Friday, June 4

As you prepare to review this week’s scripture focus, ask God to speak to your heart through his word.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of the water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are all members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife, as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:21-33


I’m not sure how many weddings I have performed in my life as a pastor – probably somewhere around 200. Well-known polling expert Louis Harris estimates that current statistics on marriage and divorce in America indicate that between 1 in 8 and 1 in 5 of those marriages will end in divorce. While I don’t think the number is that high among the couples I have married – I do know that some of those marriages have already ended. Not a single couple stood before me on their wedding day thinking, “The love we have today will probably last a few years, then we will inevitably drift apart, establish a pattern of chronic conflict, forget how to love each other, and get divorced!” Not a single one! Yet, it happens. Why does this happen? And is there hope for marriage?

This passage from Ephesians 5 shares insights that help us answer both questions. Marriages fail for many reasons – some of them quite complex. But Paul is suggesting that marriages struggle when they are not mutually submitted to Christ first and foremost. Marriages fail when one or both partners are unable or unwilling to humble themselves enough to serve the other. Marriages struggle when the husband does not love his wife as Christ loves the church and when the wife does not respect her husband. Marriages fail when the covenant that protects one flesh intimacy is violated or unprotected. The flip side of all of this is that there is indeed hope for marriage! The hope for marriage is shared submission to Christ at the center of the relationship. Through Christ we learn to surrender our selfishness; through Christ we learn to serve one another well; through Christ we learn to forgive; and through Christ we learn to love unconditionally. The hope for marriage lies in the two-sided Velcro of love and respect. The hope for marriage is in the joy of one flesh intimacy in the safety of the inviolable covenant of promise!

This is God’s hope for marriage. This is God’s hope for your marriage! And if you are not yet married – it is God’s hope for what you will one day experience with a husband or wife. Thank him for this hope – and ask him for his guidance, strength and help in realizing his hope for you and your marriage!

Brian Coffey