Ephesians 5:22-33

Being Subject to One Another In Christ

We recently looked at Paul's instruction on being filled with the Holy Spirit of God.  As you walk by faith in union with Christ you are walking by the power of the Holy Spirit.  As you fix your eyes upon Christ, who is your life and who sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, the Spirit of God is working through the means of grace to transform you into the glorious image of Christ, filling you full of the knowledge of the Son of God until you grow up into the full measure of the stature of the mature man which belongs to the fullness of Christ (cf. 4:13).  As the Spirit of God is working to transform you into the image of Christ there are noticeable characteristics that are being produced in and through your life.  We noted a few of them in the opening verses of chap. 4 (see vv. 1-3) and even more of them throughout chaps. 4 & 5 until we came to the climax in vv. 19-21 where we were taught that the Spirit of God will produce a life of singing joyfully in your hearts to one another and to the Lord, living a life of always giving thanks in everything to God, and being subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

We noted that the last statement served as a "hinge" verse that completes the list of results of being filled by the Spirit with Christ but also begins the next section (almost serving as a title) on how being filled with the Spirit works out practically and specifically in our day to day lives.  Therefore, we are still talking about the Christian believer being filled up with Christ by the Spirit of God and specifically how that works its way out in our daily relationships with one another.  Paul first speaks of the closest relationship that many of us have in our relationship with our spouses.

Remember what we have said from the beginning that everything Paul says in chaps. 4-6 is grounded in the glorious indicatives of the gospel in chaps. 1-3.  In other words, none of this is applicable to those who have not been regenerated by God's Spirit and united through faith to the Son of God.  Equally, Paul can now speak to those who have been gloriously delivered from the kingdom of darkness and safely brought into the kingdom of God's marvelous light and by God's amazing power and love, have been lavished with the glorious riches of God's mercy, being reconciled to God and are now being fitted together by God's Spirit to grow into the holy temple in the Lord.

Because you have been united to Christ and his Spirit is now working in you, your relationships to one another in the body of Christ will begin to be transformed so that those unique characteristics of Christ's life will begin to be imitated in your life.  As we begin to look more closely at your individual relationships, remember that Paul is addressing the church.  Though each of these relationships properly function in their own distinct spheres outside of the immediate sphere of the church, Paul teaches us that there is some degree of overlap so that the Spirit of God working among the life of the body of Christ is truly affecting your daily relationships outside the immediate bounds of the gathered church. 

Also, note that though Paul speaks of wives, husbands, children, etc. it is absolutely clear that what is unique about these instructions is Paul's grounded each of them in the life of Christ; in the gospel.  These are gospel-imperatives in which you have received the promises of God's power ahead of the command so that by faith and by God's grace these characteristics can and will be produced in your daily relationships. 

Also, each of these commands are a joy and the bread of life to us because in each of them we have the glorious privilege of modeling the life of our Lord and Savior in so many ways in our every day lives. 

Finally, before we look at our passage today, there are some here this morning who may think that because they are not married that this passage has nothing to say to them.  However, Paul is not limiting the working out of our union with Christ to only these three relationships mentioned in 5:22-6:9.  These characteristics of our union with Christ may be found in every relationship we have.  Paul is merely giving some very specific, practical examples of how our lives are being transformed by God's Spirit so that we may see concretely what being filled by the Spirit will look like in our day-to-day relationships with one another.  But we should not limit what Paul is saying to only these three relationships.  Try and look at the bigger picture here.  Paul is speaking about our lives which by God's Spirit are taking on the characteristics of Christ (cf. 4:1-3).  Though he is presently giving us some specific pictures on how that will look, the characteristics themselves ought to be present in all our relationships to one another.

Now, we want to turn to the first relationship that Paul mentions:  wives and husbands.  In vv. 22-24, Paul specifically addresses the wife first.  Vv. 22 and 24 gives us the command while v. 23 gives us the basis of the command.  In light of v. 21, Paul first applies this command to the wife:  wives are to be subject to their own husbands as to the Lord.  In v. 24, Paul adds: "in everything."  Ultimately Paul roots this command in the higher relationship of the church to Christ, her head. 

Let's look at a few things about Paul's statement:

I have heard many men, even Christian men, who have taken Paul's words here and used them as a club to crush the spirits of their wives in such a way that they end up diminishing the glorious, unique qualities that God has given to women.  I believe this is a serious problem in the church when men will take these words and use them as support to mistreat and even abuse their wives.  As we read Paul's command here we should remember that their is nothing uniquely Christian about Paul's instruction on the wife being subject to her own husband, because he is the head of his wife.  Many teachers have placed the emphasis here and have used these verses to, so-called, "put women in their places."  But I would argue that we would all be hard-pressed to find any man in the world who would not believe this statement without ever reading Paul.  Just watch the daily reports on the Islamic culture around the world and you can see how another religion promotes the same idea but often to extreme.  But there is nothing unique to Christianity so far.  What is unique to a Christian's wife to her husband is that she is to be subject to her own husband "as to the Lord."   

Christian wives have the glorious privilege of modeling or being a picture of the church's relationship to her Savior both to the body of Christ and the rest of the world.  There is something gloriously unique about the marriage between a Christian husband and wife that is a picture to the world of Christ's relationship to his church.  The church is the bride of Christ.  She loves her husband and expresses this love by willingly, lovingly deferring her will (in everything) to her true love.  As the Christian wife thinks about her relationship to her husband she must realize that by the Spirit of God uniting her to Christ and thereby filling her full of Christ that everything in her life now takes place in the fullness of the realm of Christ's life.  Remember what Paul reminds us all in Galatians 2:20:

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me."

As wives, you are teaching and preaching the gospel to the whole body of Christ and to the world.  You are displaying the loving relationship of a church which has been bought with the high price of Christ's blood, which has been shown truly amazing love and grace, and how that church thankfully responds to her true love in light of the gospel. 

This characteristic of "being subject to one another" belongs to the whole body of Christ.  Each one of us as Christians who are being filled by the Spirit of God will express our union with Christ by being subject to one another.  But where are we going to turn to see practically what that looks like?  Paul teaches us that one place that we can turn is to look at the Christian wife who wonderfully models the life of Christ who submits his will to the Father to serve the church even to the point of death and now the church who now gratefully submits her will to Christ to serve him even to the point of death if he so chooses.  As Christian wives you have the glorious privilege and responsibility of teaching all of us how we are to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

Now to the Christian husband (see vv. 25-33).  Christian husbands also have the glorious privilege and responsibility of using their God-given "headship" or leadership to teach and proclaim the gospel of Christ to the church and to the rest of the world.  Just as Christ used his leadership to humbly serve the body of Christ (cf. Phil. 2) so the husband uses his leadership in the relationship to humbly serve his wife.  Notice how the roles are reversed:  as the wife models the church's submission to her Savior, Christ, so the husband models Christ's loving service to his bride, the church.  Paul specifically notes this parallel in v. 32. 

It never ceases to amaze me that so many so easily get this all confused.  The reason for such confusion is that when we come to these verses many will suddenly revert back to the world's way of thinking about authority and submission when they come to these verses.  Remember the conversation that the disciples had before Jesus (Matt. 20:25-28; Mk. 10:42-45; Luke 22:24-30).  Jesus beautifully illustrated this in John 13:3-17.  We must remember that we are all called to submit ourselves one to another.  Such submission of one's will does not exclusively belong to the wife, but also the husband.  He too must learn that God has given him leadership and authority which is completely opposite of the world's understanding of authority.  Rather, God has given him authority to wrap the towel of his own will around his waste and humble himself and serve his wife in love.  The apostle Peter finally learned this and wonderfully explains the nature of Christian leadership in his epistle (see 1 Peter 5:1-5).  But where Peter and all of us learn how we are to humbly submit our wills in service to one another is in and through the life of Jesus Christ (cf. Phil. 2:3-8).

Jesus Christ loves you the church to the extent that He willingly submitted His will and gave Himself up to death for you.  Do you feel the impact of those words?  Have these words become to common-place?  Jesus loves you so much that He gave you something!  He could have given you anything.  He created the whole world.  He sustains the whole creation.  He could have picked anything out of it to give to you.  But He chose to give you Himself even to the point that He would loose His own life so that your life might be saved. 

It is by the glorious work of the gospel that Jesus willingly obeyed the whole law for you and willingly gave up His own life as a sacrifice for your sin that by faith you might become His eternal Bride.  And it is through the word of this gospel that he is using to sanctify you that He might present you on the day of judgment as His holy and blameless Bride, having no spot or wrinkle.  Notice the immensity of the love of Christ for you.  He crossed the eternal chasm of heaven and earth and became your slave by taking on your own fallen nature and perfecting it through his life and death, even the death of a criminal.  In doing so you have been joined to Christ and have become his own body (vv. 29-30) and what God has joined together, no man shall separate. 

Now Paul turns to the husbands, with this glorious example of eternal love and mercy and says to you, "so husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies" (v. 28).  What a glorious privilege you have!  You are to exemplify and imitate for the whole body of Christ and the watching world what Christ's amazing love for his own Bride looks like.  Remember that Paul prayed in 3:17-19 that an instrumental aspect to our sanctification is that we would comprehend the four-fold fullness of Christ's glorious love for you.  Where do we turn to see an example of Christ's love for us:  we look to our Christian husbands and watch how they love their wives as Christ loves the church. 

In v. 33, Paul sums up his instructions to the Christian husbands and wives, as well as to the whole body of Christ.  It is our rich privilege as individual members of the body of Christ, as wives, husbands, and even our single members, that in every relationship we have among the body of Christ to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.  It is only as we are constantly filled with Christ by the Holy Spirit that the characteristics of his life will find their expression through earthen vessels of clay so that the glory of the gospel of Christ might be on display for the whole body of Christ and the watching world who needs Christ as their Savior.

Amen!  - SDG -