Life Together: Marriage
October 17, 2021 / Pastor Chris Morgan / Ephesians 5:21-33 / Immanuel Baptist Church
To HUSBANDS
1. Be filled with the Spirit, and yield to the Lordship of Christ (5:21).
2. Love your wife as Christ loved the church (5:25-33)
3. Lead with love (5:25-33).
“Christ fulfilled his leadership over the disciples through sacrificial service. Jesus did not cease to be the leader of the disciples when he stooped to wash their feet (John 13:13-15). And when he hung on the cross, the weakest of the weak for the sake of his bride, the church, he was no less her head. Woe to the husband who thinks that his maleness requires of him a domineering, demanding attitude toward his wife. This is not the mark of a Christ-like head but a childish bully.” John Piper
To WIVES
1. Be filled with the Spirit, and yield to the Lordship of Christ (5:21).
2. Submit to and respect your husband (5:22-24, 33).
“Equality of worth is not identity of role…. God himself created man male and female in his likeness. So both equally bear his image, but each also complements the other. The biblical perspective is to hold simultaneously the equality and the complementarity of the sexes.” John Stott
“If ‘headship’ means ‘power’ in any sense, then it is power to care not to crush, power to serve not to dominate, power to facilitate self-fulfillment, not to frustrate or destroy it. And in all this the standard of the husband’s love is to be the cross of Christ, on which he surrendered himself even to death in his selfless love for his bride.” John Stott
3. Do so unto the Lord Jesus (5:22).
To HUSBANDS & WIVES
1. Wives, give of yourselves to bless your husbands.
2. Husbands, sacrifice yourselves to bless your wives.
“Husbands and wives, in marriage you have become one flesh; therefore, if you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your own highest joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making a marriage after the image of Christ and his church. So pursue your own joy in the joy of each other!” John Piper