Ephesians 5:22-6:4
Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke Sunday, October 6, 2024
“Learn
How To Love Your Family”
There is no shortage of advice available concerning marriage and children. I suppose it is true of other areas of life as well, but you can find entire shelves of books with advice for married couples regarding their lives together. And you can find entire shelves of books with advice for parents raising children. That doesn’t even take into account all the other sorts of advice. There are websites devoted to these topics, radio shows, professionals to work with, blogs, and even casual conversation. If you want to learn what someone believes to be good advice concerning marriage or children, it really shouldn’t be a problem.
What can be a problem, though, is making sure that you have found the right advice. Certainly not every book on the shelf or every website on the internet offers the same advice to spouses or parents. No doubt some pieces of advice are much more valuable than others. The most valuable advice of all, however, is more than just advice. It’s found in our readings and hymns today. It is more than advice because it provides a sort of user’s manual for marriage and children. And You can be certain that this is the good stuff, because it comes from the Creator himself. And that is completely literal. This is the one who created marriage. He created man and woman. He created children and families. And God tells us exactly how to love our families. He wants us to learn and to know and to put into practice what he teaches. He teaches us concerning our individual roles, and he teaches us about the example of Jesus Christ.
You heard the marriage and family advice that Paul first shared to the Ephesian Christians. That was our Second Reading, including parts of chapters 5 and 6 of Ephesians. It’s good to note that by the time we’re reading those portions of Ephesians, we’ve already heard Paul explain things like he does in Ephesians 2: “Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (vs 8-9). Paul is not teaching people how to become Christians. He is not teaching how to earn God’s favor. He is teaching people who are saved by grace in Christ Jesus how to live a life of thankfulness.
And that starts in the home. Paul, really God through the writing of the apostle, discusses several roles that people have in the family. He talks to wives, husbands, children, and fathers. And to all of them he says something about submission and authority. Children are to obey parents. Wives are to submit to the leadership of their husbands. God has set things up this way.
Most people who hear that children have a role of submission and obedience to their parents probably take that in stride. That makes sense. We understand that children have growing up to do. But when you start saying that wives should submit to their husbands, that usually elicits a different response. It makes people uncomfortable. They think that is backwards. It isn’t keeping up with the times. It doesn’t understand that women are talented and capable. It doesn’t sound like what women deserve to hear according to our society today. And there may be a lot of women and wives who don’t like to hear that direction.
To be fair, there are a lot of people who also bristle at the suggestion that children should obey their parents. Those people tend to be children. They find all sorts of situations in which they believe they understand and mom or dad just doesn’t get it. That behavior is stereotypically teenage behavior, but it can show up well before that, too. Who among us likes being told what to do? Who of us wants to listen to someone else or have someone else in charge of us? It doesn’t really matter our particular station in life, we don’t tend to appreciate someone else’s authority over us.
Some of that is simply our own selfish pride raising its ugly head. “You can’t tell me what to do!” But there are other factors, real factors. Parents make mistakes. Husbands mistreat their wives. People abuse their authority, and that makes us even more concerned about any authority or any position. But God tells us that he’s designed these things for our good. He invites wives to submit to their husbands as the church
submits to Christ. This is a good and honorable thing. This is a relationship foundation that works. God establishing roles means we don’t have to figure it out and hope for the best. He tells us his plan. He tells us his way. It’s the way he made us. And maybe the example of wives submitting to their husbands is still a bit harder to understand than the children obeying parents. God laid out that role clearly in his Fourth Commandment. He commanded his people to honor their fathers and mothers. He made a promise that this would serve them well—it was true as his people in the Old Testament were about to enter the Promised Land, and it is still true today. If we listen to our parents and obey them as we grow up, God blesses us with safety and security. He gives us wisdom. He helps us live long and live well in the place where he has settled us.
God doesn’t just talk to the children and wives, though, does he? He has instructions for the husbands and the fathers. Those whom he has placed in roles of responsibility and leadership have a special calling. They are called to love their wives and train up their children. They are called to focus on the other. Not in an abstract way, want what is best, but love your wife and sacrifice yourself for her up to the highest level. Love your children so that what you do is not about what you want, but about what they need.
And here’s an interesting thing about places in Scripture like this where God gives directions to particular people and roles: when we hear this, we like to say, “This is good stuff—and that person needs to hear it.” The husbands say, “My wife should submit more.” The kids say, “My parents should be more loving and concerned about how I feel.” The parents say, “If only my kids would listen better!” What we should be doing is looking at the words God addresses to us. Husbands, ask yourselves, “Are there ways that I have been less than Christ-like in my love for my wife?” Wives, have you been less supportive in marriage and instead wanted to take the lead and undermine your husband? Children, think of the times when you have disobeyed your parents because of how you felt at the time or what you thought best. Parents, admit the times you have reacted in anger instead of love, or when your motives were fixing a problem instead of training a child. All of us have reason to repent, want to do better, want to walk away from that sin.
And we shouldn’t go through this service without mentioning that there are people who don’t think they fit these categories. A college student doesn’t have the same relationship with their parents. A single adult doesn’t fall into one of these categories. But you can still take the point to heart. God does call you to specific roles and gives you specific responsibilities. And all of those roles and responsibilities give you opportunities to submit to those in authority and to love others and serve others. Just like the parents and spouses and children, you can’t and you won’t do those things like Christ did.
And that is exactly why throughout these verses the example and the work and the love of Jesus are described and explained and expounded. The love of Jesus is so much more than just an example for husbands to follow. The self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ washed his church clean of every stain and wrinkle and blemish. The washing with water in connection with the Word makes us holy. That is why we want to live according to God’s will. That is why we want to serve others. That is how we are able to serve others as we live in ways that do not conform to our nature or our society or our world.
The love of Jesus is so much more than an example, but it also remains an example. It is the perfect example of love, the pattern for a husband’s love. Christ’s relationship with his Church is a perfect reflection of a godly marriage. That any of us could be a part of that truly is a wondrous mystery. And yet that is something that is experienced all around us.
You could read all sorts of books on the subjects of marriage and childrearing, and many will have helpful tips. But one book stands above them all. The Bible is where we truly learn to love our families, in the roles God has established for us, and according to the love that Christ has shown to us. May God bless us to put his lessons into practice.
The Text: Ephesians 5:22–6:4 (EHV)
22Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he himself is the Savior. 24Moreover, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives, in the same way as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, by cleansing her with the washing of water in connection with the Word. 27He did this so that he could present her to himself as a glorious church, having no stain or wrinkle or any such thing, but so that she would be holy and blameless. 28In the same way, husbands have an obligation to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29To be sure, no one has ever hated his own body, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. 31“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.” 32This is a great mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33In any case, each one of you also is to love his wife as himself, and each wife is to respect her husband.
6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2“Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise: 3“that it may go well with you and that you may live a long life on the earth.” 4Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.