But let's start over in Ephesians
chapter 5, and I want us to start in verse 15. I'm going to read
to the end of the chapter, and then I'm going to go over to
1 Peter and do likewise. Look carefully then how you walk,
not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because
the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish,
but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not get
drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with
the Spirit, addressing one another with psalms, hymns, spiritual
songs, singing, and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, while submitting to one
another out of reverence for Christ." Wives, submit also to
your own husbands as to the Lord, for the Lord, for the husband
is the head of the wife, 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. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church
and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing of the water with the Word, so that
He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without
spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy
and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife
loves himself, for no one has ever hated his own flesh, but
nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because
we are members of His body. Therefore, a man shall leave
his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and
I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However,
let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the
wife see that she also respects her husband." Now, 1 Peter, chapter
3. Well, let's not have to back
up to chapter 2 for just a second. Verse 18, chapter 2. 13, yeah, 13. Be subject to the Lord's
sake for every human institution, whether it be to the emperor
as supreme, or to the governor, or sent by him to punish those
who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the
will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the
ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free,
not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants
of God. Honor everyone, love the brotherhood,
fear God, honor the emperor. Servants, be subject to your
masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle,
but to the unjust. For this is the gracious thing, when, mindful
of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what
credit is it when you sin, you're beaten, and you endure? But if
when you do good and you suffer for it, this is a gracious thing
in the sight of God. For to this you've been called,
because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example,
so that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin, neither
was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not
revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but He continued
entrusting Himself to the one who judges justly. He Himself
bore our sins in His body on that tree, that we might die
to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed,
for you were straying like sheep, but now have returned to the
Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. Likewise, wives, be subject
to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the
word, they will be won without a word by the conduct of their
wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let
your adorning be external, the braiding of your hair and putting
on gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning
be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty
of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very
precious. For this is how holy women who hoped in God used to
adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed
Abraham, calling him Lord. And you are her children if you
do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise,
husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing
honor to the woman as a weaker vessel, since they are heirs
with you of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be
hindered. Finally, all of you, Have unity
of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, a humble
mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but
on the contrary, bless for to this you are called that you
may obtain a blessing. Let's stop for a second. Now,
for those of you who are always with me and have been with me
for a long time, you understand. why I never can just start in
a space that says therefore, likewise, and for whatever, because
it's not a complete thought. It's actually a partial thought,
and a partial thought can be misconstrued and become a lie.
And secondly, this instruction that we see in Ephesians, Colossians,
1 Peter, other places, this is not instructions on how wives
ought to be and how husbands ought to be. This is not supposed
to be parsed out and segmented. Oh, here's how the wives need
to learn. No, this is all within a specific and solid and unified
argument about Jesus Christ alone, who he is, his mind, and who
we are, who have his mind. That's what it's about. It's
not about what is sin, what is not sin, how we're supposed to
live, how we're not supposed to live. It's about who we are and
how we live out as subject to Christ. And I could take some time right
now and give some personal reflections, but I'll just do it this way. There are things you don't know,
and you don't know what you don't know. But when you do know and
you don't change, you're an idiot. When you do know and you don't
learn, you're dumb. You see? I know these are funny
things, but when we know we should do something, when we understand
the error of something, and we take no action to remedy, to
rectify, to change, to transform, to grow, to make right, or any
of that, we're literally saying it doesn't matter because people
don't matter. because the situation doesn't
matter, because the truth doesn't matter. You must say, what are
you talking about? And anything. I mean, if you got into a habit
of stabbing your hand with a pencil every day, because you were taught
in grade school that that would keep you disciplined for your
arithmetic. And then finally, somebody says, you know, you
don't have to do that. That's really abusive. And here's the
reason why. And here's the silliness of it. And you keep doing it. That's
on you. There are people who have been
taught that it's okay to yell and scream at children and at
each other as husbands and wives, that it's okay to hit, that it's
okay to belittle or to ridicule, that it's okay to poke fun at
people. There have been things in our
world where believers, where the church and its magistrates
have said that it was godly to kill people who didn't convert
to Christ. And so all manner of ungodliness
and wickedness has been perpetrated in the name
of godliness. That's not going to change. But
what can change is when God actually shows us the reality of the horror
of how people suffer under the hands of supposedly godly men. And so I know where I've been.
and I know where I've come from and I know where I am now. And
I certainly, because of all that, know exactly where I'm going.
Now, for those of you who have followed me on social media or
on my publishings, you know that I've been writing about this
for over two and a half years. that I've been very clear. It's
not new, it's not a new idea, it's not new interpretation,
it's actually the interpretation of the Holy Writ in the context
of the Bible from Genesis to Matthew without any explanation,
without any regard to having to give an apology or debate
it. Historical theology is about
as valuable as the sand between your toes in the context of the
beach trip if you bring it home and say, I'm still at the beach.
Friends, the distance between application of proper theology
and its historicity is so long that we would be fools to just
say, that's what it means. That's what it means, but that's
what we've done. That's what we've done in society. And in the 1950s,
the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, evangelical culture has done a very good
job of bringing subjugation on the heads of women. taking marriage
and making it what it's not. Misogyny is alive and well. There
is no debate there. You may not know it, you may
not think it applies, but I would say that nine out of 10 women
in the context of the evangelical church in the United States of
America have suffered under abusive situations either in the church
or at home or in the community or the workplace because of godless
principles being taught in the name of Jesus Christ. You might
say, how do you say that? Because I'm talking to the women
who are suffering, who are doing the research, and there are 15,
20, 30,000 of them who have come out in the last eight months
and said, this has happened to me. This has happened to me. There
are very prominent so-called men of God who are saying that,
you know, Anybody who comes out and even
makes an accusation of such things need to be put to death. This week, a pastor said that
from his pulpit. So there's a lot of things I
could charge. I could just like wind up and rub my hair on a
balloon and just comb on the balloon and stand my hair up.
We could really get excited about a lot of damaging realities. But the truth is, is that submission,
as taught in the Scripture, is commanded of husbands to their
wives, and wives to their husbands, and children to their parents, and men and women and children
to the magistrate, and to one another. And so what we see in
the teaching of the New Testament is an overarching, gospel-centered,
Christ-like mindset of submission, which I'm going to argue today
and show that you probably don't even know what the word means.
Well, the definition in Strong says obey. It ain't what it means
in the context. Did you know that the definition
was written down by people? You know dictionaries and concordances
and thesauruses and all that, people decided that and not a
collective majority, a minor, minor, minor institutional minority
decided those things. And so just because it's written
down for 60 years or 200 years or 5,000 years doesn't make it
true. Context is a million percent
the meaning of a word. Every single time. Ask linguists. Ask people like Dr. Dalkor, a
very dear friend of mine, whose entire life is spent every day
dealing with the grammatical construction of the New Testament.
He will tell you it doesn't make a rat's behind what any person
has ever said about the construction of a term and its definition.
If it's used in a different way in context, the context defines
it every single time. Like the word Google. He didn't
know it was a truncation of a particular numerical idea, which is why
they used it, a Googleplex. Like the word Coke. The reason they were called Coca-Cola
is because it had coca-cane in it. Now it's a brand. Now in the South, it's anything
that's not Sprite or tea. Friends, I'm saying all this
because it's time for us, as I said last week, to wake up.
It's time for us to understand. What I've said in review, the
power of God's transformational love is seen as freedom, as autonomy
from the culture of Christian living, and a interdependence
and an embracing, a subjectivity, a submission to the person of
Christ. And let me tell you, we will
redefine these things and re-understand these things and we will grow
in our understanding of these types of applications as long
as there are human beings in the world. The problem is we
don't have the freedom to be authentic or genuine because
it can cost us our heads. Like I said two weeks ago, people
would accuse me of being liberal. I take that as an incredibly
high Christocentric compliment. Liberal with generosity, liberal
with love, liberal with compassion, liberal in the context of freedom.
Holy cow! This is the message God's called
me to preach. Where there is liberty, there
is what? Life. The Spirit of the Lord. But because we are so confined
to our teensy little blinded myopic communities of thought
and chambers that echo, we are unable to hear people, much less
see them. And when we are triggered out
of fear or frustration, it proves that we are emotionally immature
in these areas of our lives. It doesn't mean that we're just
like a brainless blob of emotion. It just means that we're not
mature. Why? Because we've never been able
to confront these things. How do you grow your muscles?
You hurt them. How do you grow your thoughts? You hurt them.
You put things in there that you've never thought about before,
and then you have to work with them. You go, ugh. You ever had
a thought hurt? I have. How do you grow your
theology? You deal with it. You confront
it. You ask hard questions. But we've
been told so long as a people that you don't question anything.
I'm here to tell you that under the authority of the Word of
God, you should question everything, for it is a command of the disciples,
of the apostles, and of Jesus Christ Himself. Question everything
in Christ. Test every spirit. That means
test every theory, every doctrine, every sermon, every big blabby
word that comes out of my mouth, every idea that may be presented
and every argument that may be presented, but do not debate
it trying to prove your point. Open your mind, get woke, see
it for what it is in the seriousness of the Spirit of God. And yes,
I'm using extremely frustrating terms on purpose because psychologically,
you and I need to go there. I hope it rubs. I hope it rubs. Almost chafes. I want it to chafe. Why? Because
this pulpit is not a school. This is not a pep rally. This
pulpit is not a place for you to feel empowered through powder
puffness. It's not a place for guilt. It's
not a place for shame. It's not a place for beating
up. It's a place for preparation. This pulpit is a standing point
of preparation. We are supposed to come here,
learn, praise, worship, all of the outflow of the things through
the means of grace that God has promised us, so that we may get
up off our bohonkas and go out into the world and D.O. the work
of the ministry, meeting the needs as an administrator, minister,
governor, whoever we might be, we meet people where they are.
We are not to be separatists. We are not to build our own leagues
and our own platforms and our own, We're to be in the world,
every part of it, in every sense, in every way, every day. We are
not to hide from the world. We are to be in the world, but
we in the world are not of the world. But beloved, we're so
not in the world, we're not even in the way the world thinks.
So we're scared of it. Jonathan and I, some months ago
when we Recorded a video on some of the things that we want to
be and do in this community as shepherds of God's people and
Together as a church and of course the hurricane sort of Changed
our plan for our little gathering last month, but we maybe we'll
do it. Maybe we'll do it November Who know what I'll be Thanksgiving.
We'll do it sometime. We'll just do something but one
of the things I said in our conversation is that I am seeing more Christ
likeness and unchurched people and and I'm more comfortable
in my life around unchurched people. That doesn't mean us,
but just generally. Think about it. Because you can't
even be honest around church. You have to put a mask on. My
friends, to ask questions is to be human. To ask questions
is to be curious. To be curious is to be Loving. If nobody cares what you're doing,
or doesn't really care where you are, doesn't care what you're
talking about, or aren't interested in learning more about your position,
they don't love you. Because that's part of love to
begin with. We have freedom from this obligation
and this guilt. Freedom through from having to
seek autonomy in ourselves because we can find our true selves and
our identity in Christ. We have freedom through the transformation
of knowing the Lord. And beloved, I think we can have
freedom and truly understand what it
means to be submissive by knowing God's design. by knowing God's purpose. That's
why I was in Ephesians 5 and Romans 12 the last few weeks.
And so what we see here is that our identity, and this
is what I've done, and if you haven't been here, if you haven't listened
to the last five sermons out of 1 Peter, I think you should,
if you seem a little confused, because the whole of the first
two chapters build up to the pragmatism of chapter three and
four and five. To the family, to the relationships
of the church, the relationships of the community, the relationships
of the family, the relationships of these things, understanding
how it works in the context of how Christ shows us as the example,
how God is looking into our lives and he sees and he notices when
we suffer in our submission, And it's a good thing. And you've
already heard me sort of stomp the roach a little bit in a few
of those areas and give the caveats. You are not called to submit
and stay in abuse, emotionally or physically. It is not godly
for anybody to call someone to stay in abuse. And then we look about the suffering.
We're to submit to the suffering. After all, remember Peter's writing
to people who he said, you've got to submit to the world that
you're going into. You've got to be submissive to it. You can't
go in. Our job as Christians is not
to change the world. Did you know that? We're not supposed
to change ideologies. We're not supposed to change
anything. But yet, if we are able to make
change, we can do so in the context of being in the world. But we're not to be separatists. We're not to hide, we're not
to create a whole new culture and say, oh, look here, this
is a Christian culture. It's no such thing. As far as I could see, John, uncountable of every nation,
of every tongue, and of every tribe brought together in the
unity of the love of God through the death and the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. So then, Peter at the end, then
he spends an entire last chapter banging this application out
on guys like me and Trey. Now that you've got all this,
now you, shepherds, baby shepherds, fake shepherds. So our identity is found in submission.
That's the whole point, right? Christ's identity as the Son
of God is found in what? His submission to the Father. That's one of the areas. That's one of the puzzling things.
Well, how's he God if he submits to God? And we've done a lot of work
over that through history, right? But the application of that theology
is often misapplied because we're not really approaching it every
day in our daily lives. The application of right theology
is not just believe it and hush your mouth. The application of
theology is what difference does this make now? How can you live
this out in your life? How can you worship God through this
truth? How can you love your neighbor? How can you embody
this? So the first 12 verses of chapter
one talks about the foundation of our identity in Christ and
that we are the elect exiles. We are the ones who are submitting
now to this living hope of being
born again. The latter part of chapter one
talks about us living out this righteousness as our identity
through submitting to the commands of Christ in a way that shows
who we are. Chapter 2 does the same thing,
as it begins to say, listen, we're going to put away all this
malice, we're going to put this stuff away so that people will
see us, they'll hate us just because of whose we are, and
when they see us, they're going to blame us and accuse us, but
we're going to walk in a way that's so amazing, as we embody
Christlikeness, that people are gonna just literally be liars
when they make this accusation, and in the day of the Lord, at
the day of justice, at the day of righteousness, at the day
of redemption, some of them are gonna be found standing with
us, born again to a living hope. The very ones that used to accuse
us, but a lot of people are gonna be like, you know what, I got
egg on my face, that was not true. Then, being subject to all of
the different authorities. And then our identity is also
further carried out in being subject to one another in marriage.
And I'm gonna say that off the gate, that there is no subjugation
of a wife that a husband does not also have to his wife. There's
no subjugation of a wife to the husband that the husband does
not also bear the responsibility to his wife. And the wording
may be different, the tone may be different, but the reason
that it's different in tone and verbiage is because it is to
identify Christ and the church in the picture. I'm not Jesus
and my wife at the church. Far from it. It's supposed to
be a mini-movie in our minds of understanding the essence
of our call and commands. And I would say that submission,
in all of these ways, is true autonomy and true freedom. So,
in 1 Peter, we see these words, and then I'm going to talk about
it, and then I'm going to unpack some stuff and have to pick up
here next week. I can already tell it's going
to be way too much. It's okay, we're not in a hurry, we're being
prepared, right? Our hearts, minds, and lives
are being prepared. Likewise, wives be subject to
your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word,
they may be won without a word by the contact of the wife. So
what's the point here? The point here is not to tell
wives their job, or their role, or their place. The point here
is to reestablish the very thing that Peter has already said.
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak
against you, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on
the day of visitation. Likewise, wives, do the same thing with
your husbands, even the ones who are unbelievers, because
if you do that, God may very well indeed show your humbleness,
show your husband, through your humility, what? The love of God,
the love of Christ. There are things in our marriages
that we really wish the other person would do, change, or perform. But being subject to Christ means
it's what I really want, it's what I really need. You need
the freedom and the space to say these things, and it's not
wrong for you to want these things or desire these things if they're
prudent, good, and godly. But at the end of the day, being
like Christ and embodying this submission means, okay, as long
as they're not abusive, dangerous, or emotionally damning, I'll
just be patient. So, why do you get that? Likewise,
it connects everything that's been written from verse one,
chapter one. And more specifically, in the
context of chapter two. Likewise, put it all there. All
this subjection, all this stuff, starting in verse 13 of chapter
two, it connects it. And what is this connection?
What is this word? What does that actually mean?
Let me say it this way. Be subject, a voluntary, loving
submission that reflects Christ's humility and love. It is not
rooted in domination, but in freedom to reflect the love of
Christ in a practical and lived out way. It's about how the picture
of Christ is to be lived. It's not an order of subjugation. So, submission, which I will
show you in a minute, is mutually commanded in marriage, is an
expression of the freedom of our righteousness that we are
in Christ. It is not about enforcing gender roles, hierarchies, or
tiny umbrellas under bigger umbrellas. It's about living out Christ-like
love within the family. The submission is mutual, as
we'll see. Well, I'll just go ahead and
show you in verse 7. Likewise husbands, likewise husbands,
likewise. In the same way, in the same
sense, in the same manner, exactly what I just said to the women,
husbands. So the submission is mutual and
it's driven by love and respect, not obligation or power. Now I'll tell you right now,
there are a lot of ladies Lot of sisters that have gotten in
my blogosphere and gotten on my, I haven't been able to put
it up since the hurricane and all, but I've still got about 17 more
articles on Reclaiming Eve, and there's a lot of sisters that
are upset about that. I think I've only got 12 or 13 published
right now. But there are a lot of them upset about that, because
they feel just fine wearing the doormat. I know some men who take more
care of their doormat than they do their wives. Likewise, husbands live with
your wife in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman
as a weaker vessel. I'll go ahead and deal with this
one. It's not a sermon right now, but what does that mean?
Most of the time, biologically, women are smaller and weaker. physically. That's all it means. That's it. There's no other meaning
there. This isn't about women's ability,
intelligence, role, value, worth, emotions. I coach men every day
in their emotions. And from what I'm learning, many
women are stronger emotionally than men are. So I don't, I wanna
hear it. Anybody who can give birth is
stronger than men. And I've got like so many reels
that I haven't put up because of all the storm and not having
internet, but one of them was, you know, hey men, it's not your
wife's job to take care of you and your children and your house.
It's an adult's job. And while you might have decided
on those roles in your own marriage, you're an adult. Husbands, you
don't help your wives around the house. It's your house. You
don't keep, no husband, no father keeps their children. I sorta
wanna like Judy Chop people when they say, I gotta keep the kids
tomorrow, cause my wife's going to set my daughter's appointment.
Keep the kids. You mean raise, take care, do
your obligation, be a daddy, be a best, be a human? So this call for husbands to
live in an understanding way and show honor reinforces this
mutual nature of submission and marriage. Both husband and wife
are heirs of the grace of life, meaning that they stand equally
before God. This instruction subverts any
notion of hierarchy. Marriage is a partnership where
both husband and wife serve and honor one another in love. So
it's not about control, it's about mutual submission rooted
in the freedom and the love that we have in Christ. And when we
do this to one another as equal partners, we reflect the love
and submission that Christ showed in His relationship with the
Father. You see it? It's not my idea, it's what Paul
said. It's what Paul said. So let's
think about that. Well, see, I've had people even
say to me through the years, when Katie was a baby, when Grace
was a baby, and we were having these discussions, and even in
the beginning days, when Robin and I were going through our
marriage counseling, I'm like, I don't believe this crud. I don't believe
that kind of stuff. I mean, we were told very clearly
in one of our sessions that whatever James wants, and every decision
that he makes, Robin, you just gotta submit to it. You can have
your way of talking about it, but in the end, he gets to make
the decision. That's ungodly. It is ungodly. If Robin didn't
trust me in something and disagree with something, she has a right
to not do it and not agree with it and vice versa. So the point of submission in
the context of the Bible is to come under the alignment of mutually
agreeing. Mutually loving. Mutually honoring. Mutually obligating oneself one
to another. But, you take a Greek word like, let's
see, hypotassal. Hippotasso. That's probably what
I think it is. To be subject. Oh, let's break
it down. It means under and what else? In order. Okay. The basic meaning is to arrange
under. The context shows that it's a
voluntary alignment. a conscious decision to work
together in a particular order that shows a picture of a greater
order, Jesus Christ, the Father and the Church. So what this is showing is that
this word subject and the surrounding context is rooted in the freedom
found in Christ. It points to voluntary submission
It points to the motivation of love and respect. It does not
point to any obligation. So let's think about that. What
about in Ephesians? Ephesians 5.21, go back over
there for a minute. Ephesians 5.21, 5.22. The key
here is to understand the broader teaching. Paul begins with a
general call to mutual submission. Verse 21, submitting to one another,
the same word, the same idea, submitting to one another equally
as out of reverence for Christ. So I subject myself. Friends,
I subject myself, I submit to you every single day as the body
that I have to oversee. How? I pray for you, I keep my
life in order to such a degree that I'm not defaming the name
and have to step down out of this pulpit. Oh, I could. I got
plenty of good vibes on the inside that I could jump bad. Especially
playing competitive billiards, and I started playing my horn
two weeks ago. I mean, there's some rowdy people out there.
And the fit of sarcasm that can come out of my soul can incite
riots. Well, man of God ought not be
playing pool and saxophone. Well, find another preacher,
I guess. Because that's authentically
me. I also do wizardry called illusions. And I read books about
wizards. And I read fiction. I also read
atheists. Does that scare people? It does. It does. That's okay. It's not a one-way
submission. Submit to one another out of
reverence for Christ. Verse 22, wives, submit to your
own husbands as to the Lord. So this is directive to all believers
to submit one another out of love for Christ. This is foundational. And we need to understand submission
in marriage. And in order to do so, we have
to get this picture. The wife's submission to her husband is
one form of this mutual submission, but the call is reciprocal. Nowhere in the Bible does it
tell us that somebody else is in charge of us. What about head? The word head there, what does
it mean? The one who goes before, the one who has the picture.
Jesus Christ is the head, but what did Jesus do? He died on
the cross as the head. You hear me talk about what a
terrible Marvel movie it would be. The hero dies. The hero comes back to life and
then ascends to heaven. There's no retribution because
he subjected himself to the one who judges rightly. I mean, the
sequel's even terrible. Because it's not going to be
bad enough. It's not going to be tough enough. It's not going
to be vengeful enough. It's just going to be poof. All
is right. I mean, God's not going to come
down and deliver justice in time like an alien invasion with laser
beams. People run, oh, I should have
believed. I mean, no. It's just going to
be done. So this relationship is supposed
to mirror the mind and the heart of Christ. Not power and coercion,
but submission. Love, honor, without expectation,
without entitlement. Love does not get its own way. Love does not demand its own
way. This mutual picture goes on to
talk about marriage, the marriage bed, the authority that we have,
the mutual authority and submission that we present in marriage.
Neither spouse has more authority than the other. I mean, look at 1 Corinthians
7, talking about sex in the marriage. And what does Paul say? Don't
deny it. Husbands? Wives? Mutually. And men are
like, yeah, that's right. Well, what happens if it's just
not gonna happen? If it doesn't work out, what do you do? Okay,
that's your answer. You don't go to somebody and
say, well, the Bible. See, Robin and I have joked about
that recently in the context of, well, the Bible says you
should lay your life down. Why are you asking me to do this
over here? Why do you need me to go over here and do this?
I want you to go to the store and get that. Well, I don't want to go do it.
You go do it. Well, you're supposed to be the one laying down your life.
And we laugh. It doesn't matter. But yet, that's a simple, fun
thing to laugh about. What about when it's really serious?
What about when you live in a situation where one of the spouses decide
that they're going to get their way? What does the other spouse do?
Patiently wait. Are you being abused? Get out.
Leave. Take it to the church. Don't hide it. Let's get through
it. In Galatians 3, there's neither
Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male nor female.
You are all one in Christ Jesus, this equal standing of men and
women, and all people who are in Christ before the Lord. It removes this hierarchical
division of gender roles and everything else. And this is
the ancient world. We've done a very poor job of
maintaining this gospel picture. And you might think, where's
all this misinterpretation come from? Man, it's just, it's always
been here. It's why the disciples talked about it, and it's why
so many people think that Paul is a misogynist, because they
read it in the context of that sexism. of those patriarchal structures.
But there's a historical ground of misogyny in the Greco-Roman
world, the codes, the written codes that we see. Matter of
fact, the time of Peter and Paul, women were considered in some
cultures property of their husbands, legally. So what do they do there? See, that's a different situation,
isn't it? Because when they left, just like a slave, they had no
right to do anything. They couldn't own anything, couldn't
do anything. This was tough. But the early, I mean, my goodness,
I mean, what did Aristotle say? I got a quote here somewhere
in all this, but it's like 33 pages of things that I'm not
gonna talk about. The male is by nature superior and the female
inferior. The one rules and the other is
ruled. That was Aristotle. And that carried over into the
church and subverted the true teaching, which subverted this
type of teaching, which is what? Mutual love, mutual respect,
mutual equality? Servant-heartedness, Christ-like
humility? I mean, Tertullian, the third century? Listen to
this. Woman, you are the devil's gateway. He had a lot to say. Eddie and I talk a lot about
these. John Christendom, fourth century. The woman taught once
and ruined all. On this account, therefore, he
saith, let her be in silence. What? And then all throughout
history, people have used 1 Peter 3 and Ephesians 5, 22 as proof
text to continue to keep this situation going. And it's not
just the church, it's the culture too. But I can prove in the scripture
that Mutual submission and equal value are the way. Jesus' treatment
of women. Jesus honors Mary for sitting
at his feet, breaking cultural norms that women should not even
be in the teaching. John 4, 7, he speaks with a Samaritan
woman. You know that's one of my favorite
passages. Matthew 28, the first witnesses of the resurrection
were women. Paul's teaching on marriage and the mutual submission
there that we've already gone through. Peter's teaching. So
submission is mutual, voluntary, and rooted in Christ-like love. And we can continue to go and
continue to go and continue to go, but the question that I have
now is how are we supposed to look at this? What are we supposed
to do? We're supposed to just now pay attention. There is not
a whole lot we can do to change the way we think. And here's
what I know about us, Grace Truth Church, is that we've come through
a whole lot of steam. We've come through a whole lot
of pressure. We've come through a whole lot of judgment. I mean,
I don't know of any way we haven't been judged yet. So welcome to
the neighborhood. Here's another way. And we're not being judged by
subverting the cultural norms or the Christian tradition. We're
being judged because we're having compassion for people and people
can't stand that. And even where we're wrong and
we learn how to fine-tune our theology and we fine-tune our
application, we do that with compassion, we do that with patience,
we do that with long-suffering, and we do it together. And I
promise you, in four months, when I'm working through some
of these other things again, some of the sound bites that
I've let fly out of my shoe today, I'll probably retract and go,
let me just not retract, but let me massage and show where
I'm coming from. Because an assertion without
real argument and time, without real observation, is often just
dogma, like bullets from a gun. And that's just the way we are
as humans. But I feel like we need to come
up with a linguistic alternative to the word submit, because what
we've done in our culture, we've made it a terrible thing. Because
what it means today is a terrible thing. How about aligning in
love? How about honoring one another?
How about serving one another in love? Just use other things
that the scripture talks about in the context of this teaching. To learn the application of how
husbands and wives are to mutually submit. Husbands, we are called
to serve our wives in love, to not dominate them, nor control
them, nor tell them what to do. This means that as a husband,
I'm to lay down my desire. I'm to lay down my wants, And
contrary to all good psychology, I'm to lay down my needs if necessary,
actively seeking to honor my wife, listen to her, cherish
her as an equal part of who I am in Christ as one person. I'm
to love myself in such a way that gives glory to God so that
I can love my wife in the same way. Submission for husbands is about
loving sacrificially, protecting emotionally, physically, and
providing a place of flourishment, a place of growth, and a place
of safety that's bigger than us. That's called having value, by
the way. There's nothing less valuable
than a man that has everything. but is nothing. Wives were called to align with their husbands,
not out of obligation or inferiority, but an expression of identity
in Christ. Submission is not passive. It is not about giving
up your voice or your needs. It's about mutual partnership
where both husband and wife work together, respecting and serving
one another as equals in Christ. The curse is the wife wants to
control the husband, and the husband will control the wife
because he can. He's stronger, powerful. You
see? It's sin. Both of those are sin. This is not God's order. This
is wickedness. And both of them are trying to
control one another rather than giving to one another. And I
believe that until this is mentally, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically
grounded in a place of peace and understanding, any differences
of opinion or idea or expression or desire need to be tabled until
this is at peace. You never should do anything
until you are at peace and submission. So I believe
there needs to be a new vision of submission as freedom. and
service. And by reframing it as alignment
and love and serving one another, I believe we can recover the
beauty and the power of the teaching about what marriage is supposed
to look like, and where both spouses flourish as equals and
are outdoing one another to such an extent that that's what causes
their fights. I mean, God, what it would have
been like knowing this in my 20s, Last April, I divorced. I divorced myself. The man that I was died. Because before that, I would
have thought that I was like the model Christian husband. But yet I was even part of these
types of things that I'm preaching against today, not even knowing Not even knowing. And I know that there are theological
positions and then the Center for Manhood and Womanhood and
all that kind of stuff and Grudem and Piper and all these guys.
And you look at their lives and you look at their wives and you
look at their children and all that. They're like, I hate this guy.
He's a piece of trash. You know? He's garbage. And I open the doors. last year
for my children to tell me what a piece of garbage I was, and
they did. And they had the freedom. And some of you have been there.
Hey, clear the air. I have a new core value that
I've been implementing, that I'm trying hard to implement,
that I'm going to implement every day for the rest of my life,
but it's called Evict the Elephant. We should not allow things that
need to be said to go unsaid. We should not hide how we really
feel. We should clear the air. And
whether a relationship or a partnership or a marriage or a parental relationship
can be reconciled, doesn't matter. Integrity and honesty rules. And quite honestly, if we're
to look at our lives and see how some of these ideas have
tainted these relationships, we shouldn't want to go back
to what we had. We should want something new.
Isn't that what the gospel's all about? Something new. And so when I get through all
of this, when I get through all of chapter three, and when I
start looking at some of these things, we need to recognize
that Christ ultimately is the greatest submissive person that
ever walked the earth. And that our submission to one
another is not about Obedience in the cultural sense of doing
it because you're supposed to. Our submission is about living
it because it's who we are. And I want you to hear this,
church. We live subject to one another
because it's who we are. Now, some of us may be in a place
and go, you know what, I'm just not there. And I said this last week and
the week before, it's okay because the rest of us will be patient.
And if we can't be patient, then somebody will be patient with
us not being patient with you. And through it all, our Lord
and Savior is patient. Because he said, it is finished. And yeah, I'm gonna talk a lot
about egalitarianism and complementarianism and poopitarianism and all this
other kind of stuff. And boogers on the wall. Just
make sure the kids are listening. But at the end of the day, it's
all about the gospel. It's all about the freedom and the peace
that comes. And friends, how long is this
joy gonna last till you get home? How long is this feeling of empowerment
gonna last until you forget about it and something happens? And
that's why we need each other. That's why we need each other
in our lives. And it's not about fun times, fellowship and game
night. Those aren't bad either. It's about intentionally seeking
each other. Pursuing one another. Because we're only gonna get
out of any relationship exactly what we put in it. Not anything
else. Unless somebody else has put
in a whole lot more that we benefit from. And I think that as believers
should be our mindset. I wanna put in a whole lot more.
in my marriage, in my church, in my community, as a child,
as a parent, as an employer, as an employee, I want to put
in a whole lot more. Not because I have to, not because
God really wants me to and I feel bad, because this is who I am. Is that who you are? If it's
not, I want to encourage you to contemplate the idea that
that might be who you want to be. And if so, me too, we're gonna
walk together in that. And I think that's a beautiful
picture. And I think that shuts the mouths of the naysayers and
silences the oppressors. And what does it say? If your
enemy is hungry, feed them. If they're naked, give them your
shirt. If they're thirsty, give them a cup of cold water. And
by doing so, you will put hot coals on their heads. So even
if we just can't be pure in our love, we can at least get a little
snicker. And let the Lord flesh it out
of us in time. Let's pray. Father, it is good
to be reminded of this beautiful promise. Like you showed us in what we
talked about last week, Father, remind us of what we are learning.
that we need to be patient with ourselves and with one another.
And it's okay to learn to grow. It's okay to
be wrong. We can work through it. So Father,
I know there are a lot of things that I've not considered, the
implications, but that's okay too, Lord, because You're growing
me as I walk just about a teensy step ahead of this idea as you
grow us all together. And so, Lord, as we take the
table today and we taste and we remember, let us remember
that this is what it's about and that we're not called to
die to save because we can't. We're called to emulate and to
live the one who did because he did. And we thank you for
that. And it's in his name that we
pray. Amen.