Stewardship: Relationships between husband and wife

Ephesians chapter 5. I'm going to notice a couple of verses at the beginning of the chapter and then pick up the theme as it runs down through it. Ephesians 5 and 1 says, Be ye therefore followers of God. Now that means an imitator, as imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.

Now then a sharp contrast is drawn in the following verses when it says, but fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness let it not be once named or not even be named among you as becometh saints. Drop down to verse 18 and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the spirit speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as under the Lord for the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church and he is the Savior of the body therefore as the church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word that he might present it to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies he that love of his wife love of himself for no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord the church for we are members of his body of his flesh and of his bones for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church nevertheless let every one of you in particular soul of his wife even as himself and the wife see that she reverence her husband now Ephesians chapter 5 is really a transition from the relationships in the body of Christ that we were really noticing on Friday night in Ephesians chapter 4 and it is really putting us in perspective first of all in relation to the world around us we are to be light to the world we were once darkness now we are light in the Lord that's our true character and our true relationship to the world around us is light in the midst of darkness and it's in the context of moral darkness the immorality the corruptedness of life our lives are intended to shine with the beauty of the purity of truth holiness goodness so it starts out by relating us to God and to Christ now maybe we see this more in little kids but you'll see little children imitating dad and sometimes you can just you know you may have seen this child only once and you know who he belongs to as I say a chip off the old block there's just character traits there's behavior we are to imitate God like beloved children now you're only going to do that in the measure that you admire him so do you admire the God who is your father if you admire him you will want to be like him so that's what our calling is to be followers be imitators of God just like beloved children who really love their father and then we're given another example and that is of the Lord Jesus himself and we're to walk in love now if I were to ask you what does this mean walk in love would you be able to tell me what this is really talking about walk in love now we might be able to say well I know what being in love is well okay we're not really talking about romantic love here we are talking about living whenever you get the expression walk it's talking about our ways our our way of life our behavior pattern to live out our lives circumscribed by love controlled by love in the boundaries of what love will do and will not do and if you want it some further expansion on that just go to first Corinthians 13 where we learn what love is and what it isn't what it does and what it doesn't and interestingly there's eight negative characteristics given about love so love has its principles its character but it's defined for us in that we're to walk in love as Christ loved us and has given himself for us so in other words we're not left to our own imagination or insight as to what this means that we are basically to live our lives self sacrificially living them for other people even as we have experienced the love of Christ who has given himself for us but you notice the verse doesn't end there for us but unto God and if there's one key principle of Christian living in service that is vital for all of us is that no matter what I am doing for you I am to be doing it as unto God that is as serving God as a devotedness and appreciation to God himself I live for your blessing and why that is important is this first of all that's reality but then also because sometimes we get very discouraged disheartened with life because we're not being appreciated by the people we are doing things for sometimes they react negatively against us when we try to show care toward them are you going to give up and just say well forget it then or are you still going to keep on because you're doing it as unto God himself so that is the corresponding relationship that were to recognize I wanted to pick up verse 18 down to verse 21 is preparatory for looking particularly at the marriage relationship because God does not intend for us to try to live out this kind of life that he is calling us to in our own strength but remember this encouraging fact the power of God in his Holy Spirit within you is given to enable you to strengthen you to to bring about a certain kind of character and attitude I'm just going to draw attention to this where it says in verse 18 be filled with the spirit now I don't really think this is something that we're supposed to go around trying to get tanked up being filled up really the Spirit of God indwells us and being filled and really if you look through the epistle of Ephesus to Ephesus this letter you'll see that filled is a key term of the epistle Christ is going to fill all things what does that mean he's actually going to control everything everything is going to be under his control and influence and we can look forward to a world a creation that is completely under the influence and control of the Lord Jesus Christ can you imagine what it's going to be like to live in La Crosse then what an atmosphere of life it's going to be when what Christ is dominates permeates controls everything everything in harmony with his character he's going to fill all things but now God wants us to be filled with his spirit and that again is to be under the control the influence of what the Spirit of God is in his character and again you can go to see our Galatians chapter 5 the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness and so on these beautiful character qualities that each of us need but if you notice verse 19 to 21 are all using verbs that end in I N G speaking singing making melody giving thanks submitting whenever you get that construction of language it's always attached to what was just stated before so in other words being filled with the Spirit of God will result in this these are the evidences of being filled with the Spirit of God speaking to yourselves in in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs so could I ask you simple little question have you lost your song is there within you this bubbling up of joy of worship towards your God the Spirit of God in you in me will seek to lead us in this atmosphere Godward but it's also speaking among yourselves and this is a ministry to one another of encouraging one another strengthening one another and so on making melody in your heart to the Lord that's joy now verse 20 giving thanks unto God and the Father always for all things that's a challenge isn't it what is this suggesting this is suggesting that I am to have a thankful and submissive spirit to accept life as it comes into my experience but again it relates us to the Lord Jesus giving thanks always for all things to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I'm just going to again use the marriage connection because we're coming into the marriage relationship specifically following this if I am going to give thanks to God for everything that I'm experiencing in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that means it is in union with him and in submission to him just like in the husband-wife relationship when a wife takes on her husband's name and I still think that's a nice thing to do even though there's lots of options today I think it expresses what God intends back in Genesis he called their name Adam there is a oneness of being that is intended and we are to receive and accept life from God in union with in harmony with the Lord Jesus Christ so don't think that God doesn't care about you because everything that he does with you and allows in the circumstances of your life is being given to you in harmony with the Lord Jesus who is Lord of your life now the last one is the hinge verse that leads us into the marriage relationship submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God and most Greek texts will give you the word Christ instead of God here and it's possibly more appropriate for the context that follows so as we come into the marriage relationship we have this interesting expression that in the fullness of the Spirit of God what will the Spirit of God lead me to do he will lead me to submit myself to what submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of in the consciousness of Christ so what does this submitting mean well continues in verse 22 but wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands it's interesting that this is in what's called the middle voice which is means you do this yourself you subject yourself and it really is simply this you place yourself as a servant you put the other one first and you place yourself as a servant to serve the other now I hope that as we think about husbands and wives and husbands in the position of head the wives in the position of submission or subjection that we recognize that that's under this submission in other words every husband is equally a servant I am to be a servant for my wife I am to serve her needs and we're really going to look at a servant headship it doesn't mean there's not authority there is authority according to the role that we are given by God but it is in that position of headship to serve the need of those we are responsible for so then in looking at wives and husbands it's interesting if you follow this through right through into verse 9 is it of chapter 6 where you have wives and husbands and then children and parents and then servants and masters and all of these natural relationships that are being looked at he is taking the word submission first in each case and so he is addressing first of all those who are under an order of authority a realm of authority you know a simple question that we need to ask ourselves today is where does authority come from why is the world so mixed up and confused about the whole concept of authority and where it comes from well it's because they have denied God and because they've denied God the key to everything has been thrown away and so there's confusion about what constitutes authority what gives authority what creates authority well there's a very simple connection if you understand the origin of something you will understand its authority the Lord brought that out when he was challenged about his ministry who gave you this authority well he just asked a question what about John the Baptist where was he from from heaven or of men so he tied these two concepts together authority if you're going to know and understand authority you have to know and understand its origin where it really has come from and of course the reality is that it comes from the God who is in sovereignty over all things now if you want to think about the idea of there's so many details of this passage that if you notice on the outline I have mentioned of a pattern relationship for reasons for submission and the first is simply the fact there is a simple factor reality the fact of headship for the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church you know if we want to be successful in life we have to live in the realm of reality today it seems like there is this idea that you can create your own reality you can create your own little bubble of life it doesn't work very well reality is a stubborn thing it keeps coming around the corner and confronting us and the reality here is that the husband is in a position and a relationship of being head and that is derived from God's creatorial order by creation that's explained further in 1st chapter 11 but it's also reestablished in redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ and we're really being given in this passage a higher reason for representing the God we have come to know in Christ and the church as I mentioned earlier it's brought out in the end of this chapter Christ and the church together are going to be the greatest manifestation of the glory of God the greatest display of the fullness of God's being of his headship of his love and self-sacrificing love and care Christ expresses that perfectly fully he has manifested God as representing God flawlessly fully for eternity but we are among those highly privileged people redeemed saved rescued and brought into this relationship with Christ to experience the wonder of being loved with eternal love self-sacrificing love I'm just going to say this because I know that for some believers to even hear teaching on husband-and-wife relationships can be painful it may be because you are not married and you would like to be or maybe because of the suffering that you have experienced in this relationship this relationship can either be the best possible human relationship in the natural realm or the worst it's hard for it to be neutral because it is such a close binding relationship that our lives are tremendously impacted by the influence of a life partner but I want you to appreciate this whatever your status in life here at the moment is this is that if you're a Christian you are part of a marriage that is perfect that will be perfect full complete for the ages upon ages to come we all individually as being members of the body of Christ are going to have a perfect partner we're going to have one that we are brought into this precious eternal union with that will be the greatest eternal blessing and fullness that our minds can ever conceive so whatever disappointments and anguish that we have gone through in our lives here there is something that we are part of that is going to be perfect and there'll be no regrets no disappointments so then in recognition of the greatness and the glory of Christ wives are being asked to honor and to respect their failing husbands their imperfect husbands as the one who is for them here on earth the one who is the direct representative of Christ in this relationship a pattern relationship even as Christ is head of the church and he is that is referring to Christ is the Savior of the body therefore as the church is subject unto Christ so let wives be to their own husbands in everything now that sounds like a very sweeping statement doesn't it and you'd be wanting to know that there are certain limitations built into this even though it isn't here in the verse and that is and I have you know in the Lord's work had to try to encourage and strengthen sisters whose husbands are not saved and they wrestle with this problem am I supposed to do everything he says not if it's wickedness not if it violates who you are as a Christian we had one dear sister in the assembly in Timmins whose husband even though she was probably the sweetest person that I've ever known yet he wasn't too happy when she got saved and he demanded that she would go to the bars with him and drink with him and so on now she was very very conscientious very wanted to do the best that she could as a as a wife she wouldn't do that but she was willing to be submissive to him he only allowed her to come to one meeting and she chose to come to the breaking of bread tragically even that wasn't good enough for him in the long run he left her for another woman and sadly her faith broke down during that experience and she turned away from the assembly from God's people isolated herself got her own life mixed up finally married somebody else there's a lot of hard things but I'm just saying that to recognize that these statements are not absolute without qualification of obeying God first however it is a strong statement that the wife in this relationship is to honor the fact that the husband has the final responsibility for decisions that are made that is part of what this is all about it's not that he's the dictator and she's the slave the analogy that I would like to present that I think is most accurate in corresponding to Christ in the church and the place that we will have over everything else of creation is to simply think of it in this way it's like the president and the vice president there is a personal subordination but in relation to everything else they govern everything else together that is the true relationship in comparison that has been given then husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it now here's the pattern again as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it as a husband this is a tremendous challenge to love as giving yourself for the sake of the one who is entrusted to your care again the love that is spoken of here there in Greek there's actually at least four terms for love there's a word for sexual love there's a word for family love there's a word for friendship love none of those terms are used in this passage it's the word that we call a gap a love which doesn't mean anything to us because we don't know Greek but the basic concept of it is what we learn in this passage the love that sacrifices self to give the love that gives for the benefit of the blessing of the care of the other that we are entrusted with so it is a love of choice it is that love that is the foundation that gives the stability and strength for the other kinds of love that are involved in the relationship if you're depending upon your feelings of affection they're going to go up and down according to a lot of circumstances in the relationship now I never like to ignore the warning signals of how we feel emotionally towards each other but take it as more like checking the temperature than determining the character of the relationship if you don't feel love for your partner you need to have a checkup you need to challenge yourself what is blocking my affection what is hindering the sense of closeness don't ignore those danger signals recognize that we are called to this love relationship in which we first of all are committed to the care committed to the well-being of the other and then we're to work on all the things that that cause problems conflicts issues that come up attitudes and so on and attempt to resolve them so that the love and tenderness is unhindered so loves proof is self-sacrifice but loves purpose that is given in this verse in these little section of verses is sanctification now this is where again we need to realize love has more than one aspect there's a lot of emphasis today on acceptance and chapter one has told us the wonderful reality that we are accepted in the beloved we are in the loving favor of God for a cause completely outside of ourselves and that's really very liberating and securing to know that I am loved in Christ I am accepted in Christ but this is leading us to a different appreciation of love in that this love that has embraced me is a love that will not rest until I am sanctified so I call this a transforming love and I think anybody who's in close relationships will recognize you really can't simply make this choice that you're just going to accept everybody as they are as nice as that sounds it's not complete or realistic we need to have this commitment to love that continually seeks the holiness the completeness of that person that he might sanctify cleanse with the washing of water by the word in order that he might present to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish in other words Christ loves me too much to leave me as I am he has received me as I am but he doesn't leave me as I am he will love me to perfection and that is the challenge of our marriage relationships that we won't merely accept each other as we are and choose to love each other despite what we are but that we will continually seek to be that help and benefit and purifying up building influence for the perfection of that other person and could I just say this to you this passage causes us to think about the future to a day when we will be presented by Christ to himself in perfection this would be a very significant help for our Christian relationships as well as our marriage and family relationships if we continually think of one another in a future tense you get fed up because of everything that's been going on in the past so often we are mortgaging the present and the future by dragging the past up all the time dragging it up building our attitude to each other on the past well let you it's kind of hard to avoid that influence but we need to think into the future and remember this but the Lord is going to bring me he's going to bring you to a final perfection so let's hang on and continue to care and continue to work for the blessing of one another in view of that day of perfection and that's really loves presentation as a pure and perfect bride and then loves perception that is mentioned here is so what men to love their wives as their own bodies he that loves his wife loves himself this is recognizing that in my relationship to my wife she has become part of myself and so if I treat her disdainfully harshly unjustly unfairly I'm really just hurting myself because she has become part of myself but this has to be a conscious attitude if it was you know your literal own body it doesn't take long for that signal to get back to your brain that I'm hurting I need help I need attention I need concern but when it's another person that has to be a choice to consciously be aware consciously considerate and caring to love as my own body what that is telling us is that we must never allow anything to put a distance between where we become cold and indifferent to our marriage partner and of course all these lessons are equally important and valid for Christian relationships as well now when it says here for no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord the church I've listed some points in relation to what it means to nourish it really means to supply the needs of and for husbands God still holds you responsible as the primary provider and it was a lot of challenges today because of the economic circumstances that we exist in it has warped a lot of things made it very difficult but God still holds you as head in this family unit to be willing to be the primary provider that is the basic one of the basic aspects of the division of labor you might say that is intended in the financial realm providing companionship sometimes one of the biggest failures that husbands have is that they're so busy making money and providing financially that they're not there personally and the wife becomes vulnerable to other relationships and this is especially accentuated in in the changes that have happened in our culture where everybody's out working and you're spending a lot of a lot more time actually being with somebody else other than your husband or wife and there's that added danger and I don't know if this statistic is still completely valid but I don't remember how many years ago I picked this up but seventy percent of extramarital affairs take place with somebody at the workplace because you're working with people you get close to you can start opening up especially if there's things happening at home that you're not too happy about sympathy it's easy to be sympathetic when you only hear half the story 70% of extramarital affairs I know that that has been affected by the communications that we have today with the Internet and all the things that there are in relation to that that have simply magnified the opportunities for other wrong relationships to develop so there's a lot of things that we we need to think about and not take for granted we cannot take for granted in any husband-wife relationship if I put it bluntly I will say this if your husband or wife is not your best friend I think you're in trouble your husband or wife should be to you your companion of choice the one that you prefer to be with and are with more than anybody else now my time has gone there is certainly more here that needs to be said but the verse 33 closes with the conclusion that love and respect are the foundational principles of lasting relationship shall we pray our father we would bow before thee recognizing that in our culture marriages have been significantly devalued there has been so many distortions of relationship we pray that we might be protective of the closeness of the tenderness and care about us intend to be experienced and expressed in the marriage relationship we thank you that we can lean upon the power of God the strength of a gracious spirit to enable us in all our own imperfection and the imperfection of those that we are in close relationship with to seek to be a blessing and a care a strength and protection so that our marriages will reflect by love by holiness by wisdom and by goodness we ask you for this as we commit ourselves now to thee in the precious name of our Lord Jesus