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, October 6, 1996.
Our scripture reading this morning is, first of all, found in 1 Peter, the third chapter. We begin at verse 1. Listen to the word of God. 1 Peter 3, verse 1. In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.
And let not your adornment be external only, braiding the hair and wearing gold jewelry and putting on dresses, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God. For in this way, in former times, the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands. Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear. You husbands, likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman, and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
To sum up, let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit, not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.” And then, turning over to Ephesians chapter 5, we are at verse 21.
Ephesians 5.21. Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
A supposition held by many in the broad and wide expression of Christ’s Church today is that we Christians in the twentieth century must distance ourselves in some regard from the Apostle Paul. And as you have heard this morning from the Apostle Peter as well.
This supposition declares that we can defend Paul, specifically now in Ephesians 5 verses 22 through 24, only at the expense of our own credibility and our own standing within our culture. Paul, we are told by many, is the champion of an ancient and antiquarian, out-of-date view of society, a view fraught not only with outmoded attitudes, but with unjust and prejudicial practices such practices as work their way into the statements of Scripture itself.
We, therefore, have no choice. We must distance ourselves from Paul. We must make a choice between him and the truth as we have come to see it. for we can no more defend the Apostle Paul in his statements about slaves and masters in Ephesians chapter 6 than we can his statements about wives and husbands in chapter 5.
Paul subscribes, so it is said, after all, to that understanding of society in which there are, in the words of the Westminster standards, quote, superiors, inferiors, or equals. We, of course, in our own time, have come to understand that there are no such things. At least, there ought not to be such things in any society to which we aspire. We therefore cannot support the Apostle Paul, so we are told in his view of culture and society generally. When it comes to marriage, we are to find most abhorrent Paul’s notion that wives are to be submissive to their husbands.
Since we judge that such an attitude, such a notion, betrays the belief, on Paul’s part, the belief of a female of a gender inequality. Such a position is not simply inadequate, so it is stated. Such a position is not simply improperly informed. Such a position is morally reprehensible.
Thus, all truly moral individuals, most particularly the Christian Church, which is to be a beacon of morality in the world in the expression of its collective moral conscience, must declare itself to stand beyond the narrow, provincial, prejudicial, and even iniquitous prescriptions of the Apostle Paul. Some have gone further. Some within the Church have gone further still, for they have become the most radical exponents of an anti-Paul perspective. They say that the Church has no other current, no more relevant task than to stand as the vanguard for social, political, and economic equality. That is her mission. Liberation, then, is more than the cause of God in our time. Liberation itself is God. There is no other God. He is to be identified thoroughly and completely with the liberating process that is at work in society presently.
That liberating process is at work on the Scriptures as well, for these radicals yet in the Church are laboring to the end that the Scriptures themselves would have stripped away from them all the husks of a social mythology resident from a prior era. That the Scriptures would have stripped away from themselves all the husks of an oppressive, patriarchal theology. even to the point of doing away with God the Father. The Nicene Creed which you recited this morning, according to some, is not only inappropriate, it is morally reprehensible. In this activity, then, by which the scriptures themselves are liberated, we are to discover no other message than this kernel of gospel truth within our Bibles.
Liberation is God, and God is liberation. Now, I want to say three things to you this morning in response to this anti-Paul, this anti-scripture perspective that is abroad even in the Church, moving from comments concerning the more radical forms of its expression to a more general problem that relates to its construction, ending with a more positive statement about the gospel itself in relationship to what we find here in Ephesians chapter 5. First of all, I don’t know where all of you are in your thinking, in your reflection upon what is happening philosophically, sociologically, politically in our world. But I plead with you. I plead with you that you at least in historic sense with a sense of historical veracity, recognize the roots of the radical liberation movement at work in our world. Please, don’t be naive. Don’t be ignorant.
Those roots in the first quarter are not from Christian soil. In fact, those roots are out of a decided, outspoken, articulate, anti-Christian ground. They are found most particularly in the enlightenment of the 18th century and its profound, violent, anti-Christian expression, the French Revolution. As Karl Becker has pointed out in his unsurpassed book, The Heavenly City and the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, the key to the Enlightenment is not simply the idea of autonomy, as defined by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, or the slogan of the French revolutionaries, liberty, equality, and fraternity, but the key to the Enlightenment is the conviction that eternal life in a heavenly city of God, as preached by Jesus, as preached by Paul, as codified by Augustine in his great work, the city of God, must be rejected categorically. It doesn’t exist. There is no such place. Period. You know the next line, I think. Imagine there’s no heaven and there’s no hell. Let us be done then.
So say the anti-gospel, anti-Christian forces of the 18th century. Let us be done once and for all with the superstitious silliness that sets before us the hope of a supernatural heavenly order.” But Becker went on to say that there is an irony in the Enlightenment. and something of a hypocrisy, for you see, the Enlightenment philosophers went on to substitute their own secularized and wholly this-world utopian vision for the hated and dismissible heavenly city of Christian proclamation. The utopian dream began to be taken quite seriously from the 18th century on, and it has moved like a juggernaut through the last two centuries, joining its confidence in science and mathematics to its belief in nature and psychoanalysis, then adding to all of that yet the assurance of political and economic progress—all of this in the interests of a perfectible human society, achievable by us. in our own strength. But another irony intrudes upon the 18th century Enlightenment.
It has to do with Christian reaction to that Enlightenment. for not only have the modern Enlightenment neo-pagans offered to the world their own secularized version of the heavenly city, but many a Christian has felt compelled to seek out answers in response to neo-pagan Enlightenment charges. But the route that they have taken in order to answer those charges has placed them dangerously close to the precipice. if not cast them over the edge.
In an effort to stand up to neo-pagan critics, many a Christian has himself moved onto pagan ground, beginning to accept, receive, as credible, neo-pagan assumptions and convictions. For instance, within the Church began laboring to disprove the criticism rising out of the Enlightenment that the Christian Church has an exploitive view of the natural world, one in line with the biblical message that this world is passing away and is not all that important after all. But in laboring to answer that criticism, some of these Christians have actually embraced the anti-Christian and neo-Pagan conviction that nature is all that there is. Additionally, many Christians have labored to disprove the criticism rising from the that the Christian Church is only and merely an oppressive institution, oppressive to the poor, oppressive to minorities, part oppressive to females and homosexuals. And they have embraced the pagan position on liberation with regard to each and all of these groupings within society.
But such liberation as they now envision Speaking of it as they do from within the context of the Church, from within the walls of the Church itself, such liberation as they envision has as content for its gospel this message of liberation alone. That is its sole substance. Let none of us be so naive or so ignorant. that we fail to see the roots of the radical liberation movement, to understand that they are not found in the biblical gospel, but in a decidedly anti-gospel agenda rising from an unbelieving source. The anti-gospel agenda has become a profound temptation. seducing even many within the church per se. Sadly, in seeking to save their lives in the world, many are losing their lives. And in the process, lost to them is not only interest in the true and only heaven, but an inheritance within it. With all humility, we must continue to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. The second thing I wish to say to you this morning has to do with the way we approach our Bibles, particularly as it devolves upon this passage in Ephesians chapter 5.
You see, the unfortunate assumption of far too many is this. We live in a qualitatively different age than the people spoken of in Scripture. Ours is a qualitatively different age than that of the Bible. And because this is true, we are told that we must now apply or accommodate the Bible’s message to our own times in order to fit it into our circumstances. But in doing this, in the process of doing this, We at the same time realize that certain things will have to drop out of the message. Certain things will have to be changed because the situations that we face are different for us in our different and unique age. With regard to Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 24, we face different challenges than did Paul. Truly, the times have changed.
Paul’s abrupt and even inflexible tone no longer sell in our culture, no longer communicate. They may well have been effective in his own day, given the sociological and religious character of the people to whom he wrote. But such tone and such inflexibility, let alone the message that he conveys by them, would hardly be adequately sensitive, adequately nuanced for our own time. In other words, if Paul were writing today, surely he, in communicating to us the word of God relevantly and winsomely, would not use words such as these.
Why? subject yourselves to your own husbands in the Lord.” He would know better. That certainly is not going to score him any points. He would undoubtedly understand, therefore, that such a statement would be highly offensive and a royal turn-off. to many that he was trying to reach.
But what if I were to tell you Paul’s words do in fact have in view our so-called present day and age? What if I were to tell you that there is all sorts of evidence that Ephesians 5 verses 22 through 24 was just as offensive in the first century as it is now declared to be in the 20th. What if I were to tell you that’s exactly why he wrote it? That’s exactly why he wrote it. And what if I were to tell you that from God’s point of view, the times have not changed. They haven’t changed one bit since Paul wrote what he did.
Our time in the Church of Jesus Christ is one time There is one age now in which we all live, we residents in Christ’s Church and in the Kingdom of God, one age according to the plan of God, that age and time between Christ’s first coming and his second. Therefore, whatever is said in the first is equally relevant to the twentieth century. For this time, this age in which we live, God has given his one sufficient word, which has in view all the situations and circumstances we, as the people of God, will face until Christ comes again. In this time, marriage will continue to be assaulted in the first as well as in the twentieth century.
And wives within marriage will continue to be confronted with the commands of God in their relationship to their husbands. And there remains an appropriateness to the message of the Apostle ongoing, namely, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands in the womb. The times have not changed. according to God.
And finally, we must recognize in these words from Paul the gospel message, which suggests to us, if we do away with the words and the specific form of them, do we not at the same time do away with the gospel out of which those words arise? That should be a concern to us, should it not. If I give up the command, am I giving up more? Am I giving up what lies beneath the surface of the command, or is laid within the command itself? In sacrificing the command, do I sacrifice the gospel?
Paul’s point is just that. We are speaking about the gospel here. The glory, the glory of the command that he gives here to wives is not its foundation in and for a well-ordered society or for the preservation of some primitive view of domesticality, or even specifically for the wife’s happiness. The glory of this command is specifically related to the gospel. Since in the husband, according to God’s operation, she is to see Christ Himself. Life itself becomes a parable. Life itself becomes an allegory.
In her husband, she is to see Christ. That’s why she submits. Does she submit to Christ? Does she submit to one in whom she sees Christ? The glory of this command, then, is its relationship to the gospel, since in the husband, Christ is seen, and in the wife, the Church herself is seen in its loving, sacrificial, and even willing submission to her Lord. However, please further recognize that as much as the gospel is evident in the command to the wife to submit to her husband, it is also evident in the compliance that she offers up to that command. For you see, verse 22 follows on the heels of verse 21, which is the general command to all that we are to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. What is operative in the woman as she offers up this compliance and this obedience is the obedience of Christ at work in her, the fear of Christ at work in her. Even before she is a wife, Christ has placed himself in her position. Before she is compared to the Church, Jesus Christ is joining himself to the Church, that what obedience might be expected of the Church and of wives would be found in him. She cannot do it without him. The command itself, preaching the gospel, but obedience also. preaching the gospel insofar as you see preceding the obedience of the woman, the obedience of Christ himself. And she draws upon that.
Our great fear must be that In losing the command, we lose the gospel that informs that command, but we lose also the sufficiency of scripture that supports it. It is appropriate that the warning be issued then. In light of the fact of what we see going on generally in the church and in our culture abroad, even as we see The Apostle Paul set to one side, and the truth as we understand it, set to another. We being called to choose between the two. If I separate the Apostle and his message from the truth, am I separating myself from the truth that is in him and declared by him? One of the sad facts is that in those now within the Church who have declared that the Scriptures are insufficient, who have expressed their discomfort, if not their outrage, at what the Apostle says, we find less and less interest in what the Bible is actually saying, and less and less commitment to the gospel.
And that should be warning sufficient for all of us. Our God, we are not those who obey quickly. We even find, Lord, that we do not obey willingly unless, O God, your spirit be at work in us. And Father, we are convinced by heavenly things and by your word. Be patient with us, Lord. It is not just a matter of wives submitting to husbands, it’s a matter of each of us submitting in the Lord to one another, a matter that has at its root the submission of Christ to you, a submission even to us, that his obedience might be counted as our own. Father, bless us, encourage us, continue to love us, be patient with us, we ask that we might come to the glorious day and we will see our Savior face to face and rejoice in his presence, even as we are brought into the heavens.
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.