Last Fri­day we con­sid­ered Paul’s com­mand to walk in love in Eph­esians 5:1–15, and today we have the priv­i­lege of con­sid­er­ing Paul’s com­mands to apply love to the church and to spouses.  After today’s entry on Eph­esians 5:15–33, we just have two more install­ments from chap­ter six and then we will begin our fall book study.

Verses 15–21

Paul exhorts the Eph­esian believ­ers to walk wisely as they watch their lives, redeem­ing the time.  I don’t believe there are many of us who live in this man­ner.  While we might have the goal of walk­ing in wis­dom, I think the major­ity of us walk with lit­tle reflec­tion about how we have spent our time.  Recently, Kendra and I took sev­eral hours to seri­ously con­sider our pri­or­i­ties and goals.  Then we planned out each day of the week and made a sched­ule that would reflect those goals.  After doing this with Kendra, I then did the same thing for my work sched­ule.  I have noticed a big dif­fer­ence in effi­ciency and believe I am now more suc­cess­ful at redeem­ing the time.  I encour­age you to be dili­gent about your own life – don’t live in a reac­tionary way, respond­ing to “crises” or allow­ing other peo­ple or fac­tors to deter­mine how you spend your day.  Deter­mine “what the will of the Lord is,” make a plan, and carry it out.

Then, Paul states that instead of being drunk (or filled) with wine, we should be filled (or drunk) with the Spirit.  This verse is often used as a proof-text against drink­ing alco­hol, but Paul did not intend it to be used in that way.  He is con­trast­ing one who is con­trolled by alco­hol with one who is con­trolled by the Spirit.  You should never be con­trolled by alco­hol, but for that mat­ter, you shouldn’t be con­trolled (or drunk) with money, suc­cess, peo­ple, sta­tus, aca­d­e­mic acco­lades, or any­thing else.  If we are filled with the Spirit, we will speak to one another in ways that honor God and oth­ers (v. 19).  Fur­ther, we will sub­mit to one another out of rev­er­ence for Christ, since that is fit­ting for peo­ple who are all filled with the same Spirit.

Verses 22–33

This pas­sage is seen by many believ­ers as the foun­da­tional text on Chris­t­ian mar­riage, and rightly so.  Paul begins by giv­ing instruc­tions to wives, ask­ing them to sub­mit to their hus­bands as to the Lord, since the hus­band is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.  While ask­ing wives to sub­mit to their hus­bands seems like a rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept in post-1960s Amer­ica, Paul’s read­ers would have hardly thought twice about the con­cept.  Most likely, the Spirit inspired Paul to address the issue to ensure 1) There would be time­less bib­li­cal truth writ­ten for all gen­er­a­tions that tran­scended cul­tural norms and 2) Mar­ried women would honor God and their hus­bands by adher­ing to pre-Fall bib­li­cal teach­ing about the roles of men and women (viz. that although men and women have equal worth in the eyes of God, they have been given com­ple­men­tary roles.  For more on this, lis­ten to Pas­tor Rusty’s teach­ing at the most recent men’s meeting).

The really rev­o­lu­tion­ary state­ments begin in verse 25.  Here, Paul tells hus­bands to love their wives – and not in a loose, unde­fined sort of way.  He tells them to love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave him­self up for her!”  None of Paul’s orig­i­nal read­ers would have been shocked by the teach­ing that women were to sub­mit to their hus­bands; while some would have dis­agreed, no one would have been sur­prised or offended like they are today.  But when Paul said that hus­bands should love their wives (as Christ loved the church, no less!), they prob­a­bly had to pick their jaws up off the floor.  In Greek and Roman cul­ture (of which Eph­esus was a part), women were seen as prop­erty, not as peo­ple made in God’s image. Seneca, a Roman philoso­pher who was a con­tem­po­rary of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers, wrote, “Women are mar­ried to be divorced and divorced to be mar­ried.”  It is to these kinds of men that Paul says:

1. Love your wives as Christ loved the church

2. Wash your wives in the water of the Word

3. Present your wives holy and with­out blemish

4. Love your wives as your own bodies

5. Have only one wife because Christ only has one church, and mar­riage is a pic­ture of the rela­tion­ship between Christ and the church

6. Love your wives as your love yourselves

Rev­o­lu­tion­ary in AD 60, rev­o­lu­tion­ary in 2010.  Men, how are you doing at lov­ing your wife?  Wait, don’t answer that.  Sched­ule unhur­ried, unin­ter­rupted time with your wife and ask her for an hon­est assess­ment.  If you’ve been a harsh, crit­i­cal, unlov­ing hus­band in the past, your wife may not be very keen on shar­ing the truth with you.  You need to repent of your self­ish­ness and your other sins to her and take good notes on what she says.  Your first job, after lov­ing God with all your heart, soul, and mind, is to love your neigh­bor as your­self.  There is no one nearer than your wife.  Are you lov­ing her like Paul says we must?

One year ago tomor­row, Dr. James Emery White pub­lished an arti­cle called, “Of Bit­ter Blogs” on crosswalk.com high­light­ing his con­cerns over the argu­men­ta­tive and bit­ter cul­ture in which we find our­selves  today.  His con­cern is that this cul­ture has had an impact on the church, which has caused dis­unity in more than one local body.

White states, “Soci­ol­o­gist Deb­o­rah Tan­nen writes that we live in an “argu­ment cul­ture.”  Her obser­va­tion is that we no longer dia­logue with each other, con­tend­ing that there has been a system-wide rela­tional break­down in our cul­ture.  It is as if we approach every­thing with a war­like men­tal­ity so we end up look­ing at the world — and peo­ple — in an adver­sar­ial frame of mind.  And Chris­tians seem to be lead­ing the way.”

What about you?  Do you approach broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ with this men­tal­ity, or with  an atti­tude or love and humil­ity?   Do you seek to pre­serve unity by tak­ing a stand on the things of “first impor­tance” (1 Cor. 15) and allow­ing room for dis­agree­ment on others?

Unfor­tu­nately, every one of us has at times argued with our broth­ers and sis­ters, demand­ing uni­for­mity on sec­ondary mat­ters rather than unity in the Gospel.  I encour­age you to con­sider your own atti­tude toward oth­ers and resolve to be a uni­fier rather than a divider in the local church.

For the past five months, we have preached a series called, “Reflec­tions: See­ing Our­selves and Our Sav­ior in the Psalms.”  This Sun­day, August 22nd, we will preach the final Psalm in our series - Psalm 139.  In this well-known Psalm, David med­i­tates on God’s nature and char­ac­ter.  He wor­ships God for His omni­science, omnipres­ence, sov­er­eignty, omnipo­tence, and grace.

In a town like Col­lege Sta­tion, August and Sep­tem­ber are some of the busiest months of the year.  That means it is even more nec­es­sary for us to find our rest in God.  This Sun­day, we will see how God’s attrib­utes (specif­i­cally the five David iden­ti­fies in this Psalm) can help us to find our rest in Him.  We hope to see you then!

As I was think­ing about how to apply Psalm 133 today, I con­sid­ered that in our ser­mon last night we focused on unity within our church.  We did men­tion the impor­tance of unity with other believ­ers out­side of New Life, not­ing that Chris­tians must be uni­fied around the Gospel, but we didn’t spell out what that looked like in great detail.

They say a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, so we’ll see if that’s true:

In this pic­ture are seven men.  These seven men rep­re­sent five major denom­i­na­tions, asso­ci­a­tions, or net­works.  These seven men range in age from the mid-60s down to the early 30s.  Only three of these men live within dri­ving dis­tance of each other.

And yet all seven of these men believe and preach the same Gospel, and because of that there is a unity that denom­i­na­tional, asso­ci­a­tional, or net­work dif­fer­ences can­not thwart.  I pray that New Life would be a church that reaches across the lines to serve with other men who love the Gospel, just as these men have.  That’s true unity.

In our sec­ond to last install­ment on the Psalms, we will be study­ing Psalm 133, where David declares, “Behold, how good and pleas­ant it is when broth­ers dwell in unity!”  We will con­sider the dif­fer­ence between unity and uni­for­mity, then learn what we need to be uni­fied around.  Next, we will focus on three dan­gers of dis­unity, and end with the rea­sons why New Life must be uni­fied.  We hope to see you tonight at 5 pm!