Title Lessons to Wives / Ephesians 05:22-24
Today's text is the pinnacle of family ethics. Of course, this illuminates the spiritual relationship between the church and the Lord, but what is surprising is the teaching of the truth that the beautiful church life of a true Christian must be complete at home. No matter who you are, if your family life is unhealthy, your church life will not be healthy either. We are experiencing that a healthy spiritual life is the foundation of a healthy family life.
The requirements for a healthy and happy family taught in the Bible can be summarized as the following by focusing on Psalms 127 and 128. The first is that families of faith were decidedly happy. Second, there is an abundance of gratitude or words of gratitude among family members. Third, it is a family in which families spend a lot of time together and have a lot of conversations with each other. Fourth, when difficulties come to families, they are hopefully and positively interpreted and handled by families.
Who are the members of such a happy and healthy family? Needless to say, husband and wife. The home starts there. Today, I would like to receive a lesson for wives toward their husbands.
duty of obedience
Verse 22. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”
This is 1 Corinthians 11:3. “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”
Colossians 3:18. "Wives, submit to your husbands, for this is proper in the Lord." All these verses teach that a wife has a duty to obey her husband. We need to know the deep meaning of these words. The original meaning of this verse is not in the relationship of subordination, but in the words 'Do it as to the Lord'. The interpretation that a wife submits to her husband should not be misinterpreted as 'because women are inferior to men'. It emphasizes that it is a wife's duty to obey her husband willingly, just as a Christian obeys the Lord autonomously.
Of course, you should also know that the husband's authority as husband is presupposed. In other words, in order for a husband to be able to voluntarily obey his wife, the sound and faithful authority of the husband is a prerequisite. When you use violence and lose your authority as a husband, if you try to apply these words as a coercive clause, you must know that you are not understanding the will of the Lord.
There are nine types of obedience in the Bible.
The Bible teaches that the wife's obedience to her husband is the obedience that the church does to Christ.
There are two main ways a wife treats her husband. One is passive and the other is active. There are two types of passive posture. One is the attitude of resignation and the other is the attitude of martyrdom. These two attitudes eventually make both husband and wife helpless and develop into an unhappy couple.
There are two ways to be active. One is an attitude of anger and the other is an attitude of giving up on oneself. This, too, has unfortunate consequences.
However, as the Bible teaches, if you treat your husband as the church willingly obeys Christ, your husband will also change.
That is why the Bible commands wives to obey their husbands. It is the Lord's teaching that allows us to experience happiness by keeping the creation order with a willing heart, not in a master-slave relationship or inferiority relationship.
Reason for obedience
This is verse 23. “For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, who himself is the Savior of the body.”
What Paul taught the Ephesian church about the principle of the wife's obedience to her husband is a wonderful truth and Christian family ethics. Explaining that Christ is the head of the church as a reason for a wife to obey her husband, he presented the logic that the husband is like him. 'head' here is kefalh; (Kephale), which is a word used as 'leader' or 'ruler'. In other words, just as Christ governs and leads the church, the husband must be able to practice the principle of ruling with authority over his wife, and the wife must respect and obey the authority of her husband, teaching and teaching family happiness through the principle of life. there is. There is a very important statement that supports this statement. “He himself is the Savior of the body.” What do you mean? Husband means sacrificing for the wife as Christ sacrificed for the church, and furthermore, it is a word that indicates that the husband becomes the wife's protector. Just because you're a husband doesn't mean you have to submit to your wife.
And in verse 24, there is a saying, 'You must be submissive' to your husband. The original text is uJpotavssetai (hupotassetai), which is a term with the meaning of order. In other words, it shows that the wife's obedience to her husband does not mean that she is subordinate to her inferiority, but that she conforms to God's creation order.
role of a good wife
A good wife is a wife who has a wise mission to make her husband act like a king on the outside and like a king on the inside.
In a company with a lot of public wives, the boss called his employees at lunchtime to test how good his company's employees were. “If you can shout at your wife among you, go through the door on the right, otherwise go through the door on the left.” All the temples went through the left, but only one entered through the right door. The boss was curious and asked the employee. Then the clerk replied: "This morning, my wife told me not to go because there were a lot of people." Who is more public?
My husband, who was drunk, got up in the middle of the night and opened the bathroom door. Then the light came on by itself. When I closed the door after doing business, the light went off automatically. The husband returned to bed and muttered to his wife to himself. "Thank you so much. I think the bathroom is now equipped with automatic lighting after taking care of my drunken husband." Then his wife screamed. "You urinated in the refrigerator again." Then I got up and cleaned the refrigerator without saying a word.
My wife's life is really tiring. In particular, it is not an exaggeration to say that the wife's position in the Korean situation is pain, suffering, and hard work. But that too is a thing of the past. Our culture is changing a lot now with the rise of twilight divorces and the intensification of individualism. However, the truth taught in the Bible does not change. The Bible teaches a wife to obey her husband. Again, this is not blind obedience, but obedience that is done willingly, just as the church obeys Christ. The Bible teaches us that a husband is not a husband who does not have the authority as a husband, that is, he does not have the authority to respect and obey, and he is not the type of husband who vaguely demands obedience from his wife due to a false perception. So, in order for a husband to receive the beautiful love of obedience from his wife, the husband must not forget that the life that Christ loves the church and sacrifices for the church is predicated. We'll talk about this again next week.
conclude the word. The central idea of the lesson for wives is to obey their husbands. It is the Lord's command, God's creative order, and the wife's duty. When you accept this, you become a better wife and a happier family. I bless you that you can say Amen with the joy of volunteering these words in Christ. Amen.