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CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
THE WORD OF THE LORD
Ephesians 5:21–24 ESV
submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit 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, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
CONSIDER THIS . . .
Years ago, a wise old mentor gave me some advice on the eve of my wedding. I will always remember one thing he said: “Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.” We will unpack this text on Christian marriage in three parts. Here we go!
What is your view of power? Nothing will more determine the way you read the Bible than the way you answer that question. How do you understand and appropriate power?
I find it fascinating the way different translation teams approach Ephesians 5:20–33. For instance, the text happens to appear in the English Standard Version. The ESV team opted to put a comma after verse 20 instead of a period. Also worth noting is where they chose to put the section heading (which, incidentally, is not part of the inspired text). The ESV team inserted the heading “Wives and Husbands” after verse 21:
giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
Contrast this with the New International Version, the New Living Translation, the New Revised Standard Version, and others, who opted to place a period after verse 20 and insert the heading prior to verse 21. Verses 20–22 look like this in NIV:
always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
Don’t let this be lost on you. It may seem like tedious, insignificant detail, but the placement of those headings makes a world of difference in the way we understand Christian marriage. It comes back to our view of power, which determines the lens through which we read the Bible. Our world sees and interfaces with power primarily from a perspective of hierarchy. Who is at the top and who is at the bottom?
What is the alternative to hierarchy? Do a Google search on the opposite of hierarchy, and you get a host of terms ranging from anarchy to disjointedness, all of which hold in common some notion of disorder. This would seem to imply that a synonym for hierarchy might be “control.” Now consider verse 21: submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Might verse 21 call us to an alternative power structure around mutual submission? Whereas a hierarchical model of marriage might be termed complementarian, this mutual submission model of marriage might be termed egalitarian. I think the mutual submission (a.k.a. egalitarian) model for marriage is more in keeping with the tenor of Scripture as it represents a shared power approach.
I wish I could leave it there and let us go on and live happily ever after. I can’t. I’m in the middle of a late-breaking epiphany. It is happening as I write.
I am coming to the conclusion that the Bible supports neither a hierarchical model nor a mutual submission model. Both of these models are worldly models of power centered around control.
The Word of God reveals a model of power that centers around the surrender of control and the reversal of hierarchy. Think about it. In the kingdom of heaven, the least is the most, the last is the first, and the servant is the greatest of all. I call it lower-archy.
Whereas hierarchy is the control of power and mutual submission is a sharing of power, lower-archy means the surrender of power. Is this not the shape of the love of God in Jesus Christ? Christian marriage means two people joined in union on the condition of an unconditional and complete surrender of their lives to Jesus Christ and living out that unconditional surrender in the practical details of their life together.
This may strike us as lofty idealism. It’s another reason why God became a person. He knew ideals would never get it done. One thing is for sure: It doesn’t seem very practical. Then again, neither did the cross. So what is powerful about this model? Thanks for asking. Does the word resurrection ring a bell?
PRAYER
Abba Father, we thank you for your Son, Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Far from an ideal, the Son of God became a slave. It blows our minds. Would you show us how it might disrupt our lives and, yes, our marriages? In Jesus’s name, amen.
JOURNAL PROMPTS
Where do you disagree or push back on this reflection about marriage?
It’s hard to imagine the idea of lower-archy working in a company or organization. Could it? How about a marriage? How would it work there?
How might lower-archy become more than an ideal in your own marriage? Where would you begin? Why does it challenge you so much?
SING
Today, we will sing “Open the Eyes of My Heart,” which is not found in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. I will print the words below:
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see you
I want to see you
Open the eyes of my heart
I want to see you
I want to see you
Shinin’ in the light of Your glory
Pour out your power and love
As we sing holy, holy, holy
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
John David (J. D.) Walt Jr. is the Sower-in-Chief for Seedbed and the pastor of the Gillett Methodist Church in Gillett, Arkansas.
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7 Responses
Christians are called to avoid the love of power. Christ wants to empower us to daily humble ourselves and allow Him to consistently demonstrate the power of His supernatural love both within and through us.
When people promote exalting a man or a woman above other people, they are way off track. No mere human being should ever be considered to be above accountability.
I woke up this morning at 3:17 with the following thoughts going through my mind. All I wanted to do was to back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I kept being urged to get up and post them for all to see. Here they are:
In that day many evangelicals will say Lord, Lord, have we not done all we can to make our country great? Have we not let national pride be our guide? Have we not infused our religion with politics? Have we not (all for Your glory) verbally attacked and insulted people who disagree with us? Have we not often thanked You that we aren’t like the radical leftists? Have we not prayed for our favorite leader and even dedicated a golden statue of him to You? And Jesus will say to them . . . (Matthew 7:22-23)
After reading the scripture and the first paragraph of the lesson, I knew you were going to tell us that “lower-archy” or servant hood was how to interpret this passage. We are to strive to be like Jesus and He was the ultimate model for servant hood. I kept thinking of the song, Goodness of God, where it says, “ With my life laid down, I’m surrendered now
I give You everything
‘Cause Your goodness is running, it keeps running after me.
How does one implement “lower-archy”? A possible start: [Love] does not insist on its own way. 1Co13.5 (ESV)
The example that Christ left us with in Matthew 25 on how we need to do everything we can to meet the needs of others is how we, my wife and I live our lives together. The needs of our spouse are paramount in our lives. When we live out that commandment from Jesus and do all that we can to meet the needs of each other, we serve, submit and humbly give to the other as we serve Christ. The incredible thing about lives lived in this manor is that not only do all there needs get met but so do yours. This is not a one-up competition to see who can out serve, it is an act of grace, Christ led life style of love toward one another. I know you may not believe this but we are coing up on 44 years of marriage and in those 44 years we have never had a fight. Even before we returned to the church and put God in the center of our lives the Spirit guided us in our marriage and led us to this understanding. It is a miraculous way of life. Thank you Lord.
Oh, JD, I am writing this through tears. You just described my 54 year marriage. Never in that 54 years we had before he went home to Jesus have I heard a more truthful description of our relationship with each other and Jesus. There was never a struggle for control. Jesus was always at the center of our marriage. That doesn’t mean we never had a disagreement or difference of opinion. But always, always we were together in Him. I was truly blessed to share my life with my husband who was a one of a kind man. I thank the Lord every day for those 54 years and the memories I will always have.
I did know you were divorced and so understand the slow death of a marriage. I appreciate your honest words and feelings related to that slow walk. I did the same. I have said repeatedly that my divorce felt like death and I grieve it even today. I do walk in forgiveness, mercy, and grace and am thankful I am assured of that. I am not stuck in gri e f for my life is different now and God has led and blessed in every way possible. I listen intently and am blessed by each teaching and absolutely know God can only use broken people as he rebuilds us. Thank you for trqnsparency.
I appreciate your transparency this morning. I remember when you first told about your divorce. I had 45 years with my first wife when a massive heart attack took her home . I was devastated .0ver time and with the ever-present Holy Spirit I recovered, and even remarried.
In the years since, I am convinced that divorce can be far worse than death. I graduated from Asbury Seminary the same year as you. We never met, although we may have crossed paths. LOL .My last two years I was a Student Pastor in London. I was also 52 years old . Today I am pastoring in Harrogate, TN in the GMC as a Sr. Elder. Anyway, you and family are in our prayers. I love you all, and there is nothing you can do about it!