Ephesians 5:22-33 • The Sacrificial Head
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
On a wintry day, we give special thanks for choir members and musicians who made a special effort to be here to take care of us.
And it's opportunity to remind us all of childcare workers who made a special trip in and ushers and snow removal people.
Lots of people worked so that we could worship here today.
And lots of people are going to be working to get the media out, right?
So a number of our people cannot be here.
Those of you joining us by TV: Welcome.
We're you're family too.
We're glad that you can be a part of things here today.
Today, we're doing something special.
We're beginning a series on marriage and family.
And for that reason, I'm going to ask that you look in your bibles at Ephesians chapter 5 beginning at verse 22.
In your Grace bibles, that's page 978.
And our goal is, of course, to think about how are marriages supposed to work and families come together.
But if that's all we're thinking about, your marriage is too small.
Think where we are in the book of Ephesians.
The apostle Paul began by saying that Christ loved eternally a people that He is calling His body, the means by which He is going to ultimately transform the world until Christ fills all in all.
He, by His Spirit, is going to fill the church, so that barriers are broken down, that we come together in unity.
And then, as every person does their part, living in purity to reflect Christ, worshipping to proclaim Christ, and finally living in families as He designs, showing the face of Christ to family and world, the design, really, is for our families to make the invisible kingdom visible to the world.
Did you know that?
The goal of the family is to make the invisible visible, to be the face of Christ to one another before the watching world.
Let's stand and honor God's Word and say how: How are we going to make the invisible visible for Christ's sake?
Verse 22 of Ephesians chapter 5, Paul says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.'
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, it is not mystery to anyone in this room that these precious verses have been controversial in our culture and misused even in the church.
So help us understand what Your purpose is and what You are calling us to be.
Could it really be that You are calling, particularly in this message that focuses on husbands, calling us to be a mirror of Christ in our homes?
That would be beyond us, even though it is our calling.
And so we call out for Your grace.
Help us to understand it, to be blessed by it, and to be made able to reflect it.
That the invisible kingdom might be made visible before the watching world by how we treat one another in our homes.
So teach us, we pray, that we might know the blessing of Christ among us.
We pray in His name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
The viral video of the week: The video of N.A.S.C.A.R. race driver, Brian Scott, saying his wedding vows to Whitney Kay, a single mom, and in the service not only giving vows to this wife but to her three-year-old daughter.
What did that sound like?
Any of you seen the video?
Rather amazing that the macho man who makes his living driving a Chevy Camaro at over 200 miles an hour got down on his knees before a three year old and said these words: "Brielle, I promise to hold your hand and bring comfort to your life.
I vow to make you say your prayers before you eat.
I promise to read you stories at night and to always tuck you in tight.
I vow to show you how a man should treat a woman by my relationship with your mother.
Above all else, I promise to protect you, to treasure you, and to love you forever."
I don't know the faith commitments of Brian Scott, but I recognize in his words what this passage of scripture is talking about.
After all, one who had great ability, great resources, great position, great power, nonetheless says, "I'm going to use what I have for your sake."
It's ultimately the definition of biblical headship.
Not to abuse authority, not to abandon authority but to use authority for the sake of another.
I mean, ultimately it's what God is saying co--, so clearly to us, but it's not a mystery to you that this can be warped, damaged, misrepresented in the church as well as in the culture.
After all, what is biblical headship?
If you just take the cultural caricature, of course, it's Christians saying in the home by the husband, "Me Tarzan, you doormat."
But that's not what the apostle Paul is saying.
This is not caveman chauvinism baptized by a few Bible verses.
This is something very special, whereby the apostle is saying, "What you are to do, men in your home, is to actually mirror Christ."
What our calling is is to be the face of Christ to spouse and to family.
And in order to do that, it is this combination as the apostle begins to present these words of courage and compassion, of strength and tenderness, all coming together because that is who Christ is and how He dealt with His bride, the church.
What is biblical headship?
We know it by the responsibilities that are being described here.
We don't have to go far.
You can just look at verse 23.
"The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior."
In whatever way you think of how Christ relates to the church, you recognize that this responsibility is in some measure an expression of authority.
"As Christ is the head of the church."
Now, in our culture today, sometimes even among churches, that cite these verses, we try to take away the notion of authority, as though we are expressing here the notion of head as just kind of representative, as in the Roman culture the husband was the one from whom the family got its name.
So its source, its position in society is by virtue of the man.
But supposedly no real difference there.
That can't be the case.
Recognize the apostle Paul is actually borrowing language that he's already used in this letter to the Ephesians.
And I want to have you turn there.
If you would look at chapter 1 and verse 20: How is the apostle Paul himself describing the nature of Christ as head of the church?
In chapter 1 in verse 20, we are told that "God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the one to come.
And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."
Above all rule and authority in every age, in every place, is the way Christ deals with the church as its head.
He is head over all things.
By rule, by authority, by power, He has the authority of Lord over the church.
And you just can't deny that in some way what is being communicated here is the authority of Christ over the church is what men are to be expressing even in their homes.
Now, I want, I have to just pause there for a moment and just tell you my own biography for a moment.
Some of you noted in the ads that were out this week that now, hard to imagine almost twenty years ago, Kathy and I wrote a book, "Each for the Other."
And we were describing biblical relationships of men and women.
And when we wrote that book, I would have to tell you: The thing that we were responding against was a view of male headship in the church, which allowed people even in the church to sometimes excuse abuse and authoritarianism, that the husband would say, you know, "I don't have to help; I'm the head.
I don't have to share my bank account with you; I'm the head.
I can do whatever I want, because I am the head of the home.
That's what the Bible says."
And we had to take care to say, "That is not what the Bible is saying."
But at the same time, there is authority being described, and I say that now to you today because we are in a different generation.
And just as an earlier generation was abusing at times the notion of headship, the more dangerous consequence of the moment is young men in their family abandoning the notion of headship.
I mean, we've had a generation of Homer Simpson and Everybody Loved Raymond and Modern Family, so that any man who is a father or husband is presumed either to be a buffoon or if he expressed authority, it's bigotry.
And it's just presented as insanity of some sort.
And so young men in today's culture and in today's church, not wanting to be identified with those caricatures of wrong use of authority, simply want to say, "I don't want to go there.
I don't want to have authority in my home."
And, yet, that is actually not understanding what the Bible is giving as a responsibility.
Before I describe the responsibilities, let's just kind of identify why would God be speaking to men so carefully to say, "I am calling you to spiritual headship"?
Because not thinking of how society is dealing with this, the way in which sociologists, the way in which those who have certain philosophies that are contrary to scripture, want to impose a certain homogenization of all man and female roles, recognize that what happens in the church spiritually we are somewhat hardwired to receive.
Some years ago, Focus on the Family surveyed Christian families and simply said this: "If during a family's childrearing years, if the first one to be a Christian in the family is a child, then the likelihood of the entire family being Christian is only three percent.
If during the childrearing years the first one to become a Christian in the household is the wife, the likelihood of the entire family becoming Christian is seventeen percent.
But if during the childrearing years the husband is the first to become the Christian, the likelihood of the entire family becoming Christian is ninety-three percent."
Spiritual headship is not a mystery.
It's not a fantasm.
The reality is, we are made in such a way that however we describe, in whatever way we are saying, God is saying to men, "You have a responsibility."
You may not like your influence.
You may not even want the authority.
But the reality is we have influence in our families that is not comparable to the influence of others in the family.
So we have a responsibility.
And it is to exercise authority for Christ's sake, plainly said.
And just as plainly said is our responsibility is not only the exercise of authority but an expression of servitude.
Look with me at verse 25.
"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."
He was Lord above all things.
And, yet, He gave Himself.
"He who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, and taking the form of a servant, he became obedient, even obedient to death upon a cross."
Why?
Because though He was Lord over all, He had concern for others.
He was willing to take His resources, His abilities, even His authority and use it for the sake of others.
I mean, even the first words of verse 25 should tell us what husbands are being called to do.
"Husbands, love your wives."
Never is the Bible describing love as taking advantage of somebody, to somehow use them for your sake.
I mean, in that great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, where the apostle is describing what biblical love is, you are going to know these words.
He simply says, "What is love?
It is not rude.
It is not arrogant.
It is patient and kind and does not insist on its own way."
There is a willingness to use authority for the sake of others.
I know it sounds contradictory.
In one set of minutes, I'm saying husbands, to fulfill their biblical calling, are to use their authority to make sure that a family is being governed by love and justice and mercy, so that the ministry of Christ is known in that home, that there is a spiritual leadership that husbands are being called to.
And, yet, having said that we are to express authority, I step right over here and say at the same time we are to do it sacrificially, in service to others.
How can that be?
How can you be a servant leader?
Is there anybody in the Bible who does that?
And, of course, the answer is Christ Himself.
That He is saying as Christ loved the church, so we are to love.
It's not an abandonment of authority.
It is certainly not an abuse of authority.
It is the use of a God-given authority for the sake of others.
We begin to understand what it looks like as we consider the reasons that that authority is given.
And that's here as well.
Look at verse 26.
Having said that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church, verse 26 says, "that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."
What is one of the reasons that we as the heads of homes are to express servant leadership?
One key purpose just described is to glorify our wives.
Isn't that interesting?
That as Christ loved the church to make her splendid.
Some of your bibles will say, "to make her radiant," so that she would be without blemish, so that she would be holy and pleasing to God.
The whole notion is that the church is going to know the beauty of the glories of the grace of God as the reality of Christ fills the church.
So the goal of Christian husbands is actually that their wives would know the glory of God's grace in their lives, that a wife, thinking of the way her husband treats her, knows that she is splendid, radiant, glorious, because of the way in which the husband is showing the face of Christ to his wife.
Now, having said that, I'm not for the moment going to tell you that is easy to understand in terms of how to express at all.
If the goal is to make our wives radiant in their knowledge of the grace of God, we certainly recognize that headship can appear in other ways.
I think of words of a woman describing her husband some years ago in an article in "Christianity Today."
She wrote these words: "I hate him.
I hate him for the way he made me feel about myself: a nonperson, a slave.
I can never do anything right.
I can never do enough to please him.
I don't know if I will ever get over the hurt that he caused in my life."
Now, I must tell you when I hear those words, "I could never do enough to please him; I just felt like a nonperson," I can't say those words in this setting or on a televised setting and recognize there are not lots of people who suddenly recognize: "That is me.
I mean, I don't want to say it, but the reality is in my home, I am made to feel like a nonperson.
I do not feel splendid.
I do not feel glorious because of the way that my spouse treats me.
I do not know if I will ever get over the hurt that he has caused in my life."
Unless you think I am just trying to talk down to other people, let me tell you: I think I know precisely what that is all about, because I recognize in my own heart, in my own life, how difficult it is at times to express even what I'm preaching to you now.
I've tried to be honest with you in the past to say at least in my teen years, my family was coming apart.
And the consequence of my family coming apart for a kid who was kind of artistic and sensitive was just to go on numb.
And the consequence of that went far into my adult years.
And I recognized it after a year and a half or so of being married to my wife.
And I can remember I went off to church one, not to church, went off to work one day.
And going off to work one day, I said to Kathy, "The washer is broken.
Call the repairmen.
Get somebody to come in and fix the washer."
She said, "Fine."
Came home that evening, repairman had not been called, had not come.
Next day, "Remember to call the repairman."
"Okay," she said, "I'll call."
I got home that evening: "Did you call?"
"No."
And then suddenly the flood of tears.
"I can't do that.
I'm just not capable.
I can't do this.
I don't know how to do it.
I'm not capable of doing it."
Now, when I tell that to you, I will tell you, it is embarrassing to Kathy for me to tell you: It was devastating to me because of what I knew about my wife.
You know her now too.
My wife, Kathy, is one of the most intelligent, capable people I know.
Her grades were far better than mine in college.
>>> Kathy, don't listen.
[Laughter]
>>> She was the outstanding musician of all musicians in her university for two years running, not just flute players: all musicians.
She was the outstanding musician.
She is simply one of the most intelligent people I know.
And here was my wife telling me she could not call a repairman.
And while that was embarrassing to her, what went in my brain was this: My word, Kathy, what have I done to you that after only a year and a half of being married to me you feel so little about yourself that you can't call a repairman?
And it began a journey in our lives of my saying: How am I echoing my father, my parenting, my experience in ways that I don't even recognize?
Why is it that my wife is a perfectly capable driver until I get in the car and then she gets nervous?
Why is it that she's articulate in any conversation until I would join the conversation, and then she would begin to get hesitant and question herself and stumble?
What is it about me that's actually destroying?
What evil math is going on in me that somehow seems to say, "As long as I diminish you, I gain something myself?"
And, yet, it's so typical of us we have to think it through carefully: Is my headship doing what Christ did for the church to make the church understand her splendor before God?
I will not tell you that I had that solved quickly, but one of the things that just began to play in my brain was a picture.
This is not sophisticated, okay?
It was just a picture that was in my grandmother's home years previous and you'll recognize it, some of you, as I describe it.
It was just this old Victorian print of a boy at the wheel of a great ship.
And as you look at the ship, it's at storm at sea.
And the waves are crashing over the bow and the sails are all ripped.
And yet the boy's face is just completely confident and calm.
And the reason for it is also depicted in that picture is an image of Christ behind the boy with His hand on the boy's shoulder.
And the subtext: "Jesus is my copilot."
The message that when Christ is present and real in our lives, we never feel more confident.
We never feel better than when we know Christ is near.
What happened in me that when I got near to my wife she felt worse, not confident, not courageous: She actually felt questioning herself when I was close.
It was the beginning of a journey of saying: If Christ is treating me in such a way that I am to be mirroring to my spouse and to my family, what does that look like?
And to begin to question words and actions and thoughts that gave me authority but not for her sake.
What does authority look like if it's meant to glorify one's wife?
She begins to recognize her ability.
Just the end of the story: Just a few years ago, our washer was on the blink again.
I said to Kathy, "Call the repairman."
She didn't do it again.
No, she took the part out of the machine, looked at the number, called the store, told them the part number, ordered the part, got the part, and installed it herfe--, herself.
[Laughter]
What a woman!
You know.
[Laughter]
[Applause]
I know it's silly, but it's the journey we all have to think about.
Are we adding or subtracting, glorifying or diminishing?
And the question has to be answered not simply for our spouse's sake.
Because our responsibility is not simply to glorify our spouse.
Do you recognize it is to sanctify ourselves if we are the head of the home?
After all, do you recognize the difficulty of these words?
I mean, if you just read them selfishly, you won't get the point.
Verse 28, "In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church."
There is the sense that if I'm taking care of my wife, if I'm building her up, then I'm actually helping myself out.
Why is that?
Well, the reason for it is verse 31.
Paul says, "A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."
Now, surely that's a reflection of the sexual union, but it's saying far more.
That God has called us from different backgrounds, from different homes, from different places with different personalities and gifts and put us together, because expect for those who are gifted for celibacy, who are complete in if it were their marriage to God alone.
That the rest of us are actually made whole, made complete, made all that God intends to be as we become one with another, as the complimentary relationships are building on one another, refining one another.
God is putting us together for a purpose.
And if that union is perceived, then if you damage one, you actually damage both, because we are meant to be one.
If I am diminishing my wife, I'm actually damaging the wholeness that God intends for my own life.
She is intended by God to be part of the sanctification of my own heart.
Because of those difficulties in my family in my teen years, I would have to tell you just as I went on numb in order not to be hurt, not to be affected by the pain in my family, I took that sense of emotion into my marriage, into my family, into my ministry.
If the Lord had not put Kathy into my life with her sensitivity, with her love, with her tenderness, with her being willing to say to me at certain times in our lives, "Bryan, you know when somebody hugs you you don't just have to freeze up; when somebody gives you a gift, it's actually okay to say thank you," because I was so separate from my emotions.
I so desperately needed her to change me.
And you and I know these people.
You and I know men who have so diminished their wives that to their own demerit, the man becomes more like himself every day.
Do you know what I mean by that?
He becomes more of his base self because he has so diminished his wife that she is not helping him become all that God intended for him to be.
He is actually meant to sanctify himself by glorifying his wife, that she is playing the role and the purpose in his life that God intends.
I think of it, it may be a silly example, when Kathy and I were working at Covenant Seminary and there was a time that we invited a young couple over to our house one night and just, you know, after supper we were playing the card game Uno.
Do you know Uno?
Where you, you know, you put the numbers in order.
And, you know, before you get the last card in order, lest you win without being able to be challenged, you're supposed to say something before you get your last card in order.
What are you supposed to say?
You're supposed to say, "Uno," alright?
And the wife of this couple, she kept almost winning, but she would not say Uno.
I mean, it just got embarrassing.
She could win, but she wouldn't say it.
And so she just kept going.
She'd almost win again: She wouldn't say it.
Finally we said, "What gives?
Guys, why won't she say Uno?"
Well, her husband told us.
He said, "Well, a few weeks ago, my wife embarrassed me in a public conversation, and so we agreed that she would not speak in public until I give her permission."
Well, our first thought, of course, was, well, you can't play Uno that way.
[Laughter]
No, that was not our first thought.
How sad, we thought.
But the sadness of greatest intensity was yet to come.
Some months later as that particular husband struggled with issues of depression, he had to leave school.
And I can tell you: I've never heard from them again.
But as we reflected upon their lives, what we recognized is God had given him this wonderfully capable, intelligent, loving wife, but he had so undermined her that when it came to the point in his life he needed her, he had no support.
He had nothing to lean on, because he had so undermined her that she could not help him, which of course is her divine design as well.
That God intended him to build her up because it's just as he says there: If we are one, then a man who nourishes and cherishes his wife as Christ does the church actually is nourishing and caring for himself.
He needs her to be built up because it's part of his own spiritual growth as God in fact intends.
We become what God intend as we are helping our spouses become all that God intends for them.
It's the building up; it's the use of authority for the sake of another.
Where do we get the resources?
I mean, if our responsibility is to be using authority for the sake of another and if the sake of another is ultimately meaning we want to glorify them and ultimately through that to sanctify ourselves that we may be all before the Lord that God even intends for the husband to be, where do we get the resources to do that?
Well, actually, it's right back where we were beginning, verse 25.
"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."
We are being told what it means to be the Christian head of a home by being reminded what Christ has done for us.
>>> Men, what's that saying to us?
But that you cannot reflect the face of Christ if you don't know the face of Christ towards you.
>>> As we understand what His forgiveness, what His encouragement, what His support, what His pardon is, then our tanks begin to fill up with grace.
And it's really out of the overflow of the grace that we know that we're able to minister in our families as God intends.
I recognize that what that may mean for us even today is that you have to drink deeply of that grace again.
Listen, I cannot talk about husband and wife relationships without thinking about my own failures and faults.
I trust that is true of every sensitive head of a home here.
That I'm saying things that you recognize are beyond you to some extent apart from the grace and mercy of God, which means we have to drink of it again.
To say this is the very same apostle who said that Jesus can redeem the days.
Right?
That Jesus can restore the days that the locusts have eaten.
That if we say, "I haven't lived up to this; I'm not even sure where to begin now," that part of our understanding of the grace and mercy of God is that He is able to forgive and strengthen and start us anew.
That once I recognize that what God is calling me to do is to be a husband who glorifies my wife, that somehow as God has put us together in this union that is divine, that I myself would be sanctified as God intends.
That when that happens, there is beauty that I know because I have experienced the grace of God in my life and I just want somebody else to feel what I have felt.
Ultimately, the resource is the sacrifice of Christ in our behalf that we show to others.
Leadership in the Bible is always found on the path to the cross.
I think of one of the best examples in my life, some of you will know, it's J. Robertson McQuilkin, long-term president of Columbia International University, who right at the peak of his ministry and reputation had the experience of his wife being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.
And as the Alzheimer's began to progress in her, she became so desperate for her husband that even though the distance from their home to the president's office at Columbia was a half mile away, she would walk to his office to be close to him and he would have somebody walk her back home.
And she would walk again, sometimes as many as ten times a day, not even remembering she'd already made the journey.
Until one night after one of those ten mile days, he in getting her dressed for bed took off her shoes and found her feet bloody.
And in washing her feet discerned that even more Christ-like act to which he was being called.
As the leader of his home who would use his position, his understanding, even his authority for the sake of another, he resigned from his position of prestige in order to care for his wife.
When that was put out in an article and later in a book form, some of you will know the book called "Muriel's Blessing," people just overwhelmingly responded to this man who gave so much for his wife's glory.
People called him.
They wrote him.
They renewed their vows.
Some of them restored marriages that had long been broken.
And McQuilkin, who was at that point suffering with cancer himself, said to his oncologist one day, "I don't get it.
I want to care for my wife.
Why is caring for my wife so moving to other people?"
And the oncologist said, "It is no mystery to me.
In my profession where I care for so many couples, it is not rare at all for a wife to give herself to her husband's care.
But," he said, "it is actually quite rare for a husband to give himself for his wife's care."
It should not be so in the church.
What God has called us to do is to recognize the great grace which we have received.
And having received it and understood it, not walk away from it, not say, "It's not my responsibility to make sure my family knows this," but to use my authority to see that love and justice and mercy are known in this place, because I have known it.
And in making sure that my family knows this, I lead.
I lead in the gospel.
That my wife might know her glory and I might know more of the grace because I have shown it to another.
>>> May Christ, men, make you a mirror of the grace that is in Christ Jesus for a glorious home, a glorious spouse, and a blessed marriage.
>>> Father, so work in us, I pray, that we, knowing what You have done for us, might become reflectors of it.
Fill our tanks with grace.
We cannot talk about responsibility but be made to feel inadequate, even failures, even wrong.
So teach us of the grace that is greater than our sin, that we, being flooded with it, might become fountains of it.
Restore the days the locusts have eaten.
Redeem the days even now.
Teach us to follow after Christ that His authority in our lives might be used for the good of another.
Make this blessing flow.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.