Now marriage, sex, workplace, family: in Ephesians God shows us how authentic doctrine (when it’s really from God, not manmade) leads solidly into practice, into action.
In fact these aren’t helpful categories to separate! `Doctrine`, vision, becomes here the essential revelation that transforms practice; it’s the empowering for what we’ve got in hand to do. If the vision, `doctrine’, ever gets lost, the practical lifestyle soon changes and suffers too. That’s why Paul’s overwhelming prayer-concern in both Ephesians1 and 3 is that we grasp the vision, as we’ve seen.
So what we meet as we read the rest of Ephesians is not some spaced-out dreaminess. Truly pietistic mysticism leads straight into cutting-edge lifestyle. It’s very concrete: `walking worthy’ of the calling, the vision of the Body of Christ (4:1), means `making every effort’ (the Greek implies strenuous, deliberate urgency) to live out that vision in practice in our own situation (4:2-3). Such Christlikeness won’t just come automatically just because we are members of the Body; God – through Paul – clearly feels that love’s implications need working on very specifically in these chapters, so spells them out (fairly bluntly!) with regard to marital/sexual relationships, service to difficult employers, and right relating to parents.
Let’s notice first that `love` here isn’t a sentimentalism that smiles benignly on wayward doctrinal carelessness or on personal dishonesty. It’s not a very postmodern thing to say, but the fact is, biblically, love and truth go inseparably together, and God through Paul makes this very clear. Our calling is always two-sided; as Paul says in the seriously important verse 4:15, our calling is to `speak the truth in love‘. Ephesians empowered us earlier to see the process of `salvation’ in its broadest, most cosmic sense; so for example love means aligning with that process as it really functions, through faith alone (2:8-9) – and not turning a blind eye to false teachings as to what the gospel is, and how this salvation is to be attained.
This needs emphasis in our present cultural situation. Our media-oriented, postmodern culture has made it harder to think with this kind of alert doctrinal precision. But love demands that we must; we can’t afford woolly thinking about what the gospel is when people’s whole salvation is at stake. Further, sound doctrine is vital for the Body’s whole life; the exercise of the spiritual gifts of 4:11 is, says God through Paul, designed precisely to protect the Church from being `blown here and there by every wind of teaching’ (4:14). (Lord, please give me Your courage and Your alertness…) Not all traditions or doctrines or `new waves’ are acceptable, and the gifts of the Spirit are actually given to ward some of them off! Love, then, must always build on truth, otherwise it becomes gutless liberal sentimentalism – just as truth without love hardens quickly into legalism and doctrinaire sectarianism. (If truth without love is like a dry skeleton, isn’t love without truth like a boneless jellyfish?!) It’s love likewise that necessitates our speaking `truthfully’ in general, the motivation being that `we are all members of one Body’ (4:25). So then a really helpful, practical question for each of us is: where does my personality sits on this spectrum, and what adjustment may be necessary? Is my personality more likely to emphasize love, and to underplay truth? Or to emphasize truth, and to neglect love?
Again, love presupposes ethics, and holiness. The Spirit whose presence is the dynamic of the Body (2:22, 3:16-18) is a personal and Holy Spirit. Holiness is therefore so crucial that Paul will here `tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord’ (4:17): `Find out what pleases the Lord… Be very careful how you live’ (5:10,15). To say that this Holy Spirit is the dynamic of God’s entire cosmic process is not a piece of safe, abstract philosophy. It means, for example, that our relationship with Him is so vital that we must take great care not to treat our local sisters and brothers in ways that would block it, that would put us out of touch with the mainline. Thus, says Paul, a key motivation for `getting rid of all bitterness’, and for carefully restraining ourselves from `slander’, is the importance of not blocking that relationship, not `grieving the Spirit’ (4:30-31). Holy Spirit, please help me see what to do here to maintain my walk with You, and then to do it…
Throughout this section, then, we find vision transforming practice. It’s being `taught’ the sheer glory of a new self `created to be like God'(!) that motivates us to work at `true righteousness and holiness’ (4:22-24). It’s as we’ve grasped the reality of how Christ’s life-giving `grace’ flows through each of us in His Body (4:7-12) that we also grasp our responsibility to live as its channels; to do what `imparts grace to those who hear’, rather than the opposite (4:29 RSV). It’s faith secure in Christ’s enormous love (5:2) that liberates us from the greedy acquisitiveness which – `of this you can be sure’ (5:5-6) – could bring onto us God’s severe discipline. (And liberates us also to use our God-given financial resources for their true purpose, 4:28.) It’s grasping the sheer glory of ch5’s vision of sexuality (we’ll come onto this in a moment), that can help us hold on to the reality that God knows best: that sex belongs in marriage, where we know it means `I belong to you and you to me, 100% without reservation, without us having to earn anything by performance`, like with Christ’s Bride and Christ; and so love means holding back from pushing our partner into sex outside marriage, and expecting joy as we trust God in such matters and refuse to disobey him. And it’s being continuously, joyously `filled with the Spirit’, beginning to enjoy heaven now, that – as the flow of 5:18-20 makes clear – is both cure and alternative to debauchery. (If we really desire that ongoing `filling’, we will want to discover what it is. The close parallel in Colossians makes clear that another way to describe the same process is a spirituality full of Scripture, where we `let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Col 3:16-17); being (truly) filled with the Word (Col 3) and (truly) filled with the Spirit (Eph 5) have exactly the same effects, in worship and thanksgiving.) So thankyou, Lord, for the revelation of Your glory and Your love; please help me in turn to `be very careful’ about `finding out what pleases the Lord’, day by day…!
And above all, the wonderful vision we’ve been exploring sets the transformational pattern for our relationships: `Be imitators of God’ (5:1)! Paul makes the point repeatedly: Christ’s utterly self-giving love at Calvary is the transforming model for us, for our forgiving each other (`just as in Christ God forgave you’, 4:32), and for `living a life of love’ (`just as Christ loved us’, 5:2); and first and especially for our marital/sexual relationships (5:21-32). And he reveals, too, that it’s when we’ve seen how, in the `oneness’ God has created, service to difficult employers is also service to the Lord (6:5,7) – as is right relating to parents (6:1) – that we’ll be armed to handle those sometimes challenging relationships aright.
This is not at all easy. Such `submissiveness` (5:21) goes right against the grain. So it’s precisely after this context of living out Christ’s love in the family and workplace that Paul challenges us, `Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power’, and spells out carefully how we can arm ourselves, aspect by aspect, against the satanic attack we may face (6:10-18). This is where spirituality can be toughest; it can be in our closest relationships that Satan most easily sabotages us and defiles our walk with the Spirit (cf 4:30-32).
Space doesn’t permit our exploring these sections in detail. But the supreme example of Christ as our pattern is in 5:21-33, Paul on love and marriage. As the sexual and the spiritual illuminate each other, this profound passage floods us with light in at least three directions.
First, it radically illuminates our marriages: we grasp how we should love our partners by learning to take as our model the utterly self-giving, creative, patient care of Christ for his Bride (5:25). `Husbands, love your wives, just as, just as, Christ loved the Church’! Wow. That seems a really horrendous challenge… (a verse to write in our diary for every two months??) Yet if, day by day, we can manage, through the Spirit’s power helping and changing us, to love our spouses just a little bit more like Christ loves (Paul drives the point home to husbands three times as a command (love is not first a feeling!) (vv25,28,33)) – including, to `leave` (v31), ie down-prioritize, other things (which may include careers or hobbies) – we surely should not have too many failed marriages! Something to pray about – possibly uncomfortably!? – and God gives plenty of challenging things in vv22-33 for wives to pray for themselves too!
(It is worth noting here too how the biblical response to Ephesus’ debauched sexuality is not the normal ascetic reaction of human religion, understandable though that would be (cf Col 2:23). God’s response is not so much external restraint as internal transformation. If we truly see how totally devoted sex, mutual and permanent self-giving in security and generosity, reflects and expresses in-Christness, then promiscuity becomes really senseless, a bone-headed abandonment of what sex is fundamentally about. But rather than excluding it in the manner of celibate monasticism, the biblical vision gives profound dignity to sex, liberating it from sleaze or from seeming a mere and perhaps unfortunate animal drive, and showing us how sex in its right, marital context is something magnificent to be valued with God’s great blessing and joy. (We might add that learning to see sexuality sanctified and glorified by grasping the biblical vision in this way is itself an instance of the beautifying of the Church/Bride by `washing with water through the Word’ (5:26); that is, `sanctifying by the truth, your Word’ (John 17:17).)
So then we understand the ever-deepening oneness of marriage and sexuality through this wonderful parallel, the ever-deepening oneness of Christ and his Church. But at the same time, the passage illuminates the Church for us: we understand her through our understanding of marriage, as Christ’s Bride, his partner-to-be that he loved so passionately he `gave himself up for her` – screaming in agony in Calvary’s darkness, bearing the unimaginable judgment of hell, so much did he love her, us – … to present her to himself’ (v25-27)… That, may the Spirit help us grasp it, is Christ’s love for `Church` the Bride, for us!
And lastly it illuminates Christ for us too: our eternal Lover, the devoted Bridegroom, who endlessly, patiently, `feeds and cares for’ his Bride; washing her feet, `cleansing her by the washing of water through the Word’. (Imagine also Him coming to do this as daily you pick up your Bible or smartphone, or as you prepare for the Word on a sunday or at homegroup!) Until finally, one day, his preparatory work is done and she will be `without stain or wrinkle’, all defilement gone; `a radiant Church’, ready to share his throne, indeed everything he has, his love, his power for goodness, his joy, forever (vv26-29)!
(And of course our experiences of singleness also `conform us to Christ’, and help us to know him better: let’s remember he has waited patiently an enormous length of time for his Bride!)
It’s all a marvellous vision. One book where we watch Paul working these things out amid great difficulties is 2 Corinthians, where he faces, both in himself and in others, plenty of these `stains and wrinkles’; we’ll hope to explore that in a few weeks’ time. But it’s in action, he insists here, in finding our way through the challenges of our closest relationships, that we can come to understand and express more of the love of Christ himself. Vision, absorbed doctrine, will empower action; action illuminates vision.
So then get and keep the vision, Paul challenges us; meditate thoroughly on it; it is the living Word that the Spirit will use to empower you for those everyday realities where the vision touches the ground…
Father, thank You so much for the vision. Thank You for the Calvary love of Christ. Please help me treat my sisters and brothers in such truthfulness and love. Help me treat my family, and my employer and employees, in a way marked by this vision of Christ. And help me treat my spouse in the devoted, generous, loving, and caring way You love us in Your Church……
