The True Liberation (Eph 5:22-24,33) Intro This used to be thought the loveliest passage in the Bible on the blessedness of married life. Is there something wrong with the passage?
Exposition The crowning relationship is clearly the first as the reflection of Christ and the Church. Therefore wives are exhorted: • “Submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (v. 22) • “Let the wives be [subject] to their own husband in everything” (v. 24). • “Let the wife see that she respects [lit. fears] her husband” (v. 33).
Doctrine 1. This arrangement for wives in marriage is like all of God's ways, wonderful, right, good, beautiful, pleasing, and delightful. Does Christ hold the church in slavery? No, “He is the Savior of the body” (v. 23). Someone might suppose “that this feminine submission places the man in a position of advantage over the woman. Only someone who knows nothing of Christ's self-sacrifice, nothing of the cross, nothing of Christ's love for the church, could think such a thing” (Lewis).
2. In every authority relationship, it is always sacrifice or submission “The sternest feminist need not grudge my sex the crown [for it is the crown] of thorns” (Lewis).
Application 1. Don't be conformed to the world's idea of submission. See Phil 4:3, Acts 16:14, Jdg 4:21, Acts 18:26, Rom 16:3, Pr 31:10ff, 1Tim 5:10, etc.
2. To Husbands: “Christ loved the church not because it was…lovable, but in order to make it such.”
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