Ephesians 5: 21 Thru 6: 4(NIV): Submit to One Another out of Reverence for Christ

Our Command Structure

Ephesians 5: 21 - 33(NIV): Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 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, 27and 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 his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, 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. These passages have to do with spiritual warfare. Now at first glance it may not seem to you that what we just read has any bearing whatsoever on our war with the devil and the dark powers and principalities of this world, but trust me it does. Now just in case there are some who are unaware that we are involved in a struggle with dark powers and principalities let me present Ephesians 6: 12(NIV) to you; it says: our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. So then what has the biblical family structure of a husband, a wife, and children to do with this spiritual warfare against the devil and his brigade? Well the family is God’s creation; it is how God wants procreation to proceed in the earth. The devil wants stop or severely cripple this process and so he has attacked God’s Family Plan. These attacks are spiritual attacks and even though they appear in the natural, nevertheless they are still spiritual in nature. In other words we shouldn’t war against one another because flesh and blood is not the enemy; spiritual forces that promote wickedness in the earth is the enemy that we all fight against. If we are to be victorious in this spiritual battle then we must be filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words to fight a supernatural battle you are going to need supernatural power and super natural enablement; that Power and enablement is availed to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Again, I tell you that your enemy is not your sister nor is it your brother; it’s not your wife, nor is your husband your enemy. The enemy is not a flesh and blood enemy – he is an invisible spiritual being who wars against us using spiritual wickedness as a means to stir up trouble at every opportunity. This enemy wants to set us against one another and he is particularly interested in undermining the family; he wants husbands against wives and wives against husbands thus producing wayward children, but we have been endued with Divine Power so that we might overcome this enemy and all of his spiritual wickedness. But while we fight, some of us getting anxious and disturbed by the things that we go through; we are disturbed because we haven’t connected the things that we are going through to the necessity of having spiritual power to overcome those things. In other words we don’t see how we are going to get out of a problem or how this mess or that mess will be cleaned up because we are not living in the spirit; many of us are still living in the flesh and walking by sight, and not by faith thus hindering the work of the Holy Spirit. We need to better understand that the Holy Spirit has been given as an Enabler and a Helper. He is the Means by which we overcome the trials and tribulations of this world. He helps us to be all that God says we are; He enables us to do all that God said that we should do. So since the Holy Spirit is necessary for victory then how can one know whether or not he or she is filled with the Holy Spirit? Well to begin with if you have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior you have been endued with Power – which is the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit you now live a lot wiser than you used to live because you know the Lord’s Will concerning how you should live; also when you are filled with the Holy Spirit - you worship. Ephesians 5: 15 – 20(NIV) explains it; it says: Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those having the Spirit of the Lord do these things mentioned in the above scriptures. Now, another grace that is found in those who have the Holy Spirit is the ability to submit. The natural man is not willing to submit to anything or anybody; he only submits when forced to do so, or when force is threatened, but this is not so for the man or woman who is controlled by the Spirit. The person controlled by the Holy Spirit has within them the grace to submit; that is to say through an act of our will we make ourselves subject to one another. We choose to submit to whatever or whoever God has said that we should submit to. We do not have to have a bit put in our mouth or be forced into submission; we do not have to be threatened with force, but we willingly submit to the Will and the Way of God. We submit willingly because we understand what the Lord’s Will is and we want to submit to His over arching Will. Ephesians 5: 21: says: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Why do we choose to submit to one another? We choose to submit out of reverence for Christ. Spiritual Believers filled with the Holy Spirit know when to submit – they know what is the Lord’s Will and they submit to it especially within their own family relationships. Submitting as referred to by Paul in verse 21 where he says: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ goes back and forth – submit one to another he says. So then submitting is not a one- person job, it is a one another job. I’m sure that the ladies in the house are delighted to hear that submitting is not their job alone. In other words this passage does not say that one person is to do all the submitting; everybody involved is to submit. So then there is a litmus test to determine whether you are filled with the Holy Spirit and the results of that test can be measured by how you are at home, how well you submit. Let me say it again – there is a test, there is a bottom line that lets us know whether or not we are under the control of the Holy Spirit because the Spirit gives us the ability to submit. With that in mind understand then that most conflicts at home generally happen because one or more of the people there have to have their way. When nobody in a family is submitting then chaos, confusion, rejection, and finally divorce will be the result. With the number of divorces that take place in America these days it is clear that the family is under siege from the enemy. The traditional family as God has defined it is a marriage between a man and a woman and that union produces children, but we have an enemy whose agenda is to re-define what a family is. States are legalizing homosexual unions; they are calling them marriages and giving them the same rights and privileges that they give a marriage between a man and a woman. Even religion has become anti-family by performing these unholy unions between same sex individuals. Satan is out to destroy the family as God has defined it and understand that this is not a new strategy on his part. You see he was on the scene when Adam and Eve got married. Satan never bothered Adam while Adam was single, but as soon as Adam and Eve said “I do” Satan showed up. Now the reason why the Apostle Paul wants talk to us about the family is because he understand one of the fundamental rules of warfare, and that rule is that you should do everything in your power to destroy your opponent’s chain of command, because if you can destroy your opponent’s chain of command, then you not only cut off the head that gives the commands, but you also destroy the soldiers in the field because if the soldiers in the field don’t know what is happening – if they don’t know which direction is the right direction to travel; if they don’t know what the mission is; if they are confused about who the enemy is and what the enemy looks like because the command structure has being disabled then it is just a matter of time before they no longer function as a unit; it’s just a matter of time before they become disorganized, demoralized, fearful, and then they are easily cutoff and defeated. Ephesians 5: 21 which says: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ is tied to this chain of command that God has established in the earth. God uses this chain of command that he established a long time ago to disseminate spiritual truth. Now notice that Paul’s main concern here relative to the family is not how much in love you are with your mate, it’s not how happy you are or how stimulated you feel – all of those are good benefits and by-products of a marriage and a family, but notice that Paul’s foremost concern in these scriptures that talk about husbands and wives and submitting is found in Ephesians 5: 32 where the Apostle suddenly shift gears and says something seemingly unrelated to family and the command structure that we have been talking about in the preceding verses. He says: This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. In Ephesians 5: 21 – 6:4, the Apostle is talking to us about family, but he pauses in the middle of that discourse about family to explain that his foremost care and his biggest concern is bigger than our individual families. Put another way Paul is saying that I am concerned about your families, but I am much more concerned about the mother of all families “The Church.” First let us understand that there is no marriage in heaven; and the reason that there is no marriage in heaven is because once you get the real thing – you don’t need the illustration anymore. What I am saying is that “human family” is in the earth to illustrate divine family, and divine family is “Jesus Christ and His Bride the Church.” To understand this passage of scripture that says: This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church one must see that while Paul is speaking about family, the “profound mystery” is that he is really talking about Christ and the Church. Folks tend to pull out of the scriptures the portion having only to do with husbands and wives and their respective roles in the family structure, but I tell you this passage is so much weightier than that – in that Paul is really talking about Christ and the Church. Paul breaks down for us the command structure in the home – he says in Ephesians 5: 22-24: Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Now these are three of the most hated verses in the Bible. The reason why these verses are hated is because when you first read them they appear to be so one-sided, but as we shall soon see this is not the case. Now in addressing the role of wives, Paul picks up a word out of verse Ephesians 5: 21, which says “to submit.” The wife is to voluntarily place herself under the authority of her husband and she does this because it reflects her submission to Christ. In other words Christ says that she should be subject to her husband and so she out of reverence and obedience to Christ submits to her husband. To submit is to be subject to – to willingly and voluntarily recognize the headship of the husband and place yourself under that headship. The reason a wife needs to do this is because of God’s chain of command. In the Garden of Eden we see that Adam was first formed and it was Adam who was given the responsibility to keep the Garden together in the fashion that God had commanded. Genesis 2: 15 -17(KJV) says that: the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. So when sin was found in the Garden, God came looking for the one that He had left in charge of the Garden, He comes to the garden wanting to talk to Adam about the sin in the garden because Adam’s charge from God was to dress and keep the Garden. Even though Eve was the one manipulated and beguiled by the devil and even though Eve was at the very heart of the transgression, still God comes and he wants to know from Adam what has happened in the Garden that He gave Him to dress and to keep. Men, God will want to know from you what has happened in the house that He gave you to dress and to keep. Genesis 3: 8 -11(KJV) says: And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? So we see here that God is looking to Adam for answers as to what went wrong in the garden that he was supposed to dress and keep. Another important observation is this: even though Adam had total responsibility for the garden, Eve his wife was not made completely and absolutely subject to Adam until after the fall, until after God explained to each the consequences of their sin. In Genesis 3: 13 -19(KJV): the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. So given the events that take place in Genesis, we see why the Apostle Paul lays out his exposition in Ephesians 5: 21 – 33 the way that he does. The Apostle takes into account what has already happened in Genesis and what God’s Decree is based on what has happened; and so Paul says that: the husband is the head of the wife, and since God set it up this way – then in verse 24 the Apostle says of wives: wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Now what we have seen in all this is that Satan attacked the first family – which was Adam and Eve.