SERMON: The Loving Headship of Husbands, Part 1 (Eph. 5:25–33)
The
Loving Headship of Husbands, Part 1
(Eph. 5:26–33)
Series: Ephesians: Building the Church Text: Ephesians 5:26–33
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: July 9, 2023
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: PM Service
I.
Introduction
Our last session in the Book of Ephesians involved one of
its more controversial portions in today’s culture — that of the role of wives
in marriages. Specifically, the
controversy lies in the reality of male headship in those verses. This wasn’t controversial in Paul’s day,
however.
In fact, there’s an interesting omission in these verses now
addressed to husbands. Nowhere do these
verses use the words, “Husbands, rule your wives.” Such a command would be unnecessary in the
Roman culture to which Paul writes — men would already presume their leadership
roles, with or without biblical warrant.
Unfortunately, they might have done so with an authoritarian stance that
the Bible wouldn’t allow.
As one commentary notes,
Throughout history the most
dominant distortion of relationships has been on man’s side. In most cultures of the ancient world, women
were treated as little more than servants, and the practice is reflected in
many parts of the world today. Marcius
Cato, the famous Roman statesman of the second century b.c., wrote, “If you catch your wife in an act of
infidelity, you can kill her without a trial.
But if she were to catch you, she would not venture to touch you with
her finger. She has no rights.”[1]
Many people today think this is the kind of brutish
patriarchy that the Bible presents.
However, that’s not the case. Instead,
this section calls men to love, an important message for them to hear. Why?
As we began considering marriage last week, we considered how sin has
made it go awry. While it’s true that
Eve ate the fruit first, Adam was not loving her by protecting her from the
false words of the serpent. Just a few
generations later, a man threatened the integrity of marriage through polygamy
(Gen. 4:23). Scripture, and history
beyond, records numerous marital issues flowing from the selfish behavior of
men and their lack of love for their spouses.
So, the issue back then wasn’t so much weak-willed men not
leading their households, but an unloving perversion of male headship. As we noted last week, though, Scripture
provides a corrective in Christ. Remember
that these verses follow Paul’s teaching on the indwelling Spirit, giving the
practical consequences of being Spirit-filled.
Those who submit to the role of the Spirit in marriages will find that
their relationships work differently than those around them. As we study this passage, we walk away with
one of the most beautiful images of marriage in all of Scripture, and it
involves the command for husbands to love their wives.
In today’s society, the call for husbands to love their
wives might be controversial. The need
of a husband to love his wife permeates pop culture, which isn’t always bad. However, the definitions of love our culture
provides are weak, amounting often to niceness and good feelings. Indeed, one in our culture rarely has the
concept of love as a verb — it’s often viewed as a noun, an idea, that one can
stumble upon or lose over time.
God is love, so only His gospel can provide us with a clear
image of what love should look like. The
Lord defines Christian relationship through this word (1:4; 3:17; 4:2, 15, 16;
5:2). It is through understanding our
relationship to the Lord in love that we can better understand how we are to
love one another. We can’t understand
the love husbands should show their wives if we don’t understand the
gospel.
So, in Christ, we see precisely what kind of love men should
share with their wives. We can divide
the lessons in this passage into two parts: Husbands must love as Christ does
(vv. 25–30) and wed as Christ does (vv. 31–32), with v. 33 serving to sum
everything we’ve studied concerning marriage.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to get through all this passage today,
so for part one, let’s consider the first and larger point.
II.
Husbands must love as Christ does (vv. 25–30)
Again, husbands must first trust this gospel to
demonstrate proper love. When husbands have
the Holy Spirit, they can have a Spirit-filled life, a God-honoring marriage, and
show proper love to their wives. As
such, we have here an extended illustration of Christ’s love for the
church. So, we will see that husbands
should seek to show the sacrificing, sanitizing, and sympathizing love of
Christ.
A.
First, husbands should seek to show the
sacrificing love of Christ (v. 25)
Husbands, love
your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
The sacrificial love of the Lord is, in some ways, both His most
understandable attribute and the most difficult to mimic. First, remember that there are different
nuances to love mentioned in the Greek language. In this case, we have a committed kind of
love — agape (the noun) or, more specifically, agapao (the
verb). This isn’t always as holy love,
for people can agapao love the darkness rather than the light (John
3:19) and the approval of men rather than God (John 12:43). However, this is also the agapao love
that God showed toward the elect (cf. Eph. 2:4).
So, we already can perceive a message in this. Whatever or whoever it is in this world that
men agapao love — whether it be trucks, toys, tech, etc. — in marriage,
it better be their wives. Christ showed
His love for His church, and we should also be devoted to our wives. If husbands are committed to their wives with
this kind of love, they’ll avoid, as the parallel says, becoming “embittered
against them” (Col. 3:19).
Again, the gospel undergirds this, which is good for us who
realize we don’t love our wives as we’re commanded to in Scripture. Christ is committed to us, showing His love
in that He gave Himself for the church.
Paul said something similar back in v. 2; “Christ also loved you and
gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” This one act was not necessarily something
Jesus wanted in the flesh (praying as He did for the cup to pass), but He
submitted Himself to the Father’s will and for the sake of those He
saves). He even sacrifices Himself for
men who have failed in their loving of their wives.
So, love is expressed in sacrificial action, even when the
other party is less-than-deserving of it.
In that great chapter on love, we learn that love “does not seek its
own” (1 Cor. 13:5); often, it gives.
Just as Jacob worked for Rachael, and Christ worked for us, husbands
should give of themselves for their wives.
Of course, this can be expressed in many ways, including a man working
outside the home to support his family.
It can also often take him outside his comfort zone. One way that husbands might not feel
comfortable doing this is in caring for the spiritual well-being of
their wives, not just their physical or material needs. Still, in the following verses, we find three
“that” statements — “so that He might” in v. 26, “that He might” in the first
part of v. 27, and “that she would” in the second half of v. 27. These show the expected results of Christ’s
sacrifice for the church. So, as we
continue to consider what Christ has done for us, in terms of marriage, we turn
now to consider how husbands might cleanse our wives. Let’s consider these verses.
B.
Second, husbands should seek to show the
sanitizing love of Christ (vv. 26–27)
so that He might
sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that
He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or
wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
There’s a strong parallel between here in how God describes
Israel in Ezekiel 16:1–14. God says He
cared for her from her youth. He then
describes when Israel was ready for marriage, He cleansed and adorned her in
beauty. He now applies similar metaphors
for the spiritual health of the New Testament church.
Christ first sanctifies the church. This was Christ’s expressed desire in His
high priestly prayer (Jn 17:17–19), and several passages highlight the fact
that Christ has sanctified us (Titus 2:14; Heb. 10:10, 14, 29; 13:12). What does that mean?
This requires us to know a couple of theological terms. On the one hand, sanctification speaks of
progressive growth in holiness. However,
in addition to progressive sanctification, there is definitive
sanctification, the singular act of setting something apart. Christ selects the church from the world,
consecrating it unto Himself for His own purpose. This was at an absolute point in the past (as
the verb here indicates), concurrent with His declaring the church righteous.
Sanctification is a core doctrine with which Christians
should grapple. We seek to achieve
greater moral purity in our lives, sanctification being a grace that the Lord
shows to us. However, we must also
recognize this grace as already granted to us at a definitive point in
the past. Where we are along the
sanctification process matters only as a fact of progression, not as a
question of salvation, which He’s already accomplished.
To liken this to the image of marriage, husbands select
their wives and set them apart when they marry them. They see their wives as a prize to be won,
a pearl of great price. It’s a shame
that pop culture attacks the image of the knight winning the hand of the maiden
— yes, she’s not his slave or a trophy for a shelf, but she is a prize,
nonetheless. He wants to claim her
because he wants a committed relationship with her and doesn’t want to risk
another man winning her heart. Neither
does he want to give his affection to any other woman — he wants to set his
wife apart from the rest.
If a husband already has a wife, he must ensure that, if he
hasn’t been, he should begin thinking of his relationship with her in these
terms. She is already set apart — he won
her, a prize awarded with a vow, however long ago. She is already set apart — he must seek no
other.
He should then work to ensure that moment of consecration
continues. If she sometimes fails to
live up to his expectations, he must remember that he always falls short
of the Lord’s and give her the grace her position demands. He should do things not only to keep her
heart relationally but encourage it before the Lord. In this way, he is playing a small role in
the overall sanctifying work of Christ.
Christ also cleanses the church. Indeed, this is linked to Christ both
definitively and progressively sanctifying His church. We are sinners, covered in our filthy rags
and in need of a bath. The Lord provides
this for His precious church. This also
refers to a single moment, which is what the verb indicates.
The question here is to what this washing refers. Some might think this might refer primarily
to our water baptism. For instance, some
commentaries note that this might reference the bridal bath before the wedding
(cf. Ezek. 16:9). As one commentary notes,
“In ancient Greece, a bride-to-be would be taken down to a river to be bathed
and ceremonially cleansed from every defilement of her past life. Whatever her life had been before, it was now
symbolically purified and she would enter the marriage without any moral or
social blemish—the past was washed away.”[2] Of course, in the Christian context, we read
that the Lord “saved us… by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the
Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). Here, we see
that it is, indeed, the “water with the Word;” this is the inward, spiritual
baptism.
This, again, is an important spiritual reality for us to
remember. When we sin, since we are
concerned with purity and holiness, we might falsely perceive a stain that
can’t be washed away from us. We may
even be tempted to think of it in terms of a label that now defines us. However, we as Christians have already been
cleansed, and we can be sure though our “sins are as scarlet, they will be as
white as snow” (Isa. 1:18). It’s a sad
reality when a Christian chooses to embrace some sin for whatever reason, for
he can become “blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from
his former sins (cf. Titus 3:5; 2 Pet. 1:9).
Similarly, we need to extend such grace to our wives,
remembering our vows. That moment of
marriage indicates a clean start, and husbands should continue it. Should some moment arise in the life of the
marriage that requires the husband to forgive the wife, he must remember that
forgiveness means that he promises not to become “historical” in the heat of
the next conflict. He also certainly
must never introduce anything into the marriage himself that would taint his
wife, like pornography or anything else that might defile the marriage bed —
again, his affection is for her alone and for her well-being. He should seek to keep the relationship pure
just as Christ cleansed the church.
Christ also clothes the church. The Lord made coverings for the first wife
and her husband in the Garden of Eden (yes, even though they sinned,
3:21). He also clothes believers, even
though we’ve sinned. We see just how He
adorns the church in the rest of this verse, but let’s not move too quickly
past the fact that Christ is doing this.
He first does this so that He can present us to Himself. That sounds strange to present oneself with a
gift, but there’s an emphatic pronoun in the text testifying to just that. One commentary notes, “Whereas human brides
prepare themselves for their husbands, Christ prepares His own bride for
Himself.”[3] This is a blessed reality — we don’t make
ourselves ready for God.
Several verses speak of the presentation of believers. For instance, 2 Corinthians 4:14 calls the
reader to the knowledge that “He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also
with Jesus and will present us with you.”
Another example comes from the parallel book in Colossians 1:22; “yet He
has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present
you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.” We can look forward with joy to the day of
our presentation.
Indeed, and this is to be a future presentation — Christ
wants to present Himself one day with a pure bride. Of course, this doesn’t deny that we have a
present relationship with the Lord now; we’re currently His body, and we
experience that progressive sanctification as a result of our ongoing
relationship with Him. Even so, Christ
must one day glorify us to remove impurities (sinless perfection is not
possible in this life).
How will He clothe the church at glorification? You see where we get that theological term,
for we read here that the church will appear “glorious.” That term used of royal dressing in Luke 7:25,
but no clothing on earth can describe what we will wear on that day.
As any true glory we have must come from above, we will be
presented while arrayed in God’s glory. In
other words, we’ll be arrayed by the “the Father of lights, with whom there is
no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
There will be no spot or wrinkle or any such thing. The Father “dwells in unapproachable light”
(1 Tim. 6:16), but we will be clothed in that white light.
Indeed, it seems the appearance goes beyond clothing. In 2 Corinthians 11:2, Paul notes that
Corinthian believers (with all their faults) can be presented as “a pure
virgin.” Wrinkles can speak of age and
wear, as well, whereas the bride will be presented youthful on that day. With the resurrection body promised in 1
Corinthians 15, we will be youthful and unspoiled for the Lord.
Of course, remember that this also speaks metaphorically of
our moral state. The contrast of “spot
or wrinkle or any such thing” is “holy and blameless.” This state is only achievable in Christ. Indeed, in this context, this is Christ
gaining the salvation the church needs.
Earlier, Paul said that God chose us in Christ “before the foundation of
the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Eph 1:4).
So, we see something here far more important than simple
appearance, as stunning as that day will be.
This is about us see the object of our faith, that the gospel of Christ
has brought us before the Lord. He knows
what the church needs and lavishes her with it.
We as husbands have already had our wedding days, but we
hopefully have many more days of marriage before us. No one would see the clothing of the bride as
the ultimate point of the wedding. But,
too often, we view the wedding day as the end of a journey, when the wooing has
accomplished its desired end. Instead,
we must seek to understand our spouses, continuing to go to school on them and
seeing what they need. We should even
get to the point where we can anticipate some of their needs, providing for
them even when they themselves don’t know what they need.
That brings us to the next point, but we will save that for
next week.
III.
Conclusion
At the beginning of this sermon, we noted that men didn’t
need to be told in a Roman culture to lead their wives. They needed to hear this command to love, for
this would have been nearly foreign to their thinking. Perhaps if writing to our feminized culture,
Paul would make the implicit command explicit, for headship is precisely
what many marriages need.
However, headship does not come with fear and
intimidation. Husbands may not lord
their position over their wives.
Instead, they must seek to love their wives as Christ loved the
church. The gospel is the example we’re
to follow. The good news of the gospel
is, of course, extended to men who are failing or who have failed in their
roles!
[1] John F. MacArthur Jr., Ephesians, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody
Press, 1986), 294.
[2] John F. MacArthur Jr., Ephesians, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody
Press, 1986), 300.
[3] Harold W. Hoehner, “Ephesians,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An
Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2
(Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 641.