You must know who you are in the picture of marriage or you will always be lost in your marriage. And so Ephesians 5 paints that picture of the various roles and duties and attitudes and all that that's there. And so we've spoken about this matter of the picture generally. Now we're going to drop into into specifics of what that looks like from this one passage of Scripture. There are several passages of Scripture that we could draw on.

This here is the longest continuous section of Scripture on marriage, and so it reveals so many details. It's so helpful. I'm going to say it's the flagship text on marriage outside of the introduction of marriage in Genesis chapter 2. And so here are the details that we need to pay attention to. Now, the way that Ephesians 5 is structured needs to be understood.

Ephesians 5 18 is really the beginning of the argument that Paul is making regarding marriage. Where he says, I'll begin in verse 17, Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. And when the Apostle Paul finishes this phrase, be filled with the Spirit, he begins to itemize what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit. What's in Ephesians 5 is a description of what it looks like when the Holy Spirit is governing a marriage. And so he says, be filled with the Spirit.

And the first manifestation of being filled with the Spirit is it changes the way that you speak. And you speak to one another in Psalms and Hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ submitting to one another in the fear of God and he's speaking about what it looks like when the Spirit of God is filling the people in the church. They begin to speak to one another. They speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. They speak of beautiful things.

They speak of heaven. They speak of the glory of God. That's what happens to the person who's filled with the Holy Spirit. And in their community with one another, they submit to one another in the church. There are various ways that people submit to one another in the church.

You know, when the Apostle Paul said, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. That's a way that you submit to one another in the church. You moderate your life. You forgive one another. You're kind to one another.

You have mercy. You know, if you look at the various one-anothers that are in the Scriptures that are commands for church life, you see what this submission looks like. Because in the church, you're always submitting to one another in particular ways. When you love one another, you're submitting to one another. When you become like Christ and you become like a bondservant, you're submitting to one another in the church.

So there's this general effect in the church where people start talking to each other differently. And they speak about beautiful things. They speak about things of significance and grandeur. And their whole relationships change and they don't view themselves as above one another. They view themselves as below one another and they serve one another and they're a blessing to one another and they submit to one another in this general scheme of church life that the Holy Spirit produces so he begins first of all to speak about what the power of the Holy Spirit looks like in a church.

You know, there's lots of confusion about that today, about what the power of the Holy Spirit looks like. I mean, you have whole sectors of Christianity that isolate the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit to various kinds of manifestations, but the primary manifestation of the Holy Spirit is holiness. He is the Holy Spirit. He makes holy, And when you have the power of the Holy Spirit, you have people who are being made holy. This is the chief manifestation of the power of the Spirit of God working in the church.

And it's so transforming that it actually changes the way that you talk and the things that you talk about and the things that you sing. And rather than having the people in the church being proud and over one another, they submit to one another. It changes their whole relational orientation in the church. And then, after speaking of this manifestation of the Holy Spirit in relationships in the church, he turns specifically to wives and then he turns to husbands and then in the next chapter he speaks to children and then he speaks to servants or slaves those who are in working relationships, slave, master kinds of relationships. And he's illustrating the various ways that the power of the Holy Spirit is manifested in the world.

Begins with life in the church, It extends to life in the family, a husband and a wife. When they're filled with the Spirit, here's what it looks like. What does it look like when children are filled with the Holy Spirit? They honor their father and mother and they obey them. And what does it look like when a worker is filled with the Holy Spirit?

Well, it's spoken of there in chapter 6. So the Apostle Paul is itemizing various manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit in a person's life. And what we learn is that the Spirit of God is designed to work everywhere. In your church, in your family, out in the working world. And there are various proofs of the work of the Spirit of God.

Now when he begins to talk to husbands and wives, and he speaks of these proofs of the Holy Spirit, they're kind of startling. They're counterintuitive in many ways. But I'd like to first of all begin with wives. And then later on after dinner we'll deal with husbands. And we're just going to walk through this passage of Scripture.

And why are we doing this? We're trying to get the picture right. We're trying to learn our lines. We're trying to understand who we are. Who are you in this relationship?

And have you made the transition from being yourself, playing yourself, giving your own lines for your own glory, and have you made the transition to where you see yourself as not your own and you know who you are. If you're a wife you're you are the church. If you are a husband you're playing the role of Christ. Okay so let's walk through this. He first of all begins in verse 22.

Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. And he begins with this word submit, which is an offensive word for most of us who have grown up in this society. We all grew up in a feminist world. We've been breathing feminist air and drinking feminist juice for so long, it's hard for us not to think like feminists. But this word, submit, is an assault against feminism.

And so it's hard for us to process what this word means. But the Apostle Paul uses a word that speaks of authority and submission. He uses a military word that speaks of order and authority. It's not a picture of superiority and inferiority. The Bible makes it very clear that men and women are equal in nature.

However, God in His wisdom has arranged society in such a way that a wife would submit to her husband. She would order herself under His authority. There's no implication of her inferiority. Everybody knows or everybody should know that wives are not inferior. Okay?

You know, most of us married women, we realize our wives are not inferior on a number of levels and every wise man understands that. So this is not a, This is not implying any kind of inferiority at all or superiority. It rather speaks of order and authority and God has established order and authority in a marriage. And so he uses this word, submit. Wives submit and then he 17 defines the scope of the submission to your own 17 husbands as to the Lord.

So what God has done in creating marriage, He has ordered one member in that marriage to order herself under the authority of her husband. She doesn't submit to every man in the world. She submits to her husband. There's this prioritization of submission in marriage. And while it is true that wives are submitted to their own husbands, There are various levels of submission that all wives also exist in.

Like, for example, all wives have a responsibility to submit to the civil government to obey the laws of the land, as long as those laws don't contradict the laws of God. Wives also place themselves under the authority of the church as well. In other words, her husband is not her only authority, but it is her primary authority. A wife is in an authority and submission relationship with a number of authorities in her life. Same thing with a husband.

A husband is also a man under authority. No husband stands alone in exclusive authority over anyone. He's under the authority of God, he's under the authority of the civil government, he's under the authority of the local church as well. So God has arranged various authorities in our lives, in both husbands and wives' lives. But there's a particular prioritization of authority that exists in marriage.

Now, the authority of a husband over his wife in marriage is greater than any of the other authorities in her life. For example, the authority that the civil government has over a wife is very limited. It's, it, it, it, the, the, the civil government is limited to the authority of the sword and the establishment of laws. That's it. So the civil government has a little bit of authority over a lot of people.

Then when you get to the church, the church has a little bit more authority over a smaller number of people. But when you get to marriage, you have lots of authority over a very small number of people. You have a father who has authority over his family. Lots of authority over a small number of people. You know, it's not the civil government or the church that has the authority to tell a wife how to dress or how to wear her hair or what she does in her day.

But God does give that kind of authority to a husband. So you have these various levels of authority, but the authority in marriage that a wife must recognize is a highly concentrated authority. Her husband has more authority over her than any other authority in her life. And so there's this matter of submission that she submits to her own husband, but then he defines it. He speaks of how she should think about her submission because if she thinks of submission in the wrong way then she won't understand how to play her role.

She won't understand who she is and so he qualifies the submission and he says submit to your own husbands how? As to the Lord. So what that means is as a wife learns who she is, she has to recognize that her submission to her husband is very much like her submission to the Lord. It's a heartfelt submission. It's a freely granted submission.

That's the kind of submission that she gives. And her submission to her husband is to be like her submission to the Lord. Therefore, if a wife does not submit to her husband, she is demonstrating to you that she is not submissive to the Lord. Because they're interconnected. You cannot disconnect them.

A wife cannot say, I will disobey my husband here and obey the Lord there. It doesn't work that way. Because her submission to her husband and the Lord are comparative in this sense. And then he gives the reason for all this in verse 23. For the husband is head of the wife.

So The apostle Paul further explains the detail. Not only is there a prioritization of submission and not only is that submission like her submission to the Lord, Her submission is under a head because the husband is the head of the wife. And so now we come to the whole matter of headship in marriage. And again, we have to get our minds out of the whole realm of superiority and inferiority and think in terms of order and authority and headship. And what God has done is He's established a husband to be the head of the wife.

And that head is the responsible party. A husband is responsible to lead his wife, and a wife is responsible to acknowledge his headship over her. And so what we find in Scripture is that God establishes headship over women. And this is a critical matter. In God's kingdom, the way that He has ordered things, a woman is never out from under the protection of some head, of some authority.

Never. When a daughter grows up in her father and mother's household, she has a head, she has a protector. That protector is her father. And then when it's time for her to get married, she is given in marriage. And she is transferred from one entity of protection to another under the protection and the headship of her husband.

And this is what God has done for women. He has established headship and protection for women like no other philosophy and no other religion. You know, when I went to ask Deborah's father if I could marry her, I'll never forget this. I went into his office and I was sitting down in the chair and I was so glad that he said, yes, you can marry my daughter. He said, yes, and then he said, but.

I thought, oh, no. He said, but you must understand that when you marry her, I am transferring her out of my care center into yours. He said, I cared for her. I've cared for her these 19 years And now I'm going to transfer her into your care center. He understood.

He understood this whole matter of headship. He understood the responsibilities of headship regarding women. And what God has done is he has established order and authority in the home to provide protection for a wife and there's no there's no time when a woman is is not under the protection of some authority This is the way that God designed it. And, you know, there is no higher view of women in all philosophy and all religion than Christianity. In Christianity, God places protection over women in every stage of her life.

You even see this in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. When the Lord Jesus Christ is hanging on the cross, His mother is down on the ground, and the Lord Jesus turns to the apostle John and he says to John, Behold your mother, and he says to his mother, Behold your son. Jesus Christ was transferring the protection and the care and the authority of his mother under the authority of the Apostle John. God has designed a place of protection for women so that they are never out from under some protective authority. Someone who will take care of them.

Someone who will be their head. Someone who will lead the way. Someone who will lead them into green pastures and into clear waters. This is the whole matter of protection that God has established. And this is all implied in this word head.

The husband is the head of the wife. He is the one who's responsible for taking care of her and providing for her and protecting her. And you'll see detail when we get to the husband, we'll see just exactly how detailed that is. But there is no higher view of women in any religion or philosophy in the world than in Christianity. In paganism, men use women.

In Islam, they abuse women. In Hinduism, you know, they'll, they burn women on a funeral pyre when her husband dies. You know, there is no higher view of women than in Christianity. Christianity gives a woman a protective head and there's nothing like it really in all other non-Christian society. He says, for the husband is head of the wife.

Now, in this phrase, a wife learns that in many ways her life is not her own because she now is placed under the headship of her husband. You know, one of the, you know, one of the most startling facts about marriage is that when a man marries a woman, she really does give up everything. She gives up her whole life. She gives up her friends. She gives everything to follow this man.

And God calls her to follow him to the ends of the earth and to submit to him as her head. And, you know, men should be very careful not to violate such a trust like that. A man must know what a woman gives up to follow him. It's staggering. The responsibility is great but a wife needs to understand that this is what she has done when she has married.

She has placed herself under a head. Now the problem is, he's not a perfect head. He is not Christ. He's a representative of Christ, but he's not Christ. And every wife has to recognize that.

God for some reason gives imperfect headship to wives. Now that shouldn't surprise us because every authority is like that. When God establishes civil leaders and the Bible says that God is the one who establishes all authorities in Romans 13. We have never had a president of the United States that was a perfect governor. We never have.

Your boss is not a perfect governor and yet you're commanded to submit to him and to honor him. It's the same way in marriage. It's the same way with your children. You know, husbands and wives are the governors of their children. And children don't get perfect parents.

It has never happened. So a wife should never say, I can submit to my husband when my husband has a greater level of perfection. That's completely wrong thinking because God always gives imperfect heads in his institutions and he's done that with this institution of marriage as well. And so a wife can never say, I'll submit when he gets his act together because God has given her a head. For the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church.

And then he says, therefore just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. So again, we learn more about who you are as a wife. Well, you have a head. That's one thing you know. And you are the church because he says, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands and everything.

And here a wife learns that not only does she have a new leadership, she also has a completely new relationship. And that is, she now relates to her husband as Christ does the Church. And this is why we've said many times, a wife needs to know who she is. She's the church. She's playing a role in life, a role that's not her own.

And so that's why he says, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." Now it's even further startling to notice the scope of the submission And the Scripture is very clear. In what areas must a wife submit? It's very plain in everything. In everything. It's easy for wives to want to cherry pick their areas of submission.

But God leaves no room for that for a wife. Now it's obvious that there are two things that are implied in this. One is that this is a this is a voluntary submission. It's not something that's forced. It's something that submission is, it can only come from the heart.

It can't be forced. You cannot force people to submit to you, particularly in a marriage. It must come from a voluntary desire. That's true submission. The other part of it is that when he says in everything, it's obvious that he's not talking about matters of sin or matters of breaking the law.

So a wife, a wife must not submit to her husband if her husband wants her to sin. A wife must not submit to her husband if she's breaking some law of God. That's obvious. So when he says, in everything, the implication is that we understand what he means here. That he means everything except in matters of sin.

And a wife has to recognize that she is to submit to her husband and everything. And this is one of the most difficult parts of submission. And what it does is it puts a woman in a position of trust that even these things that her husband would have her submit to him that might not seem helpful to her, God is leading her in a direction different than her own heart. It's just implied in this that God is going to lead wives to submit in ways that are contrary to their own heart. And they have to reconcile themselves to that fact.

I mean, my experience in the world is that The most peaceful women, the most stately women, the strongest and most contented women I have ever known are women who have learned how to submit to their husbands. They're not worried about it because they believe that God gave them a head. It was God who did that. And while they might not agree with everything that the husband is doing, they know that God is their protector. They know that God has put a head over them and He has done it by His own wisdom.

And so they can rest. They can trust God. That it was God who gave them that husband. And they don't have to agree with it. And sometimes, you know, the wife has greater wisdom.

And she knows that there's something wrong with what her husband is doing. And that he might not be choosing the best thing. But she can be at peace because she knows that it was God and God alone who gave her that head and He is her head. And so it really, it breathes peace into the heart of a wife when she can finally let go, when she can kind of breathe a sigh of relief and say, Lord, I I know you gave me my husband. I'm gonna follow him.

And it puts her at peace. And so, but this is the scope of her submission in everything. And I think it's very important that we try, that we do not minimize that and try to redefine it. What does this Greek word everything mean? It means everything, okay, except for the obvious things that we all can understand.

And then, and then he turns to the husbands in verse 25. We'll speak of that later, but the next thing that we hear about the relationship of a wife is found in verse 33, where he says, Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. So her other duty is to respect her husband, to recognize that God sovereignly put him in her life as her head, that God has designed that she would submit to him in everything. And yes, God does know the things that her husband wants her submit to. And in the midst of all of that, in the midst of sometimes the confusion and the doubts and the questions that arise out of various disagreements that she might have with her husband, She's called to do something in her heart.

And it is a matter of the heart. Let the wife see that she respects her husband. She has a duty to respect him. To see Him as someone who has been placed there by God. And she can respect the position that God has placed Him in.

In her respect, she's not endorsing everything about Him. But she recognizes that she can respect what God has done in putting him over her. But respect is a matter of the heart. And so a wife has to ask herself, Do I respect my husband? Do I find the things in him that I can respect?

Now, this is an issue that everyone has to grapple with in terms of authority and submission. Like with the civil government, we're commanded to honor the king. You know, how do you honor a president like President Obama right now? How do you do that? There are ways that you can honor the king.

You can honor the position. You can honor that God has ordered His authority. You can always find many, many reasons to honor a king, even the most corrupt king. If you have a father and he wasn't the best father, You're called to honor your father and your mother. You can't honor him in everything, but you can honor him in something.

And what God is calling wives to do is to find every vestige of honor that can be given to that husband. To find every manner of praise, every reason to give him respect, and to make sure that that is the guiding emotional force in her life, that she's finding how to honor, how to respect her husband, and to discern the various appropriate ways that she can respect her husband. Every person, even the worst people, can be found to be respectable in some ways and so God has called wives to live in such a way. Let the wife see that she respects her husband. Now one of the interesting things about verse 33 is that during this whole discussion that the Apostle Paul has been presenting, he has he's been speaking of of the husband and wife as one.

But here, when you get to verse 33, he actually separates them. He says, nevertheless, let each one of you in particular. So he's actually separating them in this last verse, and he's making them individuals. They've, he's been speaking to them as they are one, and that they have this reciprocal kind of, you know, relationship of unity, but now in the very last verse, he divides them and he speaks to the husband in particular and the wife in particular. And I think what he's saying to husbands and wives is that no matter what your spouse does, you have a responsibility.

And in this case, the wife has a responsibility regardless of her husband's behavior. She has to do her part. She has to play her role regardless of the role of her husband. And she can't be saying, well if only my husband would be this kind of person I could respect him. The Apostle Paul would have none of this And so he particularizes the command and separates them and he says, wife, you must see that you respect your husband regardless of what your husband does.

And he does the same thing with the husband as well in terms of love, that a husband would love his wife as himself regardless of what he receives from his wife. And what this means is that in the marriage relationship, each person must know who they are. They must know what their responsibilities are. Their responsibilities are independent of the other spouse. And that's why we say you have to know who you are.

You have to know what your lines are, you have to know what your role is so that you play that role regardless of the other person. Now my experience in with marriages and in marriage counseling is that this is one of the most fundamental problems is when love is withheld because of some feature or behavior of the other spouse. And there's a relentless withholding of the role and the love and the lines because of a failure. And it wouldn't surprise me if some of you are struggling with that here. That there are ways that you withhold love because of a failure in your spouse.

And what the Lord does in marriage is He's calling a wife to respect her husband regardless of what her husband is doing so that she knows who she is and she can boldly and confidently play her role And she doesn't have to be pushed around by her emotions. She doesn't have to be pushed around by what other people do. She can be strong. She can be who she was created to be. She can be a woman of God.

She can look to her Father in heaven as her faithful creator and know that she's safe because God is her king and God alone is the one who has placed her husband over her and he is her head and she is responsible to submit to him and to respect him. And so all this to say a wife needs to know who she is. She's the church. And a wife, a wife, whenever she's confused about how she should respond to her husband, she should think of the church. And I think this means that one of the chief occupations of study for a wife is ecclesiology, that she would really learn what a glorious church looks like.

A wife needs to know that. You know, when I was raising my daughters, I wanted them to understand the church, the doctrine of the church. I wanted them to under- I wanted my daughters to understand what a glorious church was and so we involved you know our children and the full life of the Church of Jesus Christ so that they would understand what a glorious church looked like. What is an obedient church? What is a faithful church?

What do faithful church members say to one another? How do they act to one another? They forgive one another. They prefer one another in honor. They love one another.

They do so many things for one another. This is what a glorious church does. And so it's so critical for a wife to understand what a church is designed to look like. And so my advice to fathers is make sure your daughters don't leave their house until they really understand what the Church of Jesus Christ is and how the Church of Jesus Christ should operate toward her Lord and toward the world because a wife needs to know who she is and she will find her lines in the commands to the church. She'll find her way by the doctrine of the church because she is the church.

So a wife in this sense would never be confused about what she should do or what she should say. She knows who she is. She's an obedient and a faithful church and she has lines and she has commands and so she's safe in that sense. So there it is. A wife needs to know who she is in the story and play that role and she needs to know her lines and make sure that she delivers godly lines, not lines of her own.

Okay. So I want to throw it open for questions or discussion about all these matters. You know, we've seen this big picture of, you know, who the players are. We've just gone into some detail about the role of a wife. So, what are, any thoughts or questions?

Thank you.