The Power for Marriage
June 16, 2019
Scripture: Ephesians 5:18-21
I. The Holy Spirit fills you to give you the power for marriage.
A. In Ephesians 5:18 we see the Apostle Paul give a command to the church at Ephesus: “Do not get drunk with wine… but be filled with the Spirit.” How do you get this filling of the Holy Spirit? You pray for it. Every day at any moment you as a Christian can ask God to fill you with His Holy Spirit. The Spirit will give you the power to change into the likeness of God and Jesus (Eph. 5:1-2). We have the power to love others – including our spouses – when we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
B. We cannot love when we are empty. We can only love when we are full. In Ephesians 3:19 Paul prays that the Ephesian church might know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. No matter how much you think Jesus loves you, you’re wrong. You have no idea how much Jesus loves you. What happens when we in the church have a growing understanding of how much Jesus loves us? The end of Ephesians 3:19 says that you get full of God. And that fullness of God overflows from you like a fountain to love your spouse and other people.
II. The Holy Spirit fills you to give you the power to serve.
A. What does submission mean (Eph. 5:21-22)? The word submit literally means to arrange under. It means to place yourself under an authority figure of some kind. In Paul’s day the word submission was frequently used in a military context. Soldiers surrender their independence, they give up the right to make decisions unilaterally, and they put the good of the whole over the good of self. This is what it means to submit.
B. Why would a wife choose to submit to her husband rather than living for just herself and her own desires? Because every Christian understands that whether we are a husband or a wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. Both husbands and wives are called to obey Galatians 5:13: “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” If we love and serve others, we find happiness. Matthew 16:25: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
III. The Holy Spirit fills you to give you the power to see the greatness of Christ.
A. At the end of Ephesians 5:21 Paul gives the church their motivation to submit to authority figures in their lives and to serve others. Paul knows that submission is hard for all of us. So, Paul tells us at the end of vs. 21 that we submit out of reverence for Christ. This word reverence literally means fear. In the Old Testament we read a lot about the fear of God. But here in Ephesians 5 Paul talks about the fear of Christ motivating us to submit to and serve one another in marriage and in other relationships. The fear of Christ for the Christian does not mean that you are terrified of Jesus or intimidated by Him. To fear Christ means that you are in awe of someone who is so great. Fear then does not make you want to run away from Jesus. Fear makes you want to get closer in your relationship to the great Jesus. We understand that fear makes us want to get closer to God from Psalm 130:4: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”
Application:
Pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that you will have the power to love your spouse.
Sources:
The letter to the Ephesians
Commentaries on Ephesians by Bryan Chapell, Peter O’Brien and Richard Coekin
“The Meaning of Marriage” by Tim Keller