Welcome to Episode 4 in Series 2, in our study in Ephesians. Great to have you with us. I hope many of you have been studying the episodes one by one; every talk I give is connected to the previous one, because I am looking at the book as a whole. That is always how we approach things in Word Online. We are looking at the context, at the whole book, and trying to make sense of it in its original context before we make an application to ourselves.

Recap and Background

This episode is very important. Paul has been talking about practical discipleship, and in the next two episodes, he focusses on the Christian household, or family, or home. In this episode, he deals with the question of marriage itself. In the next episode, he will look at children and parents, and about domestic servants, or slaves, in the first century context.

Before we start the passage, let me make some preliminary comments about marriage. This is an incredibly important subject which we are looking at from a worldwide perspective. I am speaking cross-culturally in Word Online. I am speaking from my own culture in the United Kingdom and in the West but am very aware that we are a worldwide audience, and all our cultures are important. All our cultures value marriage but we have different customs, and some of those need to be identified at the beginning of this talk, before we relate to what Paul says. Some of us come from a culture where marriages are arranged by the family; we are guided into marriage by parental advice and the wider family. Others come from cultures such as mine, where the choice of your marriage partner is largely an individual, or personal choice. Most of us live in cultures where monogamy is normal - in other words, a marriage between only one man and only one woman - but there are parts of the world which practice polygamy, in which one man may have more than one wife. That is an important part of this discussion because polygamy existed in the ancient world amongst the Greeks and Romans, to whom Paul was preaching.

Some of us have a traditional culture of marriage, in which the roles of husband and wife are very different and separated, where, generally speaking, the woman is responsible for the home and bringing up children, and the husband responsible for the public life of the family and the earning of money. Not all cultures are like that. Many modern cultures have maids, and the roles in the family are much more equal in terms of childcare, and of being in the workplace and earning money.

Many of us who are married will have very different experiences of marriage itself. Some will have experienced harmony and love in their marriage. Some will have experienced disharmony and even abuse and violence. I am aware of these differences, and I have them in the back of my mind as we talk about marriage.

Paul would have been aware of all these things as well. Some of these issues were referred to in the second part of Ephesians 4 and the earliest part of chapter 5, when Paul was talking about Christian discipleship behaviour. There were a number of references to sexual issues. Some of us come from cultures where sexual unfaithfulness in marriage is largely tolerated and hidden. Others come from cultures where that is not the case, and that unfaithfulness is punished. We have different views in different parts of the world about divorce. In some places, divorce is easy to achieve, and in some places it is difficult.

There are many different experiences we bring to the question of marriage. When we look at the Kingdom of God, and God’s purposes for humanity, and God’s purposes for the Church, we find that marriage is absolutely foundational. It is central but it is not that everybody should be married. This is far from the case in the Church, but marriage provides the basic social unit to build community, and to build the Church. Singleness is honoured. Jesus was single. Paul himself was single. Those who are widows or widowers are honoured in the Church. Our focus here is on marriage itself.

In many parts of the modern world, marriage is under tremendous pressure. For Christian marriages, there is the pressure of liberal sexual ethics; the idea in many cultures that a man and a woman living together informally without getting married is okay; the pressure that comes from many divorces; from abuse and control by the husband in marriage; and the pressure that comes from economic poverty. There are many pressures. If you live in a country experiencing warfare and civil war, violent conflict, ethnic conflict or tribal conflict, it will put tremendous pressure on marriages and families.

Family Life in Ephesus

We keep all those things in mind. That is our experience, and I respect the fact that people will have different experiences to mine. Now we leave that aside and think about the experience of marriage that Paul was dealing with in his society. Paul was talking here to the Ephesian Christians, who were a Gentile community for the most part, living in the Roman Empire. We need to ask ourselves, what kind of family structures did they have there? That is the starting point before we look at what Paul says. What kind of families were there?

First, the husband and father had great power and authority in a family in the ancient world. Ultimately, his decisions were the final decisions for the family if he chose to exercise that power. He could exploit his wife, if he was unloving. He could abuse her. He could divorce her. He had power over his children, and they had to obey him; there could be harsh punishment if they didn’t. In the ancient world, slavery existed. Not the sort of slavery that we often think about - a racially based slavery, such as the transatlantic slavery from West Africa through to the Caribbean and the Americas. No, the slavery of the ancient world wasn’t based on race or ethnicity, it was based largely on warfare, or extreme economic poverty. In these situations, men and women, and even youngsters, could be turned into slaves and for most of them it meant they worked as domestic servants. This is the context that Paul is speaking about in Ephesians 6. As people converted to Christianity, maybe a husband and a wife converting together becoming Christians and their children also. Very often there would be domestic servants in the household, especially if they were richer. Paul is addressing all these relationships in this teaching that he gives in the second half of Ephesians 5 and the first half of Ephesians 6. These are the households that we are talking about.

Christian Marriage

His focus in this section is on marriage itself. In the culture of the Greeks and Romans, the man could make all the decisions. He could rule over his household. What was Paul going to say about that? Was that a good thing? Was that a bad thing? Was that something that needed changing? How did the coming of the husband and wife to faith influence the way they related as man and wife? This teaching is very important because Paul draws an important comparison: he compares the husband and the wife to Christ and the church. This is another way of thinking about marriage, which would never have occurred to the new converts before they came to Christ. Paul talks about Christ as being the head of the Church, the one who is the leader of the Church, ruling over the Church if you like. But we quickly see that Christ is a loving leader, a servant leader, who laid down his life for the Church. Paul introduces the idea here that the husband should model himself on Jesus Christ, by being the servant of his wife and laying down his life for her benefit, while remaining the head - taking the ultimate spiritual responsibility for his family. This is a revolutionary idea to the Greeks and Romans and the new converts. This is where he introduces the idea of submission, He was not talking about submitting to a dictator, a tyrant, a military ruler, an emperor or a husband who has free reign to do whatever he wanted. No, he was talking about submission to a loving servant leader.

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Ephesians 5:21, NIV

In this verse, we see the general principle that Paul is going to apply to all the relationships in the household: husbands and wives; parents and children; and masters and servants, or slaves.

Submit to those who are given the leadership role in your family structure because you have a respect for Jesus Christ who calls you to do that, just as you would submit to Jesus Christ, the servant leader in the church.

That is the basic principle.

Christian Wives

“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 Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Ephesians 5:22-24, NIV

You can see the comparison between Christ and the Church and the husband and the wife. The Church submits to Jesus because they know that he loves them. We want to do Christ’s will because he is a loving servant leader and the husband should be a loving servant leader in the home, and the wife then should respond to that leadership. This is a very different picture of relationship between husbands and wives than they were used to in their society, where the husband ruled; even if he was an evil man, no one could really stop him, he did what he wanted to do. He could exploit his wife and family and even abuse them. This is impossible in Paul’s way of thinking; he wants the wives and the husbands to have a totally different approach to their relationship.

These verses leave an unanswered question. What is going to change the husband to be more like Christ? To be worthy of submitting to, in this way? What is going to change the husband?

Christian Husbands

“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.”

Ephesians 5:25-30, NIV

This is a totally different way of thinking about the role of a husband than would have been the case in the society. It was not about power and dominance and control. The husband’s role was something very different in the Christian household. The husband models himself on Jesus Christ. Paul asked husbands to think carefully, frequently and deeply about what Christ actually did by giving up his life for the Church. The sheer sacrifice of himself for the Church is the model that the husband needs to think about. He is asked to do something similar for his wife: to love her with a sacrificial love that focuses on her best interests. This was an incredibly revolutionary idea, and completely against the culture of the day. Christian households are going to be built on different principles to those in the Gentile society around. It was not about power and control and fighting for rights but about sacrificial respect for each other in the different roles. The key for this is to think of the type of sacrifices that would be involved: time, money, affection, priorities and honour. These are the things that husbands need to give to their wives and of course, to their children - praying for them and serving them.

Another key idea here is that the husband needs to understand what loving his wife is by thinking about how he loves his own body. This is not very difficult for us to appreciate. Before I came to speak to you today, what did I do? As I woke up in the morning, I had had a good sleep, and deliberately gave myself enough time to sleep. I washed myself and drank enough tea and water. I ate enough food, and clothed myself, and I shaved my face. I am looking after myself. I am loving myself. It comes naturally.

Paul says, your wife is part of you, so you need to think about her needs the same way that you think about your own needs. What about her physical needs? What about her emotional needs? That is what husbands are called to do. What is the goal? To make her holy. The husband’s responsibility is to draw his wife to follow Christ as he follows Christ. In many families we find, right the way across the world, the women are more spiritual and godly than the men, and that creates a difficulty in the family. Paul here challenges the men to be very godly and spiritual, and focused on Jesus Christ - knowing him and serving him themselves, and then serving their wives and their family and their communities. This is revolutionary teaching.

God’s Creation of Marriage

“‘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.”

Ephesians 5:31-33, NIV

Paul’s thinking is based on the book of Genesis. Genesis 2: 24 is quoted here. There are some very important principles in the book of Genesis, in the creation story, that are in Paul’s mind. At the beginning, in Genesis 1: 27 it says in the text: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Our starting point is that males and females are of equal value to God, of equal status before God. The second point of thinking is that in Genesis 2, there is a difference between the man and the woman identified. If you read the story, you will find that Adam is created first. God shows Adam the Garden of Eden, before the creation of Eve, and he gives him a series of commands. Genesis 2: 15 – 17, “God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” And said ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’ Adam received the commands to cultivate the earth, to look after it and produce economic benefit and food from the earth. He also received the moral command, to not eat from that particular tree. Immediately after that, in the story, we find that Adam is alone, and God realises he needs a coworker, a companion, and Eve is created. She is called his ‘helper’. What is she helping him in? She is helping him in the commands that God has given firstly, to produce children, Genesis 1: 28; secondly, the command to look after the garden, Adam needs a coworker; and thirdly, in the moral command to obey God. She helps him to obey what God has called him to do. This thought is in Paul’s mind when he thinks of marriage. The husband has the primary responsibility for working out, ‘What is God calling us to do in our marriage and in our family?’ and enabling it to happen -to protect the family, to provide for the family so that each person can obey God fully, especially and initially his wife, so that she can be made holy, as Paul says in Ephesians 5.

Man and woman came together, in Genesis 2: 24, and they are united in marriage. This verse tells us that they start a new family, they leave the other family. They are united in a public commitment of marriage, and they become one flesh through sexual union. Marriage was there in creation. Marriage becomes central to the life of the Church, according to Paul. He is willing to give time to give instructions about marriage in the book of Ephesians, alongside a lot of other practical instructions, because it is so important for the Christian community. The greatest challenge he puts is to the husbands, to change their way of thinking from their cultural background - to think that marriage is for their satisfaction, for their reputation, for giving them comfort, of their practical needs being provided and giving them status in the community through the children that might be produced in that marriage and things like that. Paul says differently. Paul says husbands are called to be like Christ is to the Church. The one who leads as a servant and gives a high quality of life to his wife, as high a quality as he can, and encourages her, with him, to obey God in whatever he calls them to do. They then share the responsibility of bringing up children but that is a topic we will discuss in the next episode.

This is a very challenging text because all of us read this text through our own experience. Many of us will have had very difficult experiences of marriage and relationships that have gone wrong. Relationships that are based on power and control and abuse or based on loneliness of a husband and wife living in the same house but not communicating together. We have to lay aside our own experience and go back in our imagination to Paul’s world and what he was saying, in order to catch a glimpse of what husbands and wives are called to do in the Christian community. The wife will only submit to the husband ‘as to the Lord’. In other words, she should not be submitting to sin and selfishness, but to his godly leadership only. That is an important point.

Reflections

First of all, let me speak to men, who may feel inadequate spiritually, and in character, to be the leader in their marriage, in their family. This text is for you, as a text to transform you, to change the way you think about yourself so you can rise to that responsibility?

Can I speak to women who have suffered in their marriages and say, God understands, and he knows; it was never his will that you should have been exploited in the ways that you have experienced. You should seek help if that is an ongoing experience.

I am encouraging both men and women to rethink what it is to be a husband and wife, not just in the light of their own experience, but in the light of the biblical teaching here, in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

I want to speak to younger and single people and say, this text is important for you to understand what it is you might be entering into if you marry one day in the future. It also encourages you to support marriages in an appropriate way.

In conclusion, I want to say that Paul’s understanding of marriage here is different from the modern understanding of living together - an informal relationship between a man and a woman. Marriage in the ancient world was always a public ceremony with public verbal commitments and promises. That is a reflection of Genesis 2: 24 and its intention. Every culture has a different way of formalising marriages, but they are the joining together of families, the joining together of two individuals, and the promise of certain commitments by the husband and the wife together. Those who live together, having a sexual relationship, having an informal relationship together, never make those public promises. It is a private agreement between the two of you, which you can break up at any point that you like. The Church, as it follows the Scriptures, does not recognise that as Christian marriage. Christian marriage is a public commitment within the context of your community, your nation, and your family, and very significantly, the church community itself.

Christian marriage is under attack in the modern world, but there are many resources we can use to strengthen our marriages and to prepare the next generation to build strong marriages and strong families. They are a key part of church life. I am encouraging you, whatever your situation, to use the resources of this passage and to go back over it again and think carefully about Paul’s meaning, in order to understand more clearly what God’s intention is in Christian marriage.

Do join us for the next episode where we talk about parents and children, and servants and masters in the households of the early Christian communities.