Christian Marriage, Ephesians 5:22-33

In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp discusses the essence, structure, and power of Christian marriage based on Ephesians 5. He emphasizes that marriage is a covenantal relationship founded on love and unity. The husband is called to be the head of the household, leading with sacrificial love, while the wife is called to submit to her husband's leadership. Both husband and wife are to be submitted to Christ, and their love for each other should mirror Christ's love for the church. The goal of marriage is to live out the gospel and be transformed into Christ-likeness.

Takeaways

• Marriage is a covenantal relationship based on love and unity.
• Husbands are called to be the head of the household, leading with sacrificial love.
• Wives are called to submit to their husband's leadership.
• Both husband and wife are to be submitted to Christ.
• The goal of marriage is to live out the gospel and be transformed into Christ-likeness.

Chapters
00:00 Reading the Scripture Passage
01:44 Understanding the Big Picture of Ephesians
05:53 The Essence of Marriage: Covenantal Love
20:39 The Structure of Marriage: Headship and Submission
34:49 Sacrificial Love: Sustaining the Covenant of Marriage
41:49 Living Out the Gospel: Transformation in Marriage
46:15 Conclusion and Prayer

Creators & Guests

Host

Aaron Shamp

Lead Pastor of Redeemer City Church

What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?

Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.

Aaron Shamp (00:01)
wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of the body. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hates his own flesh, but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.

Okay, so we are continuing in this series going through Ephesians. This series is called The Christian Household because what we're doing by looking at Ephesians and looking at it in terms of the big picture of what Ephesians is about and trying to discover what is Paul's overarching message, not just in an individual verse, but what is all of these different verses, all these different chapters and teachings that Paul gives, what are they all connected to to say?

Right. What is the big point of it all? So we're looking at Ephesians in broad strokes here. And so now we find ourselves in chapter five.

What Paul is doing in Ephesians is he is describing for us how, in a big picture, he is describing for us how God has made a people for himself or we might say a family. God has made a family for himself, his own household, and he has established his household in the cosmos. He's established his household in the world, what we also call the kingdom of God, right? He does this through the work of Jesus Christ in the gospel.

But then once God has established his household in the world or he has established his kingdom, what does that mean for living out the Christian life? Are we saved and then we just go on a merry way or does it actually make a difference? Well, that's what the whole second half of Ephesians is showing us is how what God has done in the gospel and redeeming us from our sin, saving us from our condemnation, what that does is it actually makes a difference in our lives, even down to it makes a difference in our personal lives.

in our relationships in the church and as we are really getting into now, it makes a difference in our households. What Paul shows us is how God has made his household and now through the gospel he is also rebuilding, recreating our households. And so what God has done in the kingdom and in the gospel has a very real designing effect upon the way that our households look.

the way that our marriages look, the way that our families look, the way that our work looks. The gospel has a transformative effect on all of those things as well. The first and second half of Ephesians are not disconnected. What Paul described in the gospel in the first half is directly, this is the direct application of all those things.

We're doing this because at Redeemer, we want to be a church of people who have distinctly Christian households. And wherever you live in the city and whatever your household looks like, whether that's a family, whether that's roommates, whether that's a family with kids, without kids, whatever your house looks like, we desire that all of our households be distinctly Christian households. That we wouldn't be people who just spend an hour at church once a week, but then the rest of our lives look exactly like the rest of the world.

but that all of our lives, including our homes and our work and so on, will be distinct from the world. And so when we approach this chapter on marriage, the big question that I want to ask as we get started is what makes a distinctly Christian marriage? My goal today is not to give you all just some broad general advice on like here are the five keys to success for a happy marriage or something like that.

broad advice that anyone could take away and apply to their marriage whether it is Christian or not. My goal today is to answer that question and help you all to apply. is a distinctly Christian marriage? What makes it different from the world around us? And so we're going look at three things. We're going to look at the essence of marriage, you know, essentially what it is, the structure of marriage, and then lastly the power of marriage. All so the essence, the structure, and the power of marriage. think there's a lot that we

say, I'm sure there's a lot of questions, follow -up questions that might come after hearing this passage and hearing it taught, a lot of different issues that I won't be able to get to, but let me encourage you and remind you, you know, can always come and ask me. If you have any follow -up questions after any sermon, you can come and ask me about those follow -up questions or things that didn't make sense, maybe even objections that you have. You can always come and ask me about those things because I can only say so much in 35 -ish minutes.

Some of you are thinking 35 minutes, yeah right. No. All right, let's begin with the essence of marriage. The essence of marriage, what is it that makes a Christian marriage Christian in its substance?

In other words, partially what I'm doing here is I'm trying to define marriage and make what marriage is very clear in our minds because we live in a time of great confusion over marriage. We can all recognize that, right? No matter what background or worldview you're coming from, we live in a time where there's a lot of confusion over marriage. There's a lot of debate over marriage all the way from, you know, on the one hand, is it even good? Is it something that you should pursue? Is it something that you should even want? There's a lot of people today who,

by choice, are delaying marriage or are avoiding marriage, do not desire to be married, do not desire to be married and have the obligations of a spouse and of a family. This is very common today. We see marriage is greatly declining across our younger demographics today. People are putting it off, they're avoiding it, they don't desire to ever get into it, and so on. So on the one hand, you know,

marriage is there's confusion over marriage and one of those parts of confusion is is it even something worth pursuing right you know or maybe only if you find someone really really really special and great then it's worth it someone that makes you super happy but otherwise you know is it really worth pursuing

On the other hand, we have confusion over marriage and what it even is. Is marriage the binding of one man and one woman? Can it be the binding of any other combination of consenting adults? That's the position of our world today that it really doesn't matter whether it's one man and one woman. It can be any combination of gendered people. It could be maybe more than two people. These are the debates

that we're having right now. And the world says, as long as you have consisting adults going into this agreement, the combination, the number, and so on.

doesn't really matter because it's about them and it's not about you. We have a lot of confusion, a lot of questions over marriage, understanding it, defining it, the value of it, the ethics of it, how you live in it and so on. So much confusion. And so I think what we need to answer really more than any of those questions is the question beneath them all, which is who gets to decide? Who gets to decide? Who has the authority to answer those questions?

Is the authority to answer those questions in any elected official or even bureaucrat? Do they get to decide?

Is it just those with the microphones in our culture today? Not necessarily this one I'm talking about right now, but the microphones of media, of social media and so on, where the debates happen on news networks, on podcasts and elsewhere. The people with the loudest voices, the biggest platforms maybe we can say, are they the ones who have the authority to decide? Is the authority to decide maybe just based or within every individual they get to answer for

themselves these questions on marriage. Who has the authority to decide? This is the question we have to answer beneath all those other questions because it determines the answer to all those others. Let me argue to you the Christian position. This is not mine, but the biblical position. We believe that marriage is God's institution.

It is God's institution. He owns it. He created it. Therefore, He is the one with the authority to answer.

He is the one with the authority to say, is what marriage is and is not. Here is the value of marriage. If it is worth pursuing, here is how marriages ought to be lived out. Because he is its creator, its designer, the one who instituted the institution, he has the authority to do so. God created this institution before the fall.

If you go back and you read in the creation narrative in Genesis 1, 2, and 3.

God creates the world, He greets Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve are bound together in what we would call the first marriage. Yes, it looks a little differently than what our wedding ceremonies do today, but they were, in the eyes of Scripture nonetheless, married, as much as any of you all here today are married, right? They were a married couple. This is why Paul quotes from Genesis chapter two in his section here, because he recognizes this is the

the founding of the institution of marriage in the creation. And this comes before the fall, right? In other words, before sin ever entered the picture, God had still created and ordained this institution of marriage. Therefore, as its designer and inventor, he is one with the authority. One time ago, this was several years ago, so Nora must have been maybe around three years old at the time.

I cooked some kind of dinner. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I cooked some kind of dinner. It was the first time I'd ever done it, and I made it, and I made a plate for Nora, and she was eating it, and she was just loving it. She was like, Dad, this is so good. This is delicious. And I was like, thank you, baby. She's a big fan of my cooking. And I was like, thank you. I really appreciate it. And she's like, what is it? And I I don't know. I just made it up. And she says, Dad, let me tell you something. I said, OK. She goes, if you made it, you get

name it. That's awesome. All right then. You know, and similarly with marriage, if God made it, he gets to decide. He gets to name it, he gets to define it, he gets to set the boundaries for it. He determines its value as well. God has the answer to these questions. And so when we look at scripture,

And we ask, well, what is the essence of this marriage? We find it in this chapter here, which also references the creation. Our first point is that the essence of marriage is covenantal love.

This is the essence, the substance of what marriage is, what it is founded and based upon. If we boil it down to its most essential characteristic beyond any other aspect of what makes a marriage a marriage, teamwork, companionship, procreation, any of these other things, if we boil it down to its most essential, it is this, covenantal love.

And I'll also show you how this is once again in contrast and distinct from the world. But in verse 31, Paul is quoting from the creation story. He's quoting from Genesis chapter two verse 22 whenever Paul says, you know, maybe in your version.

in the translation of scripture you're reading, sometimes Old Testament quotes will be put in bold, which is how mine has it, sometimes they're in italics. But maybe you notice there, depending on your translation, if it did that, how in verse 31 the font actually changes, right? And so in my translation, the font was bold. That's because Paul is quoting here, and he's quoting from Genesis chapter 2, where he says,

will become one flesh. That word there, that in my translation is translated as joined together. In other translations it says that the man and the wife or the husband of the wife, the man or the woman are cleaved together, it sometimes says. Kind of a...

old fashioned word for us. We don't use that a whole lot anymore, but it often says that they are cleaved together. But what does that mean? To be cleaved together means literally to be glued to something. It says that the husband and wife or the man and woman, they leave their families and then now they are glued to one another. They are cleaved with one another. In the quote that Paul shared from Genesis 2, it says, and the two will become one flesh. This gluing together is so

so intimate and it is so deep that it is as though they are no longer two individual people, but one, Paul says. This is the intensity of the cleaving, of the joining together, of the gluing together, that two people are now made one together. They are united with one another, but united by what? This is gonna be a big theme for today.

not united by a mutual feeling. They're united by an oath that they make to one another. That's the basis. That is what, what is it, what is the, if the cleaving is a glue, what is the glue made of that binds them together? It's an oath. It's a promise that they make to one another. And this is what joins them together. A marriage is a relationship that is based on a

covenant, which is relationship based on uniting through an oath, a promise. What Paul is describing here, when he quotes from Genesis and he's describing marriage, is that it is a covenant relationship. Let me describe a covenant relationship.

A covenant relationship is different from what we can call a retail or a consumer relationship. In a consumer relationship, the relationship exists so that it can meet the needs of each party who's there. So this is a similar type of relationship with the person that does your hair. If they do a good job,

they make you feel good, they make you look good, then you continue the relationship because you're getting out of it what you want and they're getting out of it what they want, which is the exchange of money, right? But as soon as one of the two of y 'all is no longer meeting those needs, let's say all of sudden your hairdresser, they just do a terrible job, they're no longer meeting your needs, you're not bound to them.

Since your needs are no longer being met, you can leave that relationship. Just as you would with the auto mechanic who no longer gets the job done or is charging you too much, you can break that relationship. You can break your relationship with your grocer or with your CPA or whoever else that is no longer meeting your needs. Because that relationship only exists for each person, whether it's, you in this case, someone providing a service and the person receiving the service, whatever else, as long as each person is having their

met. But in a covenant relationship, each party's needs are only met in order so that the covenant might be kept.

You see, it's flipped the other way around. In a covenant relationship, it is not about my needs being met, but it's about doing what I can to meet the needs of the other person so that the relationship can be maintained, so that the relationship can be continued. One of the most easy ways to describe this is the relationship between a parent and children.

That's a covenantal relationship, right? Because parents do not only parent and only fulfill their obligations to their children whenever the parents' are being met. Because very often, you guys who are parents, who are new parents, are discovering very often, no matter how cute they are, your needs are not being met. There's times when they're being so cute, it just fills your heart with warmth and fuzzy feelings, and you just can't stop yourself from meeting every one of their needs,

everyone of their demands, it's easy. But it's not always like that and the cute factor doesn't always do it for you. Very often you have to fulfill your obligations to that relationship even though your needs aren't being met. Well, why? Well, it's because you can't just kick them out on the street. You can't just say, I'm going to choose to not be in this relationship today or to play my role in this relationship today. No, you are bound to continue.

to maintain, to fulfill your obligations. Marriage, Christian marriage, is the same. It is not a consumer relationship that we enter into so that the marriage might fulfill my needs, so that it might meet my desires. Rather, a marriage is a covenant relationship where there is a meeting of our needs in the relationship, but only so that they might help to the keeping of the covenant.

The covenant is kept even when my needs are not being met.

You see, this is very, very different from our world's conception of what marriage is.

A role believes that marriage is something that happens whenever two people meet one another and they love what they are getting from the other person, right? It's because they love being with that beautiful person. They love sex with that person. They love maybe the companionship that they get from that person. They love the fun with that person, whatever else it might be. they appreciate what they are getting from this other person. And they want to make all those happy feelings and all of those good things

getting permanent and so in order to try to fix all those things you get married with the hope that being married will continue getting all those good experiences all those needs being met all of those desires being fulfilled and that's the whole point of getting married and if at any point you're no longer receiving those things you fall apart whatever else well then you leave the relationship because it's ultimately about

You see, Christian marriage, as Paul shows us, based upon creation, is in stark contrast to this. A Christian marriage is one that is based upon a promise, not a feeling. Whereas our world has those flipped around. So this is the essence of marriage, is that it's a covenant relationship based on covenantal love, a love that is promised. Let's talk about the structure of marriage, because beyond just

covenantal love and this idea of the covenant, there's even more distinctiveness to Christian marriage than just that. It's not as though we just feel something differently in our marriages than the rest of the world, but in the way that our marriages operate, there is a difference as well. It's even more distinct.

This point here on the structure of marriage might be the most controversial of them all, because Paul does say some things that bear some consequences and implications for our marriage that people today don't necessarily like. In fact, there's been times I've done many, many different weddings throughout my time. One of the privileges of having a church filled with so many young adults, right? And I consider that a great privilege. And so I've done a lot of marriages in my time.

I'm not trying to sound old whenever I say it like that. I've done a lot of marriages in my time. And a lot of premarital counseling. And even in premarital counseling with young Christian couples, both of them believers, both of them submitted to God's Word, whenever we talk about the structure of marriage, or in other words, whenever we come to what Paul says in Ephesians chapter five, and particularly Paul's words about submission and headship, the structure of marriage,

I've had even Christian couples tell me, we don't like

Well, sorry, it's there. Paul says it. He explains, he says, marriage has a structure to it. It is not just, it is not something that a husband and wife just enter into and then determine on their own what the roles and what the structure, what the hierarchy of that marriage is going to look like. If you are in a Christian marriage, we have one that is given to us by God, which Paul says here in Ephesians chapter five.

Like I said, this is going to be the most controversial point of my sermon today. And my goal is to explain it as clearly as possible without nuancing it too much.

as clearly as possible. Paul says it here in verses 22 through 24, he says, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of the body. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.

Those words are really clear.

And in the Greek, they say the same thing. This isn't one of those things where we can say, well, maybe if we dig down into the Greek, it kind of softens it for us, makes it a little bit more palatable. The Greek says the same thing, guys. I know that we in our egalitarian culture today don't like it, but what Paul says is so clear.

to make that mean anything other than what it clearly means on the surface is to be playing mental gymnastics and twisting the word of God to an excruciating degree. Here's the thing. This passage is not hard because it's hard to understand, but because it's hard to obey.

Paul lays it out clearly here. He says there is a structure to Christian marriage that is given to us by God, who is the one with the authority to make that structure. And so the second point is that the structure of marriage is one where there is headship and submission in unity.

So let me try to explain now, once again, and I can't get into every detail and application, but let me try to explain now in a summary fashion what this headship and submission looks like. I point out there, or I included those two words in that point in unity because that is so important for us to understand. Take note of the metaphor that Paul uses. He doesn't say that the husband is the king in the marriage.

He doesn't say that the husband is the emperor. There's so many other words and metaphors that Paul could have used for describing the husband's role as a leader in the house. So many other words, so many other metaphors he could have chosen, but he chose this one. He says the head of the family, the head of the household. Now, sometimes I think that what we do is we take that word and we pull it out of its context here and once again, just kind of...

take on all of the implications of a ruler, right? And that kind of a leader. But take note of the metaphor that Paul uses. He says that the husband is head just as Christ is the head. Okay? That's important. He's saying the husband is the head just as Christ is the head of the church. What is he talking about there? If you remember the context, this is only

a few paragraphs after Paul's explanation in Ephesians chapter four of the church and how the church is like a body where Christ is the head over that body. Nonetheless, there is still unity between the head and the body. The head does not rule the body separate from the body, but in unity with the body. This is why Paul says that the husband's headship is expressed in love for the body because no one

his own body. So proper Christian headship is lived out only whenever the husband cares for his wife, for his family, for his household in the same way that he would care for himself. He meets the needs of his household above and beyond the efforts that he'll go to meet his own needs because they are united as if they are his own body.

Therefore, we need to keep that metaphor in mind that headship and submission are lived out in the same way of the headship of the body where there is unity.

He doesn't say that the husband is the tyrant over the family. Because if we don't get this metaphor right, and if we don't flesh out what headship means, well then we know that it's very possible for some to start to out their headship, not as Christ does over the church, but to live out their headship as a tyrant does over an oppressed people. Ruling through fear, through intimidation.

ruling through sheer might, right, or threats of might, rather than leading in the way that Paul describes here. Husbands, you cannot lead as a tyrant over your home. You cannot lead effectively over your home unless you are doing so out of the same consideration that you have for your home as you would for your own body.

That's what Paul says clearly. He says, who loves his wife loves himself in verse 29, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but provides and cares for it just as Christ does for the church. So the husband is head as Christ is head about the body, over the body. This means that, well, this means three things. I'm about to get ahead of myself. This means three things. So three sub points of

this headship and submission mean? First of all, headship and submission require unity in Christ. They require unity in Christ. A lot of couples and people, think, do not like this, as they've told me, as I mentioned before, and receive pushback because wives or soon -to -be wives do not like the idea of just being bossed around by their husband. And you know what?

I sympathize with that. I would not like to be bossed around by another person either. I would not like to live under a tyrant either, which is why they push back, because that is what they think this means. And headship and submission, just living with someone who, regardless of his own foolishness and ignorance, just bosses one around. But that's not what it's talking about. There has to be unity between the people. What that means is husbands

You have to lead out of a position of unity with your wife. You don't lead as just charging forward and your wife or your family trying to keep up. You also don't lead just by barking orders and driving, regardless of what their point of view is, what their cares or concerns are, but rather,

Out of a unity that is cultivated between husband and wife, you lead out of that unity. So that you are not, just as a body cannot leave without the, I'm sorry, just as a head cannot leave without the body coming with it, the entire whole has to move in unity with one another. This is why you have to live out your marriage as a team. You gotta live it out as a team.

It's not a coach and a player or a coach and a trainee or a boss and an underling. You work together as a team. Husbands, your role as leader is lived out as a member of a team. You do it together. You do it in unity, not dragging the wife along or barking orders at the family, but all of you moving together as a united body. So what that means is husbands, in order to lead effectively, it's going to take a lot more work.

It's easy to just bark orders. It's easy to just get your way without having to use any persuasion or moral authority.

But if you're going to lead in the way that Christ designed in marriage, you're going to have to be a better leader than what just being a tyrant would require you to be. You're going to have to communicate. You're going to have to be patient in.

bringing your wife to, if there's a difference of viewpoints and opinions, you're gonna have to be patient in trying to persuade your wife to your side and be open -minded to what her side is so that you can find out what is best for us, right? You're gonna have to be a better communicator. You're gonna have to be more patient. You're going to have to have moral authority so that wherever you lead, your family might rightly follow.

If you waste your moral authority on obvious lacks of integrity or on leading as a tyrant rather than as a Christ -like leader, then you will not be leading out of unity. You will be leading as a boss with underlings. Submission and headship require unity, which means husbands, you have to be better leaders. Secondly,

Headship and submission require two people who are submitted to Christ. Paul says in verse 22, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. This doesn't mean that the wife submits to her husband.

in unquestioned obedience.

We bow down before Christ. He is our King. What he says, we believe and we obey, even whenever we don't like it. Okay. But what it means here, what Paul is saying is not that type of obedience as we have before Christ. He is talking about following a person who is following the Lord. So if that person is not following Christ,

wives, you still live as unto Christ. Does that make sense?

As to the Lord, because the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church. The husband has an office and a role, an office to hold and a role to play. Headship over the home as Christ is head over the church. And whenever that husband lives out that role, wives submit to that role. But whenever that husband is not fulfilling that role, whenever he is not holding that office properly,

and he is not leading as Christ does over the church, but he is leading instead as a worldly ruler, as a dictator, as a boss, then his authority is now illegitimate. Therefore, the wife has permission, has the obligation, according to Scripture, to not submit to an ungodly man, but to submit to Christ. This is why I say, headship and submission in a Christian marriage

requires two people who are submitting to Christ. As long as the husband is not submitting to Christ, his authority is illegitimate. But wives, you must be submitted to Christ as well. If you are fighting against your husband's authority, if you are contradicting the godly leadership of a Christ -like man, then you need to ask yourself if you are submitting to Christ. You might be trying to make the household your own little kingdom.

I know that happens. You might be trying to make the household your own little kingdom, right? And taking advantage of this servant leadership concept to have your husband submit to your kingdom.

You need to submit to Christ. And if you submit to Christ and his kingdom, then you will follow the leadership that God has given you. If it is, like I said, legitimate, Christ -like, godly leadership. So when you have two people who are submitted to Christ, though they play different roles in the household, they're both in unity working towards the same destination because both people are submitted to Christ as their Lord. So headship and submission requires unity.

It requires two people, both the husband and the wife, being submitted to Christ. Lastly, headship and submission require sacrificial love, just as Christ sacrificially loved us. This relationship of headship and submission or of leading and following ought to be characterized by love. Paul says in verse 25, husbands, after he just clearly stated their role as leader in the home,

What is the nature of the husband's leadership? Paul says in verse 25, husbands love your wives.

Christianity alone makes it a command in the Holy Scriptures that the husband love the wife.

It's completely unique. We take it for granted today that this is how it ought to be. That's because we're living with the benefit of centuries of Christian culture. Before Christendom, before centuries where Christian values were dominant in culture, that was not taken for granted. Therefore, you had incredible abuse. You had incredible disrespect.

of the husband towards the wife, the husband being able to do whatever he pleased both in the marriage and outside the marriage because there was never the command before. But Paul in Ephesians 525 places a command in the holy scriptures that husbands love your wives. What does it mean for a husband to love their wife? He makes this crystal clear, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. Husbands, how do you judge whether or not you are loving your wives? How do you know? What is the standard, the criteria, the filter for knowing what love in a marriage looks like? It is the standard of Jesus' sacrificial love. If you say that you are loving your spouse, okay, because obviously this goes to both, right? Not just husbands towards the wife, but wives.

loving their husbands as well. Okay, if you say that you are loving your spouse, but you are not putting their needs first, if you are not caring for them, if you are not considering how you might give to them and not just receive from them, according to Scripture, you are not loving them. Love in a marriage, according to Scripture, is love that looks like the sacrificial love of Christ. This is what characterizes the relationship of leadership and following, or headship and submission.

Christian love and marriage, once again, means you seek more of how you can give than just how you can receive. You are thinking about how can I meet the needs of my spouse, not just how can my spouse meet my needs. You are thinking about how do I make my spouse's day better, not just how do they make my day better. You think.

What ways can I go above and beyond? What ways can I serve? What ways can I surprise them? What ways can I make them feel special? What ways can I love them more than just all those things I'm wanting to get back? Me being made to feel special, my day being improved, me being served and so on. You were thinking about them more.

It means considering their needs as more important than your own. Because this is what Christ has done for us. In that he left heaven, came down to this earth, and that he gave up his life on the cross. By giving up his life on the cross, literally laying down his life on our behalf, he was putting our good, which was our salvation, before his own. So that by laying down his life for us, he might redeem us from our

sin, he might save us from death and condemnation, and we might be brought into this household of God, where he is our groom and we are his bride. It is that level of love, husbands and wives, that you are called to live out in your marriage.

So let me give you just a couple of quick applications. Husbands, are you submitting to Christ so your wife can follow your lead? If there is a lack of healthy and life -giving headship and submission in your home, it might be because you are not submitting to Christ. And only if you submit to Christ will your family be able to effectively follow you.

Are you submitting to Christ? Are you making it a joy or a burden for your wife and your family to follow your lead? Following the lead of a Christ -like head will be a joy for a family. It will be satisfying for a wife. It will be life -giving for children and it will make them flourish. But if it is not Christ -like leadership, then it will be a burden.

It will make people empty rather than full. It will produce broken people rather than whole.

Conversely, wives, are you helping your husband to be the leader that God has called him to be? Or are you undermining him? Are you talking down to him? Are you resisting him whenever he attempts to lead? Even if you are interested in following his leadership, are you helping him to lead by having an open mind yourself, whenever there are disagreements, so that you might see his point of view

but also communicate well and not just fight back for him to understand your point of view, right? Communicating clearly and explicitly. Like I said, I've done a lot of pre -mortar counseling in my day and wives, this is something that I go through nine out of 10 times in pre -mortar counseling. Some of y 'all remember us talking about this. Wives, you have to communicate what you are thinking and feeling. He can't read your mind.

That's another way that you help them lead. We both have obligations given to us by God in a Christian marriage. By submitting to Christ, we fulfill those obligations. And whenever we fulfill those obligations, then we will keep the covenant. We see here in Ephesians chapter five that marriage is more about keeping the covenant than anything else.

The world believes in this idea of love as a warm feeling that you have. But we recognize that in a Christian marriage, and biblically speaking, love is not just a warm feeling that we have, but it is an action. It is a choice and a decision that we make to put the needs of the other before ourself and to seek the good of the other before ourself. This not warm feeling is love. And love sustains the covenant, which is the goal of the marriage.

The world believes that you make a covenant in order to sustain the love. That's backwards. Biblically, we understand that you love in order to sustain and keep the covenant.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this about marriage. He said,

of marriage above the sanctity, rights, and promise of love. He concludes with this powerful statement. He said, it is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love. This is important for us to recognize because you need to realize for those of you who are approaching marriage or who have just recently been married, been married for a short amount of time, it's important that you realize

that the person you marry today is not going to be the same person you marry two decades from now. The person that Leila is married to today is not the same person she was married to 10, 12 years ago, when we got married. We change. People change. You cannot make your commitment based upon what you feel right now, but you're making a commitment no matter what you feel in the future. People are going to change, and it's a huge risk.

to enter into. That's why a lot of people in our culture right now are looking at the risk and some are judging that it's not worth it. People change. But you see the goal in a Christian marriage is that you change. Because the power of a Christian marriage is that through a husband and a wife living out the gospel with one another, they are both being transformed to look more and more like the king that we are submitted to. What is the point of marriage?

Sometimes we look so deep that we miss what's right there on the surface. Paul makes it so clear. The point is that a man and a woman coming together as a husband and wife are living out, let's put it this way, they're putting on a drama of what has happened with Christ and his church. They're putting out a drama for the world to see of what it looks like in the relationship between Christ and his church. They are living out a picture

of the gospel in their home, in their neighborhood, and so on. And so through living out that picture of the gospel, they are being transformed. This is where you understand how the risk of marriage is mitigated. Yes, it is a risk. There will be surprises. There will be hurts. There will be sins and offenses between the two people. But the risk is mitigated when we recognize that we are entering into something which is playing out the drama of the gospel. Therefore, whenever we are hurt or offended,

we were recognized that it is not appropriate for us in the role that we're playing in this drama to seek retribution for our hurts, but rather to live out what Christ did for us, which is grace and forgiveness. We see how Christ has loved us and forgiven us, we who are his unfaithful spouse. And so whenever we are hurt and offended by our spouse, we live out that same gospel with them. When I remember how Christ has loved me,

then I can forgive and selflessly serve my spouse. So let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that you chose to love an unfaithful bride and that you chose that you would cleanse and prepare and make your bride blameless and holy, not through any work that she could do, but that you would cleanse her by your blood, that you would rescue her by your own death, that you would make her blameless by taking on her blame. And Lord, now as we, your bride, come before

made blameless and pure, washed by your blood. We ask that you would remind us of that and make this something that is a real power in our lives so we might live out that gospel as a drama for our families, our friends, and the world around us to see. Let our marriages be marriages that are based upon covenantal love and unity where there are two people following Christ

and living out the structure that you have placed in the home, remembering that it is not about their needs or ideas being proven, but that it's about proving your ideas before the world by living out the roles that you have given. So Lord, we pray these things in the name of our bridegroom who laid down his life for us so he might cleanse us, our King, Jesus Christ. We pray this in his name, amen.