LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS
Life Under the Reign of the Messiah
Ephesians 4:17-6:9
INTRODUCTION
During the first 3 chapters of Ephesians, Paul has expounded on the theological background regarding the reign of the Messiah Jesus. In the first part of chapter 4 Paul gave some general instructions as how to achieve the unity which should characterize the reign of the Messiah seen in the church. Starting in 4:17 Paul will now describe the way Christians should live if they are taking seriously the reign of the Messiah in their own personal lives and in their families. Notice that although this life should characterize the lives of Christians, this life will only exist among Christians when under the power of the Holy Spirit they follow these instructions. This kind of life, in other words, does not come automatically. Instead, Christians need to participate in what Christ is trying to accomplish in their lives.
TAKING OFF THE OLD SELF AND PUTTING ON THE NEW (4:17-24)
Throughout the rest of Ephesians, Paul is going to spell out the different ways the Christian will live out his life if he is truly living under the lordship of the Messiah Jesus. Paul first commands Christians not to live their lives in the same manner the Gentiles live their lives. (He speaks of the everyday life as a kind of "walk" because walking is what we normally do in life when we go from one place to another; running is normally reserved only for special occasions.) Paul informs them that their response to what he is about to say must be taken extremely seriously because their response to it really indicates their response to the Messiah and not just to him. (Simply because Paul does not address the Jews does not mean that the Jews got it. They didn't get it any better than the Gentiles did. The only reason that he is singling out the Gentiles is that the Gentiles primarily made up the congregation there and not the Jews.)
How do the Gentiles live life? First, Paul says that they live life in the futility of their minds. A few years ago, whenever somebody did something really dumb, my brother Phil would say, "Their upstairs light is switched off," meaning they were basically clueless as to what was going on in that particular situation. Paul is saying basically the same thing about the Gentiles; somebody needed to turn their lights on upstairs. The Gentiles just didn’t' get it. To be sure some of the Greeks were brilliant. Whitehead said of Plato's philosophy: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." That's how brilliant his philosophy was. Yet even he didn't get it. In what sense? God is doing one thing, and they are concentrating on something else.
It was wonderful today to attend Jeremy McKissack's graduation at UT Tyler. The keynote speaker was really congratulating not simply the students but also the whole idea of academia, about how important they were. They are important; however, they are wasting their time if what they are doing is not related in some form or fashion with what God Himself is doing. To live life apart from what God is doing in the Messiah Jesus is simply to take up space on earth. Notice that Paul in agreement with his prayer in 1:15ff. assumes that Christians DO get it, that because of the Spirit enlightening them, they do understand what God is doing in the universe today.
Because the Gentiles are walking in the futility of their mind, because the light has been switched off upstairs, they are excluded from the life of God. By this Paul means that the Holy Spirit is not living in them and producing the life of God within them. Since real life only comes from God, the Gentiles then are nothing more than spiritually dead (2:1). They may be partying to the fullest, yet they are dead on the inside. I remember Bill bright, the former President and Founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, saying one time that in his dealings with the glamorati of Hollywood, he saw a group of people unhappier than any other group he had ever seen before. All of them were just a few steps away from suicide; that's how unhappy they were. On the outside they looked like they were experiencing life to the fullest, while all along they were walking dead men.
Why, though, are they not experiencing the life of God? Paul claims it is because they are ignorant. Well, shouldn't God excuse them if they are ignorant? No, because according to Paul it is their own fault that they are ignorant. This is not the case of a little child growing up in the jungles of Africa, raised by apes without any idea of civilization. Instead this is the case of a person who has been confronted with the truth about Jesus the Messiah and God, and yet has rejected it. It's like the boy in school who stubbornly and absolutely refuses to learn. It is his own fault that he is ignorant, not the teacher’s, and in this case, not God's. The idea used here to describe "hardness" of the heart is that of the hardening of the arteries. Because so much fatty ignorance has gravitated to the heart, the spiritual heart of the Gentiles has had a heart attack and has ceased to function.
Since these people are dead spiritually and refuse to come to the Messiah Jesus for life, they try to create a life which will give them the illusion they are alive. All of us have thousands of nerve endings which cover the body. The other day my personal physician was pricking my arms and hands to make sure that I had feelings in those body parts. Sure enough I did. If, though, my hand was covered with warts and calluses, I would not have felt a thing. The same is true of the Gentiles. They are just a bunch of warts and calluses without any feeling; therefore, they'll do anything to give themselves these good feelings. Unfortunately, normally this means resorting to all sorts of depravity and degrading "sensuality," anything just to give them the feeling that they are alive.
Until recently I really thought that the times we live in were really no worse than those in the 20's, 30's, etc. While those days were not perfect, the people in those days did not stoop down to the depths to which our culture has sunk. This past week alone I have been genuinely awakened to the fact that our society is seriously rotting within. The other night I was watching AMC, FOX Movie Channel, and TCM movie channels on the cable. These are not the HBO's which you expect to present degrading material. I was not expecting what I saw. One movie which received rave reviews had one man making advances towards another man. I quickl7y turned to another one of the 3 classic movie channels. I stepped into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I came out, I saw that the movie I had turned to was focusing on some people who had just stepped into a strip bar. On the ABC News, not Rush Limbaugh or the Fox News Channel which are conservative morally, but on the ABC News the news anchor was saying that AIDS was on the rise among a certain age group in this nation. Not among the youth or young adults but among senior adults in this nation. That's pitiful! The very people who should be setting a high standard for the younger generation is as bad off as the younger people. They need to grow up and act like the mature adults this nation needs them to be.
It gets worse. Since I don't go to R-rated movies, I can only tell you what is going on in movies deemed acceptable for younger people. Hollywood first tries to make light of an issue in order to tear down barriers and make them acceptable in our culture. First, they made light of being gay, not in a derogatory manner but in a light-hearted manner. Wasn't the gay friend in My Best Friend's Wedding really the neatest person in the whole movie? He had more scruples than Julia Roberts (which I guess is not all that hard to believe). Now that the gay agenda has been advance, bestiality is becoming the new topic du jour. How many PG-13-rated movies have you seen which show a person and an animal in a "harmless" yet compromising position? These are just PG-13-rated movies. It's no telling what's going on in the R-rated movies, such as There is Something About Mary. No way will bestiality ever be accepted? This past week it was revealed at the Women's Conclave sponsored by the United Nations that a manual was published by an arm of UNICEF, the children's—the CHILDREN'S—organization of the UN that a single woman with children at home should be allowed to do anything to find complete sexual satisfaction, including sex with men not their husbands, other women, gadgets, animals, and even minors. Once society starts down the path of licentiousness, it knows no limits.
Paul attaches greediness to the list of vices the Gentiles are engaged in. He's not speaking about greed with regards to money but instead greed with regard to sensuality. A person once told me that when he got involved in an affair, he did it in order to satisfy a certain and particular appetite. Once he committed adultery, though, he discovered that the road he was following branched out into a lot of different roads. Committing adultery with another person now was not the only vice he was interested in; a whole new range of temptations became tempting to him. Once a person starts down the path of sensuality, he discovers that enough is never enough. There is no complete satisfaction given.
Whereas everything Paul has said up to this point was true of the Gentile world, it was not to be true of the Christian. The Christian did not learn about the Messiah in this way. Paul now uses the metaphor of the schoolroom in order to describe the way the Christian should live. In this schoolroom of the Messiah, they have heard and have been taught that truth is in Jesus the Messiah, the truth that God is bringing order and unity back into His universe by sending His Son Jesus as the Messiah of the Kingdom of God.
Part of the truth about Jesus in the school of the Messiah is that we are to take off the old person and put on the new person. Every Christian to some degree is dualistic. Paul speaks about this in Rom. 7 where he claimed that although there were things he knew he should do, he did the exact opposite. The reason we are dualistic is that we have 2 natures living in us—the original human nature we inherited from Adam and our new nature which Jesus created in us when we accepted Him as Savior and Lord. The first nature is like glowing embers. We need to recognize its existence and respect its power in our lives. Those glowing embers will not go away until we either die or Jesus returns. I was talking to somebody the other day about the effects of pornography. I reminded them about the glowing embers within them. I told him that pornography is like a can of gasoline. When you throw the can of gasoline on top of the glowing embers, you are going to have an explosion followed by a raging fire. If you think it is hard to control glowing embers, then you know it is hard to control a raging fire. That's what resides within us. Pornography is not the only thing that comes in the form of gasoline. Gossip, power struggles, and clamoring for attention, etc., can all become cans of gasoline.
Each and every day we make the choice which of these 2 natures we will allow to control our lives, the nature inherited from Adam or the new nature created by Jesus and which is the image of Jesus. We do this by renewing our minds. Each morning when I get up I have to renew afresh my commitment to Jesus as Lord of my life and then look to Him throughout the day as I am faced with making decisions. (Notice that taking off the old self, renewing my commitment each day, and putting on the new self are not optional if I am going to experience the life God wants me to have. Too many times we decide we're going to do our own thing and then expect God to bless us, or we make our own decisions and then ask God to bless us. If I am following God, then I don't have to ask him to bless me because His blessings flow naturally upon the person who follows Him.)
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HUSBAND AND WIFE (5:22-33)
Starting in Eph. 4:25, Paul lists the various ways the Christian will act if he is living under the rule of Jesus the Messiah. In each of the ways he describes we see a relational element. For example, a person is not to lie to another person; he is to speak the truth in love to another person. His is not to steal from another person. The fact is that when we are following Jesus as the messiah, our relations with others will be of a certain quality. The true gauge of a person's relationship with the Messiah is his relationship with other people. The most important relationship in anybody's life is that between a person and that person’s spouse.
The Wife to Submit to Her Husband (5:22-24)
Unfortunately, this passage has been maligned and misunderstood especially in recent years. Some claim that Paul is making wives into little more than slaves. That is untrue but also unfortunate because when properly applied, this passage helps produce a healthy family. When I see families honoring the principles in 5:22-33, I see genuine love and respect operating between the husband and wife; I see children who are healthy and functional. When these principles are not honored, I see frustration and dysfunction. The passage clearly teaches that the wife is to submit to her husband.
First, we need to understand that everybody with the exception of the Father has to submit to somebody. Paul makes this point when he claims that the woman submits to the man, the man to Christ, and Christ to the Father (1 Cor. 11:3). The man does not get off scot-free while the woman has to submit to her cruel slave master husband. When men step out of their houses each day, they have to submit to government regulations, bosses at work, and police—authorities on the road. Authority and submission are woven into the fabric of life. They are some of the primary ways God brings order and unity to the universe at the present time.
Second, we need to understand that the reason God commands the wife to submit to her husband is that God holds the husband as the head of the home responsible for the home. With responsibility comes some degree of authority. When I was youth minister at Lake Highlands Baptist Church in Dallas, the personnel committee assigned the responsibility of the Family Life Center to me. It was always a mess because everybody and their dog in the church had a key to the FLC. Some people would get mad at me because of the condition of the FLC. I politely informed them that if they were going to hold me accountable for the condition of the facility, then I needed some control over it. To allow everybody to run roughshod over it and then hold me responsible was insane. The same applies to the husband. If God is going to hold him primarily accountable for the home, then he needs to be able to exercise some measure of control and authority over the home.
Finally, remember that submission does not mean servility. The woman is not to be a beaten down, sniveling, cowering little speck of a human being. Rather, this is submission, or even better, deference to an equal. I like what one person described as submission: "Submission is ducking so that God can cold cock the husband." Many wives want their husbands to change; however, that is not going to happen as long as the wife is in the way between her husband and God, preventing God from getting to her husband.
Submitting does not mean gritting your teeth and doing whatever he tells you to do. It means openly supporting your husband and the decision he makes, even sometimes when he is wrong. It means that you don't bring up ten years later a mistake he made in the past. I've blown it in the past, and not once has Nancy ever said, "I told you so," or has brought it up years later. We might laugh about some boners I have pulled in the past; however, that is a far cry from throwing it up in the husband's face.
The Husband is to Love His Wife (5:25-33)
The way some people treat 5:22-33 would lead you to believe that the most important aspect of this passage is that women submit to their husbands. The truth, though, is that Paul spends 3 times longer addressing the men than he does the women. The women submitting is not the bombshell in this larger passage. Women submitting to their husbands has practically been a given since the beginning of time. The real bombshell occurs in 5:25-33: "Husbands, love your wives." This command would have sent shock waves throughout the first-century world.
During the first century, women in most quarters were treated little better than cattle. We have a letter from that period in which a Roman soldier away on duty writes to his wife regarding the birth of their child. According to the husband, if the baby is a boy the wife is to call in the neighbors and relatives and throw a party for him. If the baby is a girl, though, she is to "expose" her. By exposing a baby girl, the wife was to take the little girl to a nearby mountainside and abandon her. One of several things would happen: (1) she would die from exposure to the elements, (2) she would die by being attacked by wild animals, or (3) she would be picked up by a local pimp who would raise her, molest her, and then sell her services. That was the kind of world Paul was addressing Ephesians to.
The husband was not simply to love his wife; he was to love her the way the Messiah loved the church seen in His dying for her. One of the best movie examples of this kind of love is seen in the movie Titanic. If you saw it only once, you probably missed something quite significant towards the end of the movie. After the ship has sunk, Jack and Rose find a large door which they can perch on until they are rescued. When they both try to mount it, it flips. The camera cuts to Jack's face. He sort of clenches his jaw and then nods his head because he realizes that only one of them is going to make it. He puts her alone on top of that door knowing full well that he has sealed his fate; the look on his face shows that he knows what he has just done. A little later, Rose apologizes for all she has put Jack through. He shoots back, "Don't say that! Getting that ticket was the best thing I ever did because it meant getting to know you."
So many times, we fail to appreciate all that Christ suffered for us on Calvary. He too had to clench his jaw and nod His head because He knew He was going to have to die the painful death of the cross. If you were to pity him, though, I feel He would respond the same way Jack did: "Don't do that! Going to the cross was the best thing I ever did because it meant getting to know you." It took nothing less than the cross of Christ for us to be able to have a relationship with Him. He thinks it was well worth the price. That is the same kind of love Christ expects husbands to have for their wives. He has set the standard for husbands.
In describing further this relationship, Paul uses the metaphor of the bride preparing herself for the wedding ceremony. A customary feature of the pre-wedding ceremonies was the bridal bath. Before it was time for the wedding ceremony to occur, the bride would bathe herself. (The reason that June became the popular month for weddings was that families took their annual baths at the end of Mary. The father would bathe in the bath water first, followed by the sons, then by the women, and finally by the children—all in the same bath water! The brides chose June for their weddings so that they would then be "Sweet [smelling] June Brides.")
In this instance the bride of Christ is unable to purify herself. Only Jesus the groom can cleanse His wife. He is the One who prepares us, the Bride, for the great wedding of the Lamb which will occur when he returns. The way Christ purifies His bride is by cleansing her with the Word.
I saw the purifying effects of the Word upon my daughter recently. She was selected as one of 15 students from the 4th grade at Bowie to participate in a camp for developing leaders. The principal told me that Molly just "had" to go. He said that it was such a great honor that she was going to be able to put it on her resume. The only problem was that it conflicted with VBS and SMAK. She really wanted to attend the camp. I told her to pray about it and then do what God wanted her to do. "Dad, do you think I will get a part in SMAK if I go to SMAK this year?" "I don't know, and that doesn't matter. All that matters is what God tells you to do." "Would you call Chuck and ask him if I am going to get a part?" "No, Molly, because that is not the point. The point is doing what God wants you to do no matter how it benefits you or doesn't benefit you." She was pretty well stressed over the whole situation. I didn't tell her what I thought God wanted her to do. I felt that she was old enough to hear from the Lord. The next day we talked; she believed that the Lord had told her to choose VBS and SMAK. It took her another 24 hours to tell her teacher though because she so much wanted to attend camp. The next day after school I saw her shooting baskets in her driveway. I asked her if she had told her teacher. She told me she had. I looked at her countenance and saw that she was so much at peace with herself, full of joy, and completely settled in spirit. That's what obeying God's Word can do to us if we obey it.
Three final comments. First, Paul claims that the husband should love his wife because she is part of him. Loving her is tantamount to loving himself. Men like to hunt, fish, golf, etc.; however, I have found that nothing beats the relationship God gives a man with his family. Every now and then Nancy may want to do something with me, or one of the kids might want to play a game (like when they were younger and we would throw beenie babies at each other and wrestle), and I don't feel up to it. God, though, conks me on the head and informs me that I need to do it. After the activity is over, I discover to my surprise that I probably enjoyed the activity more than anybody else did. Men, do yourself a favor and invest your life in your family, especially your wife.
Second, Paul commands the husband to leave his family and cleave to his wife. This applies not only to the husband but also to the wife. Men need to separate themselves in a healthy sense from their moms and dads, while women need to cut the apron springs from their moms. The primary relationship should be that between the husband and the wife. When that relationship is the primary human relationship in your life, then other relationships will fall into place.
Finally, Paul informs us that Jesus has a lot invested in our marriages. According to Paul, our marriages serve as a primary way Jesus reveals to the world His love for the church and the love and submission of the church to Christ. When our marriages go under, especially Christian marriages, then we undermine an important way Jesus reveals this to the world.