Monday, April 27, 2026
…submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. . . Ephesians 5:21-25
What Faith and Obedience in Our Relationships Looks Like
For the past couple of months, we have been in a series titled We Are The Church: A Study in Ephesians. In Chapter 5 of Ephesians Paul tells us that the key to living as children of God is imitating God in what we say and do, including walking in wisdom and treating others in such a way that the Gospel shines through our relationships with our families, at work and school, and brothers and sisters in Christ. Our key truth for the series, The Church is not a destination but a base of operation, speaks to how the church builds us up and then sends us out, living the Gospel out in our lives for everyone around us.
Ephesians chapter 5 is well known for Paul’s words on the relationship between husband and wife. However, the true relationship addressed here is the relationship between Christ and the church (all believers) – and our relationships are supposed to be a reflection of that relationship. That relationship translates to all our relationships – husband and wife, children and parents, friends, and employers.
We often focus on the “wives submit to your husbands” and “husbands love your wives” parts of this passage and don’t pay close attention to the rest of it. We focus on what this means for marriage, but we fail to see what this means for us individually. This is a beautiful picture of what Christ did for the body of believers.
What Christ Did for Us:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her… v. 25
Christ loves us and gave Himself up for us – through His death on the cross.
...to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word… v. 26
He sanctifies us and cleanses us with His sacrifice on the cross. The water that washes away sin and cleanses and purifies the soul, is the word. – Charles Spurgeon
He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. v. 27
Because of our Justification the moment we are saved, and our sanctification in our walk, we will be entered into glorification the moment we enter heaven. We are made this pure in heaven when we are joined to Jesus Christ in a way beyond all previous experience.
If we can understand the Gospel, then we can understand what marriage, as well as all our relationships are supposed to look like. God designed marriage specifically for the purpose of teaching us about His love for us. Marriage – a true, selfless, sacrificing marriage - will make us more holy every day. God laid down His life for us and we lay down our lives for each other in selfless sacrifice. In marriage we are called to put the other’s needs before our own, selflessly.
How should our faith be lived out in the relationships that we have with other believers?
The key to our faith and obedience being lived out in our relationships begins in verse 21 - submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. Marriage gives us a picture of God’s grace. You love and live with someone in grace as Jesus gives us grace. Your children and the world also see this grace in action. Love, in its purest form, is the best display of God’s beauty and His love for us. Marriage is just a picture of God’s relationship with us – unity in togetherness. Separate, but one. It is a picture of Christ and the Church, so God created marriage as a gift to all the world and a reminder of just how much He truly loves us. God uses our relationships - not just marriage - but all relationships - to teach us about Himself and make us more like Himself. This displays the Gospel message to the whole world through our lives.
