THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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prca.org We would like to spend a few minutes today
in reviewing the truth that we have seen so far in our series on marriage, the
family, and God’s covenant. Really there
is one great truth that we have sought to see, and that is that marriage is given
by God to be a picture of Christ and His church, to be a mirror of God and His
covenant with His people in the blood of Jesus Christ. May that great truth sink deep into the heart
of our understanding.
And we have said repeatedly that you cannot say that too often.
In light of that,
we have drawn out a few implications.
First, marriage is about keeping covenant promises to each other. It is not, first of all, about staying in
love. It is not, first of all, about
keeping romance. It is about keeping
promises made to one another. Yes, it is
exactly by the unwavering covenant commitment to keep our promises that the
possibility of staying profoundly in love is there and the romance will be
there. It is exactly in keeping covenant
promises that we can be in love after twenty/thirty/forty years of
marriage. But, first of all, the task of
marriage—though that may sound strange to us in this “me” age—the task of marriage
is not first our happiness. It is first
keeping covenant promises for Christ’s sake.
For God keeps His promise to the church.
Jesus keeps His promise to His bride.
Having said, “I will love you, and I will be married to you,” He keeps
His promise. His love is faithful. We read in
Hosea 2:19, 20:
“And I will betroth thee unto me for ever;
yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in
loving-kindness, and in mercies. I will
even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness:
and thou shalt know the Lord.”
God says, “In this you will know Me; I am
faithful to every vow that I have ever spoken to My church, to My wife, to My
people.”
Second, we have
seen that marriage, because it is to be a display of Christ and the church, is
therefore also a daily display of forgiving and forbearing. We are to forbear
one another in love, even as Christ has forgiven us. We find that in
Ephesians 4:32
and
Colossians 3:12
and 13. This forgiving of one
another becomes the very foundation for working on change one in the other. We do not make change by bringing ultimatums,
but we begin by exercising forgiving love for each other. This becomes the foundation for intimacy;
this becomes the foundation for changing in our married life. Here is another good text to remember in your marriage:
James 5:16,
“Confess your
faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.”
And, third,
marriage calls a husband and a wife to love with purpose. A self-denying love is a love that has a
purpose. Husbands are to love their
wives with a goal in mind, namely, that the wife grow
up spiritually. We read in
Ephesians 5:25, 26:
“Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Jesus had a goal in loving the church,
namely, the church’s spiritual growth and maturation, its coming finally to
stand before God as a glorious church.
So also, as a husband, we are to see that we receive a wife from the
Lord as a gift, knowing that when the Lord returns for her, His purposes for
her have been sought by us—that we, as a husband, have been an instrument of
her sanctification. What purpose, what
goal, do you have for the wife that God has given to you? It should be this, that she be holy and
without blemish before God in love.
Now today we want
to continue our series and hear the Word of God on the role of the husband and
the role of the wife—specifically the role of a husband to be the head of the
wife.
We note from the
Word of God that there are fixed roles for husband and wife. The Scriptures make that plain. The husband is the head of the wife and the
wife is to submit to her own husband. I read in
Ephesians 5:22,
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,” and
then in verse 24, “Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the
wives be to their own husbands.” And what about the husband? Verse 23 of
Ephesians 5,
“For the husband is the head of the wife, even
as Christ is the head of the church: and
he is the saviour of the body.” There are fixed roles, then, for a husband: he is to be the head; and a fixed role for
the wife: she is to be subject to her
own husband.
This is so, not
because of culture. This is not so
because of the male dominance in Paul’s culture. This is not so because the one in marriage is
normally the physically weaker one or the one that biologically is able to bear
children. No, we do not find the origin
of these roles in those considerations.
But this is so because marriage is a picture of Christ and the
church. That determines the role or the calling
that each has in marriage.
The apostle says
that the coming together of a man and a woman to form one flesh in marriage is
a great mystery. In verse 31 of
Ephesians 5,
the apostle quotes from
Galatians 2:24:
“For this cause shall a man
leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they
two shall be one flesh.” Then, having
spoken of God’s institution of marriage, he continues: “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church”
(v. 32).
When the apostle
says that this is a great mystery, you must not think that the word “mystery”
in the Bible is something that is obscure and hidden and hard to
understand. But that word “mystery”
means something that is profound, something that God has to show you. When God’s purpose for something is known,
then that is profound—a great mystery.
Marriage is a great mystery because this is God’s purpose for it. It is to be a picture of Christ and the
church. As God made man in His image, so
He made marriage in the image of His own eternal marriage to the church.
So husbands and
wives, as they are filled with the Holy Spirit, will get down low to help lift
the other up. They will both behave as
the servants of Him who girded Himself with a towel and a basin and washed His
disciples’ feet. They will both find
ways to submit their preferences for the good of the other. They will both be mutually humble, mutually
ready to serve the other. They will both
desire to meet one another’s needs. They
will both desire to build each other up.
Amen to all of
that! May that happen more and more in
your marriage.
But, that does not take away the distinct role, the distinct calling,
the distinct place, that God has given both to the man and to the woman in
marriage. He has given a unique calling
to both. The husband is the head of the
wife; the wife is called to be in subjection to her husband. For this is the picture of Christ and the
church.
The husband, then,
is to be the head of his wife. Once again,
Ephesians 5:23:
“For the husband
is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour
of the body.”
One thing that
becomes crystal clear as we read that verse in Holy Scripture is that the
calling of a husband in marriage is not arbitrarily a sign. Is it arbitrary that Christ is the head of
the church? Is it only for
convenience? Could this role be,
perhaps, reversed—the church becomes the head of Christ? No!
The headship of Christ over the church and the loving, honoring submission
of the church is the design of God for our salvation. So also the calling of a husband and a wife
is not an arbitrary matter. It is the
revelation of the mystery of Christ made head of the church and the church
looking to Christ in submissive love.
This was God’s
intention in the Garden of Eden. Adam
was made the head of his wife. He was
made the leader, and Eve was made a help meet for Adam. We read in
Genesis 2
that He (God) made the
woman from the rib of Adam and brought her to be a help meet for him. God said, “Adam, you lead her. You show her the marvels of My creation. You
cherish, you nurture, you provide for her.
Eve, I want you to use everything that I have made you to be—your
creative instincts, your womanly instincts—to bless Adam.
The headship of a
man in marriage did not come into being because of sin. The submission, that is, the loving service,
of a woman was not given as a curse because of the entrance of sin into the
world. No, these were already present in
the institution of marriage, and therefore these were and are good. God created it this way to be the picture of
Christ and the church. Sin did not bring
about the headship of the husband or the submission of the wife. Sin ruined them. Sin distorted them. Sin made ugly what had been made good. Sin made a man take this headship and pervert
it to serve selfish, evil ends. This
headship that was intended of the Lord for the growth and blessing of the
woman, now, under sin, is used to pervert that good intention.
Do you, as a
husband, try to destroy your wife? Do
you criticize her every fault? Do you
break her down? Do you think that you
need to change her to be what you want?
That is sin. Does your wife cower
before you? Does she feel pressure? Does she think that she is not allowed to
have a mind of her own? All of this is
sin.
And sin made the
woman to bristle when called to submit her will to God and to her husband. Sin made her say, “No, I’m not going to try
to please that guy. It’s my
way.” Sin ruined the harmony that God
gave to marriage. Not because sin
brought headship and submission, but because sin corrupted both of them and
made a man into a tyrant and a woman into a rebel.
But now our Lord
Jesus Christ has come. He has come to
redeem us, to restore, to bring marriage back to the purpose that God intended,
to provide loving headship through the man and willing submission by the
wife. Christ did not come to dismantle
marriage. He did not come to say, “Well,
this doesn’t work—this headship and this submission. There is an intrinsic flaw here.” But He came to recover marriage from the
ravages of sin.
And that is exactly what we have in
Ephesians 5.
We have
gospel teaching. We have the cross of Jesus Christ in
Ephesians 5.
We have
here the call of the gospel. We must
remember that when the apostle Paul addresses a wife and a husband in this
chapter, he is addressing them through the gospel, through the Savior. “Wives, let your fallen submission be
redeemed by modeling your submission after the loving submission of the church
to Christ. Husbands, let your fallen
headship be redeemed by modeling it after Christ.” Headship, then, is not an evil controlling, a
forced compliance, so that the wife is cowering and simply empty. But it is to mirror Christ.
What does it mean,
then, to be the head of your wife?
Once again, we read
in verse 23, “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the
head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.”
It means two wonderful things.
That Christ is the
head of the church means that Christ has assumed complete responsibility for
the church. He became accountable for
our salvation and for our eternal protection and well-being. The apostle underscores that in the
text. He says that Christ is the head of
the church and He is the Savior of the body.
He functions as the head by being the Savior. In the eternal will and counsel of God (we read of that in
Ephesians 1),
Christ is appointed to be the legal, covenant
head of the elect, of the church, to be responsible for all of them. There we stood, of ourselves guilty before
God, exposed and liable to the wrath of God against our sins. All around us were the piles of our smelly
sins. And behind us were the flames of
hell. We did it. We were the guilty. We were damn-worthy sinners. Christ, the head of the church, became
responsible for us. He became
accountable for us. He came forward and
said, “Father, lay not their sins to their charge.” He became responsible to redeem the church,
to keep the church, to preserve the church, to guide the church, to bring us
unto the Father.
Second, as head,
Christ also rules over the church, leads and governs the church. So, first of all, Christ assumed
responsibility as the head. Secondly,
Christ rules over or leads the church as its head. Paul exalts this aspect of the headship of
Jesus Christ over the church in chapter 1 of Ephesians, the verses 18-23, where
he prays that our eyes might be opened; that we might see the exceeding greatness
of God’s power or authority that He has placed in Christ; that He has raised
Christ; that He has set Christ at His own right hand far above all things; that
He has put all things under the feet of Christ, in order that Christ might be
head over all things to the church, which is His body. Christ, as the head of the church, rules the
church, and so governs all things for the good of His church. As the Lion of the tribe of
Now, husbands, be
the head of your wife as Christ is the head of the church and the savior of the
body. That means that you as the
husband, as the head of your wife, are responsible for her and for your
family. You are to take the leadership,
the guidance, the rule, aimed at her good, her growth, and the enjoyment of her
salvation. Headship is to assume responsibility
before God for your wife and for the children given to you—for her soul and for
the souls of your children. That is very
humbling and overwhelming. We can do
that only when we daily look to Jesus Christ, the real Man of God, the One who
truly came to fulfill the will of the heavenly Father.
This means that the
needs and the problems, the sins, the discipline of children—these are your
responsibility. The patience, the
ability to communicate, to be in touch with your wife, to be involved with your
wife, to pray meaningfully for your wife—you are the responsible one in your
marriage. You are responsible for the
marriage when God comes to inquire of your marriage. He begins with the head. Who is the head here? He comes to speak to you. Do not point your finger and look at
her! You are the head. Our flesh always wants to abdicate this
responsibility. We say, “This is too
hard. I am going to go fishing, or
something else. That is easier.” No.
You must look to God and understand that, as the head of your wife, you
are responsible for the spiritual direction of your family.
And that head is
also leadership. It is guiding, it is
ruling your family by the Word of God so that the direction of the home is
heaven-ward. You must see to it that you
and your family are not drifting or sliding along but that you are constantly
going to the Holy Scriptures in order that you might lead and show and instruct
and teach. You are to take the
initiative. You are not to sit back and
wait for these things to happen. As the
head of your wife, you are to take the initiative
through the Word of God. Talk to her
about these things. Consult with your
wife. You are to be lion-hearted and you
are to be shepherd-like. You are to be a
strong and tender,
steadfast and compassionate, bold and broken-hearted man of God.
I think, then, that
we need a word of encouragement. And we
need a word of caution. A word of encouragement to husbands. This would sound overwhelming. We certainly see our weaknesses. We certainly see that our wife is not
perfect—just like the church on earth is not perfect. And then, if we are not looking by faith to
our Savior and His promises, we are going to respond to this word: “I can’t!
This is asking too much. I’ll
just check out and hide from responsibility.
I’ll be frustrated because she doesn’t follow my headship, my
leadership.” Husbands, be
encouraged. Christ did not call us to do
something that He does not, by His grace, empower us to do. We read in
Isaiah 41:10,
“Fear thou not; for
I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I
am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea,
I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my
righteousness.” The roles and the
calling in the
So there is the
encouragement to husbands. But there is
also a caution to wives. You say, “But
my husband is not that way. Yes, I want
that. I want a man who is going to take
responsibility. I want a man who is
going to show good, sound, loving leadership of the family. But he doesn’t do that.” Then you, perhaps, begin to list all of his
faults. And you, perhaps, become
demanding. Well, demanding will be
counter-productive. You must pray for
him. You must pray that God strengthen
him. You must pray that God awaken in
him his biblical calling.
The apostle concludes
Ephesians 5
with these words, “Nevertheless let every one of you in
particular so love his wife even as himself; and the
wife see that she reverence her husband” (v. 33). Speak to your husband with a sense of hope
grounded in the Word of God. And direct
your husband to his God, your God, the heavenly Father
who will certainly bless and be near to every son to whom He has given this
responsibility.
After a brief intermission, we will return to this passage, seeing that, indeed, as the head of the wife, the husband is to provide and to protect his wife and family. Until that time, may God bless this Word to our hearts.
Let
us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy Word. It is indeed Thy
Word. It is a Word that we cannot keep
of ourselves. We look to Thee for the
spirit of wisdom and fortitude and we pray that we might be men of God,
responsible as heads and also leaders of our homes. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Last modified: Nov. 13, 2007