Moving Forward in Family Relationships
So how do you move forward in your relationships when you feel like your stuck?
It happens sometimes. Life gets busy. Our kids schedules get full. Our work is demanding.
Before long, we’re literally running from one day to the next just trying to get things done. And they are all good things. But we’re stuck in an unsustainable cycle.
How do you get unstuck?
[Read How do you move forward in family relationships? Part 1 Here!]
Submit to One Another
In Ephesians 5.21, the Apostle Paul begins by saying…
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
This is for everyone. Paul is about to talk about husbands, wives, children, and more. But every Jesus follower must adopt this as the primary way of life… we must each submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
This is another way of saying, Imitate God! (Eph 5.1). Or, follow the example of Jesus! (Eph 5.2).
We have to learn to submit to one another the same way Jesus submitted to the cross! Once again, sacrificial love is the standard for every human relationship for every Jesus follower.
Can you just imagine what life looks like in a marriage, in a family, in a church, when each person in the relationships is always trying to out-serve the other? When each person in the relationship is self-sacrificing for the other? This is what Paul has in mind for what life looks like for us!
Wives…
After placing this banner statement – submit to one another out of reverence for Christ – above what he’s about to teach us, Paul gets into the details.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
For a long time we’ve misunderstood this passage.
Some people have thought that Paul is trying to minimize the role or the place of a woman in marriage. But nothing could be further from the truth. For people living in the first century when this was written, in a cultural context where women had little status, Paul throughout his writing elevated the status of women in the family, in the marriage relationship, and in the church. I don’t have time to go into all the details today… but what Paul does here is simply start with wives as his first example with others soon to follow of what it looks like for Jesus followers to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
This is Paul’s instruction to wives to imitate God, to follow the example of Christ, to love their husbands with self-sacrificing love. This is Paul’s intention here!
Husbands…
And then Paul gives essentially the same instruction to husbands, except he’s even more direct… probably because he knows we’ll need more convincing!
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
This is Paul’s instruction to husbands to imitate God, to follow the example of Christ, to love their wives with self-sacrificing love.
Now you might expect that since Paul said wives must “submit to your husbands as to the Lord” that Paul would then give husbands instructions on how to RULE over their wives. But that’s NOT what Paul does!
Instead, Paul very explicitly calls husbands who are followers of Jesus to love their wives in the exact same way Jesus loves his church. How did Jesus demonstrate his love for the church? He GAVE UP HIS LIFE! So husbands, how do we “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ?”
The answer is always sacrificial love. You’re not the lord of your family. Remember, Jesus is the Lord of your family.
Submit = Agape Love
So, just in case you haven’t picked up on this yet, this idea that Paul uses… that we should all SUBMIT to one another out of reverence for Christ, that wives should SUBMIT to their husbands, and husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church… For Paul, the word SUBMIT is synonymous with Agape Love.
There are 5 words for love in the Greek language. Agape is the word for love that means unconditional love, sacrificial love, it’s the love that always looks to meet the need of the other person.
This is how we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, it’s agape love. Sacrificial, unconditional love.
Children…
And this isn’t just for husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Paul continues by saying…
6.1 Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. 2 “Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: 3 If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.”
This is Paul’s instruction to children to imitate God, to follow the example of Christ, to love their parents with self-sacrificing love.
This is what a family looks like where Jesus is Lord, where the Holy Spirit is our Helper, and where the Church is our village.
It’s every person in the family submitting themselves to every other person in the family out of reverence for Christ, following the example of Christ. Not because we have to, not even because we want to, not when we feel like it, but because we love Jesus so much and we love the people in our family so much that we want to love them the same way Jesus has loved us.
So how do you get unstuck?
When our RV got stuck down in Austin, I literally didn’t know what to do. I don’t know much about how to fix cars, much less an RV that we rented for a few days. But the property we were staying at was owned by a man named Chris who, at one point in his life, was a mechanic. Talk about God putting the right person at the right time in your life.
I walked over to Chris and told him what was going on. He said, let me take a look. Go ahead and pull it up to my garage. So I literally dragged it up the gravel road to his garage. Chris had all the tools to take the entire wheel assembly apart. He was able to identify the problem. What was even more amazing is that he had exactly the right parts in his garage to replace the parts that were messed up and then he put it all back together. And… he didn’t charge us a dime! He just blessed us and sent us on our way.
How amazing is that?
So don’t miss this, this man who was more or less a stranger, stopped what he was doing, pushed paused on all of his plans, and for the next hour WE WERE his singular focus.
In that moment, he was Jesus to us. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. And He served us well. He put our needs ahead of his needs.
Be the Manifest Presence of Jesus
If you’re wondering how to get unstuck in your relationships, this is it. We are called to…
Practice being the manifest presence of Jesus to each other.
Love the other person the same way Jesus loved you.
And if you’re stuck today, if your marriage is stuck, if your family is stuck, can I suggest you find someone to ask for help?
If you’re wondering who to ask for help, start with Jesus. If Jesus is your Lord, make Jesus is your first call, not your last resort. And don’t forget to ask the Holy Spirit, after all… he is our HELPER! And you can’t live the Christ Life without the Help of the Holy Spirit!
But let me also suggest that you ask the church. You weren’t created to do life on your own. And there are people in this church who would love to help you in your marriage, love to talk to you about raising kids.
Maybe you need to find someone like how we found Chris. Someone who knows more or has more experience than you do. Kind of like when Alisha and I asked people ahead of us in life about what they did right with their kids… there are wise people in your church you can ask for help. If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask.
Honor Jesus by Loving Each Other
Wives, when you love your husband with sacrificial love, you honor Jesus.
Husbands, when you love your wives with sacrificial love, you honor Jesus.
Children, when you love each other and you love your mom’s and dad’s with sacrificial love, you honor Jesus.
Sacrificial love is the way forward in every relationship.
So may we be the manifest presence of Jesus to each other today.
Want more from this Series… Click here.
