[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sermon text today: we will be looking at that epistle reading, St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Please be seated. When I do premarital counseling with couples, I suggest to them common Bible verses about marriage that they can use in their wedding ceremony. And out of 24 couples that I’ve had, so far, only one has chosen this Ephesians reading.
It’s usually avoided because it has that dreaded word in it: submit. It has it in there a lot of times; you may have seen it, actually. The whole passage sounds so submissive, to coin a word. I think that when women read this passage, they don’t even get past the first verse. But actually, this passage says more about the husband submitting. And it’s a shame, actually, that the verse right before it, verse 21 of chapter 5, gets left out for today. We heard it last week, actually. It really should be part of today, but I’m not in charge of the lessons and how Synod puts them, so who listens to me?
But anyway, that verse says this: “…submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” That verse really sets the tone for this next section that we heard today. It speaks much more than just about husband and wife submitting. This whole section is all about all people submitting to each other and to Christ. And yes, for those of you not married, these verses are for you too. Because Paul is using this marriage metaphor to make a bigger point, and Paul uses this marriage metaphor to keep submit from being such a dreaded word.
Yes, it says, “Wives, submit to your husband.” Okay, nobody’s going to throw anything at me. Okay, good. We can continue. Yes, wives, submit to your husband, but submit to what? Submit to the husband’s authority or control or power? Uh-uh. That’s not what it’s talking about. Submit to the husband’s care for you. And the husband submits to caring for his wife. Because it says also, “Husbands, love your wives.” How? It goes on to say, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Guys, this really raises the bar here, okay? Yes, husbands, love your wives. Yes. Nobody’s throwing anything at me again. Okay, good. We can move on. Husbands, don’t treat your wives merely as something that’s submitting to you. Don’t treat them merely in submission. Love as Christ loves the church. How does Christ love the church? John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Loving the church is God giving to the church, giving His son for the church. It’s a sacrificial love.
And Jesus also said in John 15, he said, “‘Greater love has no one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.'” He also said this in Matthew 20: “The Son of Man, meaning Him, came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” How does Jesus love the church? Sacrificial love. Dying love. Selfless love. It’s love that Jesus totally submitted to us. Jesus totally submitted to us. Even by coming into this world, coming into our broken, sinful, messed-up world is a sign of his submission.
The Son of God submitting himself to come here to live with us, suffer like us, and then die for us. That is how Christ loves the church. He dies for it. How should men love their wives? As Christ loves, by giving himself up. By being selfless, unselfish, a servant to his wife. More than that, sacrificing his life to even protect her with his life. Yeah, guys, that’s what we do. We protect our wives. We protect those that we love. We protect the things that we love with our life. That’s how Christ loved the church.
When a husband does this, when a man loves in that way, a woman will find it a joy to submit to that—submit to that kind of care. And wives, that’s what you submit to: the care of your husband. As unto the Lord, it says. Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. As you submit to the Lord, you submit to your husband. As you submit to the Lord’s care for you, you submit to your husband’s care for you.
And we all submit to each other’s care. We all, as God’s people, submit to caring for others, and we submit to the care that others have for us. Again, the missing verse here: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Submitting to Christ means submitting to His love and care as He submitted Himself to us. Submitting to God means receiving His love for you in Jesus. Yes, because Jesus certainly submitted himself to you.
Now, all of this, as Paul writes for husbands and wives, it’s also good for those of you who are not married. Okay? But your submission, okay, isn’t to a husband or to a wife. It’s totally to Christ’s care for you. I kind of look at it this way sometimes: you’ve got no middle man or woman, okay? Your submission is totally to Christ. Your relationship is solely and fully with Christ in that way and His submission to you.
Your relationship is kind of, in a way, more direct with God. And even you have a sense of a married relationship with Christ because all Christians—we are the bride of Christ. God uses that marriage metaphor to describe His relationship to us as Christ is the bridegroom and we His people, the church, are His bride. And we’re all submitted to His care for us.
And everything that Paul writes here too, all this submissive stuff, is good even for those whose marriages are struggling or didn’t work out in this way. For some, for whatever reason, marriage didn’t submit in this way for you. People are flawed, and sometimes they don’t care as they should. They aren’t submitted to caring for their husband or wife the way that they should, and the results end up not being what you planned. And even strong marriages have their difficulties sometimes.
This is still good for those of you because there’s good news in God’s care for you that you can submit to. And there are people that want to care for you that submit their care for you that you can receive. St. Paul Lutheran Church even has some ministries that deal with this, that help people who are so affected. There’s a divorce care group and one called Embrace Grace Church, that helps especially women who are pregnant and struggling.
And that name, Embrace Grace, really captures what these verses mean, I think, that Paul says: that husbands, wives, unmarried, all people—all people submit in gracious service to others. They give grace to others. And those who are being served, who need help, they embrace that grace that’s being given to them. That same with our submission to God. We submit to His grace. We embrace it by faith and receive His loving care and forgiveness.
And maybe you’re struggling in a relationship with that now. Maybe you’re struggling with things that are going on in your relationship that this submission to each other just isn’t working. There’s God’s care for you. There’s God’s grace for you. Embrace it. In that sense, submit to it as Christ has submitted to you. And maybe you’re struggling with some particular sin or activity that you’re involved in that you know is wrong, and you’re ashamed of it, and you struggle with God’s grace. Submit to it. Embrace it by faith and receive His loving care and forgiveness for you.
It’s what He wants to give you; it’s what Christ submitted to you for in His death—in His resurrection for you. Submission. Here in worship at St. Paul, we even take a posture of submission when we kneel to confess our sins and submit to God’s forgiveness for us. And in the Lord’s Supper, we submit by kneeling here and literally embracing His grace in our hand, in our mouth, in bread and wine—which is His body and blood given and shed for us. That’s the grace that we embrace; that we submit ourselves to.
I’ve got an illustration for this kind of submission. It has to do with the Greek soldiers during Jesus’ time, around His time—Greek soldiers that were called hoplites. And there’s somewhat of a word connection here in Greek, maybe a bit of a stretch, but it’s kind of cool anyway, that the Greek word for hoplite is hoplos, and the Greek word for submission is hoptos—kind of close. And there’s submission involved in a hoplite.
A hoplite was a foot soldier who was armed with a shield in his left hand and a spear in the right. Generally, all they usually carried was a spear. But it’s their battle formation that was so effective. It was called a phalanx. They would line up, shields all up front, kind of making a wall of shields with their left hands, and over it then their spear for attacking. Well, this is a great formation, but what’s kind of flawed about it is the hoplite is concerned with their right hand in defending themselves. But even with the shield, they’re still susceptible from this side—it’s kind of a blind side. They can’t see it. They’re working more this way.
This is where the soldier on their left comes into play. That soldier, part of their responsibility is to cover that guy’s left side. You know, they’re involved in defending themselves, but they’re also covering this guy’s left side. That’s the care that they’re submitting to: protecting that left side. And it just keeps going down, the left side. The guy on the far left, maybe you’re wondering, what about him? They usually put the worst guy there so he’d get killed off fast.
They’d usually put the strongest guy there who could deal with that, hopefully. Each soldier was submitted to caring for the guy on his right. And the guy on the right was submitted to that care, trusting it. And that’s our same relationship with God. We submit to each other’s protection, trusting them for it. Wives, husbands, single, divorced—that all of Christ’s people care for each other and submit to the care of Christ. Because that’s part of that illustration too: we’re submitted to Christ’s care for us. Not just on the left side, but all around us.
So in these verses, again, submission isn’t authority or control or power. And it’s not a wrestling finish move either. It’s submitting to God because He’s submitted to us. So hopefully, the word submit isn’t a dreaded word for you, but instead a word of great joy as you submit to each other as Christ has submitted to us. Amen.
Now may the grace of God, which goes beyond all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus into life everlasting. Amen.