Christian Marriage: A Fruitful Garden Protected (Ephesians Sermon 38)

Well, I come this morning to the first of three sermons in our series in Ephesians. We’ve come to the section on marriage. It was not intentionally lined up with Mother’s Day, it just happened that way. And Jared, I have six points in my sermon this morning. Is that okay? So this is like two sermons I guess, two Baptist sermons, I guess. But we’re going to look this morning in an overarching, overview, sense of marriage. And we’re not going to get into the exegetical details of Ephesians 5, but we’re going to talk some, in a big picture, about Christian marriage. And then God willing, next week we’ll have a second sermon zeroing in on the wife’s responsibilities in that section, that scripture. And then, the following week, God willing, we’ll look at the husband’s responsibilities. So that’s where we’re going.

I. A Fruitful Garden Needing Protection

And as I begin this sermon this morning, my mind goes back in time. I imagine, I don’t know that this happened, but I think it must have happened back to a warm, late June day in 1863 in a Pennsylvania farm area, where a peach farmer was just walking through his orchard. I can picture this, and I’ve walked through orchards myself, and you just smell the fragrance of those peach blossoms and you see the peaches growing on the trees, and you just anticipate the harvest and the time when the fruit is going to get ripe. And your heart is so filled with hope. The problem was that peach orchard was near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and within a week it would be the site of one of the worst battles in history. And that those peach blossoms were going to get ripped to shreds by bullets and by artillery fire, and the peace of that place was going to be rent by the screams of agonizing wounds and men dying. And we picture that image of a beautiful garden, a rich, beautiful garden that has become a battlefield. And you think to yourself, “How could such a fruitful garden become such a battlefield?” And this is the image that’s in my mind as I think about Christian marriage.

And as we come to the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:21-33, I look on marriage as a fruitful garden, a beautiful, rich garden that needs protection. That it is a battlefield. And we’re going to find out later in Ephesians, not yet, but maybe in the future if God gives us the time, how we are in a place of spiritual warfare all the time. And our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but it’s against the rulers and the authorities and the powers of this dark age, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. And that Satan has made marriage a special focus of his activity, a special focus of his attack. Marriage is one of God’s richest gifts, a fruitful garden. You look at the book of Song of Solomon, and marriage, the beauties and the mysteries and the allure, the attraction of marriage is pictured as a garden, a walled garden with fragrant spices and a fruitful harvest that’s to come. And it’s just a beautiful picture. And so, that garden imagery there in the Song of Solomon about married love, even sexual love, that picture in the Song of Songs, I think, harkens back to the original garden, the Garden of Eden where God first set up marriage, and established it right at the beginning. Adam, the first man, created by the sovereign power of God, and God brought Eve into his life. But before that, God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:15. It says, “To work it and take care of it.” Most English translations go in that direction, but I think the Hebrew more simply says, “To serve and protect it.” And so, the man’s job there was to serve the garden and pour his intelligence and his skill as a gardener into that Garden of Eden. It was perfect, but incomplete. And there were certain shrubs and plants that needed human cultivation.

And so, God gave to the man work to do and he was to serve that garden to the end, that that Garden could be everything God intended it to be. What a beautiful image for the man in his protection role of the garden, or his serving role, and also protection. When you think, “To serve and protect”, the image of protect comes in my mind of an impending threat. You protect because there’s danger. And you might think, “What danger could there be?” But by then, putting the whole Bible together, Satan had already fallen and been cast down to earth with a third of the angels, it seems, from Revelation 12. And so, Satan and the demons are coming and there’s going to be a temptation and there’s going to be danger. And there would be a severe threat to the garden and to the whole planet. And it was Adam’s job to protect the world from that threat, to serve and protect. I’ve thought about that often, since I had those insights. And I said, what Adam is called to do with the garden, I’m called to do with my family, with my marriage, and with my children, to serve them and protect them. And that’s what I want. My purpose in these sermons is that husbands would serve and protect their wives and their children, and that wives would fulfill the role that God has for them as well. And then we’ll get to the children’s section, God willing.

But we understand that marriage, as an institution, is under direct attack in our day and age. I don’t have to elucidate this for you, you know very well what I’m talking about. You know that the idea of one man, one woman, in a permanent covenantal union, for life, is under direct attack. The Supreme Court’s decision last year to allow or endorse, I don’t know what verb to put, gay marriage, is I think a satanic attack on biblical marriage. I find it staggering that the justices there could so arrogantly overturn millennia of jurisprudence and common understanding of marriage, and make that decision.

In Scandinavia, in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, where gay marriage has been legal since the early 1990s, the result has been a clear decline in marriage itself. Fewer and fewer young couples even get married, they just cohabit together, they might even have children, then they move on to another partner. And so, the idea of marriage itself has become, there, it seems, passé. But this is only the most recent attack on marriage, marriage has been under attack from the beginning. But even in our own culture we see it. The escalating divorce rates is an attack on marriage. The ideas of sexual freedom, open marriage, different things, cohabitation. And then just in general, constant marital strife. Marriage is a battleground, it’s a fruitful garden that has become a battleground.

Because of all of these faulty assumptions, because of various things, Tim Keller in his book on marriage related that many younger people, who we often call millennials, these would be young people who have come to their adult years around the year 2000, thereabouts, “Are increasingly skeptical about the traditional pattern of marriage, one man, one woman, and a binding exclusive covenant for life.”

Keller quotes a star of the film Monogamy. This star, a woman, said, “In this country we have kind of failed with marriage. We’re so protective of this really sacred, but failed institution. There’s got to be a new model”, she said. Well, do you not see that that’s exactly what our world is saying? We need a new model of marriage, we need to come up with something new. because that thing didn’t work. Well, friends, we as Christians know very well, we don’t need a new model. We need instead to live up to what God has committed to us in the Word of God. We need to live up, as Christians now, speaking as a Christian to Christians, we need to live up to Ephesians 5 marriage. That’s what we need to do.

And so, that’s what I want to do. And I want to go to the end of this section here and talk about what Paul says to get a sense of the importance, and the spirituality, and the mystical truth of marriage that Paul gives us there. Look at Ephesians 5:31 and 32. He says there, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. And the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I’m talking about Christ and the Church.”

II. Marriage a Profound Mystery: Christ and the Church

So marriage, there is a profound mystery, it is a picture of Christ’s union with the Church. Profound mystery. Now, when we come to the word mystery we’re not talking about something like Sherlock Holmes where you look at something and with deductive skill and reasoning you pick out the clues and you put the whole thing together. I think there’s a lot of young married men that are like that. They’re trying to figure their wives out. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand how that even happened. What just happened? Something happened. I can tell something happened. She’s upset. I must have done something. I must have said something. Don’t know what it is, but something happened there.” So I think a young man like that, a young husband would say, “Amen, marriage is a profound mystery.” That’s not, I think, what Paul means there when he says that.

This is not in my outline but I’m going to go ahead and say it. Alright, you’re off message, handlers running, “Don’t do it.” But I’ll say it anyway. Here’s the thing, a man is constantly studying his wife, trying to understand her. The first wife was brought by God, and He explained to Adam where she came from, because he was in a deep sleep at the time. That’s kind of a symbol, isn’t it? But anyway. Deep sleep, here is this woman, and he gets it and says, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Where did he get that? God told him. So here’s the thing, you confused husbands, go to God. He understands your wife. She might not even understand herself. Romans 7 says we don’t understand ourselves. But God knows her. That’s just an aside. But what does Paul mean when he says that marriage is, literally in the Greek, a “mega mystērion”, a “profound mystery”?

What he is saying is that every marriage there’s ever been, including non-Christians, any tribe, language, people, nation, any marriage, all marriages from the beginning have been a picture of Christ and the Church, whether they knew it or not. And that God, when He established marriage in the garden, was intending to give a lasting picture of Christ’s union with his Church. That’s the mystery. A mystery then, in Paul’s way of speaking, a mystery is something hidden in God that has to do with His redemptive purpose that He is now revealing and making known in Christ. And marriage is now fully understood in this way. It’s a picture of Christ and the Church. So therefore marriage is important. And it’s especially under this kind of confusion, this mental fog, this spiritual fog our people are in, this culture that we’re in is in. We need to live out Christian marriage according to Ephesians 5 for the cause of the Gospel. So that’s what this is a call to do.

III. The Biblical Foundation: Matthew 19, Genesis 1-2

So let’s go to the foundation. I’m going to step back and look biblically at marriage and just give an overview. I don’t think we can go over these things enough. When I do premarital counseling, and after we’ve gotten to know each other, me and the couple, and we have some time to talk, the first text I go to is Matthew 19. And you can turn there in your Bibles if you’d like, or just listen. But in Matthew 19:3-6, there Jesus teaches on divorce. Now in doing premarital counseling I’m not trying to be negative. “You guys are so excited, and you’re engaged, and you’re looking forward. Let’s talk about divorce.” But I’m not trying to be negative because what Jesus does so beautifully, the divorce question comes to him, and he answers by scripturally defining marriage. So it actually is a very good place to begin premarital counseling. In effect, I’m trying to just get out of the way and say, “I would love for Jesus to be your premarital counselor. If He were your counselor what would He do?”

And so, look what it says in Matthew 19:3-6. Some Pharisees came to him and said, to test him, they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read”, He replied, “That at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.” So that’s Jesus’ teaching on divorce, but even more significantly, He’s teaching on marriage. The question that’s posed is, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” The answer’s plain, Jesus’ answer is plain. “No, it is not, it is not lawful.” And He gives the reasons why. But the reasons just transcend the question, they just transcend. So in effect Jesus says, “If you want to understand marriage, we’re going to start with scripture, you’re going to start with the Bible.” If we could all, in our society, agree on the inspiration and authority of scripture, we wouldn’t have problems on marriage. It’s because we don’t, that’s where we’re getting into strange definitions, and we will continue to have that problem.

The basic presupposition for us as Christians is the Bible is the word of God. And you can see that that’s Jesus’ presupposition too, “Haven’t you read?” If you want to understand marriage, you have to go to the scripture, you have to understand the Bible. And so, there are dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of books on marriage, many of them are very helpful. There are lots of conferences you could go to on marriage and many of them will be very helpful. But ultimately, if I can just say, the scripture is sufficient for a healthy marriage. Scripture is sufficient for a blessed, fruitful, Christian marriage. It’s ultimately all we need. I think Jesus would say that. So He says, “Haven’t you read?” And it’s not just any scripture. All scripture is God-breathed, all scripture is helpful. But when it comes to marriage He’s going to bring you back to the beginning. “Haven’t you read that at the beginning… ” So He’s going to bring you to Genesis. And so beautifully he’s going to bring you to Genesis 1 and then Genesis 2.

And you learn different lessons from each of those chapters. In Genesis 1 you learn that the Creator made them male and female. Now, Jesus doesn’t quote the whole thing in Genesis 1, but you know it very well. “Let us make man in our image[, in our likeness.]” “And so God created man in the image of God, male and female, He created them.” And so, what we learn in Genesis 1 is the significance of the husband and wife, the man and the woman, first and foremost, as human beings created in the image of God. Now, we’re going to learn later in the New Covenant, we also learn that they’re absolutely equal. The husband and wife are absolutely equal, not only in being created in the image of God, but they’re absolutely equal in being redeemed by the blood of Christ. They’re equally heirs of Heaven. And so, the first most important thing that a husband needs to know about his wife is that she’s created in the image of God, and then that she’s redeemed by the blood of Christ.

And we’ll get into all that. So the equality of male and female in the image of God and then later in Christ, is established. And frankly, if all we had were Genesis 1, we wouldn’t actually think of any kind of differentiation of roles within marriage. It’s very egalitarian. But Genesis 1 is not all we have, we also have Genesis 2. And so, Genesis 1 gives this overarching view of marriage set in creation as part of the six days of creation. Or of humanity, not marriage. Of humanity set in the six days of creation. But then we’re zeroing in, in Genesis 2, on a detail. These accounts are not contradictory, they can actually very easily be harmonized. It’s not written by different authors as some liberal scholars have told us. But it’s just in effect like a map of the state of North Carolina, and then zooming in on the Raleigh-Durham area, let’s say, or on Charlotte. Because that’s a metropolitan area. You’ve seen that state map, so then zero on the capital or something like that. So, we’re zeroing in, in Genesis 2, I would say on marriage. I mean there’s other things, but more than anything by the end of the chapter, we understand we’ve zeroed in on marriage.

So humanity, male and female, equally in the image of God, Genesis 1. But then we zero in on marriage. And within that, we are taught some very significant things. Special roles happen. “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the Earth and breathed into his nostrils and he became a living being” Genesis 2:7. So there was a time that Adam was alone. He was formed first, and then Eve, as it says in 1 Timothy 2. So there was a time he was alone, and he was walking around in the garden, and the Lord was instructing him in terms of his role. And I already quoted Genesis 2:15 where God gives him a command. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” I’m thinking that is the most well-ordered, most beautiful, most fragrantly appealing bachelor pad in history. Probably don’t quote me on that. But I’m thinking there he is, he’s alone, and it’s a very beautiful ordered place. But there’s work to be done. He said he put him there to serve it and to protect it, and “He commanded him not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when he ate of it he would surely die.” So this setting. But then comes this statement in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” It is very vital for us to understand. We don’t have to change the scripture, we should never change the scripture. But I hear it this way, “It is not good for the man to remain alone.”

It was very good for him to be alone for a while. How do we know that? Because that’s how God did it. God could have created Adam and Eve instantly at the same time. As a matter of fact, if all we had is Genesis 1, we’d think that’s what He did do. And he could have done that, but he didn’t do that. Why? To create, I think, the headship and submission relationship that we’re going to have more clearly unfolded in Ephesians 5. To establish the male-leadership. To establish Adam, not just as head over his wife, but actually that Adam as head over the entire human-race. And there’s all kinds of theology that flows from that. So He establishes him there, but He makes this statement, “It’s not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Also, it’s important for you to realize, his aloneness was utterly unique in redemptive history. There was no other human being on the face of the earth. No one.

So I don’t think it’s good for us to take that in terms of a bachelor, or a single woman, and say, in reference to them, “It’s not good for them to be alone.” It may be very good for a man to never marry. There are some men that never marry. And it could be very good for some women to never marry, because that’s what God wills. Jesus talks about that in Matthew 19. But Adam’s aloneness was unique. There was just no other human being, and there was no way that Adam, alone, could fulfill the cultural mandate of filling the earth, subduing it, and ruling over it and being fruitful and multiple. He had to have a wife. And so it was not good for him to remain alone. So God said, “I will make a helper suitable for him.” And so I find in Genesis 2:15, “serve and protect” is the man’s calling. Genesis 2:18 is a quick take at the woman’s calling, “helper suitable.”

And I think those words are worthy of a great deal of meditation. And so the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall on him, and He created his wife from the rib of the man, and brought her to the man. Such a picture of how God makes marriages. The bringing to is a picture to me now in this world of God’s providential activity in putting couples together. And it’s a beautiful thing to watch, isn’t it? So, He brings the woman to the man, and the man celebrates. “This now bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” And then the statement that Jesus quotes in Matthew 19, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” And then it says in Genesis 2, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

Now what Jesus is doing in Matthew 19 with Genesis 2 is He’s saying, “What happened then between Adam and Eve, that’s the lasting paradigm for all time.” We don’t need a new pattern of marriage, that is it. What we need to do is live up to it. We need to embrace what God says about it and live up to it, and we will have a fruitful harvest in our marriages and our family lives. So, that’s the kind of biblical foundation.

IV. The Christian Foundation: The Spirit-Filled Life

Let’s look at the Christian foundation. I want to go to Ephesians, and you can follow with me along in Ephesians 1 up through 5. And I’m just going to give an overview of the book to where we’ve come, but this time I’m going to look at it through the lens of marriage. Because this is what I’m going to assert: That marriage flourishes best in the context of the redemption worked by Christ. Christian marriage is the best kind of marriage there is, and it’s established on the foundation of salvation by the triune God. So, I’m going to go back and just get a context of Paul’s commands here, so we understand it. We know Ephesians breaks into two main sections. Ephesians 1-3 just basically gives us salvation through Father, Son, and Spirit. And then Ephesians 4-6 gives us “how then shall we live.” What kind of lives shall we live? And so that’s what we’re doing. So, in Ephesians 1-3, we have salvation. Beginning in verse 4 and 5 of chapter one, “God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ.” So, I’m going to say we are able to have God-honoring marriages because we have been chosen before the foundation of the world to be Christians, and we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.

And that gives us a solid basis for an excellent marriage. And then, in Ephesians 1:7-8, “In Christ we have redemption through His blood. The forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” So, I’m going to say we’re able to have God-honoring marriages because we, both the husband and the wife as Christians, have been completely forgiven by the shed blood of Christ. We’ve been atoned for. By grace, we are blameless positionally before God. The Christian husband is blameless. The Christian wife is blameless positionally before God by the redeeming blood of Christ. So what that does is it gives a solid basis for the continual forgiveness you’re going to need to give each other in marriage. It’s never going to stop.

And I actually think the giving and receiving of forgiveness is very much the essence of a healthy marriage between two sinners. That we can give and receive forgiveness. It’s based on the fact we’ve been forgiven already by the shed blood of Christ. And God has given us wisdom to understand His big picture. We get what marriage is about. We understand it’s not just about me and you. Or just about me, that’s even worse. That individualism, I’m seeking my own pleasure. No, no. There’s a big purpose for my marriage, and your marriage. And that is in Ephesians 1:9-10, God was doing this to bring all things together under one head, even Christ. So there’s this incredibly work of unification going on in the universe, and marriage is a subset of that. The two becoming one. Also, we have been given the gift of the indwelling Spirit.

Ephesians 1:13-14, it says, “You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. Who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance, until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.” So, the sealing of the Spirit is essential to the Christian marriage. Each one of you, the Christian husband and the Christian wife, has the gift, the infinite, immeasurable gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. You’ve been sealed with the Spirit, and the Spirit is there to help you, in part, have an excellent marriage. So you’re indwelt by the Spirit. Now, in Ephesians 2, we learn that each of you have been saved by grace. You were dead in your transgressions and sins, and you have a lot of bad habits. Romans 7 makes that plain.

But because we walked in the pattern of wickedness in Satan’s kingdom, we’ve got a lot of bad habits. We were dead in our transgressions and sins, and you’re going to bring that into the marriage. Both of you is. But we’ve been “saved by grace through faith, and this not of ourselves, it’s the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” And again, that same solid basis for giving and receiving forgiveness. I’ve been saved by grace. I was a tool of Satan’s. I was a slave of Satan’s. I did his will, and now I’ve been redeemed. And you can see your spouse that way too, and you can extend that grace and mercy that’s been extended to you. And then in Ephesians 2:10 says, “Now that we’ve been saved by grace through faith, we have a life of good works to do. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.”

So, if you’re married, a lot of your good works are going to be in the context of your marriage. Christian husbands, you’re going to do a lot of good works toward your wife, because she’s your wife. Christians wives, you’re going to do a lot of good works that God’s laid out ahead of time for you to do because you’re a wife. And that’s going to be an organizing pattern of your good works toward one another.

And then at the end of Ephesians 2, we see Christian marriage as a part of of what God’s doing to build this magnificent spiritual structure. The Church of Jesus Christ, the Temple of the Living God, the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Zion. This beautiful structure that’s in the heavenly realms, and living stones through conversion are being brought into that, and the structures rising and becoming more and more glorious all the time. It’s a dwelling in which God lives and will live eternally by his Spirit. And so my marriage, then, serves that end. My children aren’t given to me for my own personal enjoyment, but that they might be converted and be living stones in that. And my marriage is to be a platform of the Gospel, and we’re to have people in our homes and lead people to Christ, because our this marriage, like this, is temporary. ‘Til death do you part.’ So it’s going to serve that vision of Ephesians 2. The building of the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Church, and that’s a beautiful thing. And then, in Ephesians 3, we learn that we, having been redeemed by the blood of Christ, we are infinitely, perfectly loved by Jesus. He wants you to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And that you would know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

So, a Christian marriage isn’t two empty people clinging and clutching to each other, and trying to find meaning from each other, and then failing once you get into marriage. Like, “this person is not going to satisfy me, I’m not self-actualized by this person.” And then you’re going to get a divorce and go try to find your soulmate, who completes you and all that. Jesus completes you, you’re already complete. In Him you have fullness, and you’re bringing that fullness to the marriage. And she’s bringing that fullness to the marriage. You understand what that means? If you’re single and you never get married, you’re full. You’re complete in Jesus. If the Lord wills to add a husband to you or a wife, He’s not going to improve your fullness at all. He’s just going to give you good works to do and the blessings of marriage and all that, but you’re already full. And that means if you’re a widow or a widower, and you may never get married again, you’re not an incomplete person now. You are full in Jesus, and that’s a beautiful thing.

So Ephesians 1-3, a very solid foundation for a Christian marriage. But then, how then shall we live? “As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you’ve received.” I want a marriage worthy of this Christian calling, that’s what I want. And so, verse 2-6, Ephesians 4, “Be completely humble and gentle.” Might be helpful in Christian marriage. Oh, Christian husbands. “Be completely humble and be gentle, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There’s one body and one spirit, just as you were called the one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all, and in all.” And so, in Christian marriage, you’re already one. Live like it.

You’re going to Heaven. Live like it. Live a heavenly day now between the two of you. Live as two who have become one, as we all are in the Church. That’s a beautiful thing. And then Paul defines holiness. Saying, “You’re not supposed to live like the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. Don’t think about your life like a Gentile. Don’t think like a Pagan. Don’t think about your marriage like a Pagan.” Christian husband, if you’re going to have a good marriage, you need to be transformed. “You need to put off the old man. That old nature which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. You need to be made new in the spirit of your mind by the ministry of the word of God, and you need to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” That’s how you’ll be able to do your Ephesians 5 work, which we’ll get to in a couple of weeks. And Christian wives, same thing. “You have to put off the old man, you have to be made new in the spirit of your mind, and you have to put on the new self which is created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Then you’ll be able to be a Christian wife.

And now we come to verse 18. Ephesians 5:18, “Be being filled with the Spirit.” And it’s directly applicable to the Christian marriage. It’s dramatically applicable to the Christian marriage. What do I mean? Well, He gives this command, “Be being filled with the Spirit.” Be filled with the Spirit. The Spirit-filled life is a life controlled and empowered by the Spirit of God to live out these biblical principles I’ve been giving you. The scripture that the Holy Spirit Himself inspired. And so, to be filled with the Spirit means to be very scriptural, to be very biblical in how you live. It means to be super saturated with the third person in the Trinity, where He is just controlling your heart’s and your thought’s affections, and your actions. Filled with the Spirit.

The Spirit indwells every Christian, but He doesn’t fill every Christian at every moment. You know that’s true. And all of your marital problems come because one, or both of you is not filled with the Spirit at that moment. That’s where it comes from. You will not have sorrow, and grief, and sins, and all that if you’re each filled with the Spirit, for the Spirit drives out sin. So be filled with the Spirit, and as we’re filled with the Spirit, we’re able to do what we’re called to do.

So, I want you to follow along. NIV kind of breaks it up and makes it smoother and easier to understand, but it doesn’t keep the grammatical construction the way it does. “Be being filled with the Spirit,” and then come a bunch of participles, what we call -ing words. -ing, -ing, -ing, -ing, -ing. So it’s like, this is what I mean by the Spirit-filled life. “Be being filled with the Spirit, speaking,” I’m in verse 19, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Singing, making music to the Lord in your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” See, it flows from the Spirit-filled life. Just like the worship does and all the other things.

So, the submitting flows from the power of the Spirit. The Spirit-filled life is one characterized by joyful worship within your own heart. Thankfulness, flowing out horizontally to joyful worship with others. But then we get to verse 21, and we get to this idea of submitting to one another. So, if I could just pause right now in the Spirit-filled life, and just say this. Do you want a flourishing, fruitful happy marriage. Christian men, Christian women, Christian husbands and wives? What I’m going to say is to be filled with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is not magic. It involves taking the truth of God that you already know, repenting of known sin, asking for forgiveness, and praying, and by faith receiving the gift of the Spirit. The filling of the Spirit.

So here’s just a check for you. Okay, just a check. You’re in a conversation. One of those conversations with your spouse. Husband or wife, freeze-frame, just a moment. Strobe light. Bang. Right now. Are you at this moment characterized by the fruit of the Spirit? “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.” If you’re not, you’ve sinned. It doesn’t matter what your spouse is doing. Take responsibility for your own demeanor. Take responsibility for your being filled with the Spirit. And if you’re not, then you need to ask the Lord to forgive you. You need to find out what you’ve done. Maybe you’ve already said some harsh things, some unkind things, some prideful things. Maybe you’ve done some other things. The reason we need to constantly be being filled, we’re so leaky. Herbert said that this morning. Leaky. We’re leaky. All right, you’ve leaked through sin, each of you. Don’t blame your spouse.

“Lord, if you knew what my spouse was like. You wouldn’t hold me accountable. It’s totally his fault.” Or her fault. No, it isn’t. You have to give up your filling with the Spirit, ever. It’s a choice you make. So if you’re not at this moment filled with the Spirit in that, it’s your responsibility. So ask forgiveness, and then ask forgiveness of your spouse.

And now let me make a direct appeal to non-Christians. Could very well be there are some unbelievers here. The joy of a Christian marriage is for Christians, but it’s nothing compared to the joy of Heaven. And I just to appeal to you, if you’ve come here today and you’re on the outside, you’re not a believer in Christ. You might even be in a troubled marriage, you might be in counseling, you might be contemplating divorce. There might be some abuse going on. You may be doing it, or receiving it. All I’m saying is that I have heard so many stories of how individuals coming to faith in Christ changes everything in the marriage. Changes everything. So in the name of the marriage, I’m going to go beyond that to appeal to you for the sake of your souls. Trust in Christ. God sent his Son, who lived a sinless life, died on the cross, that we might have forgiveness of sins.

V. An Overview of Marital Roles: Submission and Love

So now, I want to say a few more things. I’ll give you an overview of where we’re going, and then we’ll be done for the day. Okay, so an overview of marital roles. The first thing I want to set aside is something that many godly men teach, but I don’t agree with. And that is the idea of mutual submission. I do not think that Ephesians 5:21 is teaching mutual submission. It may seem like it is, because it says, “Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ [Or, “in the fear of Christ]”. I don’t think that that’s right.

They’ll bring in a verse, a passage like Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility. Consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also the interests of others.” Well, that’s a great passage, and it’s great for marriage, but that is not what submission is. I would call on mutual self-denial. Mutual service. Mutual foot-washing. Mutual love, yes. But the only way we can get at mutual submission is to redefine the word ‘submission’, or ‘submit’ biblically. And that’s the problem I have with those that teach it. They’re emphasizing too much the one another part, and they’re not studying more carefully enough the submit or submission part.

Submission biblically always has to do with God-ordained authority. Always. Every time the word is used in the New Testament, there is an authority and someone else yielding to that authority. Biblical submission then, would be cheerful yielding to a God-ordained authority, because you’re mindful of God. It’s in service to God. So, there’s many examples of this word ‘submit.’ We see it again and again. Like, for example, in Luke 2:51, “Jesus submitted,” same Greek root, “to his parents, Joseph and Mary, because he was a minor in their home. He obeyed his parents and submitted to them.” He wasn’t saying they were intrinsically higher or better than him. They were just parents and he obeyed the Law of Moses, and submitted to them. Their authority. In Luke 10:17, the demons submitted to the 72 missionaries that were sent out. They obeyed them, they left the people they were demonizing. Romans 8:7 says, “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” So that, again, is not just God-ordained authority, it’s God’s authority in the word, and they won’t submit. That’s the essence of rebellion. Romans 13:1 says, “Everyone should submit himself to the God-ordained authorities, for there is no authority except what God has established.” Same Greek word, submit. You’re not going to find any example, at all, of submission meaning loving service or self-denial of any of that anywhere at all. And the examples that are used, like where there’s a scripture reference, there’s only one. It’s always Ephesians 5:21. I think there’s a better way to understand this. Instead, what Paul’s saying to the mixed Christian assembly is, “Okay, all you Christians, submitting to one another is part of the Spirit-filled life.”

Category A to Category B, in the way I’m about to give you. “Wives to your husbands. Now, meanwhile, husbands, this is how you should carry yourself. Children to your parents. Now meanwhile, parents, this is how you should carry yourselves. Slaves to your masters. Now meanwhile, masters, this is how you should carry yourselves.” I think it’s just a better way of looking at it, that way you’re not redefining the word submit. Frankly, I think mutual submission makes as much sense as mutual obedience. Like imagine that in parenting, sometimes we obey them and sometimes they obey us. They’d love that. Let’s have Parent Obedient Day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Child Obedient Day the rest of the week. What would you kids do with that day? It’d be an interesting day, wouldn’t it? What would you eat for dinner? It’d be kind of interesting. It’s like, today you have to obey me, tomorrow I have to obey you.

Well, that would be the idea of mutual submission equal to mutual obedience. I think, instead, we’re talking about arranging yourself under God-ordained authority, and that is the command given to the wives. “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, of which He is the savior. Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also, wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” So, I’m going to give a whole sermon to that next week, and we’ll talk about more about that. And then the command to the husband is love. To love like Christ does.

Look at verses 25-30 and following, actually, go through verse 33. “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her to make her holy. Cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant Church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the Church, for we’re members of His body.” And then these words that we’ve looked at, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I’m talking about Christ and the Church. However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”And as I said, God willing, we’ll go over these the next two weeks.

VI. Two Clear Implications

Let me give you two clear implications as we finish. First, embrace your corresponding roles. I would think there are very few, especially older folks, among us, anyone of adult age that’s not heard Ephesians 5 before. It’s not a new thought here, it’s not a radically new teaching on headship and submission, not that. Instead what this is is again, for all of us, for me, for me, it’s a call from God through Paul, through the Spirit, to embrace the role that God’s given you. Husbands and wives should constantly copy the relationship God intended for Christ and the Church. So wives are to take their unique cue from the Church’s relationship to Christ, that’s how they’re to think of their relationship with their husband. And husbands are to take their unique cue from the way Christ relates to the Church, as defined here.

And this is going to be incredibly helpful for us going forward in this age of weird gender confusion. We’re having a harder and harder time defining masculinity and femininity. It’s like we really don’t even know what they are. And I think that for me, if you get a 10-year-old, 12-year-old boy that says to his dad, “What does it mean for me to be a man, and not a woman?” Or you could see a 10-or-12-year-old daughter saying the same kind of thing to her mom, “Mom, what does it mean for me to be a woman, and not a man?” I would urge parents, moms and dads, bring them to Ephesians 5. That’s going to be your homebase for answering that question, because frankly any other attribute that you put. Like courage, or self-sacrifice, or dedication, or thoughtfulness, or any of those things are true of both men and woman equally in the Bible.

What’s the difference, then? It’s going to be this issue of Christ-like leadership, taking initiative to serve the Church, and lay yourself down for the Church for its benefit. That’s the masculine role. And then the feminine role of responding to that kind of Godly initiative with delighted, Spirit-filled submission. That’s, I think, what biblical masculinity and femininity means. So, we’re going to unfold those more in the future.

And then secondly, and this comes right from my mentor on these things, John Piper. Desiring God has done more for my marriage than any Christian book that I’ve ever read. In that, he talks about Christian hedonism, the idea is finding pleasure. What he would say to non-Christian marriages that are floundering because they’re seeking pleasure and all that, and they’re selfish, and the self-actualization and all that. He’d say, “Your problem is you’re not seeking enough pleasure. You’re setting your sights too low. There is a kind of pleasure that soars above that kind of scrabbling in the mud after selfish lust, and patterns, and all that, that just goes so far beyond that that you don’t even know about. But I wish I could tell it to you. It’s the idea of learning to find your joy, first and foremost, in pleasing God and being satisfied in Him vertically. But then finding your joy and your blessing in another person’s joy and blessedness.

It’s like, “I am here. I’m delighted to bring the light to you. I am pleased to bless you.” That’s what I want. I find my pleasure wrapped up in yours. So both husbands and wives can do this, that we would find our blessedness, our highest joy in bringing joy to our spouse. That’s where we’re going, and we’re going to find it directly in the command of the husband, very plainly. “He who loves his wife… What? Loves himself.” It’s a beautiful statement. In other words, you want to be a happy man? Have a biblical marriage. Invest in your wife. Love her. Feed her. Cleanse her. Strengthen her, and she will bless you. So those are two clear implications. One application I would give is married couples, just take Ephesians 5 home today, and just read it together. And pray together. And if you need to give and receive some forgivenesses, and almost undoubtedly you will, then give it and receive it.

Don’t be too prideful to ask forgiveness. Don’t be too prideful to give it. Let the Lord heal your marriage. You don’t have to earn your way back to obedience. Just obey. You can just step right up into a biblical marriage today. Just give and receive forgiveness, and by the power of the Spirit, may he bless you.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the initial thoughts we’ve had today on marriage in Ephesians. Thank you for the way it just flows from the whole book of Ephesians, and how the work of redemptions just, for us as Christian couples, just flows right into our marriages. Father, we are mindful of the fact that not everyone here is married. Some would like to be married. We know that others have been bereaved. Father, we pray a special measure of blessing for each of them, that they would know that their fullness is Christ. Christ is their lives, and that they don’t need a spouse to be full and complete people. For those of us that are married, oh Lord, I pray that you would help us to live up to the Ephesians 5 pattern that you’ve given us here, by the power of the Spirit. Help us to put the Gospel on display for our watching children, that they would see what a Christ-like husband and a Church-like wife looks like. And that they would live that out. And Lord, all of us, I pray that you would fill us with your Spirit, and help us to do the good works you have for us to do the rest of the day. In Jesus name, Amen.

Some time ago, I took a tour of the battlefield in Gettysburg, PA… and I was particularly struck by the famous Peach Orchard, where some of the fiercest fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg occurred, on July 2, 1863. As I stood in that peaceful orchard, surrounded by budding peach trees, as I breathed in the fragrance of those blossoms and listened to the sweet chirping of birds, it was hard for me to imagine that such a beautiful garden could be such a fierce battleground. But on that day 153 years ago, the peace was ripped apart by the explosions of cannonfire and musketry, and the screams of wounded and dying men… bullets shredded the peach trees and leaves and blossoms fluttered pathetically to the ground…

How could such a beautiful garden become such a battlefield?

This image is much on my mind as I turn our attention to the topic of Christian marriage in the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:21-33

I.   A Fruitful Garden Needing Protection

A.   Marriage is One of God’s Richest Gifts

1.   There is an entire book in the Bible dedicated to the delights of married love… it is called the “Song of Songs” or “Song of Solomon”

2.   In it, it likens the delights and pleasures and sensual ecstasies of marriage to a fragrant garden filled with fruit… all different kinds of spices and fruit trees, with a wonderful breeze filling the senses

a.   This garden imagery is appropriate because it hearkens back to the beginning of the human race… to the Garden of Eden… a lavishly beautiful creation of God, filled with all kinds of delightful fruit trees, watered by a flowing river

2.   Adam, the first man, was created from the dust of the earth and placed in that Garden of Eden and his mandate was clear:

Genesis 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Literally “to serve and protect” the garden

We will discuss these concepts much more in the future… but I just want to put an image in your mind

The “serve” aspect means that Adam was to labor to bring that Garden to its full potential in the plans of the Creator

The “protect” aspect implied a great danger was coming… a danger that Adam would have to protect the Garden from

Christian marriage is a lavishly fruitful garden of delights that God established from the beginning for His glory and our joy

It has been under assault by the ancient serpent, Satan, from the earliest time

MY DESIRE: to use Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5 and Genesis 2 to call us back to a biblical understanding of marriage

B.   Marriage Under Attack NOW

1.   The institution of marriage has never been under a more severe attack in our nation’s history than it is right NOW

2.    The recent Supreme Court decision establishing gay marriage is the most recent Satanic attack on marriage

a.   the Justices overturned millennia of jurisprudence precedents to redefine marriage

b.   In Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) where gay marriage has been legal since the early 1990s, the result has been a clear decline in marriage itself… more and more couples just simply choose to live together, including fornication, and when they get tired of each other, to move on to other partners

3.   But this is only the most recent attack on marriage… marriage has been under attack in America for generations… divorce, “open marriage”, cohabitation, constant marital strife

a.   Because of faulty assumptions, coupled with the high divorce rate, Tim Keller says that many younger people—what we often call “millennials”—people who reached adulthood somewhere around the year 2000—are increasingly skeptical about the traditional pattern of marriage—one man, one woman, in a binding, exclusive covenant for life

A star of the film Monogamy said “In this country, we have kind of failed with marriage. We’re so protective of this really sacred but failed institution. There’s got to be a new model.”

C.   BUT… NO NEW MODEL NEEDED!

1.   We will find everything needed for a fully fruitful, healthy, God- honoring and ultimately joy-filled marriage in the fullness of what Ephesians 1-6 teaches, especially in the clear teaching on marriage of Ephesians 5

II.   Marriage a Profound Mystery: Christ and the Church

A.   Mystery: An Eternal Truth Kept Hidden

Ephesians 5:31-32 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery– but I am talking about Christ and the church.

1.   Ephesians 5:32: Paul speaks of marriage as a PROFOUND MYSTERY… but he uses the word differently than we do

2.   Not something you can solve with special skills of observation like Sherlock Holmes

3.   Like if you have enough insight, or deductive reasoning, or sharp attentive eyes scanning for clues, you can piece it all together…

4.   NO… biblical “mystery” is something kept hidden in God but now revealed in Christ for all the world to see

5.   Throughout the ages of human history, when one couple after another were joined in marriage in every culture, in every nation on earth, time and time again, a mysterious picture of Christ and his bride, the church, was being lived out

B.   Many Will Say “Amen” to How “Mysterious” Marriage Is…!!

Keller imagines some young husband throwing himself down on the bed exasperated after yet another perplexing conflict with his new wife and saying “I’ll NEVER be able to figure her out!

Marriage is a TOTAL MYSTERY to me!”

But that’s not the way Paul is using the word “mystery”

The mystery of marriage is that it puts on display the mystical and perfect union between Christ and the church… the unity of God and humanity in a permanent love relationship…

Paul actually says this is a GREAT MYSTERY (NIV “profound mystery”) Greek “mega-mysterion”

The secret of a Christian marriage is that the husband can live out the Christ-role toward his wife, and the wife can live out the church role toward the husband, and in this way the TWO can become ONE in an infinitely deeper way than any of us can possibly imagine

As the husband LAYS DOWN HIS LIFE for his wife, and as the wife WILLINGLY SUBMITS HERSELF to her husband, they become one in the pattern of Christ and the church

The amazing mystery of all this is, when God invented marriage back in the Garden of Eden, he had the gospel in mind, he had Christ and the church in mind

C.   This Central Idea Shows the Importance of Christian Marriage in the World

1.   Only by the power of the Holy Spirit will this mystery be rightly revealed and demonstrated to a world that needs it desperately!

III.   The Biblical Foundation: Matthew 19, Genesis 1-2

A.   Matthew 19: Christ’s Teaching

Matthew 19:3-6 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” 4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one.

Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

1.   In order to understand divorce, we really have to understand God’s purpose in marriage

2.   Christ goes back to Scripture:

a.   There are hundreds and hundreds of Christian books and marriage conferences available; many of them are very helpful

b.   BUT in the end, the scripture is SUFFICIENT to understand marriage

c.   To every troubled marriage, Jesus is going to ask:

Haven’t you read…?

d.   And not just to ANY scripture… to the book that discusses origins… to Genesis

“Haven’t you read that AT THE BEGINNING…”

i)   This will immediately bring us to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2

e.   The Creator made them male and female (Genesis 1)

i)   Some say Jesus never said anything against homosexuality or anything that would oppose gay marriage

ii)   But I think this statement couldn’t be clearer… God made them MALE and FEMALE… gender matters for marriage!!

iii)  Also clear from Genesis 1: the complete equality of male and female IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

f.   The Creator made a statement about them: (Genesis 2)

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and BE UNITED TO (old English… “cleave to”) his wife and the two will become one flesh”

Cleave = to stick or bond close together, remaining faithful in a permanent covenant relationship

3.   Jesus’ final command and answer:

“So they are no longer two but one; what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
This is Jesus’ answer on divorce: NO, it is NOT lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason! God has joined them together and made them ONE… so we have no right to separate them

When a man and a woman take marriage vows, something mystical and amazing happens… God joins them and makes them ONE…they have no right to separate. They have promised to love and cherish each other, forsaking all others, till death parts them.

Jesus’ answer was FOUNDED on the Creator’s expressed intentions in Genesis…

B.   Genesis 1: Equally Created in the Image of God… Equally Vital to God’s Plan for the Human Race

C.   Genesis 2: Special Roles

1.   God created the man first and alone

Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

2.   God gave the man special instructions

Genesis 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it

3.   God asserted it was not good for the man to remain alone

Genesis 2:18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

The “HELPER SUITABLE” = perfectly apportioned for him; his counterpart in every way

Suitable physically… able to reproduce… to be fruitful and multiply Suitable relationally… able to have an intimate friendship, committed relationship similar to the Trinity

Suitable spiritually… able to relate to God as well as to him

4.   No suitable helper found among the animals

5.   God made the woman from the rib of the man

6.   Adam celebrates and names his wife

7.   The universal statement about marriage

Genesis 2:24-25 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

D.   This is the LASTING and PERMANENT Definition of Marriage

IV.   The Christian Foundation: The Spirit-Filled Life

A.   The Context in Ephesians

1.   Two parts of the book

a.   Ephesians 1-3: the saving work of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

b.   Ephesians 4-6: how Christians should live in the world

2.   Christian marriage is founded on our salvation: election and redemption

Ephesians 1:4-5 For God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ

We are able to have God-honoring marriage because we have been CHOSEN and PREDESTINED to be his sons

Ephesians 1:7-8 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

We are able to have God-honoring marriages because we have been COMPLETELY FORGIVEN through the blood of Christ… we are blameless positionally in Christ; so this gives power for the continual forgiveness of sins each Christian spouse needs to do… your Christian spouse has already been atoned for by the blood of Christ, and so have you! So you can quickly and deeply forgive sins

AND he gave you all wisdom and understanding to KNOW what marriage is and what the will of the Lord is for you

AND you see the big picture of how your marriage fits into God’s plan for the universe:

Ephesians 1:9-10 … to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

a.   Also, we have the INDWELLING SPIRIT:

Ephesians 1:13-14 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance

b.   This sealing of the Spirit is essential to a Christian marriage… for the Spirit continually testifies with our spirits that we are God’s children, destined for heaven when we die

c.   Ephesians 2:1-10 makes it plain that both the husband and the wife are SINNERS SAVED BY GRACE… unmerited favor; so we are not shocked when the spouse sins, but we are able BOTH to see them covered in the grace of God, and to extend that grace yourself

Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith– and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

d.   Your marriage is also one of the most important GOOD WORKS that God has ordained for you to do:

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

e.   This enables you to see your marriage and parenting in light of eternity: your marriage serves God’s purpose in building his eternal dwelling place… the true heavenly church

Ephesians 2:21-22 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

3.   The love of God is poured out into your hearts by the Holy Spirit…this teaches you how to love each other

Ephesians 3:16-19 grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge– that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

A Christian marriage is thus not a union of two desperate, lonely, empty people trying to find fulfillment in the other person… we are actually filled to the fullness of God in Christ! We come together to share that fullness with each other

If a Christian is SINGLE and never marries, he or she is still a FULFILLED BEING… your fullness is in Christ

If a Christian is WIDOWED, bereaved, loses a cherished spouse, they are not EMPTY, DESOLATE people with no meaning in life!

Our fullness is in Christ!

And even in a normal, Christian marriage, each of the spouses doesn’t desperately need in a clingy, unhealthy way the other person

B.   Next… How Then Shall We Live?

Ephesians 4:1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

A Christian marriage is a PART of that Christian’s life… it should be a marriage worthy of the calling we have received

It is based on the ONENESS we already have in Christ:

Ephesians 4:2-6 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit– just as you were called to one hope when you were called– 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

These words find their fulfillment in a Christian marriage… the need for humility, gentleness, bearing with one another in love!!

We have to MAKE EVERY EFFORT to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of love! It is a daily battle to be truly ONE in marriage… one mind, one heart, one purpose… even as we worship the same God and are atoned for by the same cross…

There will be a MASSIVE WAR on your unity—the world, the flesh, and the devil will fight your marriage

Paul defines the need for HOLINESS as a battle for the mind: (Eph. 4:19-22)

We must no longer live as the gentiles do in the futility of a darkened mind… so if a man wants to be a Christian husband, he must PUT OFF the old man, be renewed in the spirit of his mind, and PUT ON the new self, created to be like God in TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS and HOLINESS; the same for a Christian wife… for her to be the submissive, godly, loving wife she must be, she has to do the same—put off the old self, be made new in the mind, and put on the new self

We need to heed the basic issues of sanctification: especially at the end of Ephesians 4 and on into 5:

Ephesians 4:31 – 5:2 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Here especially we must guard the sexual purity that is essential to a holy marriage! So much heartbreak comes from sexual immorality!

We Christians know that absolute sexual purity is essential to a healthy marriage:

Ephesians 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

C.   The Spirit-Filled Life

1.   The culmination of these practical guidelines for holiness is found in the simple command:

Ephesians 5:18 … be filled with the Spirit

2.   The Spirit-filled life is a life controlled, empowered, guided by the Holy Spirit

3.   The Spirit INDWELLS every Christian… but the Spirit does not always FILL every Christian

4.   As we are filled with the Spirit, we can carry out our roles

a.   The grammar leads right to the role of the wife… one command (BE BEING FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT)… followed by a series of participles (‘ing-words) that tell us what Paul means:

Ephesians 5:18-22 be filled with the Spirit: 19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music to the Lord in your heart, 20 giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 ¶ submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord

b.   The Spirit-filled life is one characterized by joyful worship, both with each other and in your own heart

c.   The Spirit-filled life is characterized by constant THANKFULNESS in any and every situation

d.   AND the Spirit-filled life is characterized by SUBMITTING in the fear of the Lord, in the ways Paul is about to describe

e.   The first being the wife’s submission to her own husband as to the Lord

5.   Application:

a.   The key to a happy, fruitful, fulfilling marriage is the filling of the Spirit

b.   If you are filled with the Spirit, you will not have the marital problems that characterize non-Christians

c.   Being filled with the Spirit is not magic… it involves taking in God’s truth that the Holy Spirit already indwells you… and ASKING Him to fill you, to control you… confess any known sin… ask Him to move you to keep God’s commands

d.   At any moment in your marriage, take the test of the fruit of the Spirit:

e.   If you are not characterized by LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF-CONTROL…

6.   You are not at that moment filled with the Spirit… only SIN can cause you to stop being filled with the Spirit… so ask the Spirit to reveal your sin to you; confess it, appropriate the blood of Christ to cover your sin… then pray that the Spirit will fill you… walk in faith that he has filled you, and start obeying his commands

Direct appeal to non-Christians: the kind of marriage Paul is about to describe is impossible if you have not been born-again! Stop right now, and ask the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Savior and Lord! It is astonishing what the Lord can do to a marriage that’s in crisis if the husband and the wife both turn to the Lord for salvation… I have heard so many testimonies of how a man and woman trusting in Christ saved their marriage

V.   An Overview of Marital Roles: Submission and Love

A.   Not “Mutual Submission”… But Mutual Self-Denial

1.   A very common misconception comes from Ephesians 5:21

Ephesians 5:21 submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.

2.   It is called the doctrine of “mutual submission”

a.   In one sense, if all you had was Ephesians 5:21 and you didn’t know how the verb there is used in the rest of the New Testament, you might think that every Christian is being commanded to submit to every other Christian

b.   This is a foundational concept for egalitarian (feminist) marriages… mutual submission means that we always submit to each other, like this:

Philippians 2:3-4 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

c.   They define submission as humble, loving servanthood… something we Christians readily acknowledge is to be part of every relationship we have

3.   BUT this verse is NOT teaching that… because that’s not what biblical submission is

4.   Submission: originally was a military term meaning to arrange yourself in ranks under a commanding officer

5.   Everywhere this word is used in the New Testament, it gives a clear sense of OBEDIENCE TO GOD-ORDAINED AUTHORITY

Biblical submission = a Christian willingly and gladly arranging himself or herself under God-ordained authority, obeying that authority from the heart as an act of worship to the Lord

a.   Luke 2:51, Jesus obeyed his parents

b.   Luke 10:17, the demons obeyed the seventy-two missionaries that Jesus sent out

c.   Romans 8:7, the mind of the flesh is hostile to God, it does not SUBMIT to God’s law

d.   Romans 13:1, everyone must obey the governing authorities

e.   AND there are many other such examples

f.   NOTE: there is not a single exception… everywhere this word “submit” is used, it always has to do with obeying God- ordained authority

6.   SO, the idea of “mutual submission” makes as much sense as the idea of mutual obedience… like between parents and children: sometimes they obey us, and sometimes we obey them… NO!!

7.   So, when Paul says “submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord,” he means

a.   IN THE PATTERNS I’M ABOUT TO DESCRIBE

b.   Wives to your own husbands

c.   Children to your parents,

d.   Slaves to your masters

8.   Along with that, though, he gives very clear instructions to the ones in authority

a.   Husbands LOVE your wives

b.   Fathers, bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord

c.   Masters, deal with your slaves in such a way that you always remember you have a master in heaven yourselves

9.   IN THE FEAR OF THE LORD… a deep reverence for Jesus

B.   The Command to the Wife: Submit

Ephesians 5:22-24 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

C.   The Command to the Husband: Love

Ephesians 5:25-30 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church– 30 for we are members of his body.
Ephesians 5:31-33 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery– but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

We’ll be going over these commands more in detail over the next two weeks, God willing!

VI.   Two Clear Implications

A.   Embrace Your Corresponding Role

Piper: “Husbands and wives should consciously copy the relationship God intended for Christ and the church.”

Wives are to take their unique cue from the purpose of the church… submitting to their husbands as the church submits to Christ

Husbands are to take their unique cue from the self-sacrificial love Christ displays for the church

1.   More and more gender confusion in our day and age

2.   Key question: a boy could ask his father, “Dad, what does it mean for me to be a man and not a woman?”

3.   Or a girl could ask her mother: “What does it mean for me to be a woman and not a man?”

4.   Modern spirit of the age has almost NO ANSWER to that question!

5.   But for me, I would start with the different roles specified here in marriage

a.   Wives are commanded to submit to their husbands; but husbands are not commanded to submit to their wives

b.   Husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… the clearly masculine role of protection, leadership, provision is given to the husband not the wife.

6.   We’ll be unfolding those more in detail over the next two weeks

B.   Find Your Delight in the Joy of Your Spouse

1.   One of the most unforgettable lessons from John Piper’s Desiring God… true love means to find your own delight in the delight of your spouse

2.   The irony of the self-centered “me-ism” of modern marriage is that the people are actually NOT COMMITTED ENOUGH to their own happiness… there is a far greater happiness available for husbands and wives who will learn to immerse themselves fully in their mate’s happiness

3.   Marriage he calls the “Matrix for Christian hedonism”

a.   Hedonism = the pursuit of pleasure

b.   Clearly, the husband should pursue his joy in laying down his life for his wife

Christ died for the church to present her to himself as a radiant church…
It was CHRIST’S DELIGHT to purify, sanctify, beautify the church… he will enjoy her for all eternity as she is holy in heaven

SO ALSO, it should be the husband’s delight to love his wife as his own body:

HE WHO LOVES HIS WIFE LOVES HIMSELF… a clear appeal to hedonism… to a life that is maximally joyful

The most joy a husband can experience in this world is the joy of a beautiful, sanctified wife who gives herself to him freely and purely as the church does to Christ… he who invests love in his wife will be drawing out the dividends for years to come

c.   The problem in marriage is that the husband and/or the wife pursues their own joy INDEPENDENT of the spouse… selfishly pursuing their own pleasures at the expense of the spouse

C.   Application

1.   Married couples: go home and read this section out loud to each other

2.   Pray together and ask God to fulfill this pattern in your marriage

3.   See if there’s any sin that needs forgiving