Submitting to another out of reverence for Christ

Wedding sermon for Peter & Stephanie Hayes

Ephesians 5:21-33 ²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. ²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.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. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body.³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Pete and Stephanie, have you noticed that we are living in a time in our country when marriages are really under attack? We live in a country where family values are being eroded by movies and TV. Where the court system has confused the definition of marriage so that a wedding between a man and a woman is considered old-fashioned and naïve. Where many are confused about what it means to be a man or a woman anymore. Where sex is mistaken for love; living together is preferred over marriage; and unborn children are looked upon as a burden.

God wants marriages to succeed. He wants marriages to be filled with joy and love and forgiveness. He wants marriages to receive His divine blessing. Pete and Stephanie, we spent a lot of time in our pre-marriage counseling talking about God’s design for your marriage. I’m glad that you have invited everyone here today so they can learn that God explains that marriage between a husband and wife is an illustration of the marriage between Jesus Christ as the Bridegroom and we, as Christians, as His bride.

St. Paul first discusses the role of the wife: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22).

I understand that in our politically correct society, no one really likes the word “submit” anymore. At the reception of a recent wedding, the mother of the bride said to me, “That was a very good service, Pastor. Although, I could have done without that whole ‘submitting’ thing.”

“Submit” means to put your trust wholly in the other person. Stephanie, that means you trust Pete to make the right decisions for your household. He is the God-appointed leader for your home. St. Paul explains it this way: “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. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:23-24).

Stephanie, your role in your marriage is to trust Pete’s leadership, the same way that you trust Christ’s leadership. God has made you Pete’s “helper.”

After making Adam, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). Again, many today consider the “helper” role to be inferior. Except, almost every time the Bible uses the word “helper” it is referring to God being our helper. “So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid” (Hebrews 13:6). And God is certainly not inferior.

So, Stephanie, your role as “helper” is to be like God the Father in your new relationship. You are to build up your husband. Encourage him. Listen to him. Cheer him up when he’s depressed. Calm him down when he’s frustrated. Love him and support him, just like God the Father does for you.

Pete, your role is to be the Christ figure in your marriage. St. Paul explains: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her …” (Ephesians 5:25). You are to put Stephanie first in your life. You are to put her up on a pedestal. Everything you do is to first serve Christ and then serve her and your future family.

You sacrifice for her. Maybe that means cooking and cleaning. It means knowing how to calm her down when she becomes an emotional wreck. It might mean putting aside the video games to spend more time with your wife. You give yourself up for her in the way that Christ gave Himself up for us. And remember, Christ died for us, His bride.

This scriptural advice of submission and leadership goes against the grain of the American ideal of the “liberated” woman and the “sensitive” guy. But look at what has happened in our “enlightened” culture when we went away from God’s prescription for a blessed marriage. The consequences of men and women abandoning their God-given roles has been disastrous. A tragic rise in divorce. Broken homes. Sex without marriage. Children raised by people who aren’t their parents.

Our culture will say that this is freedom and progress. Except that freedom from God’s will and progressing away from God’s blessings will always lead only to disaster.

St. Paul introduces this whole section on the roles of husbands and wives by saying: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). He wants you to remember that everything you do because you are married to each other, you are doing, first, because you are married to Christ.

The Holy Spirit is instructing you to be the helper and leader in your marriage. You are to submit to each other. You are to give glory to God in your marriage. But, I’m telling you as your pastor that you are going to fail. You are going to argue. You are going to demand instead of give. You won’t be kind or compassionate or forgiving. You are going to hold a grudge. You are going to go to bed mad. You are going to wake up angry. Like so many other married couples, you can become trapped in cycles of bitterness and resentment.

So, how do you break this cycle? You submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submitting means to put the other person ahead of yourself. None of us want to do this because we are inherently selfish individuals. We want others to serve us. We don’t want to serve someone else. That goes against our very nature. Why would we ever want to put someone else’s needs above my own?

We wouldn’t … unless we are Christians. Then we submit – we live unselfishly – “out of reverence for Christ.” We submit to our spouse in marriage because we love our spouse, but really because we love Jesus. We put someone else first because Christ always put us first.

How did Jesus Christ put us first? St. Paul teaches: “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.” 

Stephanie, as beautiful as you are in your wedding dress, Jesus Christ, our Bridegroom, has made you and Pete even more beautiful. He has made all of us who are Christians beautiful as His beloved bride. Paul teaches that Christ has made us holy, righteous, perfect. He has clothed us with the gleaming white gown of our Baptism – “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.” Now, each of us appears beautiful in our perfection before the altar of God.

And how did Christ make us holy? “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy.” Jesus became bloody so we might be made holy. He gave us life by dying our death. He presents us before His Father’s altar by bleeding and dying upon His Father’s altar of the cross. He gives us a seat at His wedding feast by being forsaken, tossed out of the Trinity, and bound hand and foot upon Calvary’s cross. He gives each of us beautiful wedding clothes to wear – not today – but every day as His believers. Please understand that these wedding clothes we wear were washed clean in the shed blood of the Son of God.

One of the hymns in our hymnal portrays this beautifully: “Jesus, your blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress” (CW: 376 v1).

Jesus is the faithful Bridegroom who didn’t wait for us to clean up ourselves (because we can’t). Instead, He came and laid down His life for His bride – you and me – to cleanse us and make us His pure and holy bride. That we might have something to wear to the wedding feast in heaven.

We submit to each other because we submit to Christ. We submit to Christ because Christ submitted to us. He always put us first. He is our Helper. He is our Leader. He is our Bridegroom who laid down His life for us, His bride.

Pete and Stephanie, and all of you here today, St. Paul’s advice for a Christian marriage is really advice on Christian living. The only way you will ever be able to put up with each other is because you have Christ with you. Marriage is difficult because it is putting two sinners in the same home for life. That is bound to cause major problems. But, when Christ is in the home of those two sinners, then there is love, forgiveness, and mutual submission. All out of reverence for Christ. Amen.