Marriage and Singleness

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Message M1: Marriage and Singleness October 26, 2008

Title: Marriage, Singleness and Mutual Submission

Text: Ephesians 5: 18, 21-30

Big Idea: When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, whether we are married or single, we will pour ourselves out in love for others.

We know from life experience that certain truths are counter-intuitive.

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, Rudy Giuliani, who was then the mayor of New York City, was hailed for his able leadership during a time of crisis.

When Mayor Giuliani was asked how he was able to lead under such great pressure, he said, “My father taught me that the greater the crisis we face, the more calm we must become. So I try to practice that. The greater the crisis, the calmer I seek to be.”

It is paradoxical. It is counter-intuitive. We would tend to think that in the midst of a great crisis we would need to become more intense, more tight-fisted. But great leadership is exercised by those who can remain calm in a crisis.

The Boston Celtics basketball star, Larry Bird, used to say at critical moments in the game the court would get quiet and the players would seem to be moving in slow motion. The great athletes are able to perform at their peak during the critical moments of a game because they are able to relax.

Studies have shown that the optimal heart beat for peak performance is between 115 and 145 beats per minute. Once our heart beat goes above that, our performance tends to diminish because we are over-aroused. That is part of why some athletes tend to choke during the most important part of the game, and other athletes tend to flourish.

One would think, that in sports, great performance would come out of intense, clench-fisted effort. The fact is that part of great performance as an athlete is about relaxing on the court, on the field. It’s counter-intuitive.

This principle of paradox is also true in relationships, in a marriage, in particular. The word “submission” is an offensive word to many people in our culture. And, on first impression, it would seem to be the last thing that would help a relationship. We tend to think that to get the most out of a relationship, we have to hold on to our rights—have to grab as much as we can from the other person. But if we are able to let go and give (or “submit”) we will find that our relationships, whether they are as married or as single people, flourish.

Today we are going to begin a series that will cover aspects of both marriage and singleness in the Spirit. Today we are going to tackle the very controversial subject (just warning you) of what submission likes in a marriage and then briefly as people who are single.

Hear the apostle Paul and what the Spirit of God may say through him to us today.

If you have your Bibles, please turn to Ephesians 5: 21-33

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² 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.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing ^[b] 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, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." ^{[c] 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.

This famous passage on marriage is preceded by Ephesians 5:18.

¹⁸ Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.

In fact in the Greek from vs. 18 to 23 is one continuous sentence.

Paul in Ephesians 5:18 calls us to be filled with the Holy Spirit—“don’t be drunk on wine but be filled with the Spirit.” Perhaps the biggest cause for conflict and breakdown in both marriages and the relationships of single people is self-centeredness.

All of us are self-centered in ways that we are probably not even aware of.

Aristotle says, says if when we are a soldier in a war, for example, and an arrow is shot through the sky and hits someone beside us, and not us, we think “What good luck that it wasn’t me.” We tend to define reality and good fortune in terms of what’s good for us.

When two people do that in a relationship, it tends to kill the relationship.

When we are filled with the Spirit of Jesus, a Spirit which (according to Philippians 2) looks out for not just our own interests, but also for the interests of others…. we will find ourselves becoming more giving people… willing to pour ourselves out for people…. It is as we are filled with the Holy Spirit that we can live out the kind of relationships that God has called us into, whether we are married or single.

What’s the most radical and culturally disturbing aspect of the Ephesians text?

Isn’t it the line, “Wives submit to your husbands?

But that wouldn’t have been the case in Paul’s day.

The radical statement in Paul’s day would have been, Ephesians 5:21

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This would have been a radical statement in Paul’s culture. In Paul’s world it was typical to call on wives to submit to their husbands; slaves to submit to their masters. But to call on husbands and wives and members of households to submit to each other was radical. The call for husbands to love their wives would have also been unheard of.

“Wives submit to your husbands” sounds offensive to us today.

So, it is important to understand the cultural context in which Paul is giving this call.

Though Paul is seen as conservative and traditional by many people who would read him today, Paul was seen as being a subversively progressive in his own day and empowering to women.

How so?

In a culture that was very patriarchal and did not recognize the leadership of women, Paul recognizes the gifts and the leadership among women. In Romans 16, for example we see Paul affirming the leadership of many women in the church, including, Junia, who occupies the office of apostle, the highest position of leadership that someone could hold in the church of Paul’s day.

1 Cor 7 Paul says that the wife has authority over husband’s body.

1 Cor. 7 Paul says if a wife is married to and unbelieving husband and he does not want to stay with her because of her faith in Christ, she is free from the marriage. That statement would have been surprising for people, because in Paul’s day it was the assumption that a wife would take the gods of her husband.

As I mentioned a few moments ago, while it was very common for people in Paul’s day to talk about wives submitting to husbands, the talk of mutual submission in a household was unheard of. It was unheard for husbands to lay down their lives for their wives.

So Paul would have been seen as a liberal subversive in his own day, a person who sought to affirm the value, leadership, and rights of women.

Part of the reason why Paul in Ephesians 5 calls on women to submit to their husbands is so that he does not unnecessarily offend people outside of the faith who may think he is destroying an important traditional family structure. This is why Paul in Titus 2:5 says to women, “be subject to your husbands, so that no-one will malign the work of God.”

What would have stood out to Paul’s hearers in Ephesus is the call in Chapter 5, vs. 21 (because it was so counter-cultural), the call to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

In a healthy marriage the norm is mutual submission.

Wives submitting to husbands, yet but husbands submitting to wives.

Paul says submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. It’s out of devotion to God that we submit to each other…

Even secular people understand this idea—though they use different language.

One of the most helpful pieces of counsel that I have received before being married to Sakiko came from one of John Gottman’s books. He said, “Let your spouse influence you.”

Men who allow their wives influence them tend to have happier marriages and are less likely to divorce.

Marriages where husband and wife are seen as equal (different), but equal are far happier.

Patriarchal marriages tend be much less happy and healthy—with more incidences of violence and depression and marriage failure.

According to John Gottman, when a man is not willing to share his power with his wife, there is an 81% chance their marriage will self-destruct.

Does the call to mutual submission mean that Paul doesn’t believe there are any role distinctions between men and women?

No.

It’s interesting that Paul uses different language as he calls men and women to be faithful in marriage.

He calls on husbands to love their wives and cherish them.

But in vs. 33 he calls on wife to respect their husbands.

(But, of course, the reverse is also true, husbands are to respect their wives and wives are to love their husbands—but it’s interesting that language Paul uses different language to exhort husband and wife).

Part of what this distinction of language suggests is that Paul believes that while men and women are equal, there are real differences between them. Paul and the Bible in general affirm that there is a nature difference between men and women (though of course there is overlap between so-called male and female qualities people and exceptions to what is generally the rule).

I remember being in a conversation fairly recently with a feminist scholar who told me that she had believed that the gender differences between male and female were just a result of our social environment. But as the result of having kids of her own, she said that that view of hers has been seriously challenged (and are now frankly more in line with current social science research). She notices that her son, though she encourages him to be gentle, loves to make weapons out of things. He will take a stick and make it into a sword, whereas her daughter tends to be much more gentle and peaceful. Studies have shown that if there is an object in the room, the boy tends to knock it over or grow through it, whereas the girl will typically go around it. Obviously, there are exceptions, but generally speaking boys tend to be more aggressive than girls, and girls tend to be gentler than boys.

As Carol Gilligan has pointed out in her landmark book, A Different Voice, that even when and men and women have exactly the same job, they tend to go about it a different way. A man tends to be more independent, a woman more interdependent. A man tends to care for others so he can achieve some sort of impact. A woman tends to want to achieve something in order to care for people. Again obviously there is overlap between male and females qualities and exceptions to the general rule.

What does Paul mean when he says the husband is head of the wife in vs. 23? This is could be quite inflammatory if not read in the context of the whole passage.

The context is telling us that the husband is not called to be the “head” to boss his wife around, but rather (vs. 25) to be like Jesus Christ to his wife—i.e., to never use his position as husband for his own advantage, but to pour himself out for her so that she becomes more beautiful. Being a head like Jesus, is not permission to boss someone round, but to lay your life down for them.

Part of the reason Paul calls on men to pour out their lives for their wives like Jesus Christ, I believe, is because we men can at times be very dominant in a self-serving, sinful way, but we can also be tempted to evade responsibility, as well. This tendency to evade responsibility and be passive can be traced back to our ancient forbear Adam, who when asked by God, “Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not eat from?” Adam doesn’t say yes or no, but he says, “The woman, she gave me some of the fruit and I ate it.” Men can be dominant, but men can also evade responsibility and be passive.

When I was teaching in the Philippines a couple of years ago, my host was telling me that in many cases the Philippine household is actually run by the woman. The woman is not only taking care of the kids, but she’s the one who’s out working--she is the breadwinner. The husband is often just sitting at home watching TV, using the money that that his wife earns on his girlfriends.

I asked my host. “Do women like that kind of privileged position of being leader of the household, the breadwinner?” My host Stephen said, “You know, most women would just love if their husbands would take some initiative and responsibility in the home.”

To illustrate a little closer to home, in almost all cases that I am aware of, even if a woman is a greater leader, she prefers to be in a romantic relationship where the man initiates and take responsibility.

Even if the woman knows that she really wants to marry a man, in every culture that I am aware of, a woman prefers it if the man proposes.

As a pastor, I’ve been heard many proposal stories. I’ve never heard a woman say, “I’m really angry, because I wanted to pop the question, but he beat me to it.”

What Paul is saying here in this passage when he talks about the husband being a head like Jesus Christ, that he is to pour himself out in love for his wife as Christ has done for the church. Paul says, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and laid his life down for it.” A husband is to use his role not for his own selfish advantage, but for the benefit of his wife.

Two qualifiers…

When Paul does call on wives to submit to their husbands (and remember submission goes both ways), the wife’s submission to the husband is never unconditional.

If the husband asks the wife to do something that is clearly out of the will of God, in the same way that we are to disobey government if we are asked by government (Acts 5) to… a wife would be called to disobey her husband in that kind of situation, and vice versa.

When a husband suggests something ridiculous, the wife should oppose that.

So what does it mean for a wife to support her husband? I think it’s when her husband takes initiatives in a way that reflects Jesus Christ… then part of what the wife does is to affirm that and when you do that… your husband becomes more of man in the best sense and most loving sense…

At a wedding sometimes I turn to the groom and say… As Adam sang over Eve in Genesis 2, “so cherish your wife and she’ll blossom like a beautiful flower…” I turn to the bride and say, “ If you respect your husband, and make him feel like a champion, he’ll be a champion of a man in the best sense of that word…”

Paul, in Ephesians 5:21, talks about mutual submission, not just within marriages, but within the larger Christian family where there are married and single people. Paul also calls us to exercise mutual submission within the larger family of Christ.

We live in a culture that prizes autonomy and individualism and freedom from any kind of obligation, perhaps above all else. Paul, in Ephesians 5, said that husbands are to love their wives like Jesus Christ, by pouring out their lives for him. The Scriptures teach us that when we give our lives to God, we become part of God’s family, that we are brothers and sisters.

The Scripture teaches us that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper.

Part of what this means that we are willing to pour out our lives for each other.

There are many different applications of this, of course, but one of the applications is that we will speak the truth in love.

In Lauren Winner’s book, Real Sex, she describes a scene from Danielle Crittenden’s novel, Amanda Bright@Home: “One night Amanda Bright’s best friend Susie comes for dinner, with her new boyfriend in tow. Amanda is charmed by the beau, but just before dessert Susie tells Amanda that he is married. Amanda is shocked and angry and is worried about her friend. Amanda’s husband Bob pooh-poohs her concerns, insisting that Susie is a grown-up and that her affairs are her…well, her affairs. Amanda finds herself convinced by Bob’s reasoning.”

We live in a culture that believes that our affairs are our affairs. People’s business is their business. But the Bible teaches that if we belong to the family of God, what is going on in your life is my business, what is going on in my life is your business, because I am your brother and you are my sister or my brother we care for each other.

Part of what mutual submission in the family of Christ means is that on the one hand we are willing to pour out our lives for each other by speaking the truth in love, but we are also willing to submit to our brothers and sisters, if, and as, they call us to the way of Christ.

In the 1990s I spent a summer in Singapore. I was doing ministry internship there. I was hosted by a group called Eagles Communication, a band of brothers and sisters who dedicated themselves to serve the Lord through this ministry called The Eagles. Early on they took a vow that for the first couple years of ministry none of them would marry so they could really focus on God and the work that God was calling them to. Since that period of a couple of years have passed, and a number of the people from the community have gotten married. But The Eagles will say that none of them will get married unless their decision to marry this person has been affirmed by the community. This is really unusual in our day and age, but I think healthy.

If you are single and thinking about marrying someone, and all your friends, and particularly your Christian friends, are dead against it, your family is against it, it would be wise to submit to that, assuming your friends have reasonably good judgment (and are not completely nuts).

What makes it work for The Eagles is the fact that are committed to doing life together, not just working together in ministry, but doing meals, playing tennis, shopping together. It is hard to call people to the way of Christ when it relates to their personal life, their romance lives, their terms of Sabbath-keeping, their financial lives. But if we are in close relationship with people, it can be done.

I remember conversations with close friends where I have asked them, “How are you doing with your fiancé? Are you tempted sexually?” Or, with a married person, “Are you tempted to be unfaithful?” Those questions just don’t come out of the blue. They come out of relationships where we have worked together, run together, biked together, done life together. In almost all cases, those kinds of questions have been deeply appreciated, and, likewise, when people have spoken into my life I have been deeply appreciative. For example, when I was working in Japan and a couple of people started to express their concerns that I was becoming too materialistic, I was really challenged by that. I was led to give more away, to work less and give more away.

Part of what it means to be a member of a healthy family is that we submit to each other. If we are married, as husband and wife, or if we are single, that we submit to each other in the family of God.

How we do become secure, humble, and open to love? It’s by being filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. When we are filled with the Spirit of Jesus, we become confident and humble enough like Jesus to pour out our lives for others and to submit to each other.

Let’s pray (invitation to respond).