This Week’s Passage: ²¹ 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.

Admittedly, in our culture, the word submit has a bad connotation – especially in our liberated women’s world where it is offensive to think that men can tell women what to do. Agreed. But the cultural understanding and the biblical understanding are two different things. My theory is this – if women understood what biblical submission really was then they they would joyfully embrace it.

My working definition for the word “submit” for many years has been this: A wife’s willing response to her husband’s sacrificial love. Verses 25-33 of this chapter (which we will ponder next week) outline the husband’s role in marriage. Primarily he is to be sacrificial lover of his wife. In other words he is to love her in such a way that her wants come before his; her needs come before his; her hopes come before his; her dreams come before his; her pleasure comes before his. Now this is the question that I always ask couples who come to me for premarital coaching: What woman would not want to be married to a man who sacrificially loves her like that. And what woman would not joyfully respond (submit) to her husband’s sacrificial love knowing that whatever decisions he makes on behalf of her and the family are with her best interests in mind, not his.

(The problem of course is that men do a lousy job (I am pointing 4 fingers at myself) of sacrificially loving their wives – to the point that they feel like they have to take matters into their own hands. And then things begin to get all out of whack because marriages don’t look like God intended for them to. We’ll look at this more next week.)

Now apply this definition of submission to our relationship with Christ where we are the bride and He is the husband. Why do we have such a hard time submitting ourselves to God and His Word? I think it all goes back to a shallow understanding of the sacrificial love that Christ demonstrated for us through His life and on the cross. I have written about this before. If we really grasped how “wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” then we would willingly and joyfully submit our lives  (our hopes, dreams, wants, needs) to Him. Husbands would be better husbands. Wives would be better wives. And the Church would be an attractive bride for all the world to see. So again I say… ponder this;

How deep the Father’s love is for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He would give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

I’m just sayin’!

Next Week’s Passage: Ephesians 5:25-33

This Week’s Passage: 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.

This Week’s Passage: ¹⁵ 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.

As I pondered this week I realize that I bit off more than I can chew. Verses 15-16 is about all i can handle because there is so much in those verses alone to think about. So next week will be a re-do of verses 17-20 for those who are pondering along with me.

The first thing I note is that I need to pay attention to context. Why does Paul say to “be very careful how you live”? It is because of what he said in verses 8-14 – “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the world.” We must remember that everywhere we go we incarnate the gospel. And all it takes is one act of NOT being careful and we give the gospel and God a bad taste in other people’s mouths. Not being careful is a major reason why the church of the living God has been labeled as nothing more than a club of hypocrites. Shame on us. There are things that we simply cannot do any longer once we pledge our allegiance to the Lord. Paul is not saying that we have a bunch of rules to keep. he played that religious game and it got him nowhere. Elsewhere he talks about the immense freedom that we have in the Lord. But it is a freedom not to do what we want but to do what is right and what will bring glory and fame to the name of Christ. When we live carefully and when we live wisely we understand that there are things that we cannot do and so we joyfully don’t do them.

But Paul also says there are things that we can do when we live carefully and wisely. We can “make the most of every opportunity.”. This means that we are to be an intentional people of action. I don’t know about you, but as I reflect on my days I recognize that there are a lot of missed and wasted opportunities. Paul reminds us that the days are evil. What does he mean? I think he wants us to remember that the evil one is on the attack. He is not being lazy when it comes to the business of subverting the work of the gospel by spreading lies and destroying the lives of believers. John 10:10 says that “he came to steal, kill, and destroy.” You don’t have to look very hard to see where he has had success. It is exactly because the days are evil that believers must make the most of the opportunities we are given. The evil one certainly is.

We are the instruments that God has chosen to use to spread the gospel and reach the nations. He did not ever say to his disciples, “Go into all the world…” and if that doesn’t work then we will go to Plan B. There is no Plan B. Therefore it behooves us to make the most of EVERY opportunity that comes our way.

“Father, would you open my eyes this week to all the opportunities that You put in front of me. And then fill me by Your Spirit with courage to act and with wisdom to respond in ways that that will bring You glory and advance the gospel.”

I’m just sayin’!

Next Week’s Passage: Ephesians 5:17-20

This Week’s Passage: ³ But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed,because these are improper for God’s holy people. ⁴ Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. ⁵ For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater —has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. ⁶ Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.⁷ Therefore do not be partners with them.

⁸ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰ and find out what pleases the Lord. ¹¹ Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹² For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. ¹³ But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴ for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:

This Week’s Passage: Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children ² and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

So the reason that Paul gives as to why we are to be imitators of God is because of how much  we are loved. This takes me back to Ephesians 3:18-19 where Paul is praying that we would be able to grasp just how much we are loved by God. So it would seem that the implications of fully grasping this fact are far reaching – not only will we be “filled to the measure of the fulness of God” but we also be able to imitate God. Probably these go hand in hand. The recurring theme then is the vital importance of “getting it”. Of getting it way down in the depths of our soul that we are inimitably loved  So how to we go from knowing that God loves us to KNOWING that God loves us. I’d like to hear your thoughts. Here are a few things that come to my mind….

Pray – This is what Paul was doing in Ephesians 3:18-19. He was praying for his friends that they would fully grasp the incredible depths of the love of Christ for them. And this is where I think we must begin. We must plead with God to enable us by His Spirit to “get it”. The quest to  KNOW the love of God begins on our face before the throne of God.

Ponder – By and large God’s people today are not a thinking people. We have become lazy and allowed our pastors or SS teachers or favorite bloggers or google search to do our thinking for us. We MUST beging to think deeply about things – and thinking on how God has loved us through the sacrificial death of His Son is a great place to start.

Practice – In other words, allow God to use you to “live a life of love” – to demonstrate the love of Christ in real and tangible ways to the people around you. The theory is this – the more we put into practice what we know about the love of Christ, the more God will expand our KNOWING. Give it a try. What have you got to lose.

I’m just sayin’!

Next Week’s Passage: Ephesians 5:3-14