinking, which is the reason Paul uses it here. The man who is drinking is possessed by the wine. You can tell that a man is drunk. In contrast, it is the Holy Spirit who should be the One to possess the believer. It is a divine intoxication that is to fill that need. This is not an excessive emotionalism but that which furnishes the dynamic for living and for accomplishing something for God. When we are filled by the Holy Spirit, it means that we are controlled by the Holy Spirit. The walk of the believer and his being filled with the Spirit are closely related. Paul says a believer is to walk carefully and “circumspectly” and “be filled with the Spirit.” These are commands which are given to the believer. This filling is a constant renewal of the believer’s life for strength and action, which is indicated here by the use of the present tense. The Spirit-filled believer not only walks wisely, but his Christian character is evidenced by the fruit of the Spirit (see Gal_5:22-23). A believer is never commanded to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, but we are told that we are “baptized into one body …” (1Co_12:13). Did we do that by some effort on our part? No, it was by our faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit regenerates and indwells us. The Holy Spirit seals us, and the Holy Spirit baptizes us and puts us into the body of believers. However, the believer needs the filling of the Spirit to serve Christ. The disciples were gathered on the Day of Pentecost. They needed to go out into the world for Christ, and they were filled with the Spirit. They had that experience which enabled them to witness on that day. To be filled with the Spirit is, I think, as simple as driving to a filling station and saying, “Fill it up.” As I start out in the morning with the Lord I say, “Lord, I want to walk today in the Spirit. I cannot do it myself. I need Your power. I need Your help.” We as believers need to start the day by asking for an infilling of the Holy Spirit. This is something which is desperately needed by believers. You may have been filled with the Spirit yesterday or last week, but that won’t suffice for today. I buy gasoline from a friend of mine who runs the station. I got my tank filled up one morning, and the next morning I was back again and said, “Fill ’er up.” He asked, “Where in the world have you been?” So I told him that I had been down to Yucca Valley, where I had spoken at a sunrise service and then a church service. You see, friend, when you are filled with the Spirit, you will do something for God; you will be walking in the Spirit. But that doesn’t mean you will have enough for tomorrow. You need another infilling for tomorrow. The old gas tank needs another fill up. This is the reason some people can be so mightily used of God one day and feel so empty the next. I have had that feeling, and I’m sure you have. We need a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit. This will enable us to walk in the Spirit. We may stumble and fall at times. My little grandson is learning to walk and right now he has a bruised spot on his forehead and on his nose. But he gets up and tries again and someday he will be a good walker. God wants you and me to learn to walk in the Spirit. He wants us to be filled with the Spirit. Now what is one of the evidences of being filled with the Holy Spirit? It is “speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” It is a good thing that the Spirit of God said it was speaking one to another. If He had said singing, it would have left me out. I think “psalms” refers to the Book of Psalms, as probably all of them had been set to music. “Hymns” were composed by men to glorify God. They were on a very high plane. The “spiritual songs” were less formal than either psalms or hymns. Probably some of them were composed as the person was singing. This is the manifestation of the infilling of the Spirit because He brings joy into the life of the believer. I’d like to mention one more thing about the comparison of being drunk with wine and being filled with the Spirit. I notice in motels and hotels where we stay as we go across the country that they have what they call the “happy hour” or the “attitude adjustment hour” or something else. Around five o’clock people go in, sit on a bar stool and drink so they will be sociable by six or seven and fit to live with for awhile. I have watched people go into those places, and they didn’t look happy when they went in, but neither did they look happy when they came out. Now, believers need an attitude adjustment, but they don’t need the spirits that come from a bottle; they need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that they might radiate the joy of the Lord. The apostle John says that one of the reasons he wrote his epistle was so that “your joy may be full” (see Joh_15:11). This fullness of joy is to be through our fellowship with the Father and with Jesus Christ (see 1Jn_1:3-4). We ought to have a good time and we ought to have fun in the churchI don’t mean a period of sillinessbut the joy of the Lord should be there. That kind of joy comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:20

Another evidence of being filled with the Spirit is an attitude of thankfulness. We note in the Book of Psalms a great amount of thanksgiving and praise to God. And it is on a high level. We don’t have enough of that among believers today. We should all say, “Praise the Lord, and thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.” Can you say that from the heart? It is no good unless it comes from the heart. The filling of the Spirit produces a life of thankfulness so that we can honestly thank God for all things. As I write this, there is a great deal of nonsense being promoted which I call sloppy agape. I heard recently, “Just say to everybody, ‘I love you.’” My friend, if you don’t love them, don’t say it. If you do love them, show it. Dr. Howard Kelly was a great surgeon and a great obstetrician. He wrote in the field of obstetrics, and his works were classic among doctors for a long time. He was also a great Christian, a wonderful man of God. The story is told of his taking a walk in the country outside the city of Baltimore in one of those lovely rural areas. He became thirsty and stopped at a farmhouse to ask for a drink of water.

A little girl answered the door. She said that her parents had gone to town and there was no water in the house but there was cold milk down at the spring. Would he like a glass of milk? He said, “I surely would.” So he sat on the porch while she got a glass of milk and brought it to him. My, it was delicious! She asked, “Would you like another glass?” He said, “I surely would.” So she brought him another glass.

He thanked her, then went on his way down the road, thinking what a lovely little girl she was. Not many days later the little girl became sick. She had a pain in her side and was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Who do you suppose was the doctor who came in and examined her? It was Dr. Kelly, and he recognized her as the little girl who had given him the glasses of milk.

He performed the necessary surgery and took special care of her. When it was time for her to go home, her parents came for her and waited anxiously for the bill because they didn’t have the money to pay for the operation and the hospital costs. When the bill was presented to them, they opened it with trembling hands. Under the total balance was written, “Paid in full with two glasses of milk,” signed “Dr. Howard Kelly.” This was love in action, and the love he expressed was the fruit of the Spirit, because Dr. Kelly was a wonderful Christian. My friend, you don’t have to run around telling everyone you love themshow them that you love them. Be filled with the Spirit so there will be love and joy and thanksgiving in your life. This is very practical. This is down where the rubber meets the road. Why don’t you “drive into the filling station” and ask God to fill you up? The old gas tank is empty. You and I don’t have anything worthwhile in ourselves. We need to go to Him and tell Him that we are empty and that we need the filling of the Holy Spirit so we can live for Him. We need to see that it is an impossibility by ourselves but that He can do it through us. Let me repeat this because it is so important: we are told to be filled with the Holy Spiritthis is the only command given to the believer relative to the Holy Spirit. The other ministries of the Holy Spirit are accomplished in us when we receive Christ. Every believer is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God …” (Joh_1:12). The believer is also indwelt by the Spirit."…Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Rom_8:9). And the believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit “…in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Eph_1:13). Also the believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body …” (1Co_12:13).

These four ministries of the Holy Spirit take place the moment the believer puts his trust in Christ. It is all accomplished for us. The only thing which is left up to us is to obey His command to be filled with the Holy Spirit (see v. Eph_5:18).

Ephesians 5:21

“Submit” is a very interesting word. It does not mean obey. Paul is not saying that the child of God is a buck private in the rear rank taking orders from somebody in the church who thinks he is a sergeant or a captain. We do take orders, but they are from the Captain of our salvation. Joshua thought he was a general of the children of Israel. He saw a Man with His sword drawn standing at the edge of the camp. He asked, “…Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” If I may put it in good old Americana, he said, “Who told you to draw a sword? I’m the general here!” It was actually a rebuke. Then that One (who was the preincarnate Christ) turned and said, “…Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come …” (Jos_5:13-14). Joshua went down on his face and even took off his shoes because he was on holy ground. He learned that he had a Captain. You and I are under a Captain, but the relationship is not military but on the basis of love. Our Lord said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15). I think there is an alternative there: “If you don’t love me, forget the commandments.” Now we see here that you and I are to submit ourselves “one to another in the fear of God.” That doesn’t mean we are to salute and fall down before some human being who outranks us. It does mean that in the fear of Christ we are to walk with one another in lowliness of mind. If you will turn back to chapter 4, verses Eph_4:1-2, you will see that Paul begins this section by saying that our walk should be in lowliness and meekness. That is the same thing that we have here. But notice in chapter 4 it begins with “I …beseech you.” This is not a command. It is the language of love. The fires of Sinai have died down, and now it is based on what has been done by Christ at Calvary. It is based on the grace of God. “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness….” “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” This means that you do not try to run the church. Pastors, officers in the church, members of the church, all of us are to submit ourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. It cannot be a “my way” proposition. No one can say, “I want you to know that I’ll do as I please. If I want to do it this way, I will do it this way.” Such an attitude is not a mark of a Spirit-filled believer. Submitting ourselves one to another in the fear of God is another mark of being Spirit-filled.

Ephesians 5:22

I have been doing some research on the word submit, and I have some rather startling things to tell you. The word submit relative to wives needs to be understood a little differently from the way it has been so often interpreted in the past. It is not, “Wives, obey your husbands.” Submit is a very mild word. It is a loving word. It means to respond to your own husband as unto the Lord. The way we respond to the Lord is that we love Him because He first loved us. And notice that it says “unto your own husbands.” A very personal, loving relationship is the ground for submission. Paul is definitely speaking to believers about Christian marriage. In this relationship of husband and wife, the man is the aggressor. He is the aggressor physically. He is the one who makes love. He is the aggressor in the home. He should be the breadwinner, the one who goes out with the lunch pail each day. And that doesn’t give him the authority to be a top sergeant in the home either, by the way. The wife is to respond to him as the believer is to respond to Christin a love relationship. A rough old boy came to my office one day with a request. He said, “Dr. McGee, I want you to talk to my wife. She’s very cold, and she’s not acting as a wife should.” He didn’t know it, but that was a dead giveawayhe was admitting failure as a husband. He showed what kind of a husband he was to draw that kind of response. I asked him, “Have you told her lately that you love her?” He said, “No. She knows I love her. I don’t need to tell her that.” I said to him, “I think you do. She does not need to tell you that she loves you until you say it first.” Woman is the responder, and man is the aggressor. The man is to say, “I love you,” and he is the one who does the proposing. She is the one to say, “Yes.” No woman is asked to say “I love you” to a man until he has said “I love you.” When a man says he has a cold wife, it is because she has a cold husband. He is not being the husband that he should be. It is not her business to be the aggressor. Her role is the sweet submission of love. “The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.” In what way? It is a love relationship, and the husband is to be the head for the sake of order. You will find in this section of Ephesians that there are four different areas in which there is headship for the sake of order. Wives are to be subject to their husbands. Husbands are to be subject to Christ. Children are to be subject to parents. Servants are to be subject to masters. It is to be a sweet subjection, a willing subjection to someone who loves you. It is to be that kind of relationship. If there is no love in it, the idea of submission isn’t worth a snap of the finger. I have done a great deal of marriage counseling in my day, and I would say that 75 percent of the fault in marriages is on the side of the men. It is the man who is to keep the lovelight burning. In the beautiful Song of Solomon, the bridegroom says to the bride, “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair …” (Son_1:15), and she responds, “My beloved is mine, and I am his …” (Son_2:16). He expresses his love first, and then she responds. I know someone will say I am very idealistic and romantic about all this. Well, back in the Garden of Eden God made them that way. God started off with a romantic pair, Adam and Eve. Probably He didn’t give that woman to Adam until Adam realized that he needed someone. She was given as a helpmeet. A helpmeet is just the other half of man. Man is half a man without a wife. God joined them together and called them Adamnot the Adams. Some young man will say, “Preacher, I’m not that kind of person. I’m no hero.” May I say to you that God never said that every girl would fall in love with you. Ninety-nine women may pass you by and see in you only the uninteresting boy next door. But one day there will come a woman who will see in you the knight in shining armor. It is God who gives that highly charged chemistry between a certain man and a certain woman. My wife told me she thought I was the knight in shining armor. I want to tell you how it ended. Perhaps you have seen the television commerical of a knight in armor riding across the screen holding a can of cleanser. Do you know where he ended up? In that kitchen! Now that I am retired, that is where I have ended up. A friend of mine told me, “Now that you are retired, do things with your wife. When she washes the dishes, you wash the dishes with her. When she mops the floor, you mop the floor with her!” Well, I’m not about to do that, but I surely do wash dishes more than I ever did before. Now let me say a word to you if you are a young woman. Perhaps you are not beautiful of face or figure. God never said you would attract every maleonly animals do that. Ninety-nine men will pass you by and see no more in you than what Kipling described as a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair. But one day there will come by a man who will love you if you are the right kind of person. You will become his inspiration. You may inspire him to greatnessperhaps to write a book or to compose a masterpiece. If you are his inspiration, do not ignore him, do not run from him. God may have put you together for that very purpose. You may be saying, “Preacher, you’re in the realm of theory. What you are talking about is idealistic. It sounds good in a storybook, but it doesn’t happen in real life.” You are wrong. It does happen. Matthew Henry wrote the driest commentary I have ever read in my life, but, I want to tell you, he had a wonderful, romantic life as a young preacher. You would never think in reading his commentary that he was ever a romantic, but he was. In London he met a girl who belonged to the nobility. He was just a poor boy, but he fell in love with her and she loved him. Finally she went to her father to tell him about it, and her father tried to discourage her. He said, “That young man has no background. You don’t even know where he came from.” She answered, “You are right. I don’t know where he came from, but I know where he is going, and I want to go with him!” And she did. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a clerk. He worked in a government customs office in New York City, and he was fired for inefficiency. He came home and sat down discouraged and defeated. His wife came up and put her arm around him and said, “Now, Nathaniel, you can do what you always wanted to do: you can write.” He wrote The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, “The Great Stone Face,” and other great works. So, you see, it does work out in life. It has worked out in the lives of multitudes of folk. Paul’s instructions regarding the home teach that the Christian home is to be a mirror of the relation between Christ and the church. Christ’s relationship to the church is different from the relationship of husband and wife in that “Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” The husband is not the savior of the wife. But in the realm of submission the wife should be subject to the husband and to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5:25

THE EXPECTATION OF THE CHURCHGod never asked a woman to submit to any man who doesn’t love her and love her like this. Oh, this is Christian love on a high plane. Today young people are finding out about sex, and there are innumerable books on the subject of marriage. I may sound to you like an antiquated preacher when I say that they are nonsense. Only the Christian can know what is real love in marriage, because it is carried to the high plane of the relationship between Christ and the church. There is nothing else like that, my friend.

Ephesians 5:26

“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it"that is in the past. In the present He is sanctifying the church with the water of the Word of God. The cleanser, which is the Bible, is better than any cleanser advertised on radio or television. The Word of God will not only take out the soiled spots, it will keep you from getting further spots in your life.

Ephesians 5:27

In the future He will present it to Himself a glorious church, without a spot or wrinkle but holy and without blemish. We will see the church presented to Christ as a bride adorned for her husband when we study the Book of Revelation. May I say that every woman is beautiful on her wedding day. I have officiated at many weddings during my lifetime, and I have never seen an ugly bride. I have seen them before and after their wedding day, and I can’t honestly say that all of them are beautiful. But on the day of their marriage they are beautiful. No young man engaged to a young lady thinks that she ought to be put through the fires of persecution or the Great Tribulation before he marries her. That is unheard of. So imagine anyone saying that the church must go through the Great Tribulation! She is engaged to Him, and He is cleansing the church by the washing of the Word of God. Keep in mind that when we use the word church we are not talking about an organization with a steeple, a pulpit, and an organ. We are talking about the body of true believers. This verse means that He is washing each believer, preparing each one for that great event. I believe that is something which is really taking place in our day. So we have seen the past, present, and future. Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. He is sanctifying the church with the washing of water by the Word. In the future the church will be presented to Him as a radiant bride with all sin removed. Then the church will be holy and unblamable.

Ephesians 5:28

I have quoted this entire passage so you can see how Paul draws on these two themes and goes back and forth, husband and wife, Christ and the church. After talking about Christ and the church, the subject goes back to husband and wife: “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.” The thing a couple needs for their marriage ceremony is not a champagne supper. They both need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They will have the greatest honeymoon that any couple ever had. Those sophisticated boys and girls who talk about sex and extramarital relationships today don’t even know what real love is. They know a lot about sex, but they do not know anything at all about the beauty and the ecstasy and the sweetness of a real Christian marriage. The husband is to love his wife because the marriage relationship makes the wife a part of his own body. It is like the church is the body of Christ and Christ is the head of that body. On this basis the husband is the head of the wife. It is unnatural for a man to hate his own flesh, so the husband is to love his wife because she is his own flesh. Christ, knowing the weakness of the church, nourishes and cherishes her. Husbands are to do the same. Verse Eph_5:31 is a quotation from Gen_2:24. Paul here refers to the relationship that existed in the Garden of Eden between Adam and Eve. That first couple is a figure of the future union of Christ and the church as Bridegroom and bride. Eve was created to be a helpmeet for Adam. She was taken from his side, not molded from the ground as were the animals. Adam was incomplete until they were together.

God fashioned her, and I think she was the loveliest thing in creation when God brought her to Adam. One wag has said that she had to be better looking than man because God had practiced on man but He had experience when He made woman. She was a helpmeet for Adam. She compensated for what he lacked. She was made for him and they became one. In the Hebrew the word for “man” is ish and for “woman” it is isha.

The word is almost the sameshe was taken out of man. I have two illustrations, taken from history, of this wonderful relationship between man and woman. That kind of thing is often lost today. The “new” morality and sexual freedom are putting a lot of young people in slavery. It simply will not work. God meant for Christians to have this relationship on a much higher plane. The first illustration is the story of Abelard and Heloise. When John Lord wrote his Great Women, he used Heloise as the example of love, marital love. The story concerns a young ecclesiastic by the name of Abelard. He was a brilliant young teacher and preacher in what became the University of Paris. The canon had a niece by the name of Heloïse whom he sent to be under Abelard’s instruction. She was a remarkable person; he was a remarkable man.

You know the storythey fell madly in love. But according to the awful practice of that day the marriage of a priest was deemed a lasting disgrace. When John Lord wrote their story, he gave this introduction which I would like to share with you. It is almost too beautiful to read in this day. It is like a dew-drenched breeze blowing from a flower-strewn mountain meadow over the slop bucket and pigsty of our contemporary literature. Here is what he wrote: When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, they yet found one flower, wherever they wandered, blooming in perpetual beauty. This flower represents a great certitude, without which few would be happy,subtle, mysterious, inexplicable,a great boon recognized alike by poets and moralists, Pagan and Christian; yea, identified not only with happiness, but human existence, and pertaining to the soul in its highest aspirations. Allied with the transient and the mortal, even with the weak and corrupt, it is yet immortal in its nature and lofty in its aims,at once a passion, a sentiment, and an inspiration. To attempt to describe woman without this element of our complex nature, which constitutes her peculiar fascination, is like trying to act the tragedy of Hamlet without Hamlet himself,an absurdity; a picture without a central figure, a novel without a heroine, a religion without a sacrifice. My subject is not without its difficulties. The passion or sentiment is degrading when perverted, it is exalting when pure. Yet it is not vice I would paint, but virtue; not weakness, but strength; not the transient, but the permanent; not the mortal, but the immortal,all that is ennobling in the aspiring soul. Abelard and Heloïse, having fallen in love, were not permitted by the church to marry. Therefore they were married secretly by a friend of Abelard. He continued to teach. But the secret came out when a servant betrayed them, and she was forced into a nunnery. Abelard was probably the boldest thinker whom the Middle Ages produced. At the beginning of the twelfth century he began to preach and teach that the Word of God was man’s authority, not the church.

This man, a great man, became bitter and sarcastic in his teaching because of what had been denied him. When he was on his deathbed, for he died a great while before Heloise, being twenty years her senior, he asked that she be permitted to come to see him. The church did the cruelest thing of allthey would not allow her to come. Therefore he penned her a letter. To me it is the most pathetic thing I have ever read. He concludes it with this prayer: “When it pleased Thee, O Lord, and as it pleased Thee, Thou didst join us, and Thou didst separate us.

Now, what Thou hast so mercifully begun, mercifully complete; and after separating us in this world, join us together eternally in heaven.” And I believe in God’s heaven they are together. John Wesley’s story is not told in England; it is told in this country, in Georgia. When John Wesley came as a young missionary to Georgia, the crown had already sent a nobleman out thereI think they wanted to get rid of him at court because he was an insipid fellow, devoid of personality and masculinity. Yet due to the terrible custom of that day, the nobility was entitled to marry the finest, and he had married a woman not only of striking beauty and strong personality, but one who was an outstanding Christian. Then there came into their colony this fiery young missionary. Again you know the storythey fell in love. And that happens to be John Wesley’s love story.

He begged her to flee with him and go live among the Indians. She said, “No, John, God has called you to go back to England, and He has called you to do some great service for Him.” It was she who sent John Wesley back to England. The night came for his ship to sail; they had to wait for the tide and the wind, and she came down to bid him good-bye. Oh, yes, she held him that night and he held her, but even the worst critics of Wesley say that nothing took place that was wrong. He still begged her to go with him among the Indians and live. The biographer of Wesley says that he came down that gangplank twice, but she sent him back, back to Englandto marry the Methodist church.

He returned to England a brokenhearted man; yet she had become his inspiration. It is God who gives this kind of love to believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit. May I say to the young people today: Don’t accept anything that is second-rate. Don’t take anything but the very best that God has to offer you.

Ephesians 5:33

“Nevertheless” brings us down to earth with a jolt. This is the practical part about marriage. Oh, how sin has marred this glorious relationshipas it has marred everything elsebut this relationship can be yours if you want it to be the best. Paul brings the reader back to the ordinary routine of Christian living in the home. “Let each love his wife as himself.” This shows the kind of husband to whom the wife is to be in subjection. The husband and the wife in the home are to set forth in simplicity the mystery of the coming glory. This is a very practical application of that which is highly idealistic. He brings the romantic into the realm of reality.