Mutuality In Marriage

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Opening Prayer

Mighty Lord, You are the God of wisdom, power, and love. I’m grateful for all that You are to me.

Read Ephesians 5:21-33

^[21] Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. ^[22] Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do 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, ^[27] and 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 their own body, but they feed and care for their body, 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.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

Meditate

“The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband … the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife” (1 Cor. 7:4, TNIV).

Think Further

This section begins with v. 21, for the key verb (“submit”) comes there in the Greek, not in v. 22. Paul tells us to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” and continues: “wives to your husbands.” Submission is the voluntary giving up of one’s own rights and self-interest for the other, and the teaching on marriage is in the context of mutual submission within the body of Christ. Wives are asked to submit, and husbands to love. This is a reciprocal relationship. Paul is not teaching that the wife alone has the responsibility to submit any more than the husband alone must love. Both do both.

The analogy of Christ and the church is central to Paul’s teaching on marriage. The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church, his body. I see this as a statement of inter-relationship and mutual belonging, as we see in ch. 4. Paul draws on it again when he explains how the husband is to love his wife. He is to love as Christ loved the church and as he loves his own body. Each illustration points to the nurturing and self-giving aspects of love. Christ loved the church by emptying himself and becoming a servant, even dying for her (25; Phil. 2:6-8). A man loves his body by caring for it and looking after it (29). Daily, sacrificial care for his wife’s good is to be the pattern of a husband’s love. It seems a far more extreme expression of devotion than the simple “respect” the wife is called to give (33). Paul’s picture of deep commitment and loving, mutual care holds much hope for marriage in our culture today.

Apply

Pray for a renewed, biblical view of marriage in our society. Pray for any marriages you know of that need such renewal–even yours.

Closing prayer

Father, I pray for those I know who are struggling in their marriages. Bring them forgiveness, restoration, and hope.

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