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Ephesians 5:21-33; Genesis 2:20-25; Matthew 19:1-11
August 19, 2012 • Portage First UMC
An older man and his wife were getting ready for bed one night, and when he crawled under the covers and just started to get comfortable, he heard her say from the darkness, “Do you remember when we were younger, and you’d snuggle up next to me as we went to sleep?” The old man sighed, very loudly, and scooted a little closer to her. After a moment or two, he heard her say, “And do you remember when we were younger, you used to put your arm around me and hold my hand when we went to bed?” Once again, with a loud sigh, he moved closer and took her hand in his, only to hear her say, “And honey, do you remember, when we were first married, how you used to nibble on my ear?” At this the man, threw back the covers, jumped up out of bed with a loud sigh stormed out of the room. “Wait!” she said. “Where are you going?” The man turned around and said, “I’m going to get my teeth!”
And they say romance is dead! Well, that story reminds us that love is more than a feeling. When we think of the word “love,” in our culture we most often think of romance or sex. But, as we’ve discovered in the last couple of weeks, the ancient world had a much broader definition of love. In fact, as I’ve shared with you during this month, there are four words for love in the New Testament world. “Storge” refers to family love—the kind of love we first experience. “Philos” refers to friendship love—the first place we begin to care for those outside our family. And today we come to the third word for “love,” the concept we probably most often mean when we talk about it, and that word is “eros.” Eros refers to the love between a husband and a wife, marital love. Now, we get the word “erotic” from eros, but in reality, we’ve perverted that word to mean something dirty, something beyond the bounds of marriage. In its original meaning, eros refers to the kind of life-long commitment and fidelity that God calls husbands and wives to. While we might use eros to refer to a certain kind of sex or sexual entertainment, that was not the original intention. We are sexual beings, but from the Bible’s perspective, we express that within the bounds of marriage, in a place where a husband and wife are committed to each other “til death do us part.”
Today, in America, weddings have become an industry. Every year, people spend thousands of dollars each year on the wedding day itself. On average, Americans spend $5,392 on an engagement ring and $26,984 on the wedding ceremony itself. And that’s an average. The actual costs range from $13,214 in Utah to $70,030 in Manhattan. On average, the couple will spend $194 per guest, which includes $1,393 for the ceremony site and $12,124 for the reception. Bridesmaids will end up spending $1,695 each, a figure which includes the dress, travel, gifts and parties (Stevens, “Pronounce Yourself Frugal,” Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2012, pg. 7-1). We make a huge economic investment in the wedding ceremony itself, but often we forget that on the other side of the wedding is a marriage. We invest far less in sustaining the marriage than we do in putting on a wedding, which is why, today, 50% of first marriages end in divorce (www.divorcerate.org). Sixty-seven percent of second marriages end in divorce, and—are you ready for this—seventy-four percent of third marriages end in divorce. Couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce, but not by much, and research project after research project has shown that Christian faith has little to no effect. Christian marriages end at the same high rate as non-Christian marriages. Through the prophet Malachi, God says that breaking a marriage covenant is the same as a husband doing violence to the one he should protect (cf. Malachi 2:16), and yet, we live in a time where break-ups and divorce are rampant, marriage is undermined and we seem to have no idea what it means to love our spouse in the way God intended. So what is a Biblical picture of eros love, marital love? Paul has some things to say about marriage when he writes to the Ephesians, and so we’re going to start in Ephesians 5 this evening/morning with a well-known passage about submission and love.
This passage is tricky and has often been taken out of context, so it’s important to understand what Paul is actually saying when he writes, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord” (5:22). That word “submit” has been used in many cases to justify violence against women, even in Christian circles. There are churches who teach that if your wife won’t “submit” (however you define that), you can justify “making her submit.” I knew of a church (not in this area) that held classes several years ago to teach men how to make their wives submit. But here’s the thing: we think of submission in terms of power and authority and strength and might and domination. When someone “submits” to us, we think we have power over them. Paul uses this word twenty-three times in his letters, and there is no occasion when he uses it to describe one person exerting their power over someone else. It’s always in the setting of showing respect because of a person’s qualities or their position. Paul tells us to submit to civil authorities, to church leaders, to parents and to masters. In other words, it’s a matter of showing honor, whether we agree with them or not (Wood, “Ephesians,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 11, pg. 75). We may or may not like the results of this year’s presidential election, but our calling is to show respect to the office of president. That’s the sense Paul is using here as well. Wives, submit to your husbands—they deserve respect because of who they are to you.
But let’s look again at the context, because this is not a blanket statement for wives to just give in to whatever their husbands want. Look at what Paul says about husbands: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). Now, the word there for “love” is not eros; it’s agape, which we’re going to look at closely next week, but Paul gives the explanation and the example of how a husband is to love his wife so that she will naturally “submit” or show honor. The path or guideline for a husband’s love is this: love her the way Christ loved the church. Do you remember how Christ loved the church? Jesus willingly gave his life for the sake of those he loved. The story of the Bible is the story of a broken relationship. Humanity walked away from God; we sinned. God cannot be in the presence of sin, and so somehow that relationship had to be made right. Jesus came in order to do that, to show us how to live, and then to offer himself as a sacrifice on the cross. Jesus loved us enough to die in our place, or as Paul says, he “gave himself up” for us, for the church, for all his people. That’s the example Paul uses when he describes the kind of love husbands are to show their wives: “complete, self-abandoning love” (Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pg. 67). A husband is called to be willing to give up his life for his wife. So, in many ways, Paul is giving the heavier responsibility to the husband, and his description of this relationship automatically leaves out any violence, harm, bullying, arrogance or any idea that women are somehow inferior to men. That’s not what he’s saying at all. Rather, he’s saying we have responsibilities to each other, and we’re not to coerce each other. The husband is the protector of the wife, and the wife is the first champion and chief encourager of the husband (Wood 75-76).
In a world like Paul lived in, where the Romans basically treated wives as property or as little more than slaves to their husbands, this was a revolutionary teaching, especially when Paul has set all of this in the context of verse 21: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This is a word not just to husbands and wives, but to all who find themselves in any kind of relationship—whether romantic or family or friendship. In other words, this is a word to all of us (unless we choose to live under a rock by ourselves). It sets the tone for the next several paragraphs in this letter, but it certainly applies in the passage we’re looking at this evening/morning. The original design for marriage was mutual submission—each looking out for the best for the other. From the beginning, this was God’s intention. In the beginning, Genesis tells us, God made Adam, and brought before Adam all the animals to be named. “But,” Genesis says, “no suitable helper was found” for Adam (2:20). You see, in the very beginning, God recognized we men needed help! In fact, in verse 18, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” We couldn’t go it alone—for one, we’d never stop and ask for directions and it was going to be a long time, God knew, before GPS was created. And let’s be honest: by ourselves, some of us would starve to death! So God put Adam to sleep and, in the very first surgical procedure, God removed a rib from Adam and made Eve. Now, why is Eve’s creation described this way? After all, God made Adam, we’re told, from the dust. Couldn’t he have made Eve the same way? Of course God could; God can do anything. But Eve was made from Adam so that there would be an eternal, indelible link between man and woman, so that when Adam first saw Eve, he would say, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23).
Paul uses that example as he drifts back and forth between the husband-wife relationship and the Christ-church relationship, both of which he refers to when he says it’s a “profound mystery” (5:32). There is a link between husbands and wives that goes deeper than flesh and bone, though in the view of Genesis and, I think, also Paul, the visible expression of that link, that connection is the sexual relationship that is meant for husbands and wives to exclusively share. But the connection is deeper than even that. Paul says they belong to each other, and that they are set apart for each other. That’s what the phrase “make holy” refers to. It’s a Greek word that means “to set apart.” In fact, in the old Jewish marriage ceremony, a husband would say to his wife when he gave her the ring, “Behold, thou art sanctified to me.” You’re set apart for me. Marriage becomes an exclusive relationship, with a bond that is deeper than we can really describe, though Paul tries. He says it’s like the other is part of your own body, and “no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body” (5:29). So, the bottom line: flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, husbands and wives are to care for each other as if they are part of each other, an extension of each other, which, in fact, they are, so much so that Paul and other Biblical writers talk about “leaving and cleaving” from our parents. Not that we cut our parents out of our lives, but they no longer hold first influence or first importance. When we are married, our first and highest allegiance goes to our spouse. Tom Wright says, “Often what pulls a marriage off course is the failure of one or other partner to distance themselves emotionally from their parents and devote themselves totally to their spouse. This is worth pondering in itself” (68). Today, some parents don’t set up an environment where their children can do that, and continue to insist on a primary role, and children aren’t always determined to make that break. But Paul says we leave our father and mother and become “one flesh” with our spouse (5:31).
Now, that’s the Biblical ideal, but we live in the real world, and we know it doesn’t always work that way. The statistics I quoted earlier bear that out. Getting married today means you have a 50% or better chance of being divorced within the first ten years, especially if you are between 20-24 years old when you get married. Is there a way out? Does the Bible give any escape clause? Because we’re always looking for the escape clause in whatever we’re involved in, so for that, we turn to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, where we find him preaching to large crowds in the desert of Judea, south of Jerusalem. And while he’s there, some Pharisees, who interpreted the religious law very strictly, came up to him. They always seemed to be around, watching for Jesus to do or say something they considered wrong. So this day, they approach him with a question. It’s a good question, because to contradict them would be to contradict Moses, the great teacher of the people, the great lawgiver. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” After all, they tell Jesus, Moses said a man could give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away (19:3, 7). In fact, they say Moses “commanded” that action, but that’s not correct. They’re referring to Deuteronomy 24, where Moses does say, “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house…” and then he goes on to actually say that if she marries another man and he divorces her, she can’t go back and remarry the first man. The whole passage isn’t about reasons for divorce; it’s about a proper ordering of the community. What the Pharisees actually ignore is the phrase Moses uses to allow divorce: if the man finds “something indecent” in the woman. He doesn’t define that, which is probably why they ignore it. In Jesus’ day, there were two schools of thought about that. One rabbi taught divorce was only allowed in the case of adultery, and another rabbi taught that a man could divorce his wife if she burned the toast, and still another rabbi allowed divorce “if you find someone more attractive” (Keener, Bible Background Commentary, pg. 96). In addition, the legal system of the day was very man-centric. The husband could divorce his wife at any time and for any reason, while the woman could divorce her husband only under certain conditions and with the help of the court (Keener 97). So, the Pharisees say, what do you think, Jesus? Who do you side with in this ongoing debate?
Jesus first makes the case, just as we have, for the “one flesh” idea, that husbands and wives are one. “What what God has joined together, let no one separate” (19:6), he says. Jesus goes on to say that divorce wasn’t God’s original plan, and that Moses allowed it “because your hearts were hard” (19:8). Moses allowed it because the world is so broken that sometimes our treatment of each other becomes sinful and there’s really no other choice (cf. Carson, “Matthew,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 413). But Jesus doesn’t say that makes it the preferred option. In fact, he goes to somewhat define Moses’ terms of “indecency” as “sexual immorality” (19:9)—or at least that’s how the NIV translates it. The word there is “porneia,” and a lot of ink has been spilled trying to explain what that word means exactly. It’s can mean “adultery” or “sexual immorality” or even “prostitution.” We, obviously, have adopted that word in our language to refer to a perversion of God’s good gift of sexuality—it shows up as our word “pornography.” But the word really has a broader meaning than that. Its basic meaning is “marital unfaithfulness” (Carson 413). It means the marriage covenant is broken. And certainly, adultery and other forms of sexual immorality fall into that category. But might there be other things also? The man who abuses his wife because he can—physically, mentally, sexually. When someone acts in bullying or abusive manners, when a body is hurt or a spirit is crushed—is the bond broken? In today’s world, we don’t have to go anywhere to have access to pornography. It’s all online, all for the taking. When we fantasize about someone other than our spouse, someone who doesn’t really exist, is the bond broken? Do we break the covenant when we fail to follow Paul’s instructions to submit to and love one another? It’s not simple, and it’s not something, Jesus said you take lightly. In fact, when Paul describes the union of husband and wife he uses a word (we translate it as “be united”) that means “to be glued” (Wood 78). Lifelong exclusive marriage is God’s plan for husbands and wives, and it’s also true that these things don’t automatically trigger a divorce. At the heart of our faith is the principle of and belief in forgiveness, but it’s going to take two people working very hard to get to that point. Reconciliation can happen, but it’s not going to be easy.
And there are times when divorce happens. Whether it should or not, it happens. What do we do then? First of all, let me assure you that even though divorce isn’t God’s plan, it’s not the unforgivable sin, either. Forgiveness is available. And we have to remember in the midst of the brokenness we’re experiencing that the divorce doesn’t just affect two people; there are so many more in your lives who have been affected and who may be uncertain what to do or how to respond. If marriage glues two people together, divorce tears them apart and neither are ever the same. Paul, I think, gives us a good word here, though it’s not just a word for marriage. To the Romans, Paul reminds us: “as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18). That phrase, “as far as it depends on you,” is important. We do what we can to pursue forgiveness, to live above tearing the other person down, and seek to live with integrity as much as we can. Divorce is not the end of the road.
As the church, however, our goal is to strengthen marriages before we get to that point. Just this week, I received an e-mail with a testimony about how a couple re-centered their marriage around their faith and that decision became, truly, salvation to both of them and to their marriage. Marriage, quite honestly, is hard work, and Paul doesn’t dance around that truth. Sacrifice? Submitting? Honoring? Those are hard things to do. The easy thing to do is to walk out, especially today when you can end a marriage online. Cathy and I have been married for twenty-three years, a drop in the bucket compared to some of the folks in our church, and yet it’s not always been easy. There are times when, for both of us, if it weren’t for our faith, we might not have made it to the next day. Especially after the kids were born, marriage took a lot of work. It still does, though we’re in one of the best places I can remember us being right now, even with the stresses that push in daily. But you have to make time for each other. Why is it when we get married, we stop dating our spouse? Times where it’s just the two of you are vitally important—though if you have kids at home, you may end up wondering what to do or talk about if you don’t have them out with you. Listen to how comedian Jeff Allen dealt with getting away without kids.
VIDEO: Jeff Allen - Wedding Anniversaries
So you need time away, without the kids. Children need to know they’re loved, but they also need to know you love your spouse enough to spend time together, to continue to grow your relationship. Our culture idolizes children, lets them in many ways control the family. Children are valued, loved, cared for, nurtured and that even happens when you allow yourself to work on your marriage. Cathy and I have, for the last many years, had a regular date time set aside and most weeks we keep that. We both have Fridays off, so on Fridays during the school year we go out to lunch together, and we talk, we catch up because often during the week we’re going here and there and there’s no time to work on “us.” So for us, going out to eat removes us from the temptation to do “ordinary things” around the house and not focus on each other. Each husband and wife have to find a time that works for them, and then put it in ink in your calendars. There shouldn’t be much that changes that appointment.
Beyond that, you need to make a commitment to each other that issues won’t fester. Paul said, “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (Ephesians 4:26), and that’s good advice for husbands and wives. When you are married, you make a covenant for better or worse. Too often, we let things just sit because we’re afraid of upsetting the other person. Well, he may need to be upset. She may need to be turned around. You both may need to listen. Eros love isn’t just about sex. And it isn’t just about sharing a mortgage. Deep, committed covenant love means you’re in this thing for the long haul. It may mean that today you do what she wants to do. Or tomorrow she does what you want to do. That’s part of loving and submitting and honoring one another.
And when those tough times come, it’s important to go back to the beginning. What was it that made you fall in love with this person to begin with? What qualities, what characteristics—what was it that drew you to each other? And I hear people say, “Well, they’ve changed.” So have you. None of us stays the same. But I know this: those who are willing to work hard on their marriage want to know why you fell in love with them, and that might be the reminder they need to recapture part of themselves they have lost. It’s easy to criticize the other person, but are you the person they fell in love with? Are you growing more into a loving and lovable person? Sometimes, very often, it takes simply remembering what a gift your spouse was and is.
I don’t have a lot of treasures, priceless things, but this is one of the few I do have. It’s a Bible—a New Testament—and it doesn’t look like much; there’s nothing really on the outside that would make it stand out. But it was found among my grandmother’s things when she passed away. And when I opened it, I found this inscription: “Presented to Walter F. Ticen with the prayers of the Presbyterian Church and Sunday School, Beloit, Kansas, September 25, 1917.” And on the opposite page, presumably in my grandfather’s handwriting, is his father’s name and that he lived in Sedalia, Indiana. This was my grandfather’s Bible when he served in the Army during the time of World War I. There’s also a picture tucked in here of my grandparents from 1920, after he had returned home. I never knew my grandfather; this Bible and a couple of other items are really the only I connection with him. It’s a treasure. There is not another one exactly like it in the world. So what do you think I do with it? Toss it around, leave it laying out in the rain, let the dog chew on it, or lose track of it? Absolutely not. I keep this treasure on a high shelf in my office, to remind me of my heritage of faith and of those who prayed for my grandfather, and of those who pray for me. Why am I telling you this? Because when you got married, God gave you a treasure, a work of art, a masterpiece. And that other person might not look like a treasure on the outside; you have to look inside to see God’s fingerprints. On your wedding day, God entrusted you with a one-of-a-kind creation, a treasure you are to value, honor, and protect—every day of your life (cf. Lucado, The Lucado Inspirational Reader, pgs. 153-154). How are you doing with living out eros love? What one thing will you do this week to strengthen your marriage or the marriages of those around you? Write it down, make a commitment to do it before next Sunday. Small steps can lead to great progress and turn those “worse” times into “better.” So, let’s pray for our marriages, shall we?
