The Resurrection Life in Married Life
January 26, 2016
Marriage is facing some hard times in our culture today. There are those that say that marriage just isn’t working for today’s culture. The reasons are many: First, there are those who put off getting married because they are looking for the perfect soul mate and can’t seem to find one. They are looking for an ideal person: someone who will not demand a lot from them; someone who is low maintenance; someone who is healthy, interesting, fun, and content with life. They want a marriage that’s a 50-50 partnership. They want a marriage of convenience that doesn’t demand work to make it work. So then, when their partnership no longer works, they end it… Second, There are those who simply say, “What’s the point? As long as we love each other, who needs a piece of paper.” So they forgo marriage altogether, they just live together and when it no longer works they simply move on. And then there are those who have tried hard to make their marriage work but no matter how hard they tried, their marriage ended up broken…
Marriage IS facing hard times. In many ways it doesn’t seem to be working. But one thing remains: No matter how confusing, bewildering or hard marriage is, marriage remains God’s gift to mankind. Marriage was and is His idea. When God gave us marriage, He made it possible for you to do life with a companion for life. He also gave us His design for a marriage that does work. In Ephesians 5:22-33 God has given us to help make a marriage that works:
God Gave us Power for a Marriage That Works The power to make a marriage that works is not dependent on you, but the Spirit of God living in you. In verse 22, and we read, “Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” and immediately we react to the word “submit.” It’s like a dirty word in our culture today. Our culture tries to define this concept for us, telling us that this is an unenlightened and ancient practice created by men used to strip a woman of her dignity and rights. And when a women hears this command “submit” and applies our culture’s definition of the term, she hears this: “Make your self a doormat to your man. Let him walk all over you. Let him take advantage of you, use you, and let him have his way in everything.” In other words, a women WITHOUT the Spirit of God hears this term “submit” and she wants nothing to do with it because “to submit” means setting herself up for tyrannical abuse by her husband. And if that’s what this term really meant, then she would be right to think that this can’t be God’s idea for a marriage that works. Who would?
So let’s back up a bit and look at this term in the context it is given to us. First, this term “submit” is given to us in the context of what it means to be filled with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit of God is how God designed us to live the Resurrection life – this new life we have in Christ. With this new life we have a new power to live life – God’s power: a power full of grace, truth, freedom, security, humility and love – all because we’ve been united with Christ’s life.
And the key to living this new life is to NOT LIVE IT OUT OF OUR OWN power, but out of the Power God gave us, when we put our trust in Jesus: The Power of the Holy Spirit. The idea is to willingly allow His thoughts to permeate your thoughts, His ways to guide your ways, His desires to become your desires. And we are to do this over and over again, continually allowing God’s Spirit to guide us – because we are so quick to try and live this life with our own wisdom, in our own strength and by our own desires. But when we do allow God’s Spirit to have His ways in us something changes in us:
We have a new joy in our hearts – we make music in our hearts to God. We have a new confidence and enthusiasm and our relationship with God becomes a dance of joy
We have a new attitude that colors everything – we begin to see all of life as a gift from God and become grateful for everything and everyone.
We embrace a new way of relating to others – We see them as God does, and gladly submit ourselves to them: putting their needs ahead of our own, so we can serve them like Jesus served us. With this mindset we become servants of one another in all our relationships. And the most strategic and important relationship where this new way of relating is played out is first and foremost in the relationship of marriage. So that now, when two people come into marriage united with Christ and filled with the Spirit they come into marriage looking to how they can serve one another, rather than looking to what they can get from one another. This is how radically different a Christian marriage is supposed to work! This servant mindset is the power that makes it a joy to be married. This servant heart unleashes the power to help your marriage go the distance. And it is this servant attitude is the hope that can save any marriage.
God Gave us a Pattern for a Marriage That Works: First, the pattern for wives: “Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” In other words: “Wives place your well being into the care of the man God has given you. Trust that He will lead you in such a way that he will always have your best interest at heart.”
We put our eternal well being into the care of Jesus. God gave us Jesus to die for us and to give us eternal life. If He has our eternal interests at heart, we can trust that He will always have our best interests at heart in everything. If you know Jesus this way, it becomes easy to put your well being into His hands. So the thought here is that wives, you are to do the same thing with your husbands. And the reason you are to do this is given in verse 23, 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. God has designed marriage for husbands to lead their wives in the same way as Christ leads the church. That’s what headship means. It means leadership. What kind of leadership is this? Again, it is not a domineering or controlling leadership, but the servant leadership of Jesus.
So the question is how does Jesus lead us? He leads us with grace. In other words, there is nothing in this world or in your life that will stop Him from loving you. Not your past, not your flaws, not your rebellion, not your sin. He loves you because He chose to love you no matter what. His grace saves you, His grace keeps you, and His grace to you means that He will always be for you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will always seek what is best for you. That’s how our Savior Leads. So wives, the pattern God gives you in marriage is to place your life in the hands of the man God gave you and let Him lead you. Let him give grace to you. Let him be for you. Wives, your responsibility is to let Him lead.
Now, the pattern for husbands: The pattern for husbands is this: 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. 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. Ephesians 5:25-30 Husbands, God has given us a unique privilege. The pattern for our role in our marriages is to live out the gospel for our wives. Our role is to lead her with grace. Our role is to lead her with sacrifice. Our role is to love our wives like Jesus loved the church. What this means is that God wants you to give yourself fully for her: to die to our selfish ways, to surrender our pride and seek her best no matter what it might cost us.
Men, marriage is a high and holy calling. But it’s one where God gives us the privilege of living out the gospel with our mates. And He wants your marriage to work. He knows that if we try to make it work in our own strength we will fail. So He gave us what we need to make a marriage that works. He gave us His power and He gave us Jesus.
So we have a choice. If you know the love of Christ personally, then you will be able to love your wife this way. If not, you will not. You will not die to self. But if you do know this love, you will lay down your life for your wife, because that’s what the Spirit of Christ in you will do every time. And when you do, you will model the gospel to your wife, to your children and to your friends, and you will make a marriage that doesn’t just work. It will thrive.