Welcome to Sunday School. So we're taking a break from, we were looking at Galatians and we're going to return next week to Galatians, look at the most difficult passage in Galatians, next Sunday. One of the reasons for the break is I teach a class in Malaysia, obviously not in Malaysia, but on Thursday mornings I do a Zoom class. to people in Malaysia. They come from all different churches. This was our last class. So we've been going through Paul's epistles. And then the last one was on some of the more controversial, difficult passages. So I had this. I had all my notes ready. And it's fun to compare Malaysian responses to American responses. Because Americans are always mad. Americans are always mad. It's like, who's mad now? And Malaysians, yes, you are. And these were Malaysians from all different types of churches who were very, even though they may not have been used to it, they were very open to thinking it through. And it's just interesting to see the difference. I just think America is an angry country in general. So if you get mad, relax. But you'll probably get mad. So we're going to look at Christian marriage and what it means that the husband is head of the wife, which really only comes from this passage we'll look at. And so you can turn to Ephesians 5. In Ephesians 5, as you know, we deal with a metaphor. And the metaphor is husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. as Christ is the head of his body. So the husband is head of his wife and loves his wife and then the wife submits to her husband and all things. So the metaphor is that marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church. The question is what exactly is the metaphor? So before you do that, you have to bring the rest of the Bible into your interpretation. So we start in the Old Testament, what God has revealed about marriage. And so we see in Genesis 2 that when man first saw his wife, Eve, he said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And so the first thing that Adam noticed was how much they matched, how much they could be partners. That's why a man cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh. So that's all we learn at marriage at the beginning, that there's a harmony, there's a unity, there's a working together. Genesis 3.16 is when we have introduced a hierarchy of husband over wife, but it's in the negative. This is after the fall and the consequences of the fall. So it says, to the woman, he said, with painful labor, you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you. So the first time we see an authority or a rule is the consequences of the fall. This is not a prescription to do this. The Lord is explaining to Eve what life will be like now in a fallen world. When we come to the Ten Commandments, we see that in the home, the father and mother have equal authority. Honor your father and mother. Obey your parents, Paul says. Not your father instead of your mother, but parents have equal authority in the Ten Commandments. And then we see some verses about marriage scattered throughout the law. Deuteronomy 24, if a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is free to stay at home. He is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to his wife. So a man was not to get married and then immediately go off to battle. He was to spend the first year bringing her happiness. That's a memory verse, right, for you. Exodus 21, 10 and 11. This is God regulating polygamy. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing, and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free without any payment of money. So here she is allowed to divorce her husband if he's not providing for her. in a polygamous situation. Again, it's important to remember that God is not introducing polygamy as something he's commanding, but he's regulating the culture. It was a world of polygamy. Jesus reveals that that's not ideally what God wanted. From the beginning, it was to be one man and one woman. Leviticus 20.10, if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Now what's unique about this is when you read all the other ancient law codes, the Mosaic Law is the only law code where the penalties for adultery are equal, whether it's the man or the woman. In every other law code, the man can do pretty much anything he wants. And if the woman committed adultery, if the wife, she was either killed or at least he could divorce her. But only in the Mosaic Law was there an equal penalty. Deuteronomy 24, if a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, then it goes on to say he cannot then go after her and Remarry her again. Jesus points out this was given for what reason because of Israel's what? hardness of heart This these were a stiff-necked people. They treated their wives men poorly and so he regulates where they're at by Providing her with a certificate that certificate enabled her to go get married again And that's the only way to eat to have provision and protection was to get remarried back then So easy divorce was not the ideal. It was given to protect the women in these situations. And in that day, you could pretty much come up with any reason to divorce your wife if there's something you didn't like about her. And so Israel was a patriarchal society because all societies were. Husbands had more rights than wives. The Lord regulated this system and that system also included slavery and easy divorce and polygamy. So we should never take from the law that because the Mosaic Law states something that it's God's ideal. It's a provisional temporary law for the nation Israel where they're at. And where they are at, Jesus tells us, is they're a hard-hearted people. not able to love from their hearts. So he's keeping society going in that situation and culture. Now there's a few more points. Exodus 21.7, if a man sells his daughter to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as the men servants do. To go out there means to be freed. So it's very clear in the law that men still are considered more valuable in a certain way. We're going to see that this is typology. Leviticus 12, 1 through 5, just parts of it. The Lord said to Moses, say to the Israelites, a woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. If she gives birth to a daughter, she will be unclean for two weeks. And so what's happening here? Why is she more unclean if she gives birth to a girl? because we're dealing now with typology in the old covenant because men had prominence, the law would recognize that, but the question is what's it pointing to? For example, when you're going to receive the sign of the covenant in the old covenant, who received the sign? Males. Obviously females could not receive the sign. So why were males privileged to receive the sign and women were not? Well, this is all pointing to someone. It's typological. It's temporary looking ahead because Christ would be born and he would be the true man. And so when we come to the New Testament, we see all these differences are done away with in God's kingdom. In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So all those old covenant mosaic distinctions between men and women or a slave person or free, a Jew or Gentile, think about the whole mosaic law separated Jew and Gentile, didn't it? Most of the laws were about that. All that is done away with in Christ in the church. So when we come to the New Testament, we recognize that these things are typological and they're temporary. And now the fulfillment has come with the coming of Christ. Now what's interesting about that is this statement. There's not one statement in the entire Mosaic law which instructs husbands to rule their wives, or to have command over their wives, or to have authority over their wives. And there's not one statement in the entire law which commands or instructs wives to obey their husbands. Not one. So when you come to the New Testament and you come to our passage in Ephesians 5, you have to consider that. That even in the typological period, even in a patriarchal society, husbands are never given authority over their wives and wives are never told in the law to obey their husbands. Children are told to obey their parents. Yes. Should work, right? It's a description of what sin has brought now into the harmony that was there before with Adam and Eve before the fall. And so you really have to start with the Old Testament and then see how it's fulfilled in the New Testament. When you come to the New Testament, and then you're going to start interpreting, you bring that with you. You don't ignore that. And I say that because people have taken a metaphor And they've ran a truck through a metaphor and come up with all kinds of theology from a metaphor, which is never a good way to interpret the Bible. The metaphor must be interpreted by everything else we've already seen. So before we get to the metaphor, any questions on the Old Testament? Any other questions? And so sometimes it can be shocking when you read an Old Testament passage like the one we read where men seem to have more spiritual value or women seem more unclean. You think, is that how God views women? No, because the Old Covenant is typological. It's all pointing to Christ. So in Christ now, there is no distinction spiritually between male and female. So in the new covenant, who gets the covenant sign, which is baptism? Just males? Everyone in the new covenant receives a sign. So already we see a change from the old to the new when Christ arrives. Yes. Yeah, he treats, I mean, you started off with prescription and description, that's two different things, but what you're saying now is he treats the Israelites as children, not ready for the ultimate ethic. The spirit has not been poured out on them. They're a hard-hearted people. They live in us. They're not able to completely come out of that society. So he regulates slavery, he regulates divorce, he regulates polygamy, all to the protection of those in the system. If you read the regulations, it's protecting the abused. Yeah, the Bible does not present the Mosaic Law as God's final ideal standard. It's a provisional standard for Israel. Now, some of God's ethics obviously carry over into the New Covenant, but these specifics are temporary for that world. Yeah, to say that God prescribes slavery is really missing the whole point of the Old Testament, to go that route. So let's come to the metaphor. When you come to a metaphor in the Bible, a metaphor links two ideas through imagery or mental pictures. That's what a metaphor is. So for example, it's raining cats and dogs. Good Sunday, by the way, to use that metaphor. It's raining cats and dogs is a metaphor. When you are interpreting a metaphor, you have to understand what the image is. And you don't want to interpret it beyond what the image is. So for example, if I said to you, man, it's raining cats and dogs out. And you said, you know, I don't see some raindrops looking like cats and others looking like dogs. I would say, well, you're stretching the metaphor beyond the meaning. The meaning of that, it's heavy rain. You know, like animals falling from the sky. That's the metaphor. You don't stretch it beyond that, then you're misusing the metaphor. So another example would be, Jesus is the door. That's in the book of John, right? Now imagine a pastor getting up here and saying, we're told that Jesus is in the door, so beloved, what are the hinges? Well the hinges must be the word of God and prayer. What's the knob? The knob is love. And you're probably going, I don't think that's what John meant. when he said, Jesus is the door. What did John mean? What is that metaphor? Jesus is the way to God or to heaven. He's not going beyond that. And so when we take a metaphor, the context defines how to interpret the metaphor. And so let's look at the metaphor in Ephesians 5 for marriage. Man is the head of his wife like Christ is the head of the church. So you have a metaphor of head and body. So what's a picture? Now some would say this must picture authority because a head has authority. So that must be the metaphor. So a husband is in charge of the marriage. He's in charge, he commands his wife. When we use the word head today, where would we use that for authority? Give me an example. Head of state. All right, that's the guy in charge, right? Or he's the head of the army or whatever. Others say the word head means source. That when you're the head of something, you're the source of it. What's an example for a head? The headwaters. Good. I was going to do that. A teacher came up with that. Or if I say, the head of the river, what do I mean? The source of the river. So some say, no, the metaphor is source, and there's a big argument going on, whether it's authority or source. The problem is, in the Greek world, the word kephale, or head, is rarely used for either of these. Probably, in total, The word head is used maybe 10-15% of the time for either of these two ideas. So about 90% of the time, what do you think the word head refers to? If it's not these two. The actual head. Head. Head of a body. So it means head. So almost every time it's used in the Greek world, it's used as the head of a body. And so what's the metaphor, what's the connection between a head and the body? What's the metaphor, what's the connection between a head and a body? That they're what? They're connected, they're united. All right? I mean, I don't look at you and say, your head's in charge of your body. We don't usually think that. Nor do I think the head is the source of your body. But your head is connected to your body. Now, it's interesting in 1 Corinthians 12, when Paul talks about the different members of the church, he brings this metaphor back. And what is head and body referred to in there? What's it about? It's about the members' connectedness. In other words, he uses it in the same way as he's using here. And so it's the connectedness or unity between the head and the body, that's the metaphor. Now, how do we know that here? Just look at the passage. Verse 32, the relationship between Christ and his church is called what? A profound mystery. There's not a lot of mystery if somebody's just in charge of you, right? That's not very mysterious. What's the mystery between Christ and us? That we're united to Christ. That we are married to Him. That's the profound mystery that marriage pictures. And notice verse 28. Husbands are to love their wives as what? As their own flesh. Again, that unity of the body. The reason you love your wife is because they're like your own flesh. You're connected. Way back to Genesis 2, right? You're bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And so even our Westminster Confession uses head this way. If you want to turn to the back of your hymnals, 26.1. I'll get the page in a moment. Unless someone here there first. 864, 864. When the Westminster Confession uses the word head, it almost always means connected or unity. All saints that are united to Christ, what? Their head. And what's the chapter called? The communion of the saints. By his spirit and by faith have fellowship with him in his graces. So even there, the head means a connectedness, the unity we have being united to Christ. And so do you see how this metaphor is being used? Husbands are not little Christ ruling their home. You're not little gods in charge like God is in charge. That's not the metaphor at all. What is the metaphor? Love your wife as Christ ruled his church? Is Christ loved his church and what? And gave himself up for her. Now that's a metaphor. You husbands don't die for the sins of your wife, right? You do not sanctify your wives. The Holy Spirit sanctifies your wife. So to take this metaphor and run with it, you're in trouble, aren't you? You're only like Christ in what aspect of Christ here? What's the metaphor pointing to? His sacrificial love or service. And so, husband loves your wives, you don't wash them, that's talking about Christ now, I'm working through the passage. You don't sanctify them, you don't die for their sins, like Christ did, but you are to love your wife like Christ loved his church. Paul does not stretch the metaphor to ruling authority. He never says, and rule your wives like Christ rules his church. That would be stretching it beyond what he's revealing here. Now, what does the bride do in response? Well, as she submits to Christ, she submits to her husband. Now, what does submit mean? Some have argued submit has a military connotation. That means he's the commander, and whatever he wants, you do. Well, unless it's sin, but everything else, he makes all the decisions because he's the Christ of the home, because the metaphor is head. Is that what submit means here? Well, the definition for submit is found in verse 21. Look at one verse up. Now in the Greek, you have the parsable submitting in verse 21. And who's submitting in verse 21? We're all submitting to each other. Does that mean that we're all each other's authority and commanders? What does verse 21 mean? Because he says that all throughout the epistles. What does it mean to submit to one another? To respect, serve, show deference and honor, All right, consider others more important than yourself. All the things he says about all Christians to submit. In the Greek, when you get to verse 32, there's no word submit. It simply says, and some of your Bibles may show this, wives to your husbands. So there's no submit in the Greek. Why not? Because he's already use the word in verse 21, now you just drag that idea down and in the same way you all submit to each other wives, also submit to your husbands. So if there's not an authority with each other you can't bring in an authority in the next verse because you would have two entirely different meanings of a word. from one verse to the other when he only uses it one time in verse 21. So did any of your Bibles actually have a little, like it's italicized? So some of your Bibles are showing it's not even in there. It's submitting to one another, and wives also do this with your husbands. And so if you're gonna interpret verse 22, you have to interpret it in how it's used in verse 21. And so the idea then, how do you submit to one another in church, in the body of Christ, do that in the home, in your marriage? Well, how do you do that? Well, serve, love, consider important. It doesn't say that whatever he does, you just quietly just obey. That's not the idea, because you don't do that here, right? You don't come to church and someone says, I don't like your outfit, go change. You would say, Ah, that's a little weird. And they could say, well, it says submit. He'd say, I don't think you understand that word there very well. So it's the same idea of what Paul is saying in marriage. Now, does the husband submit to the wife? Of course, because what does verse 21 say? Submit to one another, all of you, to everyone. And so it's not, and how does a husband submit to his wife? How do you show deference and honor? Love, serve, respect, all the same ways. And so that answers the question why Paul writes, in all things. Paul is not saying the husband is so invested with God's authority that everything he tells you to do, do, all things. That would make an idol out of the husband. you would be putting him on an equal par with God. But if submit means what it means in verse 21 in all things make sense, doesn't it? You're always to consider one another as important. You're always to honor, serve. Now that may mean pointing out sin and holding people accountable. That's still part of how we submit to each other in the body of Christ. And so it's not saying that when you get married, the wife has a new father. And just like the father, as you grew up, would tell you what to do, and now the husband takes over that role. That's not what Paul is saying at all. You are unified. and now you serve one another. Now especially if the husband is going to love his wife like Christ loved the church, in a Roman society, how's that husband gonna look? It's gonna look very weak. And so notice how Paul says, respect your husbands as they treat you this way because they are gonna look weak. It is a patriarchal society out there where husbands don't do that. All I gotta do is read anything Roman and you'll see that. So as they look weak and sacrifice and treat you gently, respect them. which makes sense. Now what does all this mean? And then we'll open up for questions. In Christian marriage, the husband and wife come together in love to help one another as themselves and live as partners in life as one flesh. By the way, I skipped 1 Corinthians. The only time authority is mentioned in relation to marriage in the entire New Testament is this verse. And who has the authority in marriage? Both, right? Husband has authority over the wife's body. Wife has authority over the husband's body. That's the only time the word authority is used in the whole Bible in relation to marriage. And they're both equal. And so it's not a hierarchy in marriage, but the husband as a man, men were created stronger, as the stronger one is to use his strength to serve, like Christ did. Christ, as God, could have simply destroyed us in his power. And he used his strength to do what? To come down and die on the cross for us. That's the pattern with husbands. How do we use our strength? We could overpower our wives. Well, I think 99% of us could. There's a few wives who kind of, it's the opposite, but you know, there's always exceptions in nature. We could dominate because we're the stronger ones. And Christ says that's not the way in your home to serve. So if you're thinking that Ephesians 5 gives you the final say in your home on everything, you make all the decisions, you're making that up. So the wife is not to look down on her husband as he lowers himself, but to respect him and submit to him. And as the church is not to be governed by one man, a marriage is not to be governed by one person. It always makes me chuckle when people say, well, how is a marriage going to function if you don't have one person with the authority to make the decisions? And I always say, well, is that what you want in church? Oh, no. Well, why not? We could streamline a lot of things if you guys gave me all authority. We don't need session meetings. I'll just make decisions. Think how much easier things would be. What would you all say? Well, hopefully, what would you all say? Yes. You would say we'd rather have people coming together, working through things, and making decisions than one person. Well, if you want that for the church, why can't it work in marriage? Yes, Jonathan. Right. And that's what Rome did with the emperors. Let's just streamline all this and get one emperor. That didn't turn out very well. And so when people ask me, well, if you don't have one person in charge, how do you make decisions? I always say, like adults. Talk to each other, work things out, trial and error. Sometimes when Shau and I are making decisions, I go with hers. Sometimes she goes with mine. Sometimes I say I should have gone with hers. And sometimes she says, I should have gone with yours. And that's the way marriage works. Let me finish, and then we'll go to questions. There is no such thing as a spiritual leader in a Christian marriage. Christ is the spiritual leader in a marriage. I don't know where that terminology came from, spiritual leader, but it's pretty modern. And it really doesn't make sense. Like I said, a wife can be more spiritually mature than her husband. There's nothing in the Bible that says she can't know the Bible more, or just be more mature in her faith. There's nothing in the Bible that says if she knows doctrine better, she can't instruct him. I've had a lot of people in our churches where the wife is the one who studies a lot, and he works. I'm thinking of one, he was an elder, but he's a rancher, and she does a lot of studying, very sharp, and he would come home and ask her about doctrines. And it worked great. You guys know who I'm talking about, huh? So there's no spiritual leader that he asked. Can you imagine in the early church, a wife's been a Christian for 20 years, a husband is converted, and the pastor goes up to him and says, I know you're a new Christian, but you have to teach your wife everything. She's not allowed to instruct you. He says, well, I just became a Christian Tuesday. I know, but you have to be the leader. Well, I really don't know the Bible, and she knows the Bible well. Yeah, but you're a man. Well, you're supposed to make them pastors, but yeah. So Christ is the leader of each person. Romans 14 teaches that each one of us answer directly to Christ, and we follow our conscience in our relationship with Christ. That applies to male and female. in Romans. So finally, oh, two more. The command to a specific person in one verse does not exclude that application to another elsewhere in the Bible. I can't tell you how many times you hear this, how many times you hear this over the years. Men need respect and women need love. Where do you get that? Ephesians 5, the metaphor. You think Paul was developing an entire sociology of male-female in this metaphor? Don't you think it says elsewhere for wives to love their husbands? So wives don't need to love their husbands, just respect, I mean, just because it says something in one place doesn't mean it doesn't apply elsewhere in different contexts. And so Paul is not giving a sociology of gender in Ephesians 5. I can't tell you how many books have been written taking this one metaphor and coming up with a whole theology of the differences between men and women. And Paul would be scratching his head going, it's a metaphor. I wasn't writing a book. And so eight, finally to sum it up, the head body metaphor in Ephesians 5 speaks of the connectedness and unity between the head and the body that is in a marriage but also that pictures the unity and connectedness between Christ and his church. That's the metaphor. And so why do you love your wives? Because you're now connected with her. Wives, why do you submit and love your husbands? Because you're connected to him, you're one, just like Christ is to his church. Now I saw some questions and comments coming. Oh, the husband is not given final say or authority over the wife in the Bible. You are partners and you are helpers. That's what helper means. Yes. Yeah, right. Because I said about 10% it does mean authority. But most of the time, it means connectedness. And that's true in the Bible, but it's true in Greek literature, too. So it's not like these two are never there. It's just rarely there for head. So you have to look at the context again. Yeah, 2,000 years on and off, yeah. But it really gained ground in the, was it the 80s or 90s, that the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was formed. And then they ran with this and developed and started writing books. Yes. Yeah, that's a whole other one. Yeah. We just don't have time for the head covering and what Paula's doing. But I would argue head there does not mean authority either. Yes, Ken. I don't like any of them. I don't use those terms because there's too much packed into those terms that are wrong. Obviously, believing in male ordination, I'm not an egalitarian. But given my view of the equality of marriage, somebody may consider me an egalitarian. So I don't think that terminology is helpful at all. The Bible doesn't have a lot, very little to say about gender roles. It's just not that interested in the topic. Obviously being created differently, we are good at different things and we have responsibilities. So I never use any of those terms to describe myself personally. Yes? Yeah, it's interesting that, and this is part of my book, my first book, is that the early church, if, I think I mentioned this, if you were a husband and your wife committed adultery, you could leave her right away. But if the wife committed adultery, she was told to stay. So they had taken the patriarchal views of Rome and still brought that into the church. And that stayed around for about 300 years plus. I mean, there's nothing in our confessions about male headship. So there's nothing. I'd be different each church. Yes, Ken. Yeah, it's totally a separate thing. Federal headship is who represents us before God. Now, some have wrongly brought that into marriage, as if husbands represent their wives before God, which is very, very dangerous. Bordered on heretical. Because there are only two federal heads, Adam and Christ. Husbands are not federal heads. Yes, Jonathan. Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, it's odd, huh? How is the husband the source of his wife? That's an odd one. That's why I don't think it's anything what Paul is saying. Yes, Isaac. I don't know how they would use it. It's just weird. So you're saying the source of provision. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't like the terms. I don't think they've benefited the church creating terms. What? Yeah, people pack so much into them that when you read it, you're thinking, no, I don't believe that, so. All right, I don't see anyone mad, but you may be. Well, think about it, if this is new for you, search the scriptures, obviously. That's the point, yes. Right, yeah, most conservative circles, there's a male, they take head as authority. And by the way, the Brookings Institute, which is the number one institute on divorce, have found that marriages where there is a hierarchy are eight times more likely to divorce than marriages where both opinions are valued equally. Because if a woman doesn't feel valued in her opinion, it affects every part of marriage. When you teach this type of authority that a man can have, that he can find a wife and basically command her all his life, you draw the wrong kind of men to that. That's why there's so much abuse in those circles. Now there are a lot of people who hold the view, theoretically, of authority, but they live in their marriage like equals. That happens too. So they actually do work together and make decisions together, but then they take head as authority for some reason. So thank God for inconsistencies, I say, right? All right, let's pray.