Everyday Marriage
Bible Passage:
Ephesians 5:22-28
Pastor:
Pastor Mike
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Sermon Date:
2010-05-29
You don’t meet everyday Christians every day. An everyday Christian is a person who visibly lives for God and like God every day. It’s the person who doesn’t say, “Amen” on Sunday and live differently on Monday, but rather the man who loves his wife on Tuesday afternoon or the employee who has the integrity to work hard on the Friday the boss is on vacation or the teenager who honors dad by being home before Saturday’s curfew. Everyday Christians don’t compartmentalize their faith. They visibly live for God and like God every day. Over these next weeks, we are going to study Ephesians 5-6, two chapters that help us be everyday Christians in our marriages, our families, and workplaces. Today we’re going to see what an everyday Christian marriage looks like.
I realize not all of you are married. We have singles, widows, widowers, and divorcees. But that doesn’t mean this message will be without value to you. Perhaps you’ll get married in the years to come. And even if you never say, “I do,” God’s Word today can help you be a blessing to others. Because you have married friends and family that are dying to have everyday marriages, even if they’ve never told you. So, possibly for your sake and definitely for theirs, listen to God’s Word today.
Let’s start with the facts: Marriage gets harder after the “I do’s”. On your wedding day, it’s not that tough to act like a Christian—loving, kind, compassionate, selfless. After all, she is stunning—white dress, hair done, perfectly tan, radiant, beautiful. And he is so romantic—waiting for you in his tux, shaking your father’s hand, giving you his arm, dancing with you to your favorite song. But things get harder when the wedding day turns into every day. The tan fades. The music stops. The tux comes off. And two Christians can quickly find out that simply being believers doesn’t automatically give them an everyday marriage. No, to be “everyday Christians” in marriage means living visibly for God and like God every day of your marriage. That takes God’s help and a clear understanding of God’s design. Ephesians 5 gives us both.
In this text, the Apostle Paul begins with Christian wives. In Ephesians 5:22 he writes, “Wives, [sub…subm…] submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” Well, well, well. Let’s just start with something easy…God says everyday Christian wives submit to their husbands every day. But what does it mean to submit? Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean wives are inferior or less intelligent or less important. I once did a wedding where the bride’s family was mostly atheist. Surprisingly, the bride chose these verses for the sermon that day. I asked her why and she said, “Because when my dad hears his little girl vow to submit, he’s going to flip out.” “Thanks!” I swallowed. Nervously, I began the message that day, “This service is about to get controversial.” But then God spoke through this text. We found a biblical definition of submission. After the service, a family member approached me. She called herself both an unbeliever and a feminist, so my spider-senses told me she didn’t like the sermon. However, she said, “Pastor, I can’t say that I agree with what you said, but that was better than I expected.” Whew! What happened that day was simple—God gave us a biblical definition of submission and shook off the stereotypes.
The Bible, against the culture of the 1st century, declared that women are not inferior. They are one with men because of Jesus Christ. So “submit” is not a degrading word in the Bible. In fact, Jesus submitted to God the Father. Submission simply means to respect and follow the one God has asked to lead. We submit to God. Citizens submit to government. Children submit to parents. In this case, God has called husbands to be the heads of their homes and everyday Christian wives to submit to their husbands’ leadership. That means denying the urge to criticize, nitpick, grumble, storm out, slam doors, or simply rebel. Rather, it means to respect, to follow, and to encourage in everything.
Ladies, please don’t see this as ugly. Rather, view submission like ballroom dancing. If you’ve studied ballroom dancing, you know that a couple practices and communicates and works together as one unit, yet when the music begins, who leads the dance? Yes! The man does! But it doesn’t look ugly or archaic. He leads. She follows. They dance together. The result is beautiful.
If submission can be beautiful, why don’t many Christian women submit every day? I’ll give three reasons. First, some women have a damaged view of submission because of a relationship with a man who was nothing like Jesus. Maybe you’ve been abused, used as a doormat, bossed around and barked at by a jealous, insecure, godless man. And so this word scares you. If you’ve been through that, I want to tell you my heart aches for you and God’s does, too. God is nothing like that and God never advocated the abuse you suffered, even if that man could quote this Bible passage. If you’ve been there, I understand if this teaching is difficult and I’ll pray for your healing and patient learning.
The second reason why women don’t submit--They’re afraid their husbands won’t reciprocate. They fear their husbands will stop reading at v.24 and not love their wives as God wants. So they don’t submit. They keep their guard up. They assert their independence and make their husband earn that respect. “I will not submit unless he loves me first.” While I acknowledge that fear, it doesn’t make much sense and it’s not pleasing to God. Just imagine, ladies, if your husbands used that same argument, “I will not love her like God wants unless she submits to me first. I will not treat her with Christian love until she…” You’d hate that. It would turn your marriage into a stalemate devoid of selfless compassion and sacrificial kindness.
I know some of you are married, but “spiritually single.” The Bible actually addresses this issue. 1 Peter 3 says, “Wives, be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives.” Catch that? Keeping your guard up and not submitting will not win him over to Christianity. But your purity, reverence, and submission can change him. That’s what happened to author Lee Strobel. When his agnostic wife came to faith during their marriage, she lived what she believed. Strobel, an atheist and journalist at the time, was so baffled by her changed life that he decided to prove her newfound beliefs wrong. His research led him to reconsider his doubts about Christianity and the Holy Spirit worked through the Scriptures to bring him to faith. So if you are married but “spiritually single”, don’t shy away from submission. You never know where it might lead.
But the most common reason wives don’t submit every day isn’t bad relationships or unbelieving husbands. It’s simple selfishness. Submission implies yielding to your husband’s will and part of you doesn’t like that. Because of your sinful nature, you want to get your way and do what you want and say what you want and think what you want and spend how you want and parent how you want and live how you want. That’s why you so often grumble and complain and ask to see the manager and write nasty emails and dig in your heels. You want it your way. So you push back on this. Submission is out of the question.
So with those three reasons, why would a wife submit? The answer is simple. Because the God who loves you wants you to. If you’re an atheist or you really don’t know the true God, I don’t expect you to understand this. But you Christian women, this is your Savior asking you to submit. This is the God who pursued you when you were spiritually ugly. This is the Savior who proposed to you when you were spiritually unfaithful. This is the Jesus who kept his promises to you to be by your side in sickness and in health. This is the Lord who gave himself up for you. You know him. You believe in him. This is his voice, his Word. You believe in God. Now believe God when he tells you to submit to your husband in everything. Be an everyday Christian wife.
Do you know what’s going on inside of the husbands right now? They look our spiritual and contemplative, but right now they’re doing the happy dance inside. “You go, pastor! Amen! I love church. Our marriage is going to be great because you straightened her out. I might even give $2 in the offering today!” If that’s you, listen up—God called to be the head of your marriage, not the blockhead of your marriage. This section of Scripture isn’t just about wives. In fact, God saves perhaps the biggest challenge for husbands who want to live for God and like God every day.
The Apostle Paul continues, “25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Love her. Just like Christ loves you.
Men, God is challenging us to do every day what most husbands do only on special days: Love our wives like Jesus does. Jesus gave himself, everything he had, for us. What we needed, he gave. So what does it mean to love your wife like that? It means if she needs it, do it! Is she exhausted? Offer to cook. Is she stressed out? Send her up to take a bath while you watch the kids. Does she feel ugly? Tell her she’s beautiful and take her shopping. Is she lonely? Drop out of the league and have a weekly date night. God knows your wife is worth more than a cheap trophy. Does she need to talk? Shut the T.V. off and listen. Does she want to rent a movie? Get the one with Sandra Bullock instead of the one with the explosions. Forgive her. Speak tenderly to her. Pursue her. Give yourself up for your wife just like Christ did for you.
Isn’t that the most beautiful picture of an everyday Christian marriage? So why is it so rare for husbands to love like that? Same reasons—We’ve been in a bad relationship. Or we’re not married to a Christian and we’re afraid she’ll trample on our kindness. More commonly, we’re just selfish. We want to do our thing and buy our stuff and watch our games and hang with our friends and tinker on our cars. We’re so sinfully set on being a man according to the definition of our culture. But, guys, God didn’t call you to be a man of culture. He called you to be a man of Christ.
Why would you step up and love your wife every day? Because the God who defended you asks you to. The Savior who lived and died speaks these words to you. Our selfishness as men left us spiritually guilty. Convicted of sin. Dirty and unfit for life with God. But Jesus’ cleaned us up. He gave up his own life to make that happen. When he died on the cross, he took our blame. Just like he humbled himself and washed his disciples’ feet, he humbly died to wash you of all of your sins. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, you are right with God. And now that same Savior says to you, “Go sacrifice for her. Love your wife.”
That’s an everyday Christian marriage. A wife who submits everyday to her husband out of love for God. A husband who selflessly loves his wife out of love for God. As loved and blameless children of our Father in heaven, then, I want to give you an opportunity to renew your vows, your commitment to live according to God’s design every day of your marriage. So I’m asking all husbands and wives to stand. Join hands. Look each other in the eye. “Gentlemen, you have taken this woman to be your wife. Will you be guided by the counsel and direction God has given in his Word and love your wife as Christ loved the Church? Will you be faithful to her, cherish her, support her, and help her in sickness and health as long as you both shall live? If so, answer, I will. Ladies, you have taken this man to be your husband. Will you be guided by the counsel and direction God has given in his Word and submit to your husband as the Church submits to Christ? Will you be faithful to him, cherish him, support him, and help him in sickness and in health as long as you both shall live? If so, answer, I will.”
By your promises, you have bound yourselves together to an everyday Christian marriage. May God give you the strength to live according to his will every day. Amen.
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