"Quit Hittin’ Yourself!"
EPISODE 192
Reflect Christ in Your Relationships
How do we apply church-like submission and Christ-like headship in our marriages? And what should Christians take from the servant / master commandments (and do those commandments mean that Christianity is pro-slavery)? This week we ask a lot of big questions in a Do You Understand segment focused on the Household instructions in Ephesians 5:22-6:9. Here in session 11 of Talking Through Ephesians, we ask, “WWYDFJ?” (that’s “What would you do for Jesus?”) and discover a secret strength like Samson. We also discuss how our view of marriage has changed over the years and take on a “top secret” mission in this week’s challenge. Find all the resources for this series at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: The secret strength behind Christian relationships is our love and honor for Jesus.
This Week's Challenge: Find a way to do something extra at work without letting anyone know about it.
Episode Transcription
You gave me this picture of like a big brother making his brother hit himself. Quit hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself? Quit hitting yourself. Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 192. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. We are in session 11 here as we've been moving through the book of Ephesians and we're nearing the end of the book. We only have a few more episodes left in this guided study. And this conversation we're going to have today is centered around the household. And that's in Ephesians 5 verses 22 through chapter 6 verse 9. And I like that we decided to group these together because I think it really would have been easy to stop maybe with the conversation about marriage in chapter 5 and maybe break it up from the conversation about children and masters and servants in the next chapter. But I think there's a common thread that goes through this whole thing, which I think we're going to talk just a little bit about in this episode. Yeah, I definitely think Paul is treating it as one section where he's applying some of these ideas he's been talking about in all of the different roles we have. And so it's a pretty relatable topic for all of us, as many of these have, as we think about the different responsibilities we all have. Yeah, exactly. And so we are going to be talking about the household here. So why don't we just start with our conversation starter on this episode, which we called Playing House. (imitates music) This is Talking Through Ephesians. Playing House. Kids love acting out little versions of adult life. Under our staircase, our kids have a built-in playhouse designed to look like our Tudor-style home. There's a play kitchen, play cars, toy phones, and little plastic laptops, miniatures of the grownup world. Playing house, they imagine parenthood and pretend to go to work. Our home and work lives model a bigger reality as well. In Ephesians 5 verses 22 through chapter six verse nine, each Christian household member must build relationships around the Lord. So here's the big idea. The secret strength behind Christian relationships is our love and honor for Jesus. After showing that being filled with the Spirit leads to submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, Paul illustrates mutual submission in different roles. Our reverence for Christ transforms our attitudes and behaviors towards others. - A household table is a format used in other ancient literature to outline the home's proper order. But where other household tables focused on wives, children, and servants, Paul insists that those in authority also reflect Christ's love. Husbands, fathers, and masters must learn from Jesus that leadership isn't the right to exercise lordship for their pleasure, but the responsibility to serve as a leader. This vision of marriage requires husbands to imitate Christ's self-sacrificial love and wives to follow them with respect, forming oneness like the unity Christ has with his body. Submission and sacrifice might sound outdated or unpleasant, but they're defining traits of Jesus. He surrendered his will to the Father and yielded his rights for us. We joyfully submit to him knowing he sanctified, nourishes, and cherishes us. Children must obey their parents in the Lord and servants as to the Lord and not to man. It's no longer about consequences or society's expectations. Our drive comes from a place no one can see or alter through force. We serve the Living Christ. So here's the big question. Do you interact with others as to the Lord? - So follow along with this guided study of biblegeeks.fm/ephesians, and may the Lord bless you and keep you. - Shalom. - So the big idea that we talked about there is that the secret strength behind Christian relationships is our love and honor for Jesus. And I love how you describe this as the secret strength. And it really makes me think about Samson, you know how he had this amazing superhuman strength, but nobody really knew how he was able to do those things. And his wife obviously asked him quite a number of times, how are you able to do these things? And eventually he revealed that it was his hair, but clearly it wasn't really his hair that gave him these abilities. It was his commitment to God. In kind of a weird way, that's sort of the same thread we're talking about here in these relationships, that effectively our relationship with Jesus, our love and our honor for him, is what gives us these sort of extraordinary, wonderful, blessed relationships that we can enjoy today. - That's a cool illustration. I like that. I always think of us as having a, like superpowers. The natural man does this, but the spiritual man does this other stuff. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 2, we're not natural. We have something different from our commitment to the Lord. - So unnatural. - So unnatural. And our big question in that section we just listened to is do you interact with others as to the Lord? Something Paul says there is that the servants should interact not as to man, but as to the Lord. And we often talk about WWJD, that was bracelets people in my high school had back in the day, what would Jesus do? But what about, this is a mouthful, WWYDTJ. - Okay. - What would you do to Jesus? what would you do to Jesus, not just what he would do. It says here, render service with the goodwill as to the Lord and not to man, verse seven of chapter six. So to interact with people as if they were Jesus. I think that's such a transformational principle. And I guess the trick is to try to remember that, to carry that thought process with me, whenever I'm just talking to people. And so I'm really going to give some attention to this, work on this, like a bonus challenge for this week. I think of this passage, you know, Matthew 25, Jesus talks to people as if they served or mistreated Him while interacting with others. And I think this is a theme, a thread that runs throughout, would you treat Jesus this way? And that is such a powerful question. So I'm gonna, I probably won't have the bracelets made, but I'm gonna try to remember that one. - There'd be a lot of letters to print on a bracelet for sure, and really confusing, But I do love that. I love how Jesus talks there in Matthew 25 to the extent that you did it to the least of these You did it to me such a cool way of thinking about that So as we sort of roll back and maybe get lighten this thing up a little bit We're gonna ask an icebreaker question on this episode and the icebreaker question is gonna seem like maybe it comes out of left field But you remember we're talking here in this section about marriage and then also about parenting and being a child so the icebreaker question is gonna focus on that marriage piece and Ryan, what's your favorite or your least favorite wedding tradition? Yeah, I was thinking about, you know, the vows that we say, and there's so many good things that are, we do, I like all of that. I love weddings actually. But I, I think the garter belt thing is weird. I just, I remember you kind of like under the skirts and like, you're getting swell, it's just all weird though. I can, you know, I've taken off the garter belt and flinging it at a bachelor. the thing that your wife was just wearing. I don't know. It's just bizarre. - Now that you describe it like that, I can totally see that's a super weird tradition. Absolutely. - Also people smushing cake in each other's faces is always a weird thing, but yeah. - I have one that fits both categories, actually my favorite and my least favorite. And that is having to leave the party first as the bride and groom. That always felt weird to me, you know how the bride and groom are the center of everything and then they get in a car and drive away and they leave all their friends behind and to clean up and to do all the whatever, tear down from the wedding and things like that. I don't like that on one level, but then at another level it's, yeah, let's get out of here. (laughing) You think about that as a tradition, and that's actually in the most recent wedding I was a part of was my mom's wedding. And it was at our home and it was cool that we just, after the ceremony and everything else was done, we just sat around the house and talked. It was like, this is perfect. this is exactly what this should be. It would have been super weird if they would have just up and like drove away. I don't know why that's a tradition. So. - It is an interesting thing, but it's cool that you're starting the rest of your life. Let's just go, let's start right now. - Let's get out of here. Leave these people behind. All right, and speaking of moving on, let's move on to our first segment here on the episode. And that of course is our finding Jesus segment. We're gonna look here at Ephesians 5 verses 22 through chapter six, verse nine, and we are going to find Jesus here in these really powerful and practical verses. Absolutely. So we've just talked about it in the conversation starter, the reverence for Christ led Christians to submit to one another. And then we get to verse 22 here where it says, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. And it talks about husbands loving your wives as Christ loved the church. and the wife is to look to the husband as her head, like Christ is the head of the church. And there's this beautiful picture of this oneness that you should love your wife like your own body and nobody ever hated his own flesh. He nourished, he cherished it, and Christ does that for the church. And we're members of his body and a man shall leave his father or mother, hold fast to his wife, the two shall become one flesh. And then wonderfully he says, this mystery is profound. And I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. And then he goes into children, obeying their parents and fathers, not provoking their children to anger, bond servants, obeying their earthly masters and thinking more about their heavenly masters as they do it. And then masters also, you do the same. Don't threaten them. Know that the one who is their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. So when you look at this big passage, 522 to 690, where do you find Jesus? - So I was really looking to find like a deep cut here and avoid the obvious comparison when I was trying to find Jesus. But the fact that I'm going first here in the conversation, I think it makes sense for me to find Jesus as the husband to his bride, the church. And very obvious, just right out there, very clear. Although it is cool that Paul does describe this as the mystery. I mean, we've had it revealed, But you have to imagine if you're an Ephesian Christian thinking about your relationship with Jesus and your relationship maybe with your husband or your wife, it probably was a revelation for them as they're thinking about what Jesus has done and what he expects from them. And of course, what he expects for our relationships with our spouse. So specifically, I love the language that Christ is cleaning up the church. Imagine your wife wearing white coming down the aisle or if you're a bride and how you wanna be the only one at the wedding wearing white. That's like a traditional thing, right? And I can just think back to that moment when I watched Sherrilyn walking down the aisle. I was bawling like a baby, of course, but she was sparkly and she was glowing, wearing white, all dolled up, and Jesus wants us in that same condition. He wants us clean and pure before him, but unlike that day, it was Jesus who was actually doing the work in cleaning us up. One of the traditions that we have now is that we're not allowed to see our spouse before the wedding, but prior to the wedding, Jesus is cleaning us up. He's done the work to effectively wash us and present us to himself spotless. And of course, that's where I found him, hiding in plain sight again, Jesus, the husband to the bride. - I like it. Don't overthink it. There's a reason, it's obvious. It's the heart of the passage and such a beautiful image. I did go to a different place. I went to the very last line of this whole passage at the end of the servants and masters discussion, where it's like a wake up call to masters who might think they can do whatever they want with impunity. He says, stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and that there is no partiality with him. There's that old saying, it's all about who you know, but Jesus isn't going to take our side when we're just unjustly treating someone else. And I think it's a sobering warning. we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And that word reverence is fear. It's the word that's often translated as fear. It's a positive fear. I like the translation reverence, but it's a mindfulness that Jesus, the Lord of all, the one who holds all of our fate in his hands, will judge us and will judge us righteously. And he's not going to play favorites. He is going to say, as much as he loves us and has bestowed his favor upon us, He still expects us and anybody else to act with love and with justice and righteousness. And so I think that remembering that Jesus is both the wonderful bridegroom who takes us to his own and the judge of all of us and master rounds out the picture of who Jesus is. We love him and we revere him. I think that's a perfect way of rounding this out. And so let's move on to our second segment here on the episode, and that is, "Do you understand?" Do you understand anything they're saying? Oh yes, Master Luke. Remember that I am fluent in over six million forms of... What are you telling them? Hello, I think. Okay, so here we are, and we're going to ask these questions about husbands and wives and parents and kids and masters and servants. And of course, there's a lot to unpack here in these verses. Maybe we'll just pick off our first question here. and Ryan, if you wanna tackle it, is how do the specific directions below connect to the command to submit to one another in chapter five, verse 21? - Yeah, I think we touched on it, but I really do think it's important to recognize that they're illustrating and applying that truth, that when we're led by the Spirit, we submit to one another. And one indication of the connection between 521 and 522, 521, submit to one another, 522, wives submit to your husbands, is that the word submit isn't even in the best texts of 522, it's implied from 521. It's correctly translated, but the fact that it's not there tells you, Paul is meaning this to be one continuous idea. He's completing a thought there in verse 21, but that thought is meant to lead us into the next thought in verse 22 as he starts this unpacking of what this means in the church and what this looks like. and to submit to one another is to prioritize others' rights and needs. There are still different roles in life and in the home as this passage outlines, and not everybody's submission looks the same, but everyone needs to serve and to yield to each other in love. And Jesus, of course, is the best illustration of all of that. Under a Christ-like mutual submission model, authority gets changed. becomes this weighty self-sacrificing responsibility, like a shepherd, like Jesus is a shepherd who's looking out for his sheep, rather than like an indifferent self-serving privilege like some fat cat dictator that has the, that lording it over kind of attitude of I'm going to ride on the shoulders of people. That's not what it means to be the head of a home or the boss at work or the father or mother. is I am here to spend myself and pour myself up and give up what is mine for those that I'm trying to lead. And I think that makes so much sense in context of what Paul has already been talking about here. Just thinking about how we walk. We've spent so much time introspectively focused on what we do, how we behave, what's proper for us to do. As we start looking outward, I think there's maybe a danger there in us taking ourselves too seriously or thinking too much about ourselves. So now it's that sort of shift is, "Okay, now that you've focused on yourself so much, let's stop thinking about ourselves and let's actually think about prioritizing other people's needs." Which like you said, it's exactly what Jesus was all about. So moving on to our second question here, what are we meant to learn about Christ and the church from marriage? I don't know how I wound up getting this question because we could probably spend a lot of time thinking about what we learn about Jesus from the picture of marriage that we have. But maybe just picking off the top two of my thoughts here, we learn about Jesus' headship or His authority. And I think that's really what you were focused on pretty heavily, you know, that He is in charge. who is driving the ship, so to speak, and he's the one who we look to as our leader. And in the same way that a husband is that way for his wife, and a husband is driving the home, making the decisions. But it's hard if we just stopped there, because if we just stopped at the point where the husband is the head and he's the one in charge, you might get a very one-sided picture of that relationship, of that marriage. It would be a terrible marriage, by the way, if the husband was just the focus of everything and he was the one doing it all. That's where the second point that I think we learn here from Ephesians is that we learn about his love. We learn about how he cherishes us and he nurtures us and he cleans us up and he wants us to be spotless and he wants us to be beautiful and holy before him. He doesn't want us to be messing around in sin. He wants to clean us up. He wants to actually do the work, in fact, to clean us up. And what a cool picture that not only is he the one who drives everything and who is in charge, but he's also the one who has done everything for us to love us to the point to clean us up like he has. And I don't know, just thinking about those two sides of a marriage, of a healthy and successful marriage, we learn a lot about Jesus from that, that he's not only in charge, but also he's loving, not that sort of fat cat dictator like you were just talking about. - Yeah, something that jumped out at me as I think about this idea is how Paul ties these two different things together, the marriage idea and the Christ in the church idea with another metaphor of the body. It's like the Venn diagram of Christ in the church and marriage are overlapping and the place where it's overlapping, he takes that little area and builds out this body metaphor. Yeah. And that's really helpful to understand both marriage and Christ in the church because your head and your body work together. They're one, they're meant to be-- - They're not in opposition for sure. - They're not in opposition, they're a partnership and there's a unity to it and they're serving, you can't serve your head but not be serving your hand. It all works together and I think that is a really helpful idea. So our next question is how do we apply church-like submission and Christ-like headship in our marriages? So taking this beautiful theological idea that you were talking about, or this wonderful relationship we have with Jesus, how do we rubber hits the road kind of. Let's get practical, man. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. So to start with, I think we each have to focus on doing our part or as preachers sometimes put it, stop reading other people's mail, you know, wives, you have a message from the Lord and husbands have a message from the Lord also, of course, we're going to have conversations together about how they go together, how my role and your role fit together, but I just think it's unproductive to outline your spouse's responsibility. Like you're the expert. Okay. Here is an outline of what you are meant to do and just preaching to your spouse in the kitchen about their role. Doesn't usually go well. I think it works best when both spouses view responsibility for the marriage. Not like it's 60/40 or even 50/50, but like a hundred percent is mine and a hundred percent is yours. And I'll give my attention to my 100%. And I think when husbands love like that and love like Jesus, it does change the other side, if I'm focusing on my part, then it starts to create a different attitude from my wife. It just naturally, I'm not making a promise here, stamp it money back guarantee, but I'm saying this is just how it works. This is how it tends to happen. This is the design of God. When wives show the kind of respect and support for their husbands that Jesus is teaching us to have, that Paul is talking about, it changes a man. It just does. It has this huge effect on me when my wife does this. And when we both do it, even with our imperfections, our inconsistencies, we're not always going to do it right. But still, it becomes this circle of care, this care for our one body that builds a resilient unity, a oneness that I think we need whenever things get really hard. We're like investing in that oneness now through those acts of, I'm just focusing on being who I need to be in this marriage. You focus on that other part. And then whenever things are really rocky or whenever one of us is dropping the ball or whatever it is, then we have this oneness that gives us buoyancy in those difficulties. - No, that's so powerful though, because as you start to think about it, it's like, how would Jesus have operated if he was only giving 50% of himself and requiring the other 50% from the other party, right? Like all he's doing is giving everything, right? And expecting us to do the same, to give everything. I don't think this is some Birkenstock's wearing idea here about marriage. I think this is found on what we know about Jesus and what he's done. He didn't hold anything back and he doesn't want us holding anything back. He wants us to be like him, and he wants us to give everything like he gave for us. I think that makes perfect sense. - Yeah, and the way we show up for each other is gonna be different. Each marriage is gonna be different, but also the way a man is to love his wife is different than the way a wife is to, as Paul closes this chapter, is to respect her husband. I think that's helpful to recognize they're given different commands here. There's different roles, there's different needs that each of us have. So I find strength from her respect, her commitment to stand with me, to try to see me well, all those things that come from that. And she talks a lot about the, the kind of nourishing love, cherishing love, the self-giving love, seeking her holiness and blessing, all that this describes. It's music to my wife's ears whenever she reads it. And whenever she sees it in me, it has an effect, like we talked about. And that's the bigger part of this passage, by the way. I don't know, for some reason, maybe the pendulum swings sometimes to focusing more, it seems like, on the wife's role. And both are really, again, 100% equally important. But there's more of this passage talking about husbands, and there's this huge responsibility that shows up for us to what a standard to show up and represent the role of Christ in this partnership. >> That makes you feel inadequate for sure. >> Yeah. So I think maybe the last thing that I'll say is that all of this is just going to come with practice and with listening to each other and figuring out what's needed. What does your spouse need? And what does this look like for you guys as you work it out? and how do you imitate Jesus or imitate the church in this way daily? It's like trial and error sometimes, but it's a lot of practice and just getting better and honing it through the years. - So I think as we move on here, moving past this marriage relationship that we've been talking about, chapter six, verses one to four, focus on a different kind of relationship. And the question we're gonna ask here about parents and children is here in these first four verses of chapter six, what do in the Lord and of the Lord mean? What does it mean to obey your parents in the Lord and bring up your kids in the discipline and instruction of the Lord? And again, the idea here is that Christ is underpinning all of our relationships and that is super important to think about not only in a husband and wife relationship but also in a parent and child relationship. We are obedient to our parents as if we're obeying Jesus. Just like if Jesus was telling us to do something, we obey our parents and listen to them and make sure that we're responding in honor and respect like Jesus is telling us to do those things. And you know, of course, there's probably a lot of caveats and asterisks here and people will talk about, well, what if our parents tell us to do something that Christ wouldn't have approved of? And I think even this verse probably applies to that as well, you know, making sure that we're doing what Christ would want us to do in these commands and making sure we're not going too far, but just even keeping this sense of obedience that it's not really about our parents, that it's not really how worthy they are, quote unquote, or how much they've earned our respect. But that sort of listening and relationship that we have with them really is all about what Jesus has called us to. And that I think changes the game for us in a lot of ways. Thinking about parents, we're not just making up the rules here. Parents, I know it feels like sometimes we're just flying by the seat of our pants, but it's as if Jesus was instructing our children. What would we teach our kids if Jesus was passing along a message to us to give to them? He's in the position of authority. He's the one who is making the decisions for how we parent and the kinds of parents that we are. And he wants us to train our kids to be like him. And so I just think, again, these in the Lord and of the Lord phrases here are really just about reminding us that, hey, these aren't just your earthly relationships. These are relationships that are given superpowers by the fact that Jesus is a part of them. - Absolutely, yeah, you nailed it. It's not about, I liked what you said. It's not about who they are, whoever they is. It's about who Jesus is and who you are because of your relationship with Jesus. And I think you nailed that. The next question I evidently drew the short straw on Now we're going to get a little more theoretical here. Do the commandments to slaves mean that Christianity is pro slavery and Christianity is not pro slavery. Let me just get that out on the table. It's Christian principles that ultimately transform society and has continued eradicating it. I mean, Christian principles in the West, the gospel, and as it spread, wherever it went, it has eventually, not immediately, of course, there have been Christians practicing it, but eventually is what people cited over and over again, pointing to Jesus, pointing to these teachings about loving others as yourself. That's what changed people. In 1 Timothy 1, 10, Paul condemns enslavers. He groups them with murderers. So Paul is not pro-enslavers, but rather than a political upheaval of society, that's just not what Christianity was about is let's have this war on society where we throw off tyranny and fight against the powers that be in like a physical battle, which is what it would have been if they brought this approach. Rather Christianity aim to create an inside out change in people first that would then change all of the societies that they're part of it. kingdom mindset, once Christ is king in your heart, then Christ slowly starts to affect everything outside of that person. Just read how Paul wanted Philemon to see Onesimus, and you start to see this radical rethinking of the institution starting to already creep in and take seat as Paul is viewing Onesimus as a brother, a dear friend, and as in every way Philemon's equal except that he is a servant and Philemon is master. It's also worth noting there are a lot of different kinds of slavery in those times. It's not just men stealers as the Bible sometimes puts it, people like kidnapping people as tragically has happened in human trafficking throughout history, but it was often brought about by debt or other situations. This It's just a little bit more complicated than we'll unpack here, but short answer, no, Christianity is not pro-slavery. And leading into our last question, what should Christians take from the servant-master commandments here? What do we in the 21st century view as our responsibility? What are our takeaways here in these verses about masters and servants? Because obviously we don't have these kinds of relationships anymore in our society, at at least in our American society. But I think it's been said a lot of times to describe our working relationships today. And I won't disagree with that, I suppose, but I feel like that's a little bit overly vague, or maybe just a little overly vanilla. There are a lot of challenges here that are deeply entwined in what Paul is saying that you don't really get with an employer and an employee kind of relationship. But there are a few lessons that I think we can learn. putting yourself back in the mindset of somebody who was actually a servant or a slave at that time or putting yourself in the position of somebody who was a master over a bunch of slaves, there's always someone in charge. And I think we learned that here from these verses. It wasn't that, like you said, it wasn't that they went up and had this big uprising over the people in charge. No, they realized that there's always someone in charge. And ultimately, Jesus is always in charge. He's always the master. And so if we're serving our masters like we would be serving Jesus, again, he's the thread that underpins everything. Well, I think that helps us to have a better view of our responsibility to authority. There's always somebody in charge. There's always somebody in authority and there's always somebody that we've got to submit to. And so that may be part and parcel, but just because somebody's in authority doesn't necessarily instruct us to submit to them. But here in these verses, we definitely see that slaves have a responsibility to submit and we need to do the same thing. We need to be submitting to one another as we talked about in the last chapter there. So there's always somebody to submit to and there's always a way to see somebody's humanity and dignity. No matter the relationship that we have with someone, no matter their state versus our state or some sort of socioeconomic status or something like that, there's always ways to look at somebody and see that they're a human worth loving. And I think that's what we see here. It's not like looking down on slaves or even looking down on masters for the way that they might treat you, but like just seeing people as worthy of love. And there's always a way to let Jesus underpin these working relationships. And that's something that I think Paul is helping the people of his time to see. Years and years removed from that, the fact is still the same. Jesus still is the one who underpins and who defines, redefines really the way these typical relationships should go. It's unnatural, man. I don't know what it is, but it's unnatural for sure. (laughing) - Yeah, I like what you did there with that, really stepping back and unlatching this passage from, oh, this is your bosses and your employees and that kind of thing. These passages, even though I really can't relate to the scenario that it's speaking to, are some of the most useful passages to me. This teaching about rendering service, not as eye service, not as a people pleaser. Boy, I can be a people pleaser, you know? - Yeah. - That, you know, but rather doing the will of God from the heart. All of these things, there's principles that, yes, they're not being directed to us. The Bible was written for us, not to us, as we often say, but when you look at this passage, or you look at Colossians three and verse 23 and 24 and that section, I just find myself looking to those passages, you know, work hardily as for the Lord, do all these things in a particular way often and apply them all the time to a lot of different situations in my life. - Yeah, for sure. All right, that has been Do You Understand? Lots of questions. Let's move on to our last segment here on the episode and that is our reach out question. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ - Okay, we're gonna get into our own, I was gonna say get personal, but we'll just say we're getting into our own growth and our own evolution as we have learned through the years, maybe a few things, and maybe have had our view of our marriages change. So how, Bryan, has your view of marriage changed as you've matured in the Lord? - It has changed a whole lot. - The end. the end, right? Like just put a stamp on it and put it in an envelope. I don't know. I feel like I have begun to embrace even more in 20 years of marriage. I've begun to embrace the differences between us even more. And I think this goes to some of the things that we've been talking about in this episode, but God designed our relationships to be complimentary, not identical. And I liked what you said when you were talking about Jesus and what He did. What He did was very different than what He requires us to do. He went to the cross. He fulfilled the Father's will perfectly and lived as a man on this earth with doing everything that God wanted him to do. He doesn't expect that of us. He's not expecting us to go to the cross because He did that for us. He's asking for us to do something very different but also very similar to Him. And when I'm thinking about that and what Jesus did and how we live in relation to that, I'm not identical to my wife. We're not the same person. We do very different things. We serve in very different roles. God designed this relationship to be complimentary though. I am most definitely missing something without her. And she, and as she'd tell you this too, she is definitely missing something without me around. And I guess that's just not something that I saw super clearly when I was younger. You know, we provide for each other equally. And that's an interesting thing to say, right? Because we don't provide the same things for each other, but we offer each other the same amount, which is like you were talking about, 100%. Right? We give everything to this relationship, not always perfectly. You know, we're not like the idyllic marriage, you know, we've had our struggles too, but, and maybe not even in like traditional ways, but we're sharing the load. And for as much as Christ gave for me, I ought to be willing to give the same to him. And of course, not in the same ways, but in the same spirit of love and gratitude. I don't provide for my wife in the same way that she provides for me, but I am beginning to learn after 20 years of marriage, how little I knew about what each of us is responsible for and what each of us is good at and the ways we each contribute to this marriage that we have. That's again, going to take practice, but even after 20 years of marriage, I don't think I've completely learned the lesson about what each of us brings to the table. I just know that we're definitely responsible and we're definitely necessary in the equation of our relationship. Oh yeah. This is like a stop midway through the journey or early in the journey saying, "Okay, I figured out a few things, but I'll have a very different and better answer for you years from now." But I love what you said, different but the same and the way we serve of each other and complete and bring a different gift and role to this oneness. And I absolutely see that so much. Like you said, so much the end to say about it, but just grabbing onto this passage. I really love the second part of verse 28, where it says he who loves his wife, loves himself. I've just learned over the years how true that is. I've just found that I've just, I've said that to so many people, especially whenever I'm going to be doing a ceremony for someone, I just try to drill that into the, to the young man that I'm going to be marrying to his bride. There's this old saying, happy wife, happy life. That's kind of part of this, but I don't think that gets all of what Paul's saying here either. You could say you're in the same boat. So if she's sinking, you're sinking. But I think it goes even farther than that because you're one flesh. Again, the overlap in the Venn diagram between Jesus and the church and you and your bride is this idea that you're one flesh, Christ in his body, you and your bride are one flesh and that's not literal, obviously it is a profound mystery, as Paul says, it is a truth and it's a truth that doesn't just refer to marriage, it refers to a relationship beyond this world. And so I think really understanding that idea of, you know, nobody ever hated his own flesh. It's so natural to look out for yourself. You just, you have to overcome that sometimes because it's so basic to you to defend yourself, to take care of your needs, to look out for yourself. And of course this passage gives us a moral reason to love our wives with that agape love. And then we also have the inspiring example of Jesus. There's lots of reasons we want to do it, but he also gives like a self-serving reason here. It's just like he does with the children. There's a promise if you obey your parents that it'll go well with you in the land. Similarly, there is a promise here that he who loves his wife loves himself. Take care of yourself, man. How? Take care of your wife. Prioritize her above yourselves. And in doing so, you are prioritizing yourself. You're looking out for yourself by truly and completely committing to her good. And so it's just affected the way I look at things. I stay tuned into her more than I used to. I just, you know, how you become a student of your wife and figure out what makes her tick and what they love and what they hate and what's just not going to, we're just going to ruin the day and they might not even realize it, but you've come to figure out that this can make a difference and just realizing It's not a tug of war for who gets taken care of. Taking care of her ultimately comes back around to a win for me anyways. It sounds like self-serving and overly pragmatic maybe, but it's in this text and it's really helpful to know. Just man, Jesus, Jesus gave everything. And then what happened afterwards? He won the victory. He sat down at the right hand of God. That's part of the story of the cross. And whenever you sacrifice and pour yourself out, it does come back and ultimately it's gonna come back in the new creation, but it comes back here too. - Yeah, I think that is a powerful truth. And it seems so obvious on the surface, right? Doing something good for your wife is a good act for you, but like, I mean, in the moment sometimes it's hard to remember that, especially when emotions get going or things are heated. But man, like that's been instructive for me even recently, just realizing that like when I see her go on the defense in regards to me, if I'm like doing something that puts her sort of shields up and gets her kind of thinking about ways to answer back or whatever, it's like, but I'm fighting with myself. It's like, quit hitting yourself, dude. Not in a physical way, but obviously like, sometimes it's just that battle that you have to struggle with that you realize in the end, I'm just hurting me right now. I'm not building myself up because I'm not building her up. And man, it's right there on the surface, but I think it's definitely pretty deep for a lot of us to walk away with, myself included for sure. - Yeah, so good. I love where you took that. It's hurting my, it gave me this picture of like a big brother making his brother hit himself. - Quitting in yourself. - Why are you hitting yourself? - Quitting in yourself. - But that's what we're doing whenever we're, yeah, when we're fighting against ourselves. - For sure. - By fighting against our wives. Yeah, good thoughts. So let's move on to our last little section here on the episode and that is our challenge for the week. - I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. - So our challenge for this week in response to this conversation that we've had is to find a way to do something extra at work without letting anyone know about it. And of course, we've been talking a lot about marriage, but this challenge is particularly focused on the last section in talking about masters and servants and the way that we can get out there and do things at our jobs. And I think we can all do a little bit more at our job and we don't have to toot our horn for it for sure. And maybe do that this week and just put it out there for people to enjoy the fruits of your labor. - Yeah, not by the way of I service as people pleasers. You talked about the secret superpower earlier and I think there's this idea here of being the secret agent for good. And that's a cool idea. Just, you know, God's watching and He treasures the deeds that we do for His eyes alone. And I think this kind of thing, what we were talking about with marriage, it of course has rewards in eternity, but it can change your whole outlook towards your work and bring joy and fulfillment in a fresh way to just say, I'm going to enjoy doing a great job in ways that nobody sees except Jesus and my Father. I love it. All right. So take that on this week. That should be a good one. Let's close out this conversation as we like to do with a closing prayer. And in the study guide for this episode, we have a suggested prayer there and that is, "Help me become a loving and productive member of my family and community, looking to Jesus in every relationship." And of course, that's just based on this whole section of passages here. So let's go to God in prayer. Holy Father, what a privilege to call you by that name. You're our creator and our redeemer. You lead us by the hand as your dear children. be nothing without you. It's with such hopefulness that we look to you today, realizing that you not only teach us how to be better servants of yours, but also you teach us to be better servants to those around us. Help us to become more loving towards those in our families. Help us to work alongside those in our communities, in our jobs, in our schools, wherever we find ourselves. What a blessing it is to model your love and your light in our lives, shining on and blessing the hearts of those that we meet. Teach us humility. Teach us to serve one another through the example that Jesus left us, your perfect Son. Forgive us when we aren't as thoughtful to others as we should be. We pray that you will drive away our sense of self-sufficiency and in everything we pray that our conduct and these relationships that we have would bring you honor and glorify your name on the earth. Help us and lead us in this upcoming week, dear Lord, and in this we pray in Jesus' name. Well, Bryan, next week we're getting into your favorite, the penultimate episode in this guided series, the 12th study session in this series, talking through Ephesians. And that'll be on, I mean, just such a great passage. Everybody loves it from the time you're five years old, spiritual warfare and the armor of God. So we're encouraging everybody to read Ephesians 6 verses 10 to 20. The armor, Bryan, it's next week. The armor, bring it on. Get on. All right. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in to the Bible Geeks Podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/192. All the study guides, all the conversation starters, everything you need to have these conversations with a friend, a small group, or anyone really are there on our website at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians. And until next episode everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you. [MUSIC PLAYING]