"Jesus Changes Our Marriages (Ephesians 5:21-33)", Will DuVal | 11/17/24
Ephesians 5:21-33 | 11/17/24 | Will DuVal
This morning we’re talking about MARRIAGE, which our society doesn’t have a particularly great OPINION of, as reflected in many of our JOKES:
“Marriage isn’t a WORD, it’s a SENTENCE.”
“Marriage requires give and take; you give in and she takes over.”
“Marriage is a 3-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, then SUFFER-ing.”
But God’s WORD, on the other hand, presents a much more POSITIVE view of marriage. The Bible says marriage is a good gift from a good GOD, that meets a VARIETY of our needs in life:
Our existential need, for progeny: “God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” (Gen 1:28)
Our relational need, for companionship: “God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”” (Gen 2:18)
Our physical need (or at least our DESIRE) for sex: “Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.” (1 Cor 7:2-3)
And our practical needs, for productivity (“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil”), for support (“If they fall, one will lift up [the other]”), for comfort (“if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?”), and for protection (“though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him”) (Ecc 4:9-12).
But this morning, in the most important passage on marriage in the entire BIBLE, Ephesians 5:21-33, the apostle Paul is gonna highlight for us the way in which God, through marriage, meets our two-fold SPIRITUAL need: for 1) SANCTIFICATION - daily growth in Christlikeness - and for 2) GOSPELING - our need for daily reminding of all that Christ has done for us in the gospel. And according to Ephesians 5, marriage - REAL marriage, BIBLICAL marriage - is a living PICTURE, a 3-dimensional, visible ILLUSTRATION and INCARNATION of that gospel.
This is the “profound mystery” to which we turn our attention this morning. But before we DO, I wanna say a quick word to 2 different demographics of folks who may otherwise find this sermon difficult to digest.
The first is our SINGLES, including those of you who are widowed, or divorced. You may have walked in this morning, seen the sermon title, and been tempted to walk right back out. Here’s why I’m glad you didn’t. First of all, our corporate worship is ALWAYS better when you’re here. But second: just because you’re not married today doesn’t mean you won’t ONE DAY be; God may want some of you singles to file these truths about marriage away for your OWN, later. But third: ALL of you KNOW plenty of folks who ARE married, who you’ve been called to love, serve, and pray for. Perhaps God has a word this morning for you to pass on to your married FRIEND, SIBLING, or CO-worker.
Lastly, if God wants to use marriage to remind us of the gospel, here’s the thing: it doesn’t HAVE to be YOUR marriage! I believe one of God’s biggest purposes in Christian marriage is to give us a WITNESS to others: we’re called to be a picture of the gospel FOR THEM! So, singles, I pray that you will be blessed this morning to be reminded of the gospel through marriage, even if it’s NOT your own.
But the SECOND demographic I want to appeal to now are the MARRIED folks who are too busy PRAYING and nudging their SPOUSES right now to hear anything for themselves from the Lord: “God, I pray you’ll speak to HIS heart this morning… Honey, are YOU listening…?”.
Jesus said, “Why don’t you worry about the log in your OWN eye, and let ME take care of the speck of sawdust in your SPOUSE’S” (Mt 7:4). Why don’t you ask me what I want YOU to hear this morning, and let ME (the Holy Spirit) take care of convicting your SPOUSE’S heart. Fair enough?
Okay, let’s go; I invite you to STAND… Ephesians 5:21-33. We pick up in v21, where Paul has just been exhorting us to be FILLED with the SPIRIT, and then he says THIS. Hear the word…
“[Be filled with the Spirit]...submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 In the same way husbands should love their 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 Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 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… Seated…]
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Paul addresses 4 different subjects here - Christians in general, Christian WIVES, Christian HUSBANDS, and then Christian MARRIAGES in summary - and to each, Paul writes a specific exhortation here, which he defends with a biblical justification.
That’s your OUTLINE: 1) the 4 entities Paul addresses, 2) the 4 actions Paul exhorts, 3) and the 4 explanations Paul offers.
Entity, exhortation, explanation.
And the FIRST entity Paul addresses is Christians in GENERAL - the believers in Ephesus first, but by extension ALL believers who would one day read and seek to obey this divinely-inspired book - and his exhortation to us here is to: SUBMIT TO our SIBLINGS;
Why? Explanation? because WE REVERE CHRIST. (v21)
“Out of REVERENCE for CHRIST.”
Now, this word “SUBMISSION” is a massively important one to understand here, used 4x in this passage, and it’s a massively UNPOPULAR one in today’s world. Our COUNTRY was FOUNDED on the principle of FREEDOM (for SOME of us, anyway…); freedom from tyranny, from taxation… we don’t LIKE to “submit”. And our AVERSION to it has only increased, especially in the past decade or so; we don’t even submit to BIOLOGY anymore - “I’LL choose what gender I am, thank you…”
But what does “submission” actually MEAN? Pastor David Guzik defines it this way: “The word submitting here [hupotasso] literally means, “to be under in rank.” It is a military word. It speaks of the way that an army is organized among levels of rank. You have generals and colonels, majors and captains, sergeants and privates… and you are obligated to respect those in higher rank…” He goes on, “The idea of submission doesn’t have anything to do with someone being smarter or better or more talented. It has to do with a God-appointed order. “Anyone who has served in the armed forces knows that ‘rank’ has to do with order and authority, not with value or ability.” (Wiersbe & Guzik, (https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-5/ )”
And we know it to be true BIBLICALLY as well; Romans 13 calls us to submit to the governing authorities God has appointed over us, irrespective of their respectability or competence. Luke 2:51 says that adolescent Jesus “submitted” to his parents - Mary and Joseph - NOT because they were morally SUPERIOR to him, more GODLY, but simply because God had placed Jesus under their parental AUTHORITY.
Now MARVEL with me for a moment at how MOMENTOUS Paul’s counsel is here. Never before in human history had a community EVER been governed by this kind of “MUTUAL submission” ethic. To be sure, EVERY community is governed by SUBMISSION.
Soldiers submit to their generals.
Employees submit to their bosses.
And even within the CHRISTIAN community, church members ARE called to “submit to” their LEADERS, to pastors and elders (Heb 13:17).
And yet, according to Ephesians 5:21 here, even as YOU submit to ME as your PASTOR, I am called to submit to YOU as a fellow brother or sister in Christ. WE submit to ONE ANOTHER.
Now how in the world does THAT work? How can we BOTH be “organized underneath one another in rank”? Do we BOTH act like a PRIVATE in relation to his GENERAL?!
YES! As Paul explains in Philippians 2, ALL believers are to “Do nothing from selfish[ness], but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you [privates AND generals; congregants AND pastors; wives AND husbands; let EACH of you…] look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [that’s why Paul says, “submit… out of REVERENCE for CHRIST”] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be [CLUNG to], 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant [a SLAVE; a SUBMITTER,]… he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (vv3-8)
In other words, Jesus, the most decorated GENERAL ever, laid aside his honor and accolades to become the lowliest PRIVATE, so that WE, rebel soldiers fighting for the other SIDE, the Axis of Evil, might not only be SAVED and converted, but be promoted to GENERALS within the Lord’s army.
Paul says: now YOU go follow in his footsteps. The Christian life and hierarchy are characterized by DOWNWARD mobility; it’s a race to the BOTTOM. Jesus said, “The first shall be last and the last shall be FIRST!” (Mt 20:16). He said, “those who are considered rulers [they might CLAIM a TITLE, but REAL leadership isn’t having a POSITION; it’s having a DISPOSITION of selflessness; but those CONSIDERED rulers] of the Gentiles [worldly leaders; they] lord it over them, and their [so-called] “great ones” DOMINEER over them. 43 But it shall NOT be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant 44 and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all [must SUBMIT to EVERYONE; why?] 45 Because even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”” (Mk 10:42-45)
Jesus was the ULTIMATE submitter, friends, for OUR sake. If even the Son of God Himself submitted to death on a cross to save us from our sins, how much MORE so ought WE be willing now to submit to one another, out of REVERENCE for him - his example TO us, and his will FOR us, as his Church.
#2 - The SECOND group Paul addresses now, specifically, is Christian WIVES, who are ALSO called to SUBMIT TO their HUSBANDS in particular now… WHY?? Because HE IS HEAD. (vv22-24)
Verse 22 flows in one continuous train of thought straight out of v21. There’s not even a VERB in the Greek; it literally reads: “submitting to one another… Wives, to your own husbands.”
Now if the Bible’s call to submission in general was unpopular, God’s directive here to wives specifically is downright ANATHEMA in our society, and has been for the better part of the last 6 decades now. The world has done its BEST to convince us that there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between a man and a woman (SO much so that there’s a lot of CONFUSION these days, about which is which).
But our God is NOT a God of confusion, but of ORDER (1 Cor 14:33). And in his providence and his GOODNESS, God has ordered gender AND MARRIAGE in such a way that there is no confusion, in a biblical marriage, about where the buck stops; it stops with the husband. He is charged with the LEADERSHIP of his family, and his wife is called to submit to that leadership. He is the head of the household, and the “head” of the WIFE, v23 says, in an analogous way to Christ’s headship “of the CHURCH, his BODY.” Christ is IN CHARGE; he calls the SHOTS. Within the Church, we defer to, we SUBMIT to JESUS’ leadership. “So also, wives should submit to their husbands.”
The other “headship” passages in the NT - 1 Cor 11, 1 Tim 3 - they ground this principle in God’s CREATION order; “this is the way God CREATED us, male and female, from the BEGINNING”. In other words, male headship is NOT a result of the Fall. Wives bucking AGAINST it is; that’s what God means in Genesis 3:16 when he cursed the woman and said, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, [in your SIN, you’re gonna tend to buck AGAINST his leadership], but he shall rule OVER youl…” - In HIS sin, he’ll tend to misuse his leadership selfishly, in a domineering way.
The Danvers Statement (in Hughes, 183) puts it this way: Because of the Fall, “the husband’s loving humble headship tends to be replaced by either domination or passivity; the wife’s intelligent, willing submission tends to be replaced by either usurpation or servility.”
But God doesn’t want husbands to be dictators OR wusses.
He doesn’t want WIVES to be rebels OR doormats.
And speaking of what submission DOESN’T mean, please notice that Paul DOESN’T say here that women should submit to men. He makes a point of saying, and REPEATING, “submit to your OWN husband.” It’s similar to church membership: Hebrews 13:17 doesn’t call you to submit to EVERY pastor and elder in EVERY church, but specifically to YOUR pastors and elders in THIS church; that’s why it’s important for you to know who we ARE, and for US to know who you, the church’s MEMBERS are. God is a God of ORDER. It’s important to know who you’re MARRIED to.
And wives: if you’re going to obey God’s word and submit to your husband, it’s important to know him BEFORE you agree to marry him, isn’t it? I make sure I’ve at least grabbed a LUNCH with you before we let you join the church, because I take seriously the call to LEAD you, as your pastor, and YOU oughta take seriously God’s call to SUBMIT to me.
Ladies: if he proposes on the first date – RUN! He clearly doesn’t understand, doesn’t APPRECIATE the GRAVITY of marriage, and what God is calling BOTH of you to, WITHIN it.
You don’t “submit” to just ANYONE. Wives, you submit to your OWN husbands.
Submission is ALSO not mere blind obedience. Next week, Paul’s gonna tell children to “OBEY” their parents; slaves to “OBEY” their masters. But he DOESN’T say “wives: OBEY your husbands”; rather, he says “SUBMIT”. As commentator Clinton Arnold explains (Ephesians, 383,401): “It is inappropriate [then] to argue that a wife should receive orders from her husband… It does not make the husband the boss and the wife the servant. It does not lead to the wife’s loss of her [sense of] self or identity. It does not mean the wife loses her voice and decisions are made unilaterally. [And] It [certainly] does not set the wife up for emotional, verbal, or physical abuse.”
Guzik mentions four exceptions to God’s call to submission:
1) “When the husband asks or expects the wife to sin” - in those cases, wives must say with the apostle Peter in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.”
2) “When the husband is medically incapacitated or insane” - Even if your husband is NOT insane, if you think he’s about to make an insane DECISION, that’s gonna affect you and your family, then your conscience ought to COMPEL you to speak UP!
Submission doesn’t mean VOICE-less-ness.
Third exception: “When the husband is physically abusive and endangers the safety of the wife or children”. Abuse is a type of marital abandonment, addressed in 1 Corinthians 7:15- “In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved”, no longer BOUND to the marriage, or to submit to that spouse. Now, I have counseled spouses - both women AND men - who CLAIMED they were the victims of abuse, which is a SERIOUS charge against your spouse - but really they were just married to a JERK, which isn’t FUN, but there is a difference. In such cases, you ARE bound. On the other hand, I’ve ALSO counseled believers to LEAVE a spouse who WAS abusing them, but they were in DENIAL about it (“Oh, he just gets upset sometimes…”; “No, he gets ABUSIVE, and you have to stop putting UP with it…”).
Lastly, Guzik mentions an exception to submission “When the husband breaks the marriage bond by adultery”, Matthew 19:9.
So if that’s what it DOESN’T mean to submit… when you DON’T submit, wives… what DOES it mean, positively?
Here’s how Arnold (402) describes it: To submit is “to receive her husband’s love, care, and provision. To provide encouragement, support and input to her husband’s initiatives to give vision and direction to the family. To resist the temptation to “take control”. To resist the impulse to undermine or complain about the leadership her husband provides.”
Kent Hughes adds (183): “When the husband is giving godly leadership - strong, moral, loving headship to his family - the woman ‘will be no more squelched by [his] leadership [than that] of JESUS.’ She will be elevated and enriched by her submission.”
When I do premarital counseling with couples, we spend a week on “Decision-Making” in marriage. And in the curriculum I use, there are THREE assessments we talk through: PERSONAL decision making (as individuals), CONSENSUS decision making (as a couple), and finally, HEADSHIP decision making. And we typically spend about 47% of our time on the “personal”, 48% on “consensus”, and only about 5% on “headship”, because in MY marriage, and I’d argue in pretty much ANY healthy marriage, if a husband is pulling the “head of the house” card more than like once in every 20 decisions… maybe 50 or 100?!... then you’re DOING it wrong. I don’t know if I can think of 10 decisions EVER, in our 16 years of MARRIAGE, where Polly and I COULDN’T get on the same page, but a decision still had to be MADE, so biblically, it fell to ME to MAKE it. Maybe FIVE.
But in those RARE cases, “wives submit to your husbands”... AS to the LORD, v22. What does THAT mean?
Guzik explains: “There are two main wrong interpretations of this phrase…
i. The [one] which favors the husband says that “as to the Lord” means that a wife should submit to her husband as if he were God himself. The idea is “you submit to God in absolutely everything without question, so you must submit to your husband in the same absolute way”...
iii. The wrong interpretation that favors the wife says that as to the Lord means “I’ll submit to him as long as he does what the Lord wants.” Then the wife often thinks it is her job to decide what the Lord wants…
But “As to the Lord” doesn’t define the extent of a wife’s submission or the limit of her submission. It defines the motive of her submission. “It means: ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands because it is a part of your duty to the Lord… an expression of your submission to [HIM]... In other words, you are not doing it only for the husband, you are doing it primarily for the Lord Himself… for Christ’s sake”. (https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/ephesians-5)
So “the husband is the head of the wife even AS Christ is the head of the church, his body”; so there’s an ANALOGY here, but like EVERY metaphor, it ultimately breaks down at a point. And Paul highlights that point of dis-connect for us here, when he goes on in v23 to remind us that “Christ is HIMSELF the Church’s SAVIOR”. Like ANY good preacher, Paul just can’t HELP himself - he never missed a chance to share the GOSPEL: Jesus SAVED us from our sins! But lest we conclude that husbands are ALSO the “saviors” of their WIVES, Paul immediately makes a U-turn in v24 with the word “BUT”; the ESV translates “NOW”, but the Greek word is “alla” - HOWEVER; “indicating a sharp CONTRAST with what precedes it” (Arnold, 382). Husband: you ARE her “head”, but you are NOT her “savior”; Jesus has that role covered.
Lastly, for the wives, why does Paul specify that you submit “in EVERYTHING” in v24? We already qualified that this CANNOT apply in cases of SIN, ABUSE, etc.
I think Paul doesn’t want wives to misunderstand this command as binding only in SPIRITUAL, or CHURCH matters. You could imagine a wife arguing, “Well, Honey, Paul wrote his letter specifically to the CHURCH; so God wants me to be submissive in THAT context…”. Paul says, “No, be submissive in EVERY context: if y’all disagree on whether or not to sell the house, take that job, leave that church, spank your kids, public or private school… at the end of the day, you don’t flip a coin; the HUSBAND must bear the BURDEN, the God-ordained RESPONSIBILITY of LEADING.
Why? Well that brings us to point #3 now…
3) Christian HUSBANDS LOVE their wives because WE HAVE A STEWARDSHIP. (vv25-31)
We defined it back in ch3, where Paul said, “To me has been given, by God, STEWARDSHIP of the gospel”; “the responsible oversight and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving”.
Husbands: our MARRIAGES and our WIVES are “worth CARING for, protecting”, and WE have been given the “responsible oversight” for them. Specifically, we’re called to care for our wives in TWO ways here: spiritually AND physically. But before we even get there, consider the KIND of “care” we offer. Care is really too weak a word; Paul says, “LOVE” your wives.
We just take it for granted today, but once again, this was a RADICAL calling in Paul’s day. Flip through the pages of history and you won’t find another author ANYWHERE in antiquity exhorting MEN to “LOVE” their wives. That was simply NOT an expectation of husbands until Paul penned Ephesians 5. That’s why Paul spends twice as many verses on the HUSBANDS here, as he did on the WIVES. Today, WE hear “Husbands, love your wives” and we think, “Yeah, yeah, tell me something I DON’T know…”, while WE get hung up on the “Wives, submit to your husbands” part. Such that I felt the need to spend twice as long THERE. But in Paul’s day, it was just the OPPOSITE. It was the HUSBANDS who would have read this letter and said, “Say WHAT now? LOVE her?”
You may know, there are FOUR words in Greek for “love”. The one Paul uses here is the STRONGEST kind of love: AGAPE. It is unconditional love. Unbreakable love, covenantal love.
Jesus defined it this way in John 15:13 - “Greater love has no one than this, that you lay down your life for your friends.” And yet HIS love for US was even greater than THAT, wasn’t it, because HE died not for FRIENDS, but while we were yet SINNERS, ENEMIES, REBELS against God (Rom 5:8). Christ’s was the GREATEST love of ALL!
Paul says: Husbands, have THAT kind of love for your WIVES! Love her “like Christ loved the CHURCH, and gave himself UP for her.” Few of us will ever be called to LITERALLY DIE, physically, for our wives, but ALL of us are called - every DAY! - to die to ourselves, to our wants and needs, to put HERS first.
Here are just a FEW of the examples Clinton Arnold offers us, husbands, for putting love into PRACTICE today: “grow in a willingness to deny [yourself in order] to ensure [your] wife’s well-being and care… be vigilant to guard against tones and language that could wound [your] wife; spend regular quality time with [your] wife and consistently make her feel precious to [you]; [don’t ever make her feel like a “means” to the “end” of SEX;] take every precaution not to demean [your] wife by looking at other women in inappropriate ways or desiring them in [your] heart; deny [yourself] of the desire to relax when [your] wife needs to talk or engage… learn to discern [your] wife’s needs [without being asked] and strive to meet them; recognize [your] wife’s giftedness and identify ways to support her and give her opportunity to express her gifts; seek [your] wife’s input on casting vision and direction for the family… take the initiative in conflict resolution; concentrate on doing what this passage speaks about [YOUR] role rather than insisting that [your] wife fulfill HER role.” (405,407)
I remember sitting in the marriage counselor’s office, a few years in, listening to Polly read HER list of grievances, then reading MINE, and the counselor said, “I have this mental picture of the two of you each standing on a separate MOUNTAIN, and there’s this BEAUTIFUL VALLEY in between you, just waiting, ready to be SHARED by you BOTH, but you’re both standing there, shouting across at each other: “You move first… No, YOU move first…”
Then he said, “Let’s open our Bibles to Ephesians ch5…” and we read this passage, and then he looked me in the eye and said, “Will, LOVING her like CHRIST loved the CHURCH, means that YOU’RE called to take the first STEP.”
That you lay down your PRIDE, lay down your INSECURITY, your TRUST issues, whatever it may be; listen: Jesus didn’t just lay down his PRIDE, he laid down his LIFE for us!
And why’d he DO it? Vv26 & 27 explain, and by ANALOGY, they describe the first kind of STEWARDSHIP we as husbands have been given: Why did Jesus die for HIS Bride, for US, the CHURCH? Paul uses the words “so that” THREE TIMES here to make the same point in three different WAYS: “so that he might sanctify her… so that he might present the church to himself in splendor… so that she might be holy and without blemish.”
Jesus DIED to make us HOLY.
LIKEWISE, Paul is saying, “Husband, you lovingly lay down YOUR life for YOUR wife’s holiness, for HER sanctification.”
We have a SPIRITUAL stewardship of our wives’ hearts (vv25-27).
Just as I’VE been entrusted with, as your PASTOR, a spiritual stewardship - “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your SOULS, as those who will have to give an account” - one day I’ll stand before the Lord and have to ANSWER for how I shepherded the 247 “SOULS” who belonged to this church; LIKEWISE, Paul says here, every HUSBAND will one day stand before the Lord and give account for how he led his WIFE, his FAMILY.
Hughes nails it when he says (190): “When we men read verses 25-27, we cannot escape our huge responsibility: “Is our wife more like CHRIST because she is married to US? Not IN SPITE OF being married to us, but BECAUSE… Our call is clear: sanctifying love.”
Like JESUS. Who “CLEANSED” us, his Bride, “by the washing of water with the word”. Husbands: our love ought to be like a purifying BATH for our wives, our love ought to bring spiritual RENEWAL and VITALITY to her. Again, it’s only an ANALOGY, so of course it breaks down. I can’t MAKE Polly “holy” in the same way that JESUS can, and HAS. MY “word” doesn’t have that kind of cleansing power, like GOD’S word. But my words are powerful nevertheless, and so are YOURS, husbands. And our ACTIONS speak even LOUDER than our words. And by our words and actions, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly shaping, influencing, LEADING our wives - “Is she more like CHRIST because she’s married to ME?” Is she more spiritually BEAUTIFUL, “without spot or blemish”, because of ME?
The SECOND kind of stewardship Paul mentions here, and the second REASON he offers us for LOVING our wives; he says: “Look, you OUGHTA love her because CHRIST loved YOU… you oughta lay down YOUR life because JESUS laid down HIS… you oughta EDIFY her, build her UP, make her BETTER, because Jesus made you ETERNALLY “better” - he SANCTIFIED you, CLEANSED you, brought you a HOLINESS without which you couldn’t even enjoy relationship with your holy GOD.
But NOW, Paul says, in vv28-31 - even if you don’t do it for those selfless, spiritual reasons, you oughta love her, if for NO other reason, than THIS: that she’s a PART of you! God has joined you together, “two have become ONE FLESH”. Thus, Paul reasons, “He who loves his wife loves himself.” Even if you’re just SELFISH, concerned with loving yourself, the truism stands: “happy wife, happy life”.
But I do think Paul’s getting at MORE than just that here; why all the “BODY” language? “husbands love their wives as their own bodies… no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it…”. Paul actually SWITCHES his wording over from “soma” - body - to “sarx” - FLESH. Why? I’ll give you THREE quick reasons:
First, Paul knows he’s about to quote Genesis 2:24 in v31 - “the two shall become one FLESH” - so he’s setting us up for that.Second, that word “flesh” typically has a NEGATIVE connotation in Paul’s letters - he often uses “flesh” as a SYNONYM for the SINFUL part of us. “Live unto the SPIRIT, NOT unto the FLESH.” So I think there’s a kind of clever WORD play going on here, where Paul is CONFRONTING us, husbands, in our sinfulness, our flesh-li-ness, while paradoxically CAPITALIZING on it in building his argument: “I know I’ve got to PLEAD with you to be CHRIST-like, but NO ONE has got to try and convince you to nourish and cherish your FLESH; you do that NATURALLY. The sin and selfishness that still lives inside you is gonna make DARN sure that you get yours - food, drink, shelter, clothing, sleep, sex; you LOVE yourself, your FLESH.
But then Paul HITS us with it: now SHE’S your flesh TOO. HER flesh is YOUR flesh.
Which leads me to the THIRD reason Paul evokes this imagery, and the SECOND kind of STEWARDSHIP God has entrusted to husbands: we don’t just care for our wives SPIRITUALLY; we’ve been given a PHYSICAL stewardship of her body, as well (vv28-31).
In 1 Corinthians 7:4, Paul goes so far as to say, “For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.” He ALSO says there, by the way, “LIKEWISE, the WIFE has authority over the HUSBAND’S body”, because two really HAVE become one flesh; “What’s mine is yours and what’s YOURS is MINE.”
But PARTICULARLY when it comes to the HUSBAND, we see here that we are called to take CARE of - to “nourish and cherish” - our wives, not just spiritually, but TANGIBLY, practically, physically.
What does THAT mean? It means protecting her. When an intruder breaks into your home, she gets to hide behind YOU (not the other way around). It means PROVIDING for her. Husbands - you make sure that you’ve got enough to eat, drink, wear… now do the same for HER. It means you let HER worry about caring for your SEXUAL needs - “the wife has AUTHORITY over her husband’s body” - and YOU worry about caring for HER physical needs; maybe to just REST, at the end of a long day.
Paul says: “You need to worry about HER needs every bit as much as you naturally do your OWN.” Because TWO have become ONE flesh.
But in closing, #4- Paul reiterates his MAIN point all along: that Christian marriages POINT TO our SAVIOR because HE DIED FOR US. (vv32-33)
“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
Husbands, WIVES: your marriage is a PARABLE. It is a living, breathing, daily PICTURE of Christ’s covenantal LOVE relationship with his Bride. “And”, Paul says, “Christians don’t tell LIES about the GOSPEL.” God hates divorce, because it tells a LIE about the gospel. It says, “Maybe God’s love ISN’T unconditional, unbreakable, after all.” God hates self-centered HUSBANDRY because it tells a LIE about Christ’s self-LESS-ness, in giving himself UP, sacrificially, for his Bride. God hates self-assertive WIFING because it tells a LIE about the Church’s submissive DEFERENCE and REVERENCE towards our Bridegroom and head, Jesus.
SO, Paul concludes in v33 (“However” is an unfortunate translation of a word that just means “IN CONCLUSION” here, in context), “In summary: “Husbands: love your wives; wives: respect your husbands.”
And BOTH of you, COLLECTIVELY, together as a one-flesh UNION, point people to JESUS with your marriage. Point each OTHER to Jesus in your marriage.
You are a picture of the GOSPEL; be a FAITHFUL one.
Christ is worthy of nothing less.
Let’s pray…