Day 12 - Change Your Life!

Day 12 - Change Your Life!

Half-way Through The Change...keep up the focus it is worth it.

Pray, Read the book of Ephesians, Praise God

Today's study is one that has been fraught with controversy, anger and misunderstanding. Now, that is the worldly interpretation of Ephesians 5. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you into all wisdom and understanding and examine the scriptures to truly understand the intent of this teaching. Keep an open mind to God, an open heart to Jesus and an open spirit to the Holy Spirit, Beloved!

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STUDY VERSES:

Wives and Husbands

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
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 hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
30 because we are members of his body.
31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

STUDY QUESTIONS:

1. Why is a wife to submit to her husband? What does submit mean in this context?

2. How is the husband to love his wife? What is the greatest gift of the Spirit? If someone has spiritual gifts, knowledge, wisdom but doesn't have love what is he? (1 Cor 13).

3. What did we learn yesterday about love? What is the goal of love? (Reference your concordance to ground this concept in your heart).

4. When we leave our parents and cleave to each other, what does this signify? How does God explain this in His Word?

5. Can you accept submission, respect and love in your relationship whether husband or wife? Is submission as difficult as love? Why or why not?

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Commentary from the ESV:

Eph. 5:21 Submission in General. Grammatically, “submitting” is a participle in Greek and is dependent on the verb in v. 15. It explains further how to walk in wisdom (vv. 15–21 are one long sentence in Gk.). It also states a general principle of submission, which is illustrated in 5:22–6:9.
Eph. 5:22–33 Wives and Husbands. The first example of general submission (v. 21) is illustrated as Paul exhorts wives to submit to their husbands (vv. 22–24, 33). Husbands, on the other hand, are not told to submit to their wives but to love them (vv. 25–33).
Eph. 5:22 submit. Paul's first example of general submission from v. 21 is the right ordering of the marriage relationship (see also Col. 3:18; 1 Pet. 3:1–7). The submission of wives is not like the obedience children owe parents, nor does this text command all women to submit to all men (to your own husbands, not to all husbands!). Both genders are equally created in God's image (Gen. 1:26–28) and heirs together of eternal life (Gal. 3:28–29). This submission is in deference to the ultimate leadership of the husband for the health and harmonious working of the marriage relationship.
Eph. 5:23–24 the husband is the head of the wife. This is the grounds of the wife's submission to her husband and is modeled on Christ's headship over the church. Just as Christ's position as head of the church and its Savior does not vary from one culture to another, neither does the headship of a husband in relation to his wife and her duty to submit to her husband in everything. “Head” (Gk. kephalē) here clearly refers to a husband's authority over his wife and cannot mean “source,” as some have argued. In fact, there is no sense in which husbands are the source of their wives either physically or spiritually. In addition, in over 50 examples of kephalē in ancient Greek literature, with the idea “person A is the head of person(s) B,” person A has authority over person(s) B in every case (see also 1:22; Col. 2:10; see note on 1 Cor. 11:3).
Eph. 5:25 love. Paul now turns to the duty of husbands. He does not command the husband to submit to his wife but instead tells the husband that he must give himself up for her. Thus, husbands are to love their wives in a self-sacrificial manner, following the example of Christ, who “gave himself up for” the church in loving self-sacrifice. Clearly the biblical picture of a husband laying down his life for his wife is directly opposed to any kind of male tyranny or oppression. The husband is bound by love to ensure that his wife finds their marriage a source of rich fulfillment and joyful service to the Lord. Notably, Paul devotes three times more space to the husband's duty (nine verses) than to the wife's (three verses).
Eph. 5:26–27 The focus in these verses is on Christ, for husbands do not “sanctify” their wives or “wash” them of their sins, though they are to do all in their power to promote their wives' holiness. Sanctify here means to consecrate into the Lord's service through cleansing. washing of water. This might be a reference to baptism, since it is common in the Bible to speak of invisible, spiritual things (in this case, spiritual cleansing) by pointing to an outward physical sign of them (see Rom. 6:3–4; and note on John 4:15). There may also be a link here to Ezek. 16:1–13, where the Lord washes infant Israel, raises her, and eventually elevates her to royalty and marries her, which would correspond to presenting the church to himself in splendor at his marriage supper (see also Ezek. 36:25; Rev. 19:7–9; 21:2, 9–11). without blemish. The church's utter holiness and moral perfection will be consummated in resurrection glory, but is derived from the consecrating sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Eph. 5:28–30 Paul reiterates a husband's calling to self-sacrificial love for his wife by comparing this love to regard for one's own body (their own bodies), himself, and his own flesh (vv. 28–29; see also v. 33) and then to Christ's love for his body. As vv. 29–30 make explicit, the “body” for which Christ sacrificed himself was not his own person but the “body” which is the church.
Eph. 5:31 one flesh. The command for a husband to love his wife as he loves “his own flesh” (v. 29) originates in the creation reality that God joins husbands and wives together to “become one flesh.” Paul's quotation is from Gen. 2:24, speaking of marriage before there was any sin in the world; see also Matt. 19:5; Mark 10:8; 1 Cor. 6:16.
Eph. 5:32 By mystery Paul means the hidden plan of God that has come to fulfillment in Christ Jesus (see 1:9; 3:3–4, 9; and 6:19), thus his quotation about marriage from Genesis 2 (in Eph. 5:31) ties in to the relationship between Christ and his church. Paul's meaning is profound: he interprets the original creation of the husband-and-wife union as itself modeled on Christ's forthcoming union with the church as his “body” (see v. 23). Therefore, marriage from the beginning of creation (Genesis 1) was created by God to be a reflection of and patterned after Christ's relation to the church. Thus Paul's commands regarding the roles of husbands and wives do not merely reflect the culture of his day but present God's ideal for all marriages at all times, as exemplified by the relationship between the bride of Christ (the church) and Christ himself, the Son of God.

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When you meditate on the perfection that God set forth from the beginning of time by creating man, male and female, in His Image--that is the image of the trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; doesn't the significance of holy marriage take on a higher meaning than that of two people moving in together?

Do you comprehend the beauty of this union whereby God foretold the reuniting of His Son as head of the church to His Bride, the church and being captured as ONE FLESH up to heaven to be seated WITH CHRIST in the heavenlies and to behold the magnificence and glory of all the Godhead? Pray about it, close your eyes and meditate on it, God will show you.

Those who aren't married do not dispair! This lesson is for you too. You who are single and have been called to be single, your marriage is to Christ and all the fulfillment of these scriptures remain the same for you and your Husband. Those who are waiting for God to bring you together as one flesh with another, submit unto the Lord and His Word training your flesh, mind and spirit for a holy union ordained by God.

Be blessed Beloved, do not let man come between your union--in spirit maintain your holiness, righteousness and faith and no man can put your marriage asunder for it is dedicated to God. In the beauty of holiness, Sister Lisa