Year 2, Day 146: Ephesians 5

As Beloved Children

The first verse of this chapter really got me thinking today.  “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.”  I’m going to approach this conversation backwards.  When I read this, I was struck by the thought, “children learn how to behave in this world first by watching their parents.  Then things like siblings and friends and pop culture enter the picture.  But first is learning from parents.

I’m going to give my folks a ton of credit.  When I watched my parents, I learned from two very good models.  Credit for the man I am today goes first to God, then my parents, then my wife.  It really makes me wonder how many of our cultural problems today are learned by people who simply don’t take their job as role model seriously enough as a parent?

As a beloved child, we learn from our parents.  We learn the good and we learn the bad.  Boys learn how to treat women from their dad.  Girls learn how to treat men from their mom.  Girls learn how they should expect to be treated from their dad.  Boys learn how they can expect to be treated from their mom.  Children learn how to interact with the world from their parents.  Children learn their educational priorities from parents.  Children learn morality, ethics, and spirituality (whether for good or for bad) from parents.  It isn’t perfect (because things like friends and the world come into view).  But it is a proven fact that children are great imitators of parents.

That is the angle that Paul is speaking to with respect to God.  If we are God’s children, we should be learning to imitate him.  Just like children don’t perfectly imitate their parents, we of course do not perfectly imitate Him.  That’s why we have things like confession and forgiveness.  But fundamentally, the truth is: we should be imitating God.  If we aren’t – can we really claim God as our Father?

And then we get to another list of Paul’s. 

What Does This Life Exclude?

• Sexual immorality.  It should not be among us.  I don’t know about you, but I think this is a big one – especially when we add in the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:27-30.  I take my marriage vows very seriously and I claim sexual faithfulness to my wife.  I think more people who are sexually faithful in their marriage need to come public with that claim, personally.  However, that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally fall into a lustful thought.  Most of the time I fall into a lustful pattern because the world around me is drawing me into that kind of pattern: the way people dress, images on TV, advertisements in stores, etc.  I’m not saying that I’m not responsible for my own thoughts, because I am.  But I have to admit, this is a tough culture to live in and struggle against lust.
• Filthiness in speech, foolish talk, or crude joking.  How often do we tell racist jokes, sexual jokes, off-color jokes?  Prefacing a joke with “This joke is a bit off-color, but…” should really tell us to stop right there.  If we enjoy something that must be prefaced like that, there is a problem within us.  How often do we talk about things we shouldn’t talk about?  How often do we gossip?  You get the idea.
• Coveting.  Ever really desire something that someone else has and it becomes the focus of your life?  In those moments how good are human beings at stopping and asking God, “Do you really want me to have that?”  Or do we just set our heart on it until we possess it so that coveting becomes a subtle form of idolatry?
• Ever make a promise that we do not intend on keeping?  What about a promise to God? Empty words.

Look at how Paul talks about people who have these elements as a part of their life.  They have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.  It is shameful to even speak of the things that they do in secret.  Yet, how many of us have these things – or things like them – living deep down in the heart?

How Should We Walk?

Then we get to Paul’s claim on how to walk.  He uses a great line – a combination of quotes from Isaiah 51:17, 52:1, 60:1, and Malachi 4:2.  Paul speaks not in terms of slowly changing from death to life.  Paul speaks in terms of one who is dead now arising into life.  Christianity is not about compromising our current life with God’s ways.  Christianity is not about compromise between this life and God’s ways.

Christianity is about ending our life with the world and living the full life of God.  In Galatians 2:20 we did not hear Paul say, “Therefore, I am mixing my life with Christ; we both live within me.”  Rather, we heard him say, “I have been crucified with Christ.  Therefore it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”  So the question becomes: what’s more important?  Me living my life or me living God’s life?

Husbands

What a beautiful place to now turn to husbands and wives.  I hate when this passage is used in weddings, because newlyweds (especially first-timers) just don’t have the maturity in the relationship to really understand what Paul means when he uses words like “submit” and “love.”  This is not a passage for newlyweds.  It is a passage for those who have had their first marital fight, or who have come to their seven year itch, or whose children have just left the nest and they are looking at each other wondering what still holds them together.  This passage is for married people who need a kick in the pants to remember that marriage is a calling, not a choice.  Once you say “I do,” it is now a life-long calling.

Let’s start with men.  Husbands, love your wives!

Do you notice the lack of condition?  Does Paul say, “husbands, love your wives when they love you.”  No.  Paul says “love them.”  Period.  Love them as Christ loves us.  Period.  We obviously cannot earn Christ’s love, so what husband has any right to even think that they can demand any reciprocal love either?  No, Christ loved us when we were unlovable in the hope that we would learn to love Him.  So, too, must we love our wives.  Whether they love us or not, we as husbands are called to love our wives.  When we stop doing that, we break God’s calling for us as husbands.  Plain and simple.  When we stop loving our wives unconditionally, we are guilty of sin.  We missed the mark God established for us.

You might be saying that this is a really high standard.  You know what?  It is.  It is a very high standard.  But did God lower this standard for Hosea when God told Hosea to marry Gomer and Gomer was out having affairs as though living like a prostitute?  I understand that God was working a different agenda with Hosea and making a point to Israel.  But the reality is that Hosea was called to be faithful in spite of whatever Gomer did or did not do.  Period.

Now, I do understand that life is not quite that black-and-white.  Sometimes relationships don’t last.  Sometimes no amount of love from the husband can keep a relationship alive.  Life happens.  But that is no excuse for a husband who claims to believe in God to ever stop loving his wife.  As men of God, we are to love as Christ loves humanity.  Even when humanity turns its back on God’s love and pursues anything else, God still loved enough to send Christ to die for us.  God never stops loving.  Neither should Christian husbands.

Wives

Now we turn to wives.  The church genuinely loves Christ because of the grace He has shown to us through the love of God.  It is a response to God’s initial act.  Paul is also saying that women should respond to their husbands the same.  If a woman is married to a man who demonstrates unconditional love towards her, why would she not desire to submit in awe?* 

Sure, no man is perfect.  Sure, no husband can truly show unconditional love as God can.  But if a husband is genuinely trying to demonstrate God’s unconditional love to her through their marriage, how can any woman claim to be Christian and not respond in awe? 

What do we call people who see God’s unconditional love and turn their back on it?

Summary

Again, I am painting a really hard picture here.  But it is the picture Paul paints.  Men should love unconditionally.  Women should be willing to submit to God’s unconditional love poured out through a man.  It is the plan and order of God.

Now don’t get me wrong.  This is not a perfect world.  We need forgiveness because we cannot always attain God’s standard.  But that doesn’t mean that we do not try.  And when we fail, we darn well better pursue repentance and seek genuine forgiveness.  After all, it is a messy world out there.  It is a world where we will get into some situations that are hard.  It is a world where we must be open and forgiving.  But that doesn’t also mean that we don’t teach the standard as a standard.

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*This is a long argued-about passage.  So I’m going to go into the Greek.  The first thing that we should note is that in the Greek there is no verb for verse 22.  Period.  There is no verb.  So you might be asking, “Well, why do they say that wives are to submit to their own husbands, then?”  How do they know that submit is the right word if there is no verb?  That is an excellent question that I can answer.

First, when there is no verb, Greek Grammar gives us two options. 

• First, you can insert a verb of being (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, etc).  This gives the reading of “Wives are to their husbands as to Christ.”  Well, what do we do to Christ?  We submit to Christ.  We crucify our own life so that God can live through us.  That sounds like submission to me.
• Second, you can take the most recently used verb in the prior sentence.  Well, the most recent prior verb is “to sumbit” or “to be subordinate.”  This gives us the reading “wives, submit to your husband as to Christ.”

So, using either way we end up with the same understanding.  That’s why I love Paul’s writing – he had such mastery over the Greek!  Wives are to be towards their husbands as they are towards Christ.  However, this is not the end of the discussion.  We need to look at the whole “submit” thing.

The whole phrase in verse 21 – to use the “prior verb option” as discussed in the second option above – is “to submit in awe.”  We submit to God because we are in awe of His love, grace, mercy, etc.  This is why in verse 33 Paul returns to the same concept and uses the same words as he does in verse 21 (although many translations translate those words differently in either context).  Verse 33 should read, “In any case you all are the same.  Everyone thus loves their wife as themselves in order that the wife is in awe of the husband.”

When we add this sense of “submission out of awe” we get the sense about which I blogged today.  Women should not be submitting out of moral or Biblical compulsion.  That is in no way, no shape, or no form what Paul talks about here.  There is no compulsion about forced submission at all in this passage.  The compulsion is that if the husband loves the wife unconditionally, then the Christian wife should desire to submit in awe of God’s love poured through the husband as we all should desire to submit in awe to God.

In any respect, the onus is clearly put on the man.  Husbands must love their wife unconditionally.  If this does not happen and there is no unconditional love given from the husband, there is no reason for the wife to submit in awe of a love that is not present.  I know we live in a culture that demands equal rights for men and women.  But men, in this case, the burden is placed upon us by God’s Word.  If we don’t love our wives unconditionally, it is we who are at fault and it is we who are in need of repentance.  If we do – and our wife refuses to submit in awe as she submits to Christ, then it is between her and Christ as to whether or not she is truly in Christ.  If she is, she will submit to unconditional love.