As we’ve been looking into this passage of Scripture on the biblical teaching of marriage and family, we’ve been using the analogy of a pair of scissors. We’ve seen that Paul is very fair and balanced in the way that he addresses the people involved in these relationships. For instance, he talks first to the wives, then to the husbands; he talks to the children, and then he talks to the parents.
Last time we talked about what Paul says to wives, but I was careful to point out to you that is like only half a pair of scissors. Today, in order to make sure that we understand marriage correctly, we need to remind ourselves that Scripture says marriage is not two people tying the knot, but marriage is God joining two people together, and the two become as one. Half a pair of scissors is not very useful. A pair of scissors requires two halves made into one, and both halves need to be functioning appropriately. So last week we talked about the wives; now we will talk about the husbands.
[Note: The sermon referenced appeared in the March-April issue.]Advertisement
The culture Paul was addressing was one in which the men basically ran the show. They had almost total authority over the women, the children and the slaves. The women, children and slaves had absolutely no alternative but to live submissively to these very authoritarian people. So it was a patriarchal and hierarchical society.
Paul comes into that situation with the Christian Gospel, and he tells the women, the slaves and the children that they are fundamentally the same as the men, and that was a radical message at that particular time. He tells them that they are created by God, they are loved by God. Christ died for them, and they could be reconciled to God; they could be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, they could become members of the Body of Christ, they could actually have a life of eternal significance. This was radical in the extreme.
Paul is very much concerned to help these new believers “unlearn” much of what they've learned from their secular environment, and relearn what a new, Christian understanding of life and culture is all about. That is also the challenge to men and women today. We live in a secularized culture, but if we profess the name of Christ, then we identify with the principles and norms which Christ has outlined and there is a clash of cultures. We need to understand both and decide where we stand on the issues.
Let me remind you of three things we have talked about. We have to understand what the Scripture is saying about
headship, about
submission and about
love. My study of this suggests that understanding headship, submission and love is the essence of understanding what the Bible is teaching about relationships in marriage.
The reason we mention
love is very, very obvious when we turn to
verse 25 of chapter 5, where Paul begins to address the husbands. This is what he says: