Is He Leading or Ruling? | Ephesians 5:25-33 - Conrad Macintyre

Sermon Outline

1. 0:07:22 1. Introduction — Love Is the First Command Paul Issues to Any Group
   their wives. Paul does radically redefine leadership—which we absolutely will talk about today—but at no time does he tell first century husbands to submit to their wives. If you are unmarried today, you might find yourself thinking "this doesn't apply to me", but the fact is that the principles Paul outlines in this passage are critical to every Christian in the room today. We all have some measure of authority over someone in our lives—some measure of influence. Over a small group. Over employees. Over coworkers. Over classmates. Over children. Over younger siblings. Over friends. Because as much as Paul is absolutely addressing first-century husbands with this passage, that truths her offers can—and should—be used by anyone with power, authority, or influence. And no matter how much or how little, every one of us has some amount of it. In the world Paul is writing to, free males were top of the heap. The kings of the castle. And so the secular household codes—which were common—would only address these men, and they would tell them how to rule well. Not to lead, not to love, but to rule. The conversation was about authority and respect and honour: How do I rule well? But Paul takes this idea and radically transforms it with the Gospel by asking a completely different question: how do I love well? And that single substitution changes everything. Because the man who is consumed with ruling well is ultimately concerned with himself — his authority, his honour, his respect. But the one who is consumed with loving well is ultimately concerned with someone else. By putting love first, Paul puts self last. Paul doesn't seem to be dismantling authority, but completely reorienting its purpose. Once authority is motivated by love it shifts from power to responsibility. And Paul shows what this looks like by pointing to the one who has ultimate authority and took on ultimate responsibility. [J]ust as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, so that she may be holy and without blemish. LOTS to unpack here. First, I want to highlight that the part we just read is not talking about marriage. Within today's passage Paul actually volleys back and forth between husbands & wives and Christ & church. With the "just as", indicating the shift. So if you've ever heard someone say that husbands are to wash their wives in the water of the word — or something similar — that's not what Paul is talking about here. Paul is not telling husbands that they are meant to do the exact same tasks for their wives that Christ performed for His church. Christ sanctifies his Bride, and that is his work alone. What Paul is highlighting is this: in the same way that Christ saw what his Bride needed most and gave everything to serve her, for her flourishing, so too are husbands to see what their wives need and do everything within their power to meet those needs for her
2. 0:11:21 2. Verse 25 — Christ Loved by Giving Himself Up
   her benefit. For her flourishing. Paul is calling husbands to love with the same selfless, purpose-filled passion with which Christ loved the church. So how did Christ love the church? Well, the very first thing Christ did was give himself up. In the Roman Empire, control and dominance were expected markers of masculinity — kind of an Alpha Male turned up to 11. And while the idea of wives being loved was not in itself revolutionary, "giving yourself up" to love well certainly was! Placing above you the people society assumed should be below you was almost to invite shame. I have very often heard people point to this verse and insist that husbands must be willing to die for their wives — which, in our comfortable developed-world lives, makes me chuckle a little. It reminds me of the scene in Inside Out where Riley dreams about this boyfriend who would "die for her!" It's making a promise you know you'll probably never be called on to keep. Like Riley's dream boyfriend, it's well-meaning, but a little melodramatic. Instead, Paul is calling husbands to something much harder — and more practical. Like Christ, they are to empty themselves and put their own desires to death in service of their wives. Whatever the husband needs? It waits. Jesus laid aside glory and took on mortality — and that meant all of it. Yes, he endured arrest, trial, humiliation, and crucifixion — the great, dramatic, history-splitting gestures for which he is rightly celebrated. He did literally die for us, but he also got tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and sweat in the heat, and had blisters—probably. None of that was required of him either. He chose the small indignities of a human body just as deliberately as he chose the cross. And it was all—the grand and the mundane alike—in service of his Bride. Which is exactly the point. Big, bold, core-memory gestures are wonderful. But so are doing the dishes, taxiing the kids to soccer, and taking time to listen when she needs to talk—without only trying to "fix" things. Gentlemen, it's fine that we are willing to die for our wives. But how about living for their flourishing — all of it, the dramatic and the ordinary — every single day? That's what Christ did. And Paul wants to make sure we don't miss why he did it. So he stacks three purpose statements on top of each other — three answers to the same question: what was all of that for? In order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. So as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind. So that she may be holy and without blemish. Three statements. One destination. Paul is describing a love that is not reactive, not emotional, not circumstantial — but goal-oriented. Christ didn't give himself up because he felt like it on a good day. He gave Himself up in order to produce something. He had a destination in mind for his Bride, and every act of love was aimed at getting her there. Now,
3. 0:15:12 3. Verses 25b-27 — Goal-Oriented Love: Making Her Holy
   there. Now, a first-century reader would have seen these lines and immediately understood where Paul was pointing. "Without spot or wrinkle." "Holy and without blemish." This is Levitical language—the criteria applied to priests, to the people, and to the offerings themselves. It's in Leviticus 21 and 22. The standard was not adequacy, it was perfection. Growing up my father used to say, "Son, 'good enough' never is!" Nowhere is that more true than a sinner standing before a holy God and pleading his case by saying, "I was nice sometimes?" Because—of course—no one actually is perfect. Not one of us walks into the presence of God without spot or blemish. We are stained. We carry the weight of everything we have done and everything that has been done to us, and none of it washes off on its own. So how does the Bride get there? How does any one of us stand before God 'holy and without blemish'? Enter Christ, who cleanses us with the washing of water by the word. And that word—word—is almost certainly pointing to Scripture. John opens his Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The agent of cleansing,—of sanctification—is Christ himself, the living Word working through the written word. It is revelation that transforms. It is the ongoing work of God's self-revelation in the pages of Scripture as well as the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts that presents us as 'holy and without blemish'! Which means the Bride doesn't clean herself up and present herself to Christ. Christ presents her to Himself. He does the work. He paid the price. He took the death that was coming for her so that she could wear the righteousness that belongs to Him. We call that sanctification — and it is entirely, exclusively, the work of Christ. He was crucified for us. He was buried in our place. But he did not stay dead. He walked out of that tomb so that the promise repeated in those three purpose statements could be fulfilled — so that every person who confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead could stand before God exactly as Paul describes: holy, without spot, without wrinkle, without blemish. Not because of anything we did. Because of everything he chose to do with great intentionality and purpose. That is the love Paul holds up as the model for husbands. Not necessarily a love of grand gestures and dramatic sacrifice — though it may sometimes look like that. But a love with a direction. A love that looks at his wife and asks not what do I feel? but what does her flourishing require of me? A love that is willing to be inconvenient, unglamorous, and unrecognized—because the goal is not the husband's glory. The goal is the wife's flourishing. So... what does that love look like, practically? 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own flesh, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, This "in the same way" signals the switch from Christ and church back to husband and wife. l think this
4. 0:19:14 4. Verses 28-29 — Love Her Like Your Own Body
   this part is funny, because it feels almost like Paul thinks the death and resurrection of Jesus is too abstract. Like the life and death of Jesus is maybe not super relatable to the Dude-Bro Alpha Males in Ephesus—so I imagine Paul pacing around his jail cell in Rome, trying to figure out how to make this application land for his listeners. And then Paul has this "Eureka!" moment where he knows what'll get through to these Ephesian men. Love her like your body, bro! Just pause and think about that for a moment. Think about what Paul is implying. Paul seems to be saying, "You know how much you love your own body? You should love your wives that much!" These guys were more invested in their abs than their wives! So Paul says, hey, if husbands are the head, then wives are the body. Give her the attention your body is already getting. Then we get a comparison—'hate' versus 'nourishing and tenderly caring'. Let's define our terms, because "hate" doesn't mean active hostility the way we usually use the word today. In ancient thought it often carried the sense of neglect, indifference, or treating something as unimportant. And no one—short of serious mental illness—is willfully neglecting their own body out of indifference. So Paul pivots to describe how we do actually treat ourselves—and this language might have actually been a little shocking to the first-century audience. Nourishing. This isn't just hitting your macros and pounding water. It carries the sense of feeding, raising, bringing up — the kind of attentive, consistent care a parent gives a child. Selfless. Other-focused. No thought of "what's in it for me?" And then tenderly caring. This word means to cherish, to keep warm, to protect something with great care. And here's the interesting thing — Paul uses this exact word in 1 Thessalonians to describe the way a nursing mother cares for her child. That is the image he reaches for when describing how a husband should treat his wife. Paul just takes a wrecking ball to the Roman ideal of the stoic, distant male authority figure. He is calling for investment, depth, and intimacy—and he is about to draw a straight line back to Jesus and his church to justify it. 29b just as Christ does for the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his
5. 0:22:17 5. Verses 31-32 — The Great Mystery: Marriage Points to Christ
   his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a great mystery, but I am speaking about Christ and the church. So Paul takes one of the most quoted marriage verses in all of Scripture—Genesis 2:24, the verse that has been read at weddings for thousands of years—and reveals that it was always carrying more weight than anyone realized. Not prophecy, exactly. More like a picture finally coming into focus. Human marriage, Paul is saying, was always meant to point somewhere. And now, because of Christ, we can finally see where. Let's walk through this quote together: For this reason a man — Once you look at this through the lens of Christ and the church, the 'man' here is clearly Jesus. Will leave his father and mother — The Son stepping down from glory, leaving the Father's side, coming to us. And be joined to his wife — this is the cross. This is where the joining happened. Jesus gave everything he had—his comfort, his dignity, his body, his life—in order to enter into union with his Bride. Somehow, in a way I find both staggering and humbling every time I sit with it, Jesus looked at us—looked at you, looked at me—and decided we were worth it. His wife — His Bride. His church. His people. And the two will become one flesh — "One flesh" in the context of marriage describes a shared life — shared identity, shared resources, shared future, shared vulnerability. Two people who were separate becoming, in a very real sense, one thing. And in Christ, that shared life is not a metaphor. It is the most real thing there is. Jesus describes it in John 15 — "Abide in me as I abide in you." There is a mutual indwelling happening between Christ and His people that is difficult to explain with a tidy bow. His Spirit takes up residence in us. We are incorporated into him. We carry his name, his righteousness, his inheritance. What belongs to him becomes ours — not because we earned it, but because he offers it freely to His Bride. Here's what that might look like on a random Monday: when you wake up tomorrow morning and the first thing you feel is anxiety, or grief, or the low rumble of inadequacy that never quite goes away? You are not feeling that alone. Jesus—who is joined to you, who abides in you, who chose you at tremendous cost—is present in that. Not watching from a distance. In it. That is what one flesh means. Jesus is as present with you in the valley as he is at the summit. That is the union Paul has in mind. And Paul calls this a great mystery — and remember, when Paul uses that word he doesn't mean a puzzle to be solved with some secret decoder ring. He means a truth that was always there, hidden in plain sight and waiting to be revealed. The institution of human marriage has been carrying this secret since the garden of Eden. Every wedding, every covenant, every two people choosing each other across a lifetime has been—however imperfectly, however dimly—forshadowing something true about Christ and his church. But here is the thing Paul wants us to feel the weight of: the reflection only works when the marriage actually looks like what it's supposed to reflect. A marriage soaked in self-interest, indifference, or quiet contempt doesn't point anyone toward Christ.
6. 0:26:27 6. Verse 33 — Love, Respect, and Hard Questions
   Christ. It obscures the picture far more than clarifying it. The signpost only helps when it's facing the right direction. Which is why everything Paul has said to husbands in this passage matters so much. And he's not done yet. 33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband. Paul makes his final turn back to husbands and wives. Once again husbands are commanded to love. And here, for the first time in Chapter 5, we get a direct imperative to the wives: respect your husbands. It's worth noting that when Paul finishes making Christ an example of how to do authority well and returns to practical encouragements to the married people in the room, he affirms love for husbands, but he does not revisit submission for wives. Instead he calls wives to respect their husbands—to hold them in high esteem. Because here's the thing: our marriages, our relationships, our lives, our churches... they should all point to Christ. Everything we do tells a Gospel story—or distorts it. I often talk about my time with Metro Kids down in the Lower Mainland because it was so formative in my outlook on ministry. We worked primarily with unchurched children living below the poverty line. And we often ran into confusion around the phrase "God the Father". It just didn't 'land'. Fatherlessness was—and often still is—a frustratingly common issue among those communities. Even in homes with fathers, they were not always good men. Neglect and even abuse were not rare occurrences. And the choices made by those broken, or weak, or cowardly men made talking about a 'Good Father' very difficult. Because the only understanding they had was a bad father. In the same way, our marriages only help us understand that great final marriage of Christ and His church if our marriages are Christ-centered and selfless. If they are soaked through with lying, selfish ambition, or deceit, then that might leave you sitting here struggling with the image of a husband who lays down his desires for your flourishing because it sounds like fiction. Because that is not what you have seen or experienced. And that is exactly why all of this matters! Every marriage that actually looks like God intended is informing someone's imagination of what love is. Every husband who loves this way is pointing someone—maybe his own children, maybe his neighbours, maybe someone watching from the back row—toward a God who actually is what Paul describes. I'll get into where I actually stand on this next week, but for today I want to put a hard question to you: Women in the room: if the Bible really does teach that your husbands are called to lead in your home and that you are called to come under that leadership—what is your honest response? Not the Sunday morning response—the real one. Is it resistance, because you've worked hard for your voice and you're not giving it up? Or the genuine conviction that coming into submission as the more capable leader actually serves no one well—not your husband, not your children, not your marriage. Men in the room: if the Bible does not teach that you are required to lead, and headship is not a permanent divine design but a cultural moment the Gospel was moving us past—what is your honest response? Again, not the Sunday morning answer—the real one. Is it resistance, because you’ve always understood leadership to be part of your role as a husband and you’re not eager to surrender it? Or maybe the conviction that you are a capable leader, and that stepping back from that position would actually be worse for your family? If you find yourself bristling at these ideas, I invite you to take that to the Lord and ask honestly: is my position on this based on what Scripture actually says—or just what I want Scripture to say? Because those are different things.—and only one of them is really about Jesus. It is dangerously easy to read a passage like this one, hear exactly what we came in hoping to hear, and call it faithfulness. So before we get to next week, I want
7. 0:31:40 7. Conclusion — The Pastor Who Gave Up His Salary
   want to invite you to sit with your honest answer before the Lord. Not the answer that makes you look good. The real one. Are we actually seeking to align ourselves with God’s Word for the good of others — or are we just protecting our own interests and coating it in Christian language? Which brings us back to the Small Church Pastor we put in our pockets... You remember: the budget didn't balance, there was not enough money to pay all the staff and keep the lights on, hard decisions had to be made. So he called all the staff to a Friday afternoon meeting, and walked into the tight-knit circles of Friends with a simple manilla folder with unsealed envelopes addressed to each member of the team. What was in those envelopes? I can tell you because I was there. I was one of those part-time employees who relied on that paycheque to makes ends meet and that pastor is the man I still consider my pastor to this day. And when Pastor Graham sat with us and opened that folder and handed out those envelopes, he told us how good God was and how faithful and how much he had appreciated our faithfulness to the ministry. Then he handed us the envelopes. Inside each one was our standard paycheque. He wished us a happy Friday and a great weekend of ministry together. I found out years later that he didn't take a salary for months in order to get the church back in the black without having to let anyone go. But we never knew it. His family tightened their belts—it didn't hurt that his wife was a nurse!—and made sacrifices so that he could do what was best for the staff. Because the staff takes care of the people and the people are the church, and a healthy church will take care of the budget. That's what Godly leadership looks like. It looks like Christ's bottom-up—rather than top-down—leadership. Because if we think authority means we get our way, or our voice matters more, or that we are owed respect or allegiance or whatever, then we have it all wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls in the room today: in any and every area that we have authority, or influence, or leadership, that leadership should look like love, it should be soaked—no—waterlogged in the love of Christ. And Paul himself describes that kind of love better than anyone in 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Amen? Let's pray. Father, Thank you for the gift of your Word and for the example of Christ, who shows us what true leadership looks like. Forgive us for the many ways we chase authority for ourselves rather than using it for the good of others. Search our hearts and expose the places where we twist your Word to protect our pride or our preferences. Teach us to lead the way Christ leads — with humility, sacrifice, and love that seeks the flourishing of others. Shape our homes, our friendships, our workplaces, and our church so that they reflect the character of Jesus. And as we wrestle with these questions this week, give us hearts that are eager to follow wherever your Word leads. In Christ’s name, Amen.

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