[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, wives, submit to your husbands.
Husbands, love your wives.
This is the wisdom from St. Paul, and we want to consider it this morning.
Paul begins his table of duties, how we are to live as Christians in this fallen world.
But let’s take a couple of steps back, and then we’ll get a bit of a running start
at it.
Last week we heard St. Paul from Ephesians chapter 5, verses 8 to 10, where he’s talking
about how the Christians are like light in this world of darkness.
Paul says, at one time you were darkness, but now you are light, and the Lord walk as
children of the light.
That’s an amazing name that St. Paul has by the Holy Spirit for you and for me.
children of the light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and
right and true. And try, says St. Paul, try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
The Lord Jesus has given us a new life and he has placed us in this world to
live that new life as light in a dark place. We live in the midst of darkness, and we feel
it. And I know that you all feel it creeping in more and more. We know that there is something
wrong with the world. It seems like it’s getting darker and darker. How are we to live
then in the midst of this darkness?
Paul, in this section, is giving us the beginning of what we call the table of duties. And we
find this in a number of places in the Scripture, including 1 Peter. I’ll give a few verses
from that a little bit later. Also, Paul writes to Timothy, same sort of thing. The basic
idea is that our love, the way that we live, looks different depending on our calling.
So Paul writes to wives and to husbands in chapter 5, verses 22 to 33, and then to children
and to parents in chapter 6 verse 4, and then to bond servants and masters in chapter 6
verses 5 to 10. And this again is the basic idea that how your love looks, the shape of
your love depends on your calling. It depends on your office. It depends on your place
in this life. God, who is a God of order, has ordered this world in various institutions,
institutions, and He’s placed us in those institutions with different roles to fulfill.
In the language that I think we like to use today, there’s a leader and then there are
those who are led, but the biblical picture is that there’s a head and then a body.
Now one of the things that I want us to consider this morning is that we, in our day and age,
for whatever reason, are really laser focused on the leadership part. We’re focused on
the head much more than on the body. We’re focused on those who have authority rather
than the difficulty of being under authority. We focus on that authority figure rather than
being under them, and this is skewed from the biblical picture. The Bible wants us to
think about what does it mean to be under authority or under order.
So as an example, we focus, just in the church, you know the church is divided up into preachers
and hearers. That’s how Luther divides it up in the small catechism, the table of duties
there. There are those who preach and those who hear. And we really focus on the preacher
and not much on the hearer. Ross just finished a class on preaching. He had to go and practice.
He had to write a bunch of sermons. He had to get graded on that. But I would suspect
that while we’ve all taken classes up here on how to preach, none of⦠no one has taken
a class on how to listen to a sermon, which probably is what we need because it’s actually
harder to listen to a sermon than it is to preach it. That’s maybe a secret that I’m
not supposed to tell you guys, but that’s why I had to become a preacher because I could
never sit still to listen. We focus on the giving but not on the giving. We focus on
the authority but not on being under authority. We focus on the ruling but not on the submitting.
But this is how it is in the church is that we⦠that we are to focus on what it means
to be under order. In the church, there’s preacher and hearers. In the state, there’s
rulers and citizens. In the family, there’s husbands and wives. There’s parents and children.
At work, there’s boss and worker. And while we are always focused on the head, the Scriptures
focus us on the body.
So let me just give you a couple of examples from Peter, his table of duties. He says to
all Christians, be subject, be submissive for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.
First Peter 2.13. Servants, he says, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only
to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. First Peter 2.18. Likewise, Peter writes,
wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they
may see your good works,” and so forth. 1 Peter 3, verse 1. In other words, every Christian
is called to submit to the work of submission. I think this is highlighted in St. Paul in
two ways. First, can you notice the order that Paul addresses those to whom he’s writing?
He speaks first to wives and then to husbands. He speaks first to children and then to parents.
He speaks first to bondservants and then to masters. And second, that word submit, which
causes us so much heartache in chapter 5, verse 22, is not even there in the Greek.
If you just, you see it in the bulletin, are you looking at the text there? If you were
to just read it in the Greek, it says this, it simply says, wives, to your own husbands
as to the Lord. The word, the verb submit is not even there. You have to pick up the
verb from the previous verse, 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
In other words, St. Paul assumes that every Christian, in one way or another, is submitting
to someone, somehow, and that starts to take a specific shape when it comes to our vocations.
Let me give you the whole flow of the text, Ephesians 5, verse 15, all the way to verse
24, and hear how it goes.
St. Paul says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the
best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand
what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, that’s debauchery, but be filled
with the Spirit. Address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody to the Lord in your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another, out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even
as Christ is the head of the church’s body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church
submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”
The Greek word for submit is the word hupotasso, which means hupo, it means under, and tasso
means order.
And so probably the closest English we could get to it is subordinate, but all of these
words for whatever reason sound terrible to us, and we’ve got to work through that.
But let’s just make this point here.
Let’s settle in on this, that a big part of our Christian life, and this grows out
of the fourth commandment, honor your father and mother, a big part of our Christian life
life is learning how to rightly be submissive, to rightly submit, to rightly live under the
order that the Lord has put in place. It’s to learn the art and the discipline and the
beauty of submission. Now, a couple of points on this. Number one, we are all submitting
one way or another according to our vocation. Even the king who’s ruling over a nation
submits to his own father and mother according to the fourth commandment and to his pastor.
Every pastor submits to his own pastor and is ruled by other people. All of us have parents
to whom we submit, and so we start our lives in that submissive posture. And everyone in
In every vocation, no matter what, everyone submits to God.
Now this should include the understanding that submission is not simply passive.
It’s not simply letting something happen to us.
But it is what we are called to actively engage in.
submission. We are to pursue a life of submission, of honoring those in authority over us.
Now, third, and we made this point before, but just to make sure we say it clearly, that
our submission takes a particular shape according to the purpose of the institution in which
we find ourselves. So just, for example, to take the example of the church. Jesus has
instituted the church for the distribution of the good news of the gospel, the forgiveness
of sins, both in the word read and preached and also in baptism and the Lord’s Supper,
the sacraments administered. So the Lord establishes an order in the church. There are preachers
and hearers, and your submitting to me as your pastor looks a lot like what you’re
doing now, listening to me preaching. Do you see that the shape of submission is connected
to the purpose of the institution? I can’t charge you guys taxes. I can’t tell you what
fees to pay. I can’t send you to certain schools. That’s what the government’s role is and that’s
what the parent’s role is to the children and so forth. So the shape of submission takes
shape according to the purpose of the institution. Submission for children to parents looks different
than submission for workers to their boss. Submissions of citizens to those who rule
over them looks different than the submission of wives to husbands. We have to understand
then what happens when those different shapes of submission come into conflict with one
another. And I think this is what we like to think about as well. Because you say, what
What happens, pastor, when I’m trying to submit to one person, and they say that I
should sin?
For example, what if my parents are pickpockets, and they say, we want you to help us join
the family business by stealing that guy’s pocket watch, right?
Now I have the command of God to honor my father and my mother, but I also have the command
of God to not steal, so what do I do?
The answer is that I submit to God whenever any earthly authority to which I am under
submission would have me sin.
Now remember the martyrs.
They’re our example here.
The emperor would come along and the emperor would say, you have to worship me instead
of Jesus.
You can’t say Jesus is Lord, you have to say Caesar is Lord.
And the Christians who are commanded to submit to every rule would say to the emperor,
no, I cannot submit to your command to sin. Now we like that part because we’re American and kind
of rebellious, right? We like it when we can resist the authority that’s over us. But then
the emperor would say, well, okay, fine, if you won’t offer that pinch of incense and say,
Lord Caesar, then you have to die. I’m going to feed you to the lions. And the Christians would
say, fine, I’ll submit to you there. Because after all, it’s not a sin to be eaten by
a lion. It’s not a sin to go to prison. It’s not a sin to be burned. It’s not a sin
to have your head cut off. Now, it was certainly a sin for the emperors and the rulers who
treated the Christians so poorly, but vengeance is the Lord’s, not ours. So we submit wherever
we can. It’s part of the wonder of being a Christian. And there’s a lot of wonderful
stuff here. But here we have to face the fact that this word, in fact, all of these words
submit, submission, subordinate, to be subject, all of these scrape against our 21st century
American ears. Or to maybe say it another way, these words scrape against the darkness
that St. Paul was talking about earlier. We walk in darkness.
I want to⦠I want to take a little detour. I hope you all will come with me on this.
It’s a little bit wandering off the path, but I think it’ll serve us well because
I want to think a little bit about the particular shape of darkness that is in our own culture
that chafes against this particular verse. Because even before we get to the word submit,
it, we find that our culture is offended by the word that comes before it. Wives. Husbands.
These are the realities that our world is fighting against. Our world is trying to forget
what it means to be married. What it means to be a father and a mother. What it means
to be a man and a woman. That’s the darkness that we face. That’s the darkness to which
we are called to shine as lights in the midst of.
When I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago for the Issues Etc. Conference, I got to spend
a little bit of time talking to Robert George, who’s a professor who thinks and writes on
a lot about marriage and the state of our culture, and he made a point as we were in
conversation there that all of the big questions that we face in our culture today, all of
the⦠the kind of the front of the culture wars, all the big things that we’re⦠that
we’re trying to face. Go back to one particular doctrine, in fact one particular heresy.
He said all of it comes from Gnosticism. Now stick with me here. Gnosticism is that
old ancient heresy that keeps coming back. It’s the basic idea that the physical world
is bad and that the spiritual world is good, and I am a human person because of my spirit,
in fact, because of my consciousness, or even my self-consciousness. And the inner life
that we have is the true life, and the outer life is not. In fact, it’s the bad part
of life. It’s something that has to be overcome.
Now he walked through the four major fights that we’re having in our own age and showed
how they’re all connected to Gnosticism. Number one, he said, abortion. The baby in
the womb is not conscious, therefore has no value as a human being, and must be overcome
come by the choice of the mother, or the preferred language is the host, in order to avoid the
slavery of motherhood. That’s the language of Margaret Singer. It comes under the ironic,
well kind of wickedly ironic assertion that Jesus said, this is my body. And that’s used
to defend the killing of the unborn because, after all, they’re not yet a human being.
Or number two, Dr. George says, consider euthanasia. If a person loses consciousness or they’re
in intractable pain, then you are called to end the suffering and you can do so by ending
the sufferer. Problem solved. Or take the question of marriage and whether two men
or two women can be married?” He said, it’s not the body that matters after all, or marriage
bringing forth life and children, but rather the internal state of how you feel. Love.
I love, and that matters more than anything else, no matter what my body says. Or, most
recently, the question of transgenderism, and here I think we can see it most clearly,
that my inside determines my reality and my external self, that is my body, must submit
to my inner truth. That’s pure Gnosticism. I think Robert George is right in this articulation.
In fact, and he’s a Catholic guy, I wanted to tell him that Martin Luther had the same
insight 500 years ago, but I didn’t get to tell him that. But we should understand
and the phenomenon behind this attack, this Gnostic lie.
Now whenever we talk about these things, we want to speak clearly but also very compassionately
because the more that these questions arise in our own culture, the more the darkness
starts to seep in, the more people are wounded by it.
So, we know, you know, just with the question of abortion, you know people that have had
abortions.
They’re in your families, they’re in your neighborhoods, they’re sitting next to you
in church, and to those who have committed abortion or have had aborted babies, we must
say very, very clearly that Jesus died for that sin.
That the blood of Jesus cleanses all sin.
That what you’ve done is suffered for by Jesus and He, listen very carefully, He is not mad
at you.
That’s why He went to the cross.
That’s why He suffered and died, so that He could call you His own, so that He could delight
in you.
To those who are suffering the guilt and the shame of being part of conversations that
are euthanistic, the same preaching is true also for you.
This is why Jesus died.
He didn’t just die for the small sins, He died for the big ones.
For those who are, and this happens more and more, and I think we’ll see it more and more,
For those who are tempted with homosexuality, to those who are tempted with what’s called
gender confusion nowadays, euphemistically, to those who are tempted by these things,
we must say very clearly that Jesus was tempted in every way like we are, which means that
Jesus also knew this temptation, that Jesus also knew this suffering, that
Jesus also knew this affliction, that Jesus knows what it means to live in
this fallen world. There is no question about this and Jesus forgives
all of your sins. Corbin, you’re gonna help me preach here in a minute, buddy.
That Jesus died precisely, Jesus died precisely for the guilt that we bear,
precisely for the shame that we suffer. Jesus died to spill his blood to cover
you and to call you white and holy so that the church is a place of refuge for
sinners, for all sinners. No matter how much the darkness we find outside and
inside, all of it is covered, all of it is forgiven, all of it is carried to the
cross, all of it stayed in the grave, all of it is forgotten. And when we stand
before the Lord Jesus, we will stand in robes made white by His blood. We must be
absolutely clear about this. But we also must be absolutely clear that this
This darkness is darkness, and it leads to death.
And as the darkness comes, it wants to drag us along with it.
The devil in Gnosticism is not just assaulting creation, he’s assaulting the Creator.
He’s not just assaulting your body.
he’s assaulting the incarnate Son of God. The devil is going to wreck the house, but
he waits until the children are home so that he can wreck it there. So it is that God,
the Son of God, is made part of the assault. This is what the devil wants us to forget,
that God is in our flesh and that we will be raised to eternal life. But what God has
done cannot be overcome. Now this is our hope. You say, Pastor, look, it looks really bad.
It looks like this whole conversation about abortion, it looks like it’s over. There’s
no going back. The whole conversation about marriage, it looks like it’s over. There’s
no going back. The whole conversation about man and woman, it looks like it’s over. There’s
There’s no going back. How can we stand against this rising tide of an addiction to death?
What can we do when we face such huge and monumental problems? How can we possibly make
a difference? The answer? Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives.
Children, obey your parents. Parents, serve your children. Christians, support these
godly institutions and rejoice that the Lord Jesus has placed us as lights in
in the midst of darkness, as beacons, in the midst of the wilderness, as the only place
to find both wisdom and hope in the midst of a crumbling world.
And when, and when you find that the darkness is not only on the outside, but the darkness
is also in your own heart, when you see yourself sinning against the commandment of God, when
you see yourself failing to love and to serve, but rather to always loving and serving yourself
and breaking God’s commandments, when you see that the darkness also is inside, then
remember that you are the Bride of Christ, and He is our Husband, and He has cleansed
us and washed us and made us pure and spotless and holy by the washing of the water and the
Word.
Word. He has taken all of your sin and all of your sorrow and carried it to the cross
so that He might claim you in life and unto life eternal, so that all your temptation
and all your trouble belongs to Him. And we joyfully submit to that. May God grant it.
May God grant us His Holy Spirit, so that we find joy and wisdom in our Christian life
of submission, and we find joy and peace in Christ, our Head.
May God grant it for Christ’s sake, amen.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord, amen.
You
