Husbands and Wives––Christ and the Church (Eph 5:22–23) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

We often tend to gravitate toward formulas to reach our goals. If we can just follow the right steps then we get the desired results, or at least that’s the plan. Much of the counseling regarding addictions has been built around a “Twelve-Step Program.” Bill Bright boiled down becoming a Christian to “The Four Spiritual Laws.” Following the numbered steps in a recipe supposedly guarantees a perfectly cooked turkey or magnificent layer cake or some other table necessity at this time of year. In our technical world, YouTube videos offer the most expansive range of steps and formulas for doing most anything that one imagines. Such formulas become mental roadmaps to get where we want to be.

And then there’s marriage. We’re told that if we just follow a few steps then we will have marital bliss. Concepts of headship and submission get turned into formulas for how to do marriage. Couples try their hand at the neatly laid out formulas, expecting that if they will just follow the steps, their marriages will be transformed before their eyes. Plenty of books provide this kind of approach to marriage. Yet many find that after a few weeks, the formulas run thin, the neatly packed steps have become unpacked and a mess before their eyes. Then they’re back to the same old—same old.

The passage that we consider contains the longest, most thorough picture of a Christian marriage. What we notice, if we consider the text, is not a formula but a life—or to use the language that we’ve seen over and over in Ephesians, a walk. Here’s what we discover. A healthy marriage is the fruit of a healthy walk with Christ by the Spirit. So rather than hammering headship and submission into our minds, we want to see those practices in the biblical context of walking in the Spirit. How do we have a truly Christian marriage? Let’s think about that together.

1. A Christian marriage has a healthy walk with Christ in the Spirit

Context is king when it comes to interpreting Scripture. A couple of years ago when Chris and I led the South Woods marriage retreat, I returned to studying this passage in preparation for teaching on marriage. What arrested me were not the concepts of headship and submission—both important and critical to marriage—but how Paul arrived at those marital roles and practices. We notice that Paul does not pause in his short letter to the church at Ephesus and state that he’s beginning a new subject. ‘We’ve been talking about what it means to walk with Jesus. Now let’s shift our thinking to a different matter, that of marriage, family, and work relationships.’ Instead, one of the adverbial participles that amplifies and fleshes out the verb in verse 18, controls the entire content concerning household matters (Haustafeln, as Luther called it). If you notice, the verb in verse 22 in many of our translations is in italics, meaning that it is not actually in the Greek text but is instead, implied. What does that mean as we interpret this passage?

Walking with Jesus is central to marriage. We’ve seen how Paul explains what it means to “walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called . . . no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind.” And why? “You did not learn Christ in this way.” What did you learn? “Be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us.” Consequently, he tells us, “Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil” (Eph 4:1, 17, 20; 5:1–2, 15–16). So, as those who are being careful how we walk, what are we to do to walk in the way that Jesus wants us to live in relationship to Him and to one another? “But be filled with the Spirit,” Paul tells us, or literally, ‘but be being filled with the Spirit.’ Let the Spirit fill you or control you day after day. Quit living in [...]