(Ephesians 5:21-6:4)

On my last sermon post we were reminded of the importance of embracing that followership is not a solo act. As much as it might feel like it at times, as Moses experienced, we aren’t ever actually following Jesus alone. Following Jesus is done together, and our own followership is better off when we not only remember that, but also take advantage of it. That, by God’s design, is one of the great blessings of belonging to a local congregation, of having a community of believers to follow together.

But – also by God’s design – your church family isn’t even intended to be your first line of defense or system of support in following Jesus. That role belongs to your family. And, while our family makeup may vary widely from one person to the next – married or single, blended or traditional, children or no children, adopted or biological, etc. – these words from Ephesians speak to each of us wherever we’re at. That’s because in one role or another, we all belong to family. Furthermore, strong families that are faithfully following Jesus together are going to have an impact that stretches well beyond the home and into the community.

In other words, I am not just blessed by my own family following Jesus; I am blessed when yours does as well. Together, we can collectively raise the bar in our community and absolutely extend Christ’s Kingdom in the process. Let’s give our focus and attention to what that looks like, and commit to raising the bar of followership in our homes.

As we do, we encounter an unexpected plot twist, the kind of surprise that leaves our jaws open and our eyes widened. We didn’t see it coming. We couldn’t have anticipated it. It catches us completely off guard and totally changes our perception of everything.

If this section of Scripture has not yet hit you in that way, I pray that it does this time. I hope that the five words we find tucked inside these verses will leave you with a totally different perception.

Of what? Not just of marriage, but also of the church. Those five words are at the start of verse 32: “This is a profound mystery…” And, following those words are the unexpected twist that we didn’t see coming: “but I am talking about Christ and the church.” 

For those to sink in, we need to step back and revisit what it is we think Paul is writing about here. That would seem pretty obvious, wouldn’t it, just on the basis of the titles leading verses 22 and 25 – “wives” and “husbands.” OK, we’re obviously talking about families, and more specifically, the foundation of family – marriage, right? 

No. Not just marriage, anyway. Something much more profound – a mystery actually. But one that marriage helps us understand: the relationship that Christ has with the church, the connection every believer has with Jesus.

So marriage is much more than just bringing a man and a woman together to start a family; marriage helps us better understand the whole gospel that is the basis of our relationship to Christ. And our relationship to Christ, in turn, helps us better understand the blessing of marriage.

It all begins with a word that everybody loves to hate: the word “submit.” It’s a word that makes us bristle and cringe. No fallen sinner is born into this fallen world immediately seeking to place himself beneath someone else, which is what it means to submit. It’s not natural. The rebel in me refuses to envision a life that is better off when someone else tells me what to do or calls the shots!  

If we’re ever going to shift our perception of that word, it will only ever happen by linking it inseparably with the last word in the same verse: “Christ.” “Submit” and “Christ” must always remain connected, because submitting to Christ is nothing more than a faith that knows and needs what Jesus has done for us. What is that? Paul spells it out so beautifully: “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” (v.25-27). 

Paul helps us grasp the cleansing work of Christ by using the familiar picture of stain removal. What Jesus did for us is successfully manage to permanently remove that stain that we thought was never in a million years going to come out, no matter what trick we tried. The stain is completely gone – no remaining discoloration, not a trace of it left! 

To submit to Christ is to lay claim to everything he has done to leave me blameless and blemish-free, to have every stain of sin scrubbed out, to have every wrong washed away, and to replace my unholiness with his holiness. See how different that word submit is when connected to Christ – it makes all the difference in the world. 

Without a right understanding of it, the family fails to function as God intended. Instead of the training ground God intended family to be, it becomes a dumping ground. Husbands will twist their leadership role into a self-serving dictatorship. Wives will never see how God intends to bless them through the leadership of their husband and will continually push back against it. Children will never see how God intends to bless them through boundary-setting parents who care enough to discipline them and nurture them with law and gospel, while modeling grace in abundance. These things will be foreign to the home that does not grasp the infinite blessings – literally, by the way – of submitting to Christ. It is everything. 

When we make the connection that submission to Christ has nothing but our best interest in mind, then we can embrace the roles God has given us within the family. Now if we followed Paul chronologically in these verses, we’d start with the wives, then move on to the husbands, and wrap up with the children. But we’re going to start with the role that is foundational to all others: the husband’s role. Why does this matter? Without sounding overdramatic, everything else hinges on how the husband carries out his role. The home in which the husband succeeds in carrying out the essential role God called him to is a home that will thrive. In that home, through the sacrificial leadership of the husband, a wife and children will find the service, security and support they crave to carry out their respective roles. 

To emphasize this, I need to make a rather blunt statement: contrary to what our culture communicates, men and women are not equal.

Now that I have your attention, allow me to clarify. Here’s where they are equals. Though not there yet, men and women should be equals in terms of wage equality – whichever sex is getting the job done should be paid on the basis of job performance and not on the basis of biological sex. Men and women are equals in terms of the blessings they bring to a marriage and to the family. Men and women are equals in terms of sinner/saint status: we are sinners who need a Savior. Men and women are equals in terms of being on the receiving end of God’s love and mercy.

But where mean and women are not the same is in regard to the role and responsibility that God has given to each. Equals can have different roles. Different. Not superior and inferior. Not greater and lesser. Not demanding and demeaning. Just different. 

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord” (v.22). “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…” (v.25). “Children, obey your parents in the Lord…” (6:1). If we were just talking about husbands and wives and children as we address marriage and family, it would be one thing. But Christians are never just talking about husbands and wives, marriage and family; we’re always talking about Jesus.

So when we talk about the roles God has given to husbands, we’re doing so in relation to Jesus. When we talk about the roles God has given to wives, we’re doing so in relation so Jesus. When we’re talking about the roles God has given to children, we’re doing so in relation to Jesus. Paul punctuates that point in these verses by anchoring the respective responsibilities of each family member to Jesus! Whenever Paul lays out what we are to be doing within the family, every time he does so with respect to our faith in Jesus! We’re never “just” serving family, but always following and serving Jesus as we do so!

Consider why we are drawn to Jesus when our eyes have been opened to the Bible’s teaching of law and gospel, that we sin and need saving. Are we drawn to Jesus because of what he demands of us or because of what he had done for us? Does Jesus appeal to us because of the obedient life he demands from us or because of the innocent life he gave for us? There is no discussion or debate – we willingly follow Jesus and submit to him because of what he did for us. And both husbands and wives then carry out their respective roles as submissive head and submissive helper, not because the spouse has earned it by perfectly carrying out their role, but because Jesus did. We submissively serve our family because Jesus submissively served us.

Another way of saying it? As we focus on our roles within the family, we aren’t focusing on what the other family members are or aren’t doing to determine how we’ll carry out our roles. In fact, we aren’t even focusing on grading ourselves in carrying out our respective roles. No, we’re focusing on how perfectly and beautifully Jesus carried out his role for all of us, freeing us to find joy – not drudgery – in our respective roles, as we follow Jesus with and through our family.