2. Husbands, Wives and God
I was driving home from work a few weeks ago, listening to the ABC on the radio, and as it was coming up to the end of the hour the presenter, Richard Glover said: “Keep listening – in a few minutes’ time I’m going to play you the most romantic thing you’ll ever hear.” So I kept listening, and I started wondering – what does a middle-aged ABC presenter from the Inner West of Sydney consider to be the most romantic thing we’ll ever hear, and will it really live up to the hype?
In the end, I had to agree with him. It really was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard on radio. They had put together a whole lot of little clips from people in their seventies and eighties and nineties, who had phoned in the previous afternoon to talk about what it is like to be married long-term.
At one level the whole thing was so commonplace – just a bunch of old people talking about sex and arguments and staying together and family. At another level it was so refreshing – so different from the standard view that you hear assumed in the media and the movies: that romance is about fleeting passions and illicit relationships, that it’s the preserve of the young and the famous and the physically beautiful, that romance is almost the opposite of marriage. And it was more than just refreshing; there were moments in it that were intensely, extraordinarily beautiful – supremely the bit at the end, where a woman in her nineties was talking about what it was like to care for her profoundly incapacitated husband through his final years of advanced dementia. I nearly had to pull over because of the tears in my eyes.
It reminded me of how important and how beautiful the things that the Bible has to say about marriage are, and how much more than ever they need to be said in our society today. So this morning, as part of this series on ‘God and the family’, that’s what we’re going to be doing, taking as our starting point that passage from Ephesians chapter 5 that we heard read for us a few minutes ago.
I want to take that passage as a starting point and range out across the rest of the Bible from there, and I want to say two main things about marriage, based on Ephesians 5. First, I want to say that marriage in the Bible is a one flesh relationship; and second, I want to say that marriage in the Bible is a symbol of Christ and the church. Now these are not the only two things that the Bible has to say about marriage, but they’re two very important things, and they’re certainly two things that make a big difference to the way we do marriage.
(i) Marriage is a one flesh relationship (Eph 5:31, Gen 2:24)
So firstly, and fundamentally, marriage as God has created it is a one flesh relationship. Ephesians 5:31 – and Paul is quoting here from the very first book of the Bible, from Genesis chapter 2: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
Can I suggest four entailments of that basic reality about marriage.
A sexual relationship (1 Cor 6:16, 7:3-5)
Firstly, and most obviously perhaps, the fact that marriage is a one flesh relationship implies that marriage is a sexual relationship – in fact it is the place that God has created as a matrix for human sexuality. The language of a ‘one flesh’ union in Genesis 2 is not just talking about sex, but it certainly includes sex. Sex is something designed by God to express and to enact that one flesh union that is marriage.
So Paul quotes from the same verse in Genesis when he’s talking in 1 Corinthians 6 about why it’s wrong to visit a prostitute. 1 Corinthians 6 verse 16, Paul writes: ‘Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”’ Sex is a unitive act because marriage is a unitive relationship. And the two belong together.
As evangelicals we tend to be fairly good at making the negative point. We’re fairly good at making the 1 Corinthians 6 point about how inappropriate sex is outside of marriage. We’re not so good at making the positive point – the one Paul makes in the following chapter - about how appropriate and important and wonderful sex is within marriage. We know that sex is OK within marriage, and only within marriage – we just don’t think it’s all that important. It’s almost like we think of it as if it was just the icing on the cake. So it’s not that uncommon to hear about marriages – even Christian marriages - that drift slowly into a kind of tired, distant, asexual co-parenting partnership. And it’s partly, I think, because we have too low a view of sex, and we don’t think of it as being intrinsic to marriage, at the very core of how the relationship is expressed.
So Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7 – to people who had persuaded themselves that God would be really pleased with them if they achieved a kind of celibate marriage – Paul writes, 1 Cor 7 verse 3: “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.”
Notice the mutuality of Paul’s picture – this is not a one way street. Notice too that he talks in terms of giving what you owe, not taking what is your right. Sex is always something to be given, never something to be demanded. But it is to be given.
Now it needs to be said, of course, that this is not always an easy thing – usually, if the sex has stopped happening in a marriage it’s a symptom as much as it’s a cause of the marriage struggling, and there may be a whole lot of other things that need fixing as well. It’s not always an easy thing, but the fact that it’s not easy does not mean that it’s not important. It’s fundamentally, vitally important to the way that we express the fact that we’re married to each other and that we belong together as one flesh.
A relationship of mutual delight (Gen 2:23, Proverbs 5:15-20, Song of Songs 1:1-4, 1:9 – 2:13)
Marriage is a sexual relationship; and secondly, by extension, marriage is a relationship of mutual delight. Sex is about a whole lot more than just the physical act of intercourse. It expresses the fact that marriage – the one flesh relationship created by God – is intended by God not merely as a functional relationship, but as a relationship of mutual joy and delight. We are commanded in the Bible not just to be faithful to each other and to serve each other and to be partners in ministry, but also to enjoy and to give joy to each other.
Adam sets the pattern in Genesis chapter 2, when God creates Eve and brings him to her, and he cannot restrain himself from bursting out in delight, in the very first poem of the whole Bible. Genesis 2 verse 23: The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
Or you can turn to Proverbs chapter 5, where the speaker is warning his son against adultery. The chapter begins and ends by warning the young man against becoming entangled with another woman, but in the heart of the chapter, it’s about a command to the young man to delight himself in his own wife. Proverbs 5 verse 15: “Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. 16 Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? 17 Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. 18 May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. 19 A loving doe, a graceful deer — may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love. 20 Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife?”
And the sort of delight we’re talking about is a mutual delight – each one fixing their eyes on the other and cherishing, celebrating, delighting in him or her. You can see that supremely in Song of Songs. So it begins with the voice of the woman, speaking about her man and speaking to him: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth — for your love is more delightful than wine. 3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the maidens love you! 4 Take me away with you — let us hurry!” And what follows is an exchange of love songs, celebrated by a chorus of onlookers.
So he says: “I liken you, my darling, to a mare harnessed to one of the chariots of Pharaoh. 10 Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings, your neck with strings of jewels.” She replies: “While the king was at his table, my perfume spread its fragrance. 13 My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. 14 My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi.”
“How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.”
“How handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant.”
And so on. And so on. If you have stopped seeing your wife that way, or your husband that way, then maybe you need to start looking again. And if you have stopped telling her that or telling him that, then maybe you need to start talking again. Marriage is meant to be a relationship of expressed and exclusive mutual delight.
A permanent relationship (Song of Songs 8:6, Matthew 19:6)
Thirdly, if marriage is a one flesh relationship, then it is meant to be a permanent relationship. So the lovers in the Song of Songs are deeply aware that what they’re talking about is not some sort of romantic fling, or some sort of ‘as long as it feels good’ contract. She says to him – chapter 8 verse 6: “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death.”
Jesus says – Matthew 19 verse 4: “at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
Marriage is a permanent relationship.
A relationship of exclusive love and loyalty (Eph 5:28, Gen 2:25)
And finally, fourthly, if marriage is a one flesh relationship, then it is a relationship of exclusive love and loyalty. Paul says to husbands in Ephesians 5 verse 28, “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.” There is no-one who is closer, no-one who comes first apart from God himself. When a man gets married, according to Genesis 2, he leaves his father and mother and becomes united to his wife. That’s why it says in the marriage service, ‘forsaking all others’. If you are married then there is no human relationship that is to be closer – not even your parents; not even your kids. If we had time, and unfortunately we don’t, we could spell out a whole lot of practical implications that has.
Marriage is, uniquely, a one flesh union.
(ii) Marriage is a symbol of Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32)
And secondly, and this is really the other big point of the sermon this morning, marriage is a relationship that is created by God ultimately to point beyond itself to the relationship between Christ and the church. You see hints of that in the Old Testament, when the prophets like Jeremiah and Hosea use the marriage metaphor to describe God’s relationship with Israel. You see hints of it in the Old Testament, but the full picture is only really revealed in the New Testament, for example here in Ephesians chapter 5. The explicit statement is there in verse 31-32. Paul writes – verse 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.” 32 This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.’ It’s there explicitly in verse 32, but the connection is really assumed throughout the whole passage, and it is the pattern that undergirds the whole set of instructions Paul gives about how husbands and wives are to relate to each other.
Wives and the church’s submission to Christ (Eph 5:22-24)
So Paul writes first – verse 22-24 – about wives and the church’s submission to Christ. Verse 22: “Wives, submit to your husbands as 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.”
Notice that this is not just a word that is about wives, but also that it is a word that is addressed to wives. Paul doesn’t say: “Husbands, see to it that your wives submit to you properly.” We’ll see in a moment what Paul says to husbands, and it’s not that. No - this is something for the wives to give, not the husbands to demand.
And the motive - verse 21 - and the pattern - verses 22-24 - the motive and the pattern for the submission that Paul is talking about is the relationship between Christ and the church. Just as the church recognises Christ as its head, just as we honour him as our Saviour; in the same way, Paul says, wives are to honour their husbands, and recognise the role and the responsibility that God has given to them.
We’ll come back to some of the practicalities of what that does and doesn’t mean a little bit later, but for the time being, let’s move one from that short word to wives to the long word to husbands that follows.
Husbands and Christ’s love for the church (Eph 5:25-33)
Verse 25, Paul writes: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing 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.” And so on, down to v33.
According to Paul, how is the husband to act in his role as the ‘head’ of his wife? He is to love her as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. He points us to the example of Christ, and says: “That is what ‘headship’ ought to look like in practice.” If you want to know how a Christian husband ought to relate to his wife, the New Testament says, the model is not Caesar on his throne but Christ on the cross. That’s Jesus’ teaching in Mark 10; it’s also Paul’s teaching here in Ephesians 5.
What Paul is talking about here is about a particular responsibility and leadership that you are to exercise because you are a husband; but it’s not about self-serving leadership. It’s not about the right to get your own way; it’s about the responsibility to lay down your life; it’s about the resonsibility that you have to put your wife’s good before your own, and to pursue it with all your heart. And so in verses 26 to 27 Paul reminds us of the way that Christ loved the Church - he loved her by giving himself up for her; he loved her by giving everything he had for the sake of her holiness. And that is how Paul says those of us who are husbands ought to love our wives.
Misunderstandings...
That’s a brief summary of the content of the passage. But I thought it would be worthwhile, as well as reading through the passage and seeing what it does say, to stop for a few minutes and clarify a few of the things that it doesn’t say - to clear up a few pretty common misunderstandings of what this passage means. You’ll see on the outline a list of four or so pretty commonly held theories about what this passage means, that I think are really misunderstandings of the passage.
The first of those is the ‘male superiority’ theory - the theory that the Bible teaches this kind of thing because God views men as somehow emotionally or intellectually or spiritually superior to women. That was the standard view in Greco-Roman culture at the time. But it’s not what the Bible teaches anywhere. According to the Bible, right from the first few pages of Genesis through to the end of the New Testament, men and woman are equally human, equally sinful, equally redeemed in Christ, equally heirs of heaven. Different roles doesn’t mean unequal value or unequal status, any more than Christ’s submission makes him inferior to or unequal with God the Father.
The second theory is the ‘mutual submission’ theory. According to this theory, verse 21 means that everyone in the church should be submitting to everyone else anyway, so husbands should be submitting to wives just as much as wives should be submitting to husbands, which cancels out in the end, so we don’t have to worry about these verses - or if we do, they just mean “be nice to each other.”
The problem with that theory about verse 21 is that it’s not really consistent with what ‘submission’ means and it’s not really consistent with what verses 22-33 go on to say. Submitting to someone doesn’t just mean being nice to them, or being considerate of them, or being thoughtful of their needs. It means recognising a particular role that they have in relationship to you; acknowledging a particular responsibility that they have for you under God.
And so the picture of marriage relationships that Paul gives in these verses is not a completely symmetrical one; the husband’s role and the wife’s role are not interchangeable. Paul doesn’t just say: “Married people, be nice to one another and serve one another and love one another”. What he says is: “Wives, submit to your husbands; husbands, love your wives.”
The third theory about how these verses apply is the ‘passive wife’ theory. This is the theory that says that the best way for a wife to obey these verses is to shut up, do whatever her husband says and never tell him what she thinks or how she feels. The problem with that theory is that if you live it out it actually makes it very hard for your husband to do the very thing that God has commanded him to do, which is to love you. If you don’t tell him what you think and you never show him how you feel, it’s very hard for him to be a good husband. It also ends up making the husband-wife relationship sound more like a parent-child relationship. When Paul speaks to children, in Ephesians 6, he says: “Do what your parents tell you.” But when he speaks to wives, he deliberately uses different language, with good reason.
The fourth theory is the ‘whatever you want, darling’ theory. According to this theory, the way you love your wife is by just shrugging your shoulders and saying ‘whatever you want, darling’. But that’s not really love, is it - really, it’s just weak and pathetic. As a husband you do have a responsibility to sacrifice your own selfish desires to the needs of your wife. But the measure of your love for your wife is not the extent to which you abdicate responsibility and force her to make all the difficult decisions.
If it’s not those things, then what is it? It’s a loving, gentle, self-sacrificial leadership, modelled on the example of Christ, and a submission that gladly recognises and honours that responsibility.
One last thing I want to say as I close, and that’s a comment about the struggle and the beauty of living these things out in practice. I don’t want to pretend for a moment that these are easy verses. For some of us, there is a real struggle that we feel with verses like these in the Bible – we wish they weren’t there and we wish they meant something different from what they seem to be saying. For others of us, there’s no problem believing these verses in theory – it’s just living them out in practice that’s where we struggle. These are not easy verses to live by, and sometimes, for some husbands and for some wives, they’re terribly hard.
And yet, at the same time, I want to say that there is an incredible beauty about them, and there is an incredibly beauty when you see them lived out in someone’s life. Genuine, free, willing submission is a rare and precious thing. The apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 3 about ‘the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit’. And strong, courageous, self-sacrificial love – when a husband gives himself for his wife – that is also undeniably lovely when you see it lived out. It’s a beautiful thing because it reflects something of the nature of Jesus and the glory of the cross. And when those two things meet, in a marriage like the one described here in Ephesians 5, it is a wonderful expression of the gospel, and of the relationship between Christ and the church.
Let’s pray that God would more and more give us eyes to see the beauty of these things, and lives that reflect it.