This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 8, 1996.

This morning we are reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. We are at chapter 5, verse 22. This is Ephesians, chapter 5, beginning at verse 22. This is the word of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body.

Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it even as the Lord the Church. for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.

Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ. not with thy service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven. Neither is there respect of persons with him.

Over the next few months, I will be speaking to you from this particular portion of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 22 through chapter 6, verse 9. And as we make our way through these messages, you may also want to consult the parallel to these verses in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, chapter 3, verse 18, This morning I want to tell you why I am moving to a series on these verses. My objective of late has been to progress with my preaching into a consideration of the Christian’s daily life. keeping in mind the imperatives of the faith laid upon us because of our union with Jesus Christ our Savior.

Now, before I go any farther with this, it may well be imperative that I define imperatives. The imperatives of the faith are the commands. They are the expressed obligations that are set before us in the Word of God. In the Bible, an imperative is a stated directive. For example, the Ten Commandments could easily be called the Ten Imperatives.

Now, I deliberately preached on 1 Corinthians 13 in our previous series because I wanted us to consider or build up for a consideration of the imperatives of daily Christian living. I realize that what I’ve just said may leave you somewhat baffled. Because in your mind, as you review 1 Corinthians 13, and if you had it open before you, it was on the page before you, you would realize that you would not find, you would not discover one imperative in it. That’s why, through the entirety of 1 Corinthians 13, that grand and eloquent chapter on love, you do not find one single imperative to love. Not that the imperative doesn’t occur in the immediate context. It does.

You can check Chapter 14, verse 1 of 1 Corinthians, where Paul writes, Pursue, or as the King James Version has it, follow after love. But I believe the way in which Paul sets up his argument in that 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians is very instructive for us. in understanding better the whole matter of Biblical imperatives or Biblical commands. The Apostle has maintained throughout the entirety of that thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians what we might call a descriptive move, or what grammarians call the indicative move. Because by it, there is the indication of a particular state of affairs, a statement of fact, in distinction from a command. There is an indication of the way things are. Now to say this, in keeping with biblical temperament is not to say the same thing as a definition, although definitions may well be extracted from the indicative statements, the descriptive statements given by the Apostle.

Paul’s usage here in 1 Corinthians 13 is in keeping with the general biblical temperament. It has, in view, an indicative mood indicating the way things are because of an action that has taken place, and as that is related to salvation, particularly the action of God in Christ, revealed and manifest in the world. Paul’s intention, therefore, in 1 Corinthians 13, is not to provide you with a dictionary definition of love—love is this, love is that—in keeping with what you might find in a dictionary, but rather his intention is to provide you with the historical reality of that love because of what God has done. Because of what God has accomplished.

I know that this is a strange way of thinking for you. You have been schooled in dictionaries. In effect, you’ve been schooled in a Greek mode of thinking. It is all generally analytical. It is not historical or dynamic, but that is the language of Scripture. You move, first of all, to the indicative, or the accomplishment, or the action of God, and if there is definition to be given, if there is analysis to be provided, it rises out of that indicative, out of the action of God. You cannot separate definition from the action and activity of God. That’s the biblical way of thinking. You must start with event. You can’t start with idea. it turns most of your education on its head. Upside down.

Specifically then, if you are to understand love, You would do well to consult another biblical author who said, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life. You see, love is grounded in event, in action. Elsewhere, this same author, I’m quoting the Apostle John, writes, we love because he first loved us. In other words, our love rests in and upon the prayer act of God.

The love of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 13 rests in and upon God, who revealed His love in this way, even as Paul testified in Romans 5.8. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. and the love that is expected of us. Not just set forth before us, the love that is expected of us is to be found in Jesus Christ, the very act of God. Therefore, Paul means by way of the indicative of 1 Corinthians 13, to set before us Jesus Christ himself, the act of God, as the only foundation for the imperatives, the commands that would fall upon us.

Now, this pattern subtly, yet really presented by Paul is in keeping with the uniform structure of things throughout Scripture. The command or the imperative, the call to obedience, given to Adam originally in the Garden of Eden, has as its foundation the indicative of God’s action in Adam’s creation. the act precedes the command. Consider the Ten Commandments, or the entirety of the legal administration revealed under Moses. They have as their foundation the action of God when the Israelites are delivered from Egypt in the essence. event, act, precedes command. And isn’t this what is confirmed by what we are taught in the shorter catechism? Questions 43 and 44 pick up on this matter quite well. Question 43 marks out for us the indicative The historical act of God, what is the preface to the Ten Commandments, the catechism asks.

The preface to the Ten Commandments is in these words, I am the Lord by God which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. That’s action. That’s event. God has done something. marks the imperative, and at the same time joins the imperative to that indicative.

What does the preface to the Ten Commandments teach us? asks the catechism. The preface to the Ten Commandments teaches us that because God is the Lord and our God and Redeemer, he having revealed himself to be such by his saving activity, the indicative, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments. The act precedes the command. The Heidelberg Catechism, in its own way, follows this exact same pattern. It places the exposition of the commandments within an exposition of our faithfulness to God, the faithfulness or thankfulness that we owe to God because He has delivered us from all our sin and misery.

But now in thinking about this, and I hope we are all thinking this morning, because this is a thinking sermon. In thinking about this, it is very easy for us to become confused. The ideas and the order of things may become all jumbled up in our brain. Well, you may be thinking, well, you say act precedes command, but as I recall, law precedes gospel. Commandment comes before action. But I want you to keep in mind that it is in a fallen world that we are made especially sensitive through the commandments that we break of the need for a new act of God on the basis of which there will be a renewed obedience on our part.

Adam’s sin demands God’s new action if Adam is to live with God and if he is to obey him. If Israel’s sins demand God’s new, restorative act, if she is to live with God, if she is to obey Him, our sin, in the face of the imperatives of God, drives us to God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.

That in each case, be it Adam’s or Israel’s or ours, this movement from imperative to indicative, it seems to contradict what I’ve been saying about the precedence of indicative over imperative, is meant to humble us all before God, who acts first in his awesome sovereignty, and then calls us to respond in thankful obedience. The proper way of thinking, rising out of the Old Testament, confirms this, confirms what I’ve been saying. Presence’s failure to obey the imperatives of God, furthers the hope that God would act definitively, and finally, in order that by way of his new act, there might be a new obedience in us, a new compliance, and even a new ability to obey. In all of this, there is an appropriate giving way to God. that God might be all in all, that sees in the balance an appropriate grasp of the fullness of God’s grace. God, in His grace, must act if I am to obey at all. The act of God must proceed.

But having set these things in order, having gotten hold of this biblical truth, or better, this truth having gotten hold of us, we still fall short of the full splendor and glory of the New Testament revelation. For it will not simply be that God acts in Christ before we are called to obey, the indicative will precede the imperative. But marvel of marvels, God himself will actually obey in Christ before we are called to obey. Now if you’re not undone by that, and virtually melted where you sit, there may be something desperately wrong with you, spiritually. I’ll repeat it. It is not simply that God acts in Christ before we are called to obey, God Himself will actually obey in Christ for us before we are called ourselves to obey.

It is all of Him. God’s action, therefore, so marvelous is it. His action, His indicative, includes within it our imperatives. All the commands that are laid upon us are already found in Him. Here is the fuller and more glorious meaning of Christ’s perfect obedience. He is God acting to fulfill God’s own law for us and in us. Before we can obey, God in Christ obeys for us. He accomplishes it. There is a fullness of the accomplishment. There’s nothing left out. You can only enter into it. You can only take advantage of it. It’s already done.

Indeed, now, even as we hear the imperatives, as those imperatives come to us, part and parcel of the imperatives is that we would enter into and be joined to Christ, who is our righteousness, who is our obedience. Your life is His life. For to live is Christ. Again, is it not true? Grace now is magnified before our eyes, as we are compelled to see and live in the full sufficiency of God in Christ, whose indicative action for us means his imperative obedience in us. and for us. Truly, our salvation and even our daily Christian living are all of Him.

You dare not depart from Him for a moment. You must abide in Him. But now this brings us in conclusion to the imperative-laden landscape of Ephesians and the command-dominated terrain of chapters four through six, specifically, in keeping with our interests presently, the imperatives of chapter five, twenty-two through six-nine. And it is here you are able to see the dazzling glory, at least here in an initial fashion, the dazzling glory of those things that I have been endeavoring to show to you this morning.

For example, consider the root of all obedience leading to and explicative of a blessed and godly marriage. I’m suggesting to you that not just with regard to the indicative imperative that your education is going to be turned head over heels, even as you consider things like marriage and child-rearing and employment your world is going to be turned head over heels. Consider the root of all obedience leading to a blessed and godly marriage.

Is not that obedience discovered in God in Christ, and in Christ’s own obedience as it applies specifically and respectively to both wives and husbands. And what shall we say about children and parents, next on the list? Will we not find, when we scrutinize these verses in Ephesians, that their obedience is an obedience that flows forth from God the Father’s obedience and that manifest in God the Son? And what shall we say about slaves and masters? God becomes the slave. God becomes the slave, he becomes the servant, even in Jesus Christ, that there might be obedience for us, respective of our positions in life as masters and servants.

We are busy now unearthing the foundations of genuine Christian living. These foundations will prove to be in themselves a discipline to you, compelling you once more, in keeping with the tone and directive of Scripture, to give up your life, that it might be found in Christ. that the very obedience of Christ might in the end be the sum and substance of all of your Christian living.

That gives you an idea of where we’re going. And I hope you’ll stay on board. to the end of the line. Our God, the full sufficiency that is revealed in Christ startles us. When we sit down to consider it, it is greater than we can take in. We know, O God, that it means the answer to our sin, and we are overwhelmed by that thought, by that reality and truth.

But, Father, it also means a full obedience found in Him and nowhere else. Even while we are confessing ourselves to be sinners, we are justified. Even while we are struggling with sin day by day, we are triumphant. We are not overcome because we are united to the One who in Himself is sufficient for all of our lives. For in Him there is not just satisfaction for our offenses, there is the fullness of life itself, a righteousness and a complete, faithful obedience.

May we therefore be delighted to abide in Him, even as we see the benefit of that at work in our marriages, in our homes, with our children, with our parents, in our work, in our relationships one to another. Always keeping in mind the greatness of your grace, our own unworthiness, and the marvels of all of that goodness, of all of that grace, of all of that peace, communicated to us.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.