God's Secret Plan: File #13

The second half of Ephesians deals with our walk with Christ. Because we are SITTING with Christ in heavenly places, blessed with all spiritual blessings, it must alter the way we WALK. If we received new life then we should live in a different way. We have already seen several aspects of this new walk--a walk of love, a walk of purity, and a walk of wisdom. The last section ended with an exhortation to submit to one another. This topic, a walk of submission will be the burden of almost the rest of the epistle. For the next several verses Paul will deal with the way we interact with one another in the context of very specific roles. The first topic under this is the subject of husbands and wives, found in Ephesians 5:21-33.

It should also be noted that these are not new relationships Paul was introducing. These things had already been around for thousands of years. And while marriage and the family had been instituted at the beginning by God, the third--what might be called the social or economic relationship--was not specifically ordained by God at all. These were things which were around before Christ--for most of the people at Ephesus, these things had been part of their lives before they became Christians. And that is what is interesting. Paul does not introduce something new or do away with something old--what he does in all these instances is give new meaning and importance to something that was already there.

A few remarks need to be made by way of introduction. First, this passage is specifically about husbands and their wives, about wives and their husbands. This passage has nothing to say about the relationship between men and women in any context besides the bond of marriage.

Second, we should note here a pattern which we will see repeated twice again as we move into chapter six. In each case, we see a pair of distinct but interlocking commands concerning distinct but interlocking relationships. Because the world is a creation, something that was deliberately made by someone, it has a certain inherent structure. This world is not a melting pot where everything merges together into one harmonious whole. The world is like a puzzle, where every piece fits in one place and one place only, like a body in which each organ has a certain function and relation to the rest of the body. Because of that, there are specific roles which we, as human beings, fill in relation to one another, specific roles with unique, asymmetrical responsibilities. In order to have a marriage, you must have both a husband and a wife and they must stand in a specific relationship to one another. A man who does not have a child is not a father, and therefore the roles and responsibilities of the father and child are different. You cannot have an employer with an employee and they are, by definition, unique. That is why Paul has separate commands for different people--because they are in different positions within these specific social structures. However, the underlying principle in all this is:  “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”

The third thing to note in this case, as in the others, that though the role and function of the separate members are different this difference does not translate to inequality of value. The wife does not respect and submit to the husband because men are better than women or because women are better than men. Children may be in some cases better than there parents and masters may be in practice inferior to their servants. A private is below a sergeant in rank, because some kind of hierarchy is necessary for a large organization to work, but nobody thinks that means any given sergeant is better than every private in every possible way. While the duty of a husband to his wife and a wife to her husband are distinct, yet they are also equal before God because they are equal in their dependence on God. (see 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 and Galatians 3:28).

The concept of interdependence is very important to this passage. In verse 23 Paul says that “the husband in the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” Obviously, the basic sense of this is that the husband is, in some sense, a position of authority over the wife just as Christ is in a position of authority over the church. We use the word head to detonate a position of leadership or prominence. So we call a CEO the “head” of a company or a president the “head” of a nation. This is all fairly straightforward, though, obviously, Christ's authority over the church is far more extensive than that of a husband over his wife. But if we take head in its more basic meaning, we see this passage in a new light, for the head is, in a real sense, “the saviour of the body.” It is the head, the mind, which protects and takes care of the body. Your feet will not find shoes for themselves nor can the stomach obtain food for itself, without the direction of the head. We may sometimes casually say of a certain person that they are not using their head. But if they really weren't, they would die in a matter of days. Those who lose some degree of their mental capacity are in continual danger unless protected by other people. The head is saviour of the body--that is its function and purpose.

And that is the relationship which a husband has to his wife and Christ has to the church. Just as the human head works to protect and nourish the body, so the husband is to protect and sustain his wife--and just so Christ protects and nourishes the church. The headship of the husband or of Christ does not mean mere authority but a certain function--a function of service.

Paul goes into this in more details in verses 26-27, at least regarding Christ's service for the church. Jesus gave himself for the church that He might sanctify it by cleansing it, by instituting the rite and the reality of baptism by His word and that he might make it a glorious and perfected church, holy and without blemish, without blame (which is the same wording used in the opening of Ephesians, in Ephesians 1:4). Just as the head takes care of the body and tries to make it the best it can be, so Christ gave Himself for the church that it might be a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle. And in the same way, the husband is to care for the wife, not like a political ruler who (too often) rule their subjects in order to get something out of them, but like the head, which is the saviour of the body.

But why does the head try to take care of the body? Because the head is part of the body. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote one of his weird sci-fi stories about a race of aliens whose head were separate from their body and could live on its own. But we human beings are not like that. The head and the body, while they can be separated for purposes of discussion, cannot be separated in real life, without grave consequences. The head and the body are one--just as Christ and the church are one and as the husband and wife are one. Verses 28-31 make this quite clear: “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” The head and the body are so closely related that for the head to take care of the body can be roughly said to be the head taking care of itself. It's desire to protect the body can be called self-preservation. We do not usually think of ourselves as a head with a body. When we move our hand, we do not think consciously: my head sent instructions to my hand to move. We would simply say: “I moved my hand.” That is how close the connection between the head and the body is. And that is the same kind of connection which a husband has to his wife and which Christ has to the church. For a man to take care of his wife should be as natural and straightforward as a man take care of himself. For a man to love his wife is the same thing, in the end, as for him to love himself. And in some manner (for “this is a great mystery”), the same thing is true of Christ and the church. Jesus has so identified Himself with His church that they may be considered members of the same organism, “members of his body.”

And here is the important point to note. I stated earlier, that the head has no choice about being part of the body. But a man has a choice about being part of a marriage. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother.” It is a choice. And the same thing is true of Christ and His church. It is true of any marriage that it “might not” have happened. Some marriages almost didn't happen. And the spiritual union between Christ and His church “might not” have happened. He willingly chose to enter into it, even at the cost involved. Just as a husband consciously and deliberately enters into the marriage contracts out of love for his wife, even so “Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”