00:00:00:41 – 00:00:39:25
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us on a Wednesday, continuing our way through the fifth chapter of the book of Ephesians here. Probably going to finish that chapter today. An interesting section. I don’t know how else to say it. This is, some material that has gotten a ton of attention, both positive and negative, through the years. There are people that love these words and believe the church ought to live them out in the way that they think that means, and there are others who wish this wasn’t in here.

00:00:39:30 – 00:00:59:31
Clint Loveall
We’re going to try and be neutral and try to present it to you in in what we think it says and what we think it doesn’t say, but, just just a heads up. This is the kind of passage that generates a reaction often. So, a little bit longer section today. I’ll read it and then we’ll come back through and try to unpack it.

00:00:59:36 – 00:01:17:26
Clint Loveall
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is head of the church. The body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be in everything to their husbands.

00:01:17:31 – 00:01:36:47
Clint Loveall
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her in order to make her holy, by cleansing her with the washing of water and the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or anything of the kind. Yes, so that she may be wholly without blemish.

00:01:36:52 – 00:01:59:17
Clint Loveall
In the same way. Husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. No one hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we’re members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

00:01:59:22 – 00:02:34:36
Clint Loveall
This is a great mystery and I am applying it to Christ in the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband. Again, this is, this is, interesting waters to navigate when, when Michael and I meet with couples that are preparing to get married. You can generally tell if there are brides who have grown up in some traditions.

00:02:34:40 – 00:03:04:06
Clint Loveall
Often they will ask about what the vows are going to include. And instantly, you know that they have a passage like this in mind. And whether they’re going to be asked to submit or obey in their vows. I think it’s an unfortunate thing that we’ve done to this passage, Michael. On two fronts. First, I think we completely ignore verse 21, which is a word to everybody be subject.

00:03:04:06 – 00:03:31:43
Clint Loveall
And that’s the same word here. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. So we begin with this umbrella. This is the way everybody ought to act toward one another. But as soon as we get into the next bit, that kind of goes away. And that’s the second thing we’ve done. We’ve separated this passage into, sort of rule book kind of stuff, like, here’s your laws and here’s your laws.

00:03:31:48 – 00:03:57:31
Clint Loveall
And I think when you do that, you not only miss the point of what Paul is trying to say in, in the overall. But but I think that you, You, you make this passage something. It isn’t. And I think you, you take the ethical force out of it, but by making it about a hierarchy or a power structure.

00:03:57:36 – 00:04:23:33
Michael Gewecke
So this is by definition, going to be an unsatisfactory start for many people. And in fact, the way that this works is it’s highly likely that you might have found us for the first time by searching a passage like this. And I think because these are the kinds of Scripture texts that do engage people’s imagination, and they get people wondering, well, what are we supposed to do with that?

00:04:23:33 – 00:04:49:40
Michael Gewecke
And so this is your first time here. I think there’s some responsibility to point out that we’ve been doing a whole study through Ephesians, and if you’ve been with us in that whole time, then you have heard these words in verse 15, be careful, then, how you live not as unwise people, but as wise. And what you need to know is that there is this concept of living a life that is well-ordered, a life that is reflective of the way that God created you.

00:04:49:40 – 00:05:23:54
Michael Gewecke
Go back to the Genesis story. God makes the world with order. You look at the wisdom literature, and there’s a way in which we live our lives that fit within that order. Well, Christians, and specifically as we’re looking in the book of Ephesians, you have churches who are being addressed in the midst of divisiveness issues. There’s there’s struggling to keep the center, the center, to have Jesus Christ be the center of gravity that holds all of the divisions and all the complications of that community, the Gentiles and the Jews and the what laws we keep and what laws we don’t.

00:05:24:05 – 00:05:49:43
Michael Gewecke
There’s a lot happening underneath the text. Now we come here for the text today, be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. What we see in that is a call to break down and to leave broken down the barriers between us that once again, the reverence which we have for Jesus Christ is supposed to be the foundational energy.

00:05:49:44 – 00:06:15:54
Michael Gewecke
It’s the source of the reason why we subject our interest to another person. If you look at a book like Philippians, the reason why we do this is because Jesus Christ gave himself for us. So therefore the servant is not greater than the master, what we give ourselves to one another, then we get into the practical application that is in mind here the structure, the order of human relationships.

00:06:15:59 – 00:06:40:51
Michael Gewecke
And we get fixated on the word here. Why is be subject to your husband’s? His husband is the head of the wife. And there are many ways of reading this. We’re not going to be able to encompass all of them together, but I would argue, Clint, that no matter how you read a text like this, you cannot supersede the source of the text, which is the modeling of Jesus Christ self-giving for us.

00:06:40:51 – 00:07:06:52
Michael Gewecke
So no matter how you want to read this text, and whether you see this as a helpful model for human relationships inside marriage, in whatever way you conceive of that, what you have to recognize is it’s animated by the force of the way that Jesus Christ lived his life for both parties equally. And that becomes an essential, I think, foundation block for us to understand what’s happening here.

00:07:07:01 – 00:07:37:01
Clint Loveall
Here’s where I think we’ve missed this passage, Michael. We’ve made it about power, and specifically that a husband would have some level of control or authority over a wife. But if you read the rest of Ephesians, and even if you read the rest of this passage, Paul doesn’t envision that the power of Christ is coercive power, that it is authoritarian power.

00:07:37:06 – 00:07:57:25
Clint Loveall
It’s the power of love. It’s the power of self-giving and sacrifice. And, I understand that this is a these are troubling words. And and particularly in situations where they’ve been abused or misunderstood.

00:07:57:30 – 00:08:34:43
Clint Loveall
But and, you know, bear with me here. And if and if this bothers you, I, I apologize. I, I, I’d love to have that discussion, but, in its own way. And that’s tough for a passage that seems to start with a recognition of a hierarchy, but in its own way, I think that these are beautiful and progressive words about marriage in in Paul’s day, a wife is property.

00:08:34:47 – 00:09:15:20
Clint Loveall
And and yet here he says, husbands, bring Christ like love and attention to your wife. And he compares that with the way that Christ has loved the church. That’s a beautiful picture. It’s just hard to see through that kind of jarring opening sentence. Wives, you know, to your husbands, submit as to the Lord. But a a wife whose husband loved her in the way this describes would have no fear of being ordered around or, being treated authoritative, authoritatively.

00:09:15:25 – 00:09:42:04
Clint Loveall
And and the husband whose wife came from a position of faith and honor and respect, would have no worries about needing. And practically speaking, I think that’s one of my struggles with what we’ve done to this text. I’ve done a lot of marriages, weddings, as have you, Michael, and we’ve both done a fair amount of marriage counseling as well.

00:09:42:09 – 00:10:18:00
Clint Loveall
Both of us are in a marriage and I find the the power metric of who’s in charge to be largely an unhelpful framework. If if my marriage in the moment comes down to who’s got power, then I think we’re already off track, right? I mean, we’ve missed some off ramps in order to handle things better. I’ve missed some opportunities to love my wife as I as Christ loved the church if it ever gets down to do it my way.

00:10:18:00 – 00:10:41:40
Clint Loveall
Because this says I can do that. I don’t think you’ve understood this passage. I understand how it generates that kind of fear in that kind of reaction. To be honest, the church is try to use it that way. Sometimes I just don’t think it’s in the text if you understand it in its context. And and yes, you do have to account for the culture a little bit, but I don’t think it says that.

00:10:41:45 – 00:11:13:42
Michael Gewecke
So I want to take a quick sojourn and you can’t right away the very practical application that’s being offered here, and the fact that it just confronts us like that, it does require us digging into it. But I think that the fact that as Christians look for guidance as to how to structure our marriage in a way that’s honoring, we turn to a text like this, which quite frankly, in the scriptures, there are very few of us.

00:11:13:42 – 00:11:38:49
Michael Gewecke
I think that’s one of the reasons it’s very possible you found this video of you were looking just because, realistically, there’s not a lot in the Bible about this is how we should structure our lives, live together, what we do when we come to a text looking for it to answer our questions is we’re in danger of not hearing the thing that the text is trying to say.

00:11:38:54 – 00:12:13:45
Michael Gewecke
And here I just want to point out what I think is an unbelievable theological statement here. Verse 23, the body of which he, Jesus, is the Savior, I, I just want be you and I by Christ self-giving have become part of his body. What’s the analogy that Paul’s using to help us see that the actual physical relationship between two human beings navigating the world together?

00:12:13:49 – 00:12:39:45
Michael Gewecke
We’re part of the body of Christ. That’s a gift we’ve been given. And then you keep moving. We have once again that Christ gives up his self. In verse 30, because we are members of his body. It’s astonishing. The theological statement that’s made in something like verse 25, just as Christ loved the church, he gave himself up for her.

00:12:39:57 – 00:13:06:03
Michael Gewecke
These are all statements for Christians. These are all statements for people who are in the family of faith. There is substantial theological substance being offered here about the practicality of the salvific work of Jesus Christ that quite frankly, you are not going to see in the middle of a premarital conversation if your sole focus on this is so, then what do I do with marriage?

00:13:06:10 – 00:13:33:38
Michael Gewecke
What you’re going to miss is we’re supposed to be learning something about the extravagance of Jesus Christ’s gift through the frame of something that we can understand, which is human marriage. And I realize that sounds like a just different perspective. But I think when you look at the text from that perspective, this actually has some substantial theological weight to it that we miss for some of the other stuff for groping to find in the middle of it.

00:13:33:43 – 00:13:56:09
Clint Loveall
We’ll end it again. It all comes under the umbrella of be subject to one another. What the wife and husband do is a reflection of what the church, the community does. And because it is ultimately a reflection of what Christ has done for the church. And, you know, you hear that language sometimes that the husband has to be the head of the household.

00:13:56:09 – 00:14:26:15
Clint Loveall
I think Paul would argue that Christ is the head of the household and that husband wife, in their mutual love and respect for one another, seek to create a household of faith by their partnership and and again, rightly understood, I, I just I don’t think this is about who’s in charge, who has final say, who has authority over the other.

00:14:26:20 – 00:15:09:23
Clint Loveall
This is about what it looks like to love one another sacrificially, to partner together, to follow Christ together, and to respect one another and. I, I it is what it is. This is a passage that has ruffled lots. The kind of passage that ruffles lots of feathers, and we get bad press for and sometimes we deserve it. But but again, I submit that if a husband and wife understood these words and did their best to live up to them, the question of who has veto power and who can tell the other one what to do, I think those questions go away.

00:15:09:36 – 00:15:17:01
Clint Loveall
They’re not in here. I just I don’t think that’s what this I would go so far as to say that is not what this is about.

00:15:17:06 – 00:15:54:56
Michael Gewecke
I really find enriching some of the choice language in here in our translators. Specifically in verse 29 here. No one ever hates his own body, but nourishes and tenderly cares for it. Just as Christ does for the church. This is Clint, the bar, right? And in Western culture, we don’t often, ascribe nurturing to the the father figure, just in terms of some of our cultural stuff.

00:15:55:01 – 00:16:25:34
Michael Gewecke
This very clearly makes it, abundantly clear that the task of being in relationship with one another is the kind of self-giving love that exceeds the love that we have for ourself, at least meets it. And we see in Jesus Christ a kind of love that does exceed his love for himself, a kind of love that gave up his very life for the sake of the ones that he came to save.

00:16:25:39 – 00:16:52:12
Michael Gewecke
If that’s the bar for marriage, then to your point, we are going to be falling all over ourselves for the rest of time trying to live into the vulnerable, self-giving, forgiving, loving task which is set before us this particular day. The person who wants to come to this and look for the defined lines and say, so, pastor, am I?

00:16:52:17 – 00:17:20:12
Michael Gewecke
Should I do this thing? And the context is against my partner? The answer is almost exclusively unless it’s an addiction, they need immediate help. It’s almost certainly always you need to be loving and self-giving together and whatever path it takes, we’re seeking to live that out. I want to be clear, though. I don’t think the purpose is for the marriage itself.

00:17:20:16 – 00:17:44:27
Michael Gewecke
I think the argument here is that we see something unique about the thing that Christ has done for us in the most difficult relationship we’re ever going to live, that when we’re in the throes of trying to practice self-giving again, that task has something to teach us about the perfect self-giving that’s already been done on our behalf. And I think we sometimes invert the order of that in a way that doesn’t help us think.

00:17:44:27 – 00:18:11:14
Clint Loveall
This is, in some ways, a restatement of everything we’ve said. But I think if you get to the end of this passage and you think this is about how husbands manage their wives or how wives obey their husbands, you’ve missed the deeper force of the passage. This is about how husbands and wives love one another as a reflection of having been loved by Jesus Christ.

00:18:11:19 – 00:18:44:24
Clint Loveall
I think if you put this passage in context with the rest of the book, the rest of Scripture, that’s where you land. And again, husbands and wives who regularly and seriously and consistently, consistently seek to love one another as Christ loved. They these those secondary kind of questions, they just become. They just become unimportant. I think they don’t have much of a bearing.

00:18:44:29 – 00:18:45:18
Michael Gewecke
Do not forget.

00:18:45:18 – 00:18:45:46
Clint Loveall
Need them.

00:18:45:59 – 00:19:16:57
Michael Gewecke
The central character of Scripture is not moralism. It is Jesus Christ and our morals and ethics. And and by that I mean the way that we physically live out the faith in the world, our discipleship, it is always sourced once again, from what we see, Jesus Christ has been given to us. So no matter where on the spectrum you join us for this conversation, it is likely that by percentage, many, much percentage of those who’ve gathered us are unsatisfied on some level with the conversation.

00:19:17:02 – 00:19:36:52
Michael Gewecke
I’d like to point out that at the end of the day, this is a text about how Jesus Christ renews and transforms his people so that we reflect the goodness of Christ in the world. And any time that we fall below the bar of the self-giving love demonstrated in Jesus Christ, that is a calling that we’re called to reach up towards again.

00:19:37:03 – 00:19:42:21
Michael Gewecke
And that’s a beautiful invitation if we ourselves will sell ourselves to it today.

00:19:42:30 – 00:20:15:16
Clint Loveall
It’s a I mean, it’s profound that Paul would say, you know, men and women leave their family and they’re joined to one another. And this is a great mystery as Christ is with the church. The comparison of those two things, I think, says something. Paul gets a bad rap when it comes to marriages sometime. Maybe he deserves it, but that is the among the highest praise you could give.

00:20:15:30 – 00:20:34:54
Clint Loveall
Marriage is to say it is a mystery akin to Christ in the church. And then I think it’s instructive where he leaves us. Michael, each of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband. That that’s a fitting. That’s a fitting last word and a wonderful goal.

00:20:34:58 – 00:20:53:18
Michael Gewecke
We’re going to continue on next time as we move further into family relationships, and we’re going to see similar themes as we look at children and parents, and we’re going to see other relationships embedded in it as well. And so this idea of order will only continue, and we’ll see in that order similar themes to what we’ve seen today.

00:20:53:29 – 00:21:07:12
Michael Gewecke
But of course, always from a different perspective. Hope there’s been something in this that’s encouraging to you and maybe even that difficult text that, can in a new way, find meaning in your own devotional life. We look forward to seeing you as we continue the study tomorrow.

00:21:07:13 – 00:21:07:57
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.