Between You & Me

Sermon Conversations with Alex and Aaron

There’s only so much we can cover in a Sunday morning gathering!
Each week, you’re invited to tune into our podcast at 11 am on Thursdays – recorded (and sometimes prerecorded) for later, online viewing.

What can you expect? Pastors Alex, Aaron, and the occasional guest having a casual conversation, diving deeper into ideas related to last Sunday’s teaching.

Ask Questions about the Sermon Series, Between You and Me – “Navigating Your Relationships”
by texting 720-316-3893 prior to, or during the “LIVE” Thursday podcast.

Blog sites:

Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCWnNSTN-6XA7oYy6TBfS0LAxqxPvxVjH

Apple Podcast:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/guys-drinking-tea/id1616539767 

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. Ephesians 5:25-33

Paul begins with this directive to husbands: “love your wives”. Love is such a broad term in English. It can mean so many things, and it can range from “I love my God”, to “I love my new boots”, or “I love fish and chips”! All might be true! And yet, we instinctively understand that there are very different meanings behind those statements. When Paul says “Husbands love your wives”, our instinctive reading before his later elaboration is probably along the lines of some romantic poetry – something perhaps like a sonnet by Shakespeare.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach.
(Victorian Poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43”)

While Paul’s world is not the one of 17th or 19th centuries romantic poets, we do have evidence that affection between couples was alive and well in the time of Paul. Pliny the Younger writes to his wife, “It is incredible how much I miss you, first of all because I love you, but then because we are not used to being apart.”

Reading in this way “husbands love your wives” was not a particularly revolutionary imperative. If anything, Paul’s commands fit in perfectly with the cultural pattern of his day. Husbands would provide food and housing and security as their demonstration of love and wives would respond by submitting to their husbands in gratitude for their care. Together the two would provide each other with children, an important part of life.

However, there is more in Paul’s mind than just emphasizing normal societal expectations. Lurking under the surface of our English Bibles is Paul’s Greek word choice. He chooses to use the word Agape for love. The Greek language had at least four words for love, so if Paul wanted to ask for romantic love, he could easily use the word Eros. But he intends to ask for more – Agape is such a rare word that for many years scholars believed Christians like Paul created it. It appeared in so few other places. It was used to describe the highest form of love – sacrificial love – and certainly not used for something like “I love my new boots”! The New Testament is the only place in literature where this word is used in a household code.

In what remains of chapter 5, Paul describes the relationship between a husband and wife as being reflective of Jesus’ love for us, his church. In the same way that Jesus surrendered for our sakes, husbands are called to surrender themselves for their wives. This is revolutionary in any century, but particularly so in the first century AD. If Paul were to be consistent with his day, he would ask the wife to sacrifice for her husband, “her head”. But he turns social convention upside down by asking those with privilege “to surrender” it. In doing so, he changes the definition of what “masculinity” really was and is. In the Roman world, authority and masculinity were almost synonymous. A freeman would exercise authority over slaves, women and children, and by doing that, show his masculinity. The “way of Jesus” invites every believer to lay aside privilege, to pick up their cross and look for an eternal reward.

• Paul tells us that Jesus modeled this love on the cross. Where else do you see Jesus model surrender of his authority? (Chapter and verse?)
• How do you wrestle with a need to receive honor in this world? How does it affect your ability to appear as a servant?
• In what ways do you long for authority? How do you want people to recognise your authority?
• How can you choose to serve those whose status might place beneath you on social scales? Some examples might be: Children, employees, volunteers.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians 5:21 NIV

My husband and I had a beautiful wedding ceremony in which we promised almost 34 years ago to honor God in our marriage relationship. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church, he writes of the mystery and beauty of Christian marriage. The section of Paul’s letter addressing marriage is found in a larger section that describes various relationships and practical ways we can live the Christian life when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. In fact, Ephesians 5:18 is a command, “be filled with the Spirit”; then Paul gives us ways to demonstrate that filling,

Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 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. Ephesians 5:19-21 NIV

We can only submit to one another – yield our own rights to another – if we believe in Christ and are filled with his Holy Spirit. Mutual submission – putting another person’s needs, wants and desires before our own — does not come natural to us as humans. But as we learn to submit ourselves to Christ, we can learn to submit to others as well.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 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. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,… Ephesians 5:22-25 NIV

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church–for we are members of his body. Ephesians 5:28-30 NIV

In a Christian marriage, wives are to submit to their husbands – to choose to yield their rights to their husbands as they would yield to Christ. Submission is not the same as blind obedience. In Christian marriage, husbands are to love their wives as he loves his own body and as Christ loved the church. Jesus gave up His rights as deity to come to earth as a baby, to live on earth as a human, and then to die a horrific, painful death of a criminal. Jesus did this because of His great love for us, His church. Husbands are asked to sacrifice in love for their wives in the same way Christ did for us. So, the devotion husbands are asked to display in a marriage relationship is a “higher calling” than even a wife’s call to submit.

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross! Philippians 2:1-8 NIV

The mystery of Christian marriage is that it is both a picture of how much Christ loves the church as well as describing the union of a man and a woman as a new family. Paul writes similar instructions in his letter to the Colossians. Read Colossians 3:1-4:6 and notice the similarities to Ephesians 5:18-6:4. Pray and ask God to show you what you need to know and understand about putting another person’s needs before your own desires.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 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.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing[b] 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. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:21-33

This passage has often been used as a blueprint for gender roles in Christian marriage. It has also been used to reinforce preexisting cultural norms, rather than subjecting those norms to biblical scrutiny. In my opinion, these approaches do not capture just how revolutionary this passage is meant to be for Christian marriage. If we can get some distance from how this passage applies to us and just take the time to think about what Paul is saying, we may be more receptive to its message. I believe one way we can get a fresh start is to think about how different Paul’s view of marriage was for an audience in the Ancient World.

In both Ancient Roman and Jewish marriages, husbands ruled over their homes. In Roman marriage, men controlled the property. Men had absolute control over children and, to a lesser extent, their wives. Households were “under” the husband’s “hand. In Jewish marriages men controlled the family and were “lord” and “master” of the house. The wife was expected to “help” him by providing children. The will of the husband was binding on the whole family.

Marriage based on Mutual Submission: Marriage in the Ancient world was based on fixed gender roles that wives and husbands played, Paul begins this passage on a very different note — a call to mutual submission. Submission is an attitude rather than a formula or set of rules to follow. Submission is such a loaded word — to me, anyway, it connotes: setting aside one’s free will and good judgment. I wonder if this passage would make more sense if “submit to one another” was replaced with “serve one another”.

Marriage based on love:  Paul then goes on to zoom in on what “submission” means for a husband, and that is to love his wife. I wonder if this is Paul’s instruction for men in the Ancient world as a correction for the cultural view that a man was to “rule” his household. Rather than being something like the CEO of his home, a Christian husband was being told to act with love:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. I Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV

Marriage based on respect:  I once attended a seminar called “Love and Respect”. The premise was that Paul commanded men to love their wives because love is what wives need. Similarly, he commanded that wives respect their husbands. That didn’t make sense to me because men and women both need love and respect. I have an alternative idea. What if Paul commands wives to respect their husbands because that was not a trait that Ancient marriage cultivated? If men had the absolute right to rule their homes, I can imagine that wives had very little incentive to be respectful — except as they were forced to be.

Marriage that’s “All In”:  Ancient Roman and Jewish marriages involved conforming to traditional norms. Christian marriage involved a spiritual dimension that required action based on thought and inward reflection. Paul is not creating a checklist of duties for marriage partners; this passage requires much more.

Application: Compare your view of marriage to the Roman, Jewish, and Christian standards. What can you learn about yourself?

Sermon Conversations with Alex and Aaron

There’s only so much we can cover in a Sunday morning gathering!
Each week, you’re invited to tune into our podcast at 11 am on Thursdays – also recorded for later, online viewing.

What can you expect? Pastors Alex, Aaron, and the occasional guest having a casual conversation, diving deeper into ideas related to last Sunday’s teaching.

Ask Questions about the Sermon Series, Between You and Me – “It’s an All-In Game”
by texting 720-316-3893 prior to, or during the “LIVE” Thursday podcast.

Blog sites:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCWnNSTN-6XA7oYy6TBfS0LAxqxPvxVjH

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/guys-drinking-tea/id1616539767

The verses I’m writing about this week are 1 Corinthians 7:39-40, which state part of Paul’s advice regarding marriage. I usually check different Bible versions to find one that might express the scripture clearly in a slightly unfamiliar way. This might give distinctive perspectives for a woman whose husband dies. These four versions do that for me.

A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is—and I think that I too have the Spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 7:39-40 NIV

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. If her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but only if he loves the Lord. But in my opinion it would be better for her to stay single, and I think I am giving you counsel from God’s Spirit when I say this.
1 Corinthians 7:39-40 NLT

A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord. But in my judgment she is more blessed if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.1 Corinthians 7:39-40 NRSV

A wife must stay with her husband as long as he lives. If he dies, she is free to marry anyone she chooses. She will, of course, want to marry a believer and have the blessing of the Master. By now you know that I think she’ll be better off staying single. The Master, in my opinion, thinks so, too. 1 Corinthians 7:39-40 MSG

Paul covers a lot of subjects in 1 Corinthians 7, and these two verses are no exception. What is common to all four versions is the statement that the woman, after the death of her husband, “is free to marry anyone”, provided that the man is a believer who belongs to and loves the Lord. However, Paul presents another option which he strongly recommends as coming from his understanding of the Spirit of God. She is also free to choose to remain single.

An example of a single woman who may have been a widow, and a group of women who may have included some widows is found in Acts 16:12-15

From there we [Paul and Silas] reached Philippi, a major city of that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. And we stayed there several days.

On the Sabbath we went a little way outside the city to a riverbank, where we thought people would be meeting for prayer, and we sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there. One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth, who worshiped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying. She and her household were baptized, and she asked us to be her guests. “If you agree that I am a true believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my home.” And she urged us until we agreed.

It appears that Lydia was a woman of independent means, possibly having inherited the business and was highly esteemed in the community. Paul and Silas respected her, too.

Acts 16:16-39 tells the story, familiar to most of us, of Paul and Silas being imprisoned in Philippi.

When Paul and Silas left the prison, they returned to the home of Lydia. There they met with the believers and encouraged them once more. Then they left town. Acts 16:40 NLT

There are other stories of faithful women mentioned in the Bible. Take some time this week to read about: Anna, an elderly widow prophetess, Luke 2:36-38, and Tabitha (which in Greek is Dorcas) Acts 9:36-42. It doesn’t say if she is a widow or not, but she is described as, ”a believer who was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor”.

Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?

Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.

Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring.[d] So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth. “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty. Malachi 2:10-16 NIV

Throughout the Bible we see God working toward an extremely high standard for our broken world and fragile relationships: shalom (peace) – His kingdom coming to earth – He does so through covenantal relationships between Himself and people and between people. While God is absolutely Holy, the people He works through are fragile and flawed. Covenants are relationships that embrace God’s holy standards and our weaknesses.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on the differences between a contract and a covenant. However, I believe the gist is this:

A contract is a legal agreement that is broken when the rules are broken by parties to it.
A covenant is a pledge meant to be maintained even if the parties to it violate their commitments.

Like the relationship between God and his people, marriage is a covenant designed to endure for the long haul and to withstand stress, and even become stronger with testing.

What does this mean for us as we work toward God’s holy standards through the messiness of our marriages? There are no easy answers or neat lists of techniques for understanding how we are to live within the covenant of marriage. One thing is certain, that understanding requires a level of wisdom that can’t be found by reading books or successfully having navigated other types of relationships. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread – I’m going to propose some explanations but am not posing as an expert!

Covenants keep the long term in mind: While contracts are fairly black and white, covenants are designed for long term relationships and are able to tolerate more ambiguity. Every misstep is not grounds for termination/divorce.

Covenants mean our actions matter: While covenants are better able to handle missteps and mistakes, the parties’ actions still matter. It is clear from the passage in Malachi that God detests unfaithfulness to covenants. A covenantal relationship like marriage is not something one party can take for granted, leaving all the burden of maintaining the commitment on the other — both parties need to be committed.

Covenants — Are they perpetually valid? This is a subject that is way beyond my pay grade. We know that God has extremely high standards for covenantal relationships, but there are grounds for breaking them. In what circumstances does the Bible allow divorce? Is adultery the only permissible way out of a harmful marriage? Is it enough for only one spouse to be all in in a marriage? Or do both have to take responsibility for being “all in”?