Ephesians 5: Marriage Under the Lordship of Christ

Introduction

"He should understand me." "She should understand me." Salvatore Chiazza, pastor of the Église Nouvel Impact Liège, continues his series on the lordship of Christ over the major areas of life. After the lordship of Christ over identity ("I am who he says I am") and over our words, this morning he turns to marriage.

He knows the text is delicate. Every time the New Testament speaks about the couple, it stirs up debate, and the same exhortation comes back three times: in Ephesians, in Colossians and in the first letter of Peter. Depending on our leanings, we either recontextualize everything or contextualize nothing. The pastor asks the congregation to relax and reminds them that the Bible is not "a restaurant menu where you pick what interests you." If the Holy Spirit revealed these things to the apostle Paul, there is a blessing behind them for each of us.

The message follows Ephesians 5:18-33 step by step: being filled with the Spirit, submitting to one another, understanding the roles God has given, getting out of deadlocks, and then loving as Christ loved the church.

Message Outline

1. A Christ-Centered Marriage Begins With Being Filled With the Spirit

You cannot understand the apostle Paul by cutting a sentence in half. The pastor tells how someone recently quoted half of one of his sentences to make him say what he did not say. Nobody is fooled, and yet we often do the same thing with the Bible.
In verse 22, the original text literally says: "Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord." Something is missing. You have to go back to verse 21, which is part of a long sentence that begins in verse 18: "be filled with the Spirit."
Who is to be filled with the Spirit? The wife and the husband. There is only one true head in every home, and his name is Jesus. "If the man is the head, you have a problem. If the woman is the head, you also have a problem." And the problem is even bigger when it is the children.
Paul makes a comparison: do not get drunk on wine, be filled with the Spirit. Someone who is drunk is "under the influence": he walks, talks, laughs and drives differently. Someone who is filled with the Spirit walks, talks, loves and prays differently, that is to say, like Jesus.
What is the "wine" that dominates your marriage? For some, it is parents or in-laws. They should be honored, but God took the time to say, in the very definition of marriage, that a man "will leave his father and his mother" (Genesis 2:24). For others, it is the past, the wounds, the mistakes.

2. What Comes Out of the Mouth Reveals What Fills the Heart

Being filled with the Spirit means first of all building one another up with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19). It is a joy that overflows and expresses itself in words.
The pastor returns to the image of the orange he squeezed in front of the church: when you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out. "Pressure does not make you a violent person. Pressure brings out what is already there." It is not the pressure that produces contemptuous words toward your spouse, it is what is inside. And the pastor says he is saying this to himself first.
The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart (Matthew 12:34). The same sequence appears in Colossians 3:16: let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, then in verse 18, the exhortation to wives and husbands.
The pastor points out that the Church Fathers practiced three forms of worship: communal worship, personal worship (going into your room and praying to the Father in secret, Matthew 6:6) and family worship. He dreams of families who spend time together, dad, mom and the children, to pray, share and read the Bible.
In his family, every other week, they stop on the Psalms with a commentary. That does not guarantee that the children will become Christians, "but what it does guarantee is that I am doing my part." Dad, mom, are you doing your part?
The pastor talks about his 13-year-old daughter: woe to the young man who would mistreat her. That is exactly what God says in 1 Peter 3:7: honor your wife, "that your prayers may not be hindered." In other words, God, your spouse's Father, is telling you: "If you mistreat her, I will no longer be able to listen to your prayers." Before being your husband, he is a child of the heavenly Father. Before being your wife, she is his beloved daughter.

3. A Grateful Heart: A Covenant, Not a Contract

The second sign of a life filled with the Spirit: always giving thanks for all things to God the Father (Ephesians 5:20).
"When you have disciplined your mind to be grateful, send an email to your mouth to let it know." We appreciate things without saying them, whereas your wife or your husband needs to hear it. You can be grateful to God without being as grateful to others.
Four days before his 15th wedding anniversary, the pastor confides that his wife cooks remarkably well, and that over the years he ended up finding it normal. "Do you need to thank your wife when she prepares the meal? It is her duty." But duty belongs to the world of debt and contract.
Is marriage a contract or a covenant? When you start counting who apologizes first, how many gifts each has given, "your evening, my evening, your money, my money, your vacation, my vacation," you are in a transaction.
"You stopped being grateful the moment you started saying: he should, she should." You stopped being filled with the Spirit when you started underestimating what the other does and overestimating what you do. God, the inventor of marriage, never designed it as a contract but as a covenant of love, where you do not seek to dominate the other but to lift them up.

4. Submit to One Another

The third sign: "subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ" (Ephesians 5:21). When you start reading at verse 22, you forget this verse.
The pastor does not want to water it down: to submit really does mean to place yourself under. But it means placing yourself under, never placing the other under. In the Bible, nobody submits anybody else, but each person submits: in the church, in marriage, before God.
Today, the word has become an insult. During a political debate in France, a candidate was outraged when someone said she submitted to a party: "I submit to nobody." Should this word become an insult in the church?
Submission is powerful because it is lived out within the Trinity. The Son himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, "that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). One God, three persons of equal worth, equal eternity, equal divinity: the question is not who will be above the other, but who will lift the other up.
When I set my interests aside for those of the other, and the other does the same, everyone wins.
Why does Paul add "wives, in particular, to their husbands"? Because the Bible often gives a general rule and then a particular case: love everyone, especially fellow believers; take care of everyone, especially your own family; honor everyone, and doubly so those who proclaim the Word.

5. Roles Entrusted by God, Not Chores

The interpretive key is the order of creation. Paul, a former Pharisee, knows the Old Testament by heart. In Genesis, God creates man and woman and entrusts each with a mandate.
To the husband, God gives the role of leader, of "head." Every team, every company, every church needs a head, "not two: two heads is a monster." God is wise, not only when it suits us.
To the wife, God gives the role of "ezer," the helper suitable for the man (Genesis 2:18). Not an assistant: the word is used in the Psalms for God himself, our help and our support. The man is neither before the woman, nor more important, nor more loved. Jesus paid the same price for both. It is a question of mandate.
Who is more important, the striker or the defender? Both. The problem is that in couples, we forget we are on the same team and score against our own side. When you undermine your husband's leadership, or when you crush your wife's worth, you do not win: when the other loses, you lose.
Being a leader in the biblical sense is Mark 10:42-45: Jesus tells his disciples that it must not be so among them. Whoever wants to be great will be a servant. Jesus never forced anyone to follow him. The question is not "does my wife obey me?" but "am I someone people want to follow?" Not perfect, but not absent, and not playing video games while she handles everything.
These are roles, not chores: nowhere does the Bible say a woman's place is in the kitchen. Together, the man and the woman are two disciples with one mission. They seek God, pray together and serve God in their family, their church and the world.
The husband serves first: "If you want to be served first, serve first." In the culture where the pastor grew up, dad did not need to demand respect: he was respectable through his courage and his sacrifices. "You are respected to the extent that you are respectable. Otherwise, it is called domination."
The husband carries the responsibility for his family before God. In the Garden of Eden, the woman takes the fruit first, but God calls the man: "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9). He also helps his wife grow in her gifts instead of seeing her as a competitor, and he leads the way by example.
Last year, his daughter, then 12, wrote to him for his birthday: "Dad, you reflect Jesus by your actions and by your words." The pastor says he is far from a perfect father, but he is determined to be an example, when he succeeds as well as when he fails. His advice to husbands: seek to look like Jesus. Your wife will want to follow you because she follows Jesus.
The wife, for her part, strengthens her husband and lifts him up when he is wrong or doubts, instead of crushing him. She respects him, believes in him, brings her voice and her wisdom, and dares to say what she sees with gentleness. For her, submission takes the form of honor. For the husband, it takes the form of sacrifice.

6. When You Disagree: Getting Out of the Deadlock

There is theory, and there is "a neighboring planet called Earth," with real men and real women who have real personalities. What do you do when each of you is convinced you are right?
If you are filled with the Spirit, the first reflex is to pray together, to talk and to listen to each other. And if you still disagree, you pray again, have another coffee and listen to each other again.
The pastor reports, in substance, the thinking of several of his favorite authors. John Piper, in his book on marriage: in the vast majority of cases, the couple talks until they reach an agreement; in the rare cases of deadlock, the wife trusts her husband to make the call, a good husband will sometimes choose to yield, and a wife never follows her husband into sin, because Christ remains the ultimate head. John MacArthur: the wife's submission is voluntary, implies no inferiority, and is not passive; she is an adviser whose influence is precious, and the husband does not bark orders. Tim Keller: being the head does not mean deciding everything or being right in every disagreement; the husband's authority serves only his wife's interest. C. S. Lewis: as long as husband and wife agree, the question of authority does not even arise, but a lasting marriage must be able to get out of a deadlock.
In case of disagreement, taking responsibility can take four forms: postponing the decision, looking for a compromise, choosing his wife's decision ("I decide, but we will do what you say," because God may be inspiring her more), or holding to his own decision after listening, praying and weighing all the elements.
Not getting out of the deadlock means sweeping something under the rug. It grows, and at the next friction, it comes out explosively.
Sin has damaged the order of creation. Sometimes, thank God, it is the wife who takes the lead, otherwise nobody would. This message is not a condemnation of women who lead.
In the man, the drift is passivity or domination. In the woman, control or self-effacement. These drifts feed each other: the more passive the man is, the more the woman takes control, and the other way around; the more he dominates, the more she fades away.
Healing for the man: take his place back on his knees, not by banging his fist on the table, to become a leader after God's own heart. For the woman: stop living in fear, because at the root of control there is often the fear that everything will drift out of hand. Let God set her free and make room for a husband who wants to grow in his leadership.

7. Husbands, Love Your Wives as Christ Loved the Church

The text does not only say "wives, submit," it also says "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave himself up for it" (Ephesians 5:25). We often forget this part.
This is agape love, unconditional love. You love your wife by choice, by decision, every morning, and not only when you are in a good mood or when you judge that she deserves it. "Not that we loved God, but that he loved us" (1 John 4:10).
Like oil and water, two sinners, two egos tend to separate. You shake the bottle and they mix, but you have to shake it again. Every day, you make the decision to love again.
Christ loved the church first: the husband does not wait for her to deserve being loved. Christ gave himself up: the husband gives his time, his comfort, his life. Christ sanctifies her through the Word: the husband helps her grow in her relationship with God. Christ makes her glorious: the husband highlights her instead of eclipsing her. Christ nourishes her and takes care of her: the husband watches over her needs and her heart.
"Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2). If you realize that your behavior toward your wife does not look like Christ's behavior toward the church, it is never too late.
Your spouse is not a believer? Do not let that situation stop you. Let the Word of God meet your needs. With time, your spouse will sense that they do not have to meet your needs or heal your wounds, because it is Jesus who does it.
"Marriage was not given by God to make you happy." In the past, people found the meaning of their lives in their relationship with God. Today, we look to marriage for what only God can give, and we arrive with so much baggage, so many wounds and expectations. The pastor also speaks to singles: if you do not settle this before marriage, you will place the same expectations on the person you choose, and they will not be able to meet them, not because they are the worst, but because they are a human being.
Changing spouses settles nothing: unmet expectations create frustration, frustration creates tension, and tension creates separation. Healing comes when you stop looking left and right and look up to heaven. By knowing the width, length, height and depth of God's love, you are filled "with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19).
"He should understand me. She should understand me." The pastor concludes: "He understands you." Look up to heaven.

Key Takeaways

A Christ-centered marriage begins before verse 22: husband and wife are both called to be filled with the Spirit, because the only true head of the home is Jesus.
Marriage is a covenant of love, not a contract. As soon as you say "he should" or "she should," you have started counting and you have stopped being grateful.
To submit is to place yourself under in order to seek the other's good, after the image of the Son in the Trinity. Nobody submits the other.
The husband is a servant leader who serves first, carries the responsibility for his family and loves his wife with agape love, every day, by decision.
Your spouse will never be able to meet all your needs or heal all your wounds. Only Jesus can, and he understands you.

Personal Application

What is the "wine" that influences your marriage today: your parents, your past, your wounds, or the Holy Spirit?
When you are under pressure, what comes out of your mouth toward your spouse? What does that reveal about what fills your heart?
What do you appreciate about your spouse without ever telling them? When will you "send an email to your mouth"?
In what area have you started counting, saying "he should" or "she should"?
If you are married, what concrete form can mutual submission take this week: honor, sacrifice, or a time of prayer together? If you are single, what expectations do you need to lay before Jesus first?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should you read Ephesians 5:22 starting from verse 18?

Salvatore Chiazza explains that, in the original text, the verb "submit" does not appear in verse 22: it is carried over from verse 21, which is part of a long sentence that begins in verse 18. So before speaking about wives and husbands, Paul says: "be filled with the Spirit." A Christ-centered marriage begins there, for the man as well as for the woman.

What does submission in marriage mean according to Ephesians 5?

To submit means to place yourself under, never to place the other under. Verse 21 calls us to submit to one another. For the wife, submission takes the form of honor given to the role God has entrusted to her husband. For the husband, it takes the form of sacrifice: he submits his comfort and his rights to the needs of his wife and his family.

What should you do when a couple cannot agree?

The first reflex is to pray together, to talk and to listen to each other, and then to start again. If the deadlock remains, the husband takes responsibility, which does not mean imposing his opinion. He can postpone the decision, look for a compromise, choose his wife's decision, or hold to his own after listening, praying and weighing all the elements.