Therefore Submit and Love

Eph. 5:21-33

Good morning! Today we tackle a passage that some people don’t like to hear, that non-Christians sometimes mock, a passage from Ephesians about the prescribed behavior and roles of husbands and wives. I believe that the passage is misunderstood not only by unbelievers, but by many Christians as well. Before we dig into today’s passage, let me give a very brief overview of where we are in context in Ephesians. 

Paul writes Ephesians will being imprisoned in Rome. The first three chapters focus on the gospel, the message that by putting one’s faith in Christ, Gentiles become included with believing Jews in receiving redemption through Christ’s blood and the forgiveness of sins. Paul prays for them and us that the Spirit would help us to know Christ more deeply, more personally, more richly, and he prays that we would know the inheritance we now possess by faith and the power of God that is available to us.  Paul describes us as God’s handiwork, created in Christ to do good works that He has planned for us to do. These works have nothing to do with salvation, with saving us, but we are to do these works as we allow the Spirit to lead us, out of gratitude and submission, to the glory of God. As we live in this way, we, both Jewish and Gentile believers together, are like stones set in a single beautiful building, with Christ as the cornerstone. Paul goes on to share of the joy he has personally experienced – a joy that makes his many severe trials not worth even mentioning in comparison – as he lives out the calling God has placed on him as a minister to the Gentiles. 

And then, after a beautiful prayer for the Ephesians – and for us – that Christ would reign in our hearts through faith, and that we would grasp just how much Christ loves us, we come to Chapter 4, which starts with the word “Therefore.” And the second half of the book, which includes today’s passage, focuses on a more practical, detail-oriented explanation of how we should live as people “in Christ”. 

We are told to be completely humble and gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. We are told that, to assist in this goal, Christ gave the Church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Implicit in this discussion is the imperative that all believers should be joining with other believers in local assemblies, so that these gifts of Christ can benefit all believers. 

We are told to “put off” our old selves, corrupted by deceitful desires, and “put on” our new selves, created to be like God in righteousness and holiness. We are told to put off falsehood and put on truth-telling. We are told to put off anger. We are told to put off stealing but put on honest work. We are told to put of unwholesome talk and put on speech that builds others up. We are told to put off bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander, and put on compassion and forgiveness. 

As God’s dearly loved children, we are told to walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us. We are told to not have even a hint of immorality, impurity, greed, or unwholesome talk. We are told to seek what pleases the Lord, living as the wise, not as the foolish. We are told not to be drunk on wine, but be filled with the Spirit, worshipping Him and being ever thankful. And that brings us to today’s passage.  

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. – Eph. 5:21

This entire section of Ephesians, from this verse to verse 6:9, is like a thesis. And the thesis statement is right here, in verse 5:21. We will find that this thesis has six “body” paragraphs, six applications of the thesis statement, focusing on (1) wives, (2) husbands, (3) children, (4) fathers, (5) slaves, and (6) masters. Today we will look focus on the first two of these six. 

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. – Eph. 5:22-24

I want to start by talking about the Greek word used here for “submit”, hypotasso. This is a compound word, from hypo, which means “by” or “under”, and tasso, which means, in the context here, to “set”. And so hypotasso means to set yourself under. 

Note that the passage does not say that women are inferior to men. Now it is certainly true that women and men are certainly inferior to the Lord. But that is not what the comparison of the Lord is there for. It says to wives, set yourselves under your husbands in a manner like how you set yourselves under the Lord. 

Although I have to jump ahead in Ephesians to do this, let me make a comparison with verse 6:1 which tells children to “obey” their parents. This is a different Greek word, hypakouo. This is also a compound word, based again on hypo, meaning, as before, “by” or “under”, but this time also on akouo, which means to “hear”, to “attend to”, to “understand.” 

These words are very different. The idea behind the command to children is that they are far less understanding, far less wise, far less skilled or equipped, than their parents, and so they should set themselves under them to learn, to understand, to hear and heed what the parents are instructing. But the command to wives has no preconceptions – at all – that the wife is in any way less spiritually mature than her husband. This is not about capability. 

One passage that illustrates these ideas very well is from Luke 2, the account when Jesus was twelve years old and slipped away from His parents to stay at Jerusalem in the temple courts, sitting among the top teachers of the Law and discussing it with them. It says that all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. The account continues in verse 48:

When His parents saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for Me?” He asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house?” But they did not understand what He was saying to them. Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. – Luke 2:48-51

It is this last verse I want to highlight. Do you think the word translated as “obedient” here is hypotasso, which, again, means to “submit under”, or hypakouo, which means to learn from, and to obey like a child obeys his parents. The answer is hypotasso. Even though Mary and Joseph are responsible for Jesus and biologically speaking a generation older for Him, the word hypokouo would be entirely inappropriate, because as this very passage shows, Jesus is teaching the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem. Jesus, God’s Son and God Himself, chose to place Himself under the authority of His parents, because it was the will of God His Father. 

And thus, the word hypotasso was the only fitting word to use in this passage.

I have another very interesting example, the account of the centurion in Luke 7. This man was one of the “God-lovers,” non-Jews who worshiped the Jewish God at a distance. He had a servant who fell ill and sent some elders of the Jews to ask Jesus to come to heal his servant. Jesus agreed, but while still on his way, some friends of the centurion, who had come on his behalf, told Jesus not to trouble Himself to come to him, but instead to heal his servant at a distance. By way of explanation, the Centurion said this:

For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” – Luke 7:8

There are actually two occasions in which versions of these words are used: “I myself am a man under authority” and “with soldiers under me.” So this is a double question: Is the first occurrence hypotasso (to submit under like an equal) or hypokouo (to be under like a child)? 

What about the second occurrence? The answer is that the first occurrence is hypotasso, because this is a very capable Roman officer who serves under equally capable officers, and the second instance is hypokouo, because the soldiers under him are more like mere grunts, not officers, with a small fraction of the training that he has had. And notice how he compares himself to Jesus: Jesus to him is obviously hypotasso, submitting like an equal to whoever is over Him – and whether he knew that Jesus was God or not, this is an astonishing insight at this early point in Jesus’ ministry. And the powers of Jesus’ healing, whether through angels or some other mechanism, are like hypokouo compared to Jesus. Again, an astonishing insight into the true nature of Jesus, who as the book of Hebrews says, is far above the angels.  

So with all this in mind, let us return to our Ephesians passage. Let me read the section addressed to wives once again:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. – Eph. 5:22-24

So we know that hypotasso is the term here, for how wives are to submit to their husbands. But what about how they submit to the Lord? Certainly that should be hypokouo, shouldn’t it? It should be, but one of the implied, amazing messages of the first 3 chapters of Ephesians is that it isn’t. Yes, it is ridiculous, even blasphemous, to think of ourselves as equals in any way with Christ in terms of capability, in character, or anything else. But Christ treats us not as we deserve. He treats us as friends, as family, as co-laborers in the gospel. What an amazing privilege! What a delight to submit to Him in this way! And wives are to submit to their husbands in the same wonderful way. And hypotasso is also the word used in verse 24. 

And so what does this kind of submission look like? Submission that believes the best of her husband. Submission that is borne out of love of her husband. Submission that sees herself as a co-laborer with her husband to live totally for Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with humility and peace-seeking and a desire to build her husband up. Hypotasso, not hypokouo.

And before I move on to husbands, let me point out some similar instructions elsewhere in the Bible.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. – Col. 3:18

What do you think? Hypotasso or hypokouo? Hypotasso.

And one more, from I Peter:

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. – I Peter 3:1-2

What do you think? Hypotasso or hypokouo? Hypotasso. This passage I feel provides an additional insight into the question, what if my husband isn’t acting like someone I want to hypotasso to right now? This gets to the very heart of hypotasso. In this case the situation is certainly not ideal, and I Peter gives the even more extreme situation of a husband who is not even a Christian. I Peter makes it clear that hypotasso of the wife is not conditional on the behavior of the husband. 

Now there are exceptions – certainly if a wife is in danger, or her children are in danger, she should get help and, in many cases, leave the husband, at a minimum for a temporary basis, and very possibly permanently. Every situation is different, so absolute statements cannot be made here. In a situation like this, we would encourage a woman to tell someone in the church, someone she is most comfortable going to. That might be a pastor, and we would do anything to help a woman in such a situation, but we would also understand if perhaps the person would be more comfortable telling another woman.    

OK – wives are off the hook. It’s time to address the husbands. Continuing with the passage:  

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. – Eph. 5:25-28a

Now with regards to the Greek words, there is less to say here. The word for love is agape, which is the highest form of love, love that, just as the start of this passage says, is eminently self-sacrificial. Christ gave up His very life for those He loved, so that they would have forgiveness and eternal life. But the picture here in Ephesians goes even further than that, much further. I think of the picture of preparing a bride for marriage – I picture a top-of-the-line spa session: a scented bath, doing her nails, hands and feet, making her hair absolutely perfect, professional level putting on of make up, and then the dress – an unbelievably beautiful dress, ironed over and over at the last hour so that it has not even a hint of a wrinkle, a beautiful just-picked bouquet of flowers, a beautiful veil… ladies, you can tell me if I’m leaving anything out.  

This is really the picture Jesus promotes in this passage. What does it mean? How are husbands to love their wives like that?

It means, first, to pay close attention to their needs and desires. It means, as much as it is up to you, to help them to be happy and satisfied. There is also the idea of holiness and being without blame. This means that you have a spiritual responsibility for your wife. Is she getting fed in the Word? How are you helping her to do this? It could be having devotions with her. It could be making it so that she can attend a women’s Bible study. But this too is only one aspect of what this entails.

It can mean defending your wife against family members or others who don’t treat her right. It can mean helping your wife with household chores if she is tired. It can mean, if you have children, giving her breaks, and it can mean taking care of discipline of the children when needed and making sure that her children always treat her with respect. These are just a tiny number of examples of what this can mean.

I think the big picture here is that life is challenging, and husbands have a responsibility before the Lord to help her to be continually growing in love, growing in all the character qualities that Christ would have for us, doing whatever it takes to protect her, to encourage her, to restore her, to help her rest, to gently challenge her, in short to make her like that picture of the beautiful bride I described a few minutes ago. Getting a future wife ready on wedding day takes hours. Getting your wife “ready” in this sense for eternity takes a lifetime. 

I want to say that it is Christ that grows us. But our role of husbands is important as helpers in this process. We can be ever attentive to remove the roadblocks that keep her from growing in Him, or we can unfortunately be part of the problem. 

And we don’t get to ask, “have I done enough yet?” Our comparison is the Lord Himself. He gave His life for the body. And we are to love our wives as we love our own bodies. If you are taking care of your body, working out or watching your diet, or anything else, great! But have the same mindset about your wife. 

I want to point out one more thing before going on here. Remember that the wife is to submit (hypotasso) to her husband, as I Peter says, even if the husband isn’t doing his job laying down his life in agape love for his wife. But I want you (the husbands) to see how broken this is. In a marriage, Ephesians makes it clear that a husband has a spiritual responsibility for his wife, but as with all things, this is impossible without the help of the Lord – this is not something we do in our own effort alone. We do it bathed in prayer for the power of the Spirit to help us. But when we don’t do this, you are letting your wife down. She is depending on you to lead her as she submits. She will continue to submit even as you mislead, as you don’t do your God-given responsibility. And this is tragic. Not only are you sinning before the Lord; you are tragically also impacting your wife. Let it not be so. 

Let’s consider the parallel passages as we did with the wives:

Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. – Col. 3:19

Yes, it is still agape, the self-sacrificial laying down of one’s life for your wife. And the opposite of harsh is gentle. We are to be gentle, caring, and tender towards our wives, building them up. Again, I think the picture of all of the preparations of a bride for her wedding is helpful here. 

And from I Peter 3:

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. – I Peter 3:7

First note that the “in the same way” at the beginning of this verse means, if you go back to the previous chapter, like how Christ has treated you – He has given up His life for you. And so once again we see the charge to husbands to lay down their lives for their wives.

The word translated “partner” here in Greek has a much more specific meaning. It means vessel, a word often used metaphorically to represent the physical body. The word translated “treat them with respect” means honor. And so you are to honor them as you would honor, for example, a wise elder, even though he has become frail. You are to honor them despite their relative physical weakness compared to you. And this is a generalization – there are certainly women who are stronger than their husbands. But the point is to honor your wife even if she is weaker than you. 

And men, this passage also comes with a warning – so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Can treating your wife poorly block your prayers? Yes. I think it is like the parable of the unmerciful servant, or the servant who received mercy but refused to show mercy to those who were in a similar situation to what he had been in. I think this is similar, because, men, God treats you with honor even though you are the weaker partner compared to Him. He treats you kindly, graciously, gently. And so if you turn around and treat your wife in an opposite way, God becomes opposed to you. This is a very serious thing.  

Now let’s come back to the Ephesians passage. It says “He who loves his wife loves himself.” What does this mean? Well, we immediately get the following explanation:

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.  – Eph. 5:28b-33

Now in this modern day and age, unfortunately, many people in one sense do hate their bodies. That is, when they look in a mirror, they find faults with their weight or some other aspect of their appearance. But hating how you look in a mirror is not really what is being talked about here. The Greek word is strong, used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe hating a mortal enemy, or as behavior people do as unbelievers. If you really hated yourself like that, you wouldn’t eat, you wouldn’t do anything to take care of yourself. The truth is we all love ourselves even if we don’t like all aspects of ourselves, perhaps with the exception of the severely depressed. If we are sick, we want to get better, and we go to the doctor or the emergency room if it serious enough. If we are hungry, we want to be filled, and so on. 

And as we see Genesis quoted here, we know that husband and wife in the eyes of God are treated as a unit. The passage talks about Christ and the church as a profound mystery – and we will come back to that in a moment – but I find it a big enough mystery just talking about husband and wife. 

What is the point here? That we need to see our marriages as God sees them. Husband and wife are one flesh. And so, a husband who does not love his wife and take care of her like he takes care of his own body is the definition of foolishness. When we don’t follow God’s command to agape our wives, we are hurting our wives, and that means we are hurting ourselves. It’s like a bunch of the old sci-fi shows where a person and an alien creature become somehow linked, and when you shoot at the alien you also hurt the human. That is how it is for husbands and their wives. (I’m not saying that wives are alien creatures, although they can think quite differently from us at times.) 

Now Paul throws a tantalizing thought at us but doesn’t develop it. We, the church, the ekklesia, the called-out ones, are the bride of Christ. And so the deeper ministry is that Christ and the church are also in some way one flesh. And I think this is a good thing for us to reflect on as we prepare are hearts for communion. Can we really grasp what this means? No – Paul calls it a great mystery. But there are other verses that speak of it.

Shortly before the crucifixion, Jesus prayed with His disciples the following prayer:

I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are one—I in them and You in Me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. – John 17:20-23

Jesus gave His life once for all, on the cross, as payment for all sin. Jesus gave us the practice of the bread and the cup to help us to remember not only that He died for us but that He continues to love us, to agape us, to prepare us just like the perfect bride I described earlier. 

I encourage you to spend some time now drawing near to Him in prayer, thanking Him for who He is and what He has done, and for the beautiful picture He has given husbands and wives to live out, a small picture of the great mystery of the oneness and unity we will have with Christ Himself. 

Father, I pray for the husbands and wives here that you would help us to rededicate ourselves to the roles you have set out for us. Help the wives to hypotasso submit to their husbands, and help the husbands to agape love their wives. And help those who are single to find contentment in their singlehood, whether it is for a season or for the rest of their lives here on earth. And help us all to remember that this life is fleeting. It is short. And in heaven there will not be marriage as there is on earth, so even marriage and family itself are only shadows of something greater to come, the great mystery as Paul describes it – the culmination of marriage between Christ and the church, of which we are a part. Help us to know you more, to love you more, and to serve you more as we lay down our lives and submit to one another in You.