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Love
Teaching Text: Ephesians 5: 21-33
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do 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.
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 their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.“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 am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Presence
Watch or listen to the sermon. Then take a moment of silence and think about these questions:
Ask God to open your heart and mind to understand Ephesians anew as we start this season.
Thank Him for the blessings He has given you already, even those you might be unaware of.
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
This passage that has been used intentionally and unintentionally for oppression and harm in the history of the church.
Take time to listen to the talk or watch it online for the context and further explanation of this text.
If someone launches into something that would have been mostly familiar in a certain way and then they begin to change it, it’s because they want you to notice the changes. Like a familiar song but the singer changes the lyrics on you. You would notice.
We have come to section of this letter to the Ephesians where the Apostle Paul is going to interact with a widely known and very specific set of assumptions and household codes in the 1st Century Roman Empire
But he is going to change the lyrics in some significant ways which he certainly wants his readers to notice.
Paul was proposing that life in Messiah Jesus was a whole new way to be human. That impacted every facet of life.
Paul went about cultural change in this particular Kingdom ways of planning seeds, sharing the Gospel, seeing lives, and families, and pockets of community change rather than large scale cultural assault.
You could say his way was mostly Subversion rather than Anarchy.
Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Plutarch all wrote or extensively referenced household codes in their popular works.
The home was seen as a microcosm of the Roman Empire, an essential building block.
Paul says. Be being filled with the spirit
Instead of being unwise —> be wise
Instead of being foolish —> be discerning
Instead of being drunk — > be being filled with the spirit
And he gives 4 expressions of that Spirit filled life…
Speaking to each other in Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs - let your words be saturated with the promises of God. speak God’s identity over each other
Creating Poems and Singing in your hearts - add your own songs and words to this large story.
Giving Thanks to God as Father in Jesus Name - language dripping with gratitude.
Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ
All of these characteristics form the distinctiveness of the new community
They will inform and change some of the cultural norms
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” – Ephesians 5 v 21
Who is supposed to be submitting to one another? All who will now be mentioned.
(Chapter 5 is not separated in the way our text reads)
Everyone is now meant to submit in new ways to one another.
IMPORTANT: Everyone is Submitting
This is important to mention that this is the banner over all that is about to be said.
Everyone mentioned has some submitting to do. It’s certainly not just for wives.
In fact what is about to be said begins to get at what that might look like
To our modern ears, submission could sound outdated in a world where our definition of freedom reigns supreme.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do 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.” – Ephesians 5 v 22-24
Head
Paul subverts the norm by speaking to the underside of submission rather than addressing the expected person in power
To be the head in English means to be in charge
In Greek means - source : husbands were, in the cultural time the source for provision and cultural acceptance.
The Genesis account
Concerning Adam’s Rib
There is a moment in the Genesis 2 story that may have an unhelpful picture in our mind:
We have heard that Eve was made from Adam’s Rib
Well the word Rib, Tsela, didn’t come to mean Rib in Hebrew until much later - centuries after its biblical use.
In Genesis 2 the word is Side. And its an architectural term that means one side of a structure that when you add the other side - you have a whole.
The next time is shows up is in Exodus describing the rings on one side of the ark of the covenant. And you need the rings the other side to carry it.
To make the place for God’s presence in the templet
But the picture in Genesis is less like God took a piece of Adam that he wasn’t using anyway and made Eve, and more like:
He put him to sleep and split him in two or divided his being and made Eve.
So they long for each other and come back together as one flesh.
And none of animal kingdom would do as partner because they needed this one fleshless
Centers in Jesus
And maybe most crucially, it centers on Jesus at every turn.
There is some real temple language here as all throughout Ephesians but its this Jesus centered voluntary surrender to position and power for the sake of the other
“To lose the addiction of asserting my own honor and status over others”
This allows me to place myself under (Hupotasso submit)— like Jesus does in Philippians 2
We may hate submission but there is beauty and life in it
It works with Jesus as the center - and not otherwise
The Bible is not trying to get us to 1950s white America
Husband: His part in mutual submission is to love his wife the way Christ loved the church
In sacrificial love
So in this picture of Christian marriage - a wife is voluntarily living in submission to a man who is also living in voluntary submission, who is committed to love her with Jesus-like sacrificial love
And the metaphors used for the husband’s part of marriage relationships are domestic.
Washing, cleaning
Getting out stains
Getting out wrinkles
Feeding
Caring/nuturing
The husband love described here is to be this extravagant sacrificial intimacy into the details of life that allows his wife to be the the most bright radiant flourishing version of her self.
Our Submission: Jesus-centered, voluntary surrender to position and power for the sake of the other - “to lose the addiction of asserting my own honor and status over others”
Questions : If the household codes addressed by Paul distinguished the people of God from looking just like the surrounding culture:
In what way would God want our homes to be different from the pervasive and harmful parts of culture?
What submission is required in your life?
What do you do if you are supposed to submit to someone you feel is unjust or difficult to submit to?
How do you serve and honor those who are in positions to submit to you in your life?
Paul is speaking to a culture where the dominant household code is for wives and children to submit to husbands but he changes the lyrics to this song by including:
“In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (28)
“However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” (33)
How could our society be affected if persons in the dominant position of cultural power (in the case of the text: husbands) would obey this instruction?
Love
Read these notes and discuss the questions below:
What places of authority, influence and power has God given you in your life?
How can you love “as Christ loved” this week?
What could laying down your life for those who are vulnerable look like?
