Law Is a Line, Love is a Circle

Sermon by Jon Trott, April 28, 2002, Jesus People USA Evangelical Covenant Church

Why, you will soon perhaps be wondering, am I reading verses on marriage today? This isn't a marriage seminar, after all, but Church. Many if not most of you are single.

Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 5:21-33.

As you open them, allow me to do a little explaining. I believe this passage, which itself has often been interpreted in a legalistic manner, is all about not only the core of marriage but the core of Christian fellowship, our oneness in Christ. For that reason, I'm first going to spend some time breaking down a few false ideas about what these verses are saying, and second will suggest some things it has to say about loving one another as believers. I am going to read the entire portion to begin.

Ephesians 5:21-33

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior.
24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word,
27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind--yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.
28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church,
30 because we are members of his body.
31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.
33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

These verses in Chapter 5 come from a larger portion of the book of Ephesians, where Paul is discussing beliefs and behavior of the Church as a whole, and emphases the goal of growth in unity. The core of this larger passage may come early in chapter 4, vs.14-16. "We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love." Note his emphasis: growing up in every way into Christ, through and in love.

The Chapter 5 marriage verses, then, are about how to love one another, and NOT about how to set up some sort of pecking order. Hierarchy flows one direction; love flows in a circle, an unending energy loop that is self-fueling. Law is a line; love is a circle.

The Spirit gives life; the law kills. In fact, look at the Genesis 3:16 account. Hierarchy – husband over wife – was part of the curse of the fall! "To the woman he [God] said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Carol Elaine, my wife, sees the extreme of this principle working out among some of the women she works with at our Leland House. Victimized over and over again by various men, some of these women will continue to find their only value in having a relationship with a man. He can beat her, impregnate her, steal her money, and have other women on the side. She clings to this man in a seemingly literal outworking of the Genesis curse.

Jesus Christ has broken the hold of that curse; woman and man, we are new creatures in Christ. As Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Again: these verses are about love, not law. And it is sad to me that we can hardly read them without hearing the voices of the past overlaid on top of their deepest meaning. For instance, Paul writes that the man is head of the woman, as Christ is head of the church. The "old school" says "AHA! See, Paul thought wives should be under the authority of their husbands." But where is it shown that hierarchical authority is the topic of these verses? Paul is after something much, much deeper than authority. He's after love. And isn't it obvious that love requires the surrender of authority? Authority is about who's the boss. Love is about who can outdo who in good acts, good words, and good attitudes. Law is a line; love is a circle.

For instance, about that term "head" Paul uses: "the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church." Wheaton Professor Gilbert Bilezikian writes, "The word 'head' used figuratively in the English language refers to boss, person in authority, leader. It never has that meaning in New Testament Greek. There are hundreds of references in the New Testament to religious, governmental, civic, familial and military authority figures. Not one of them is ever designated as 'head.'" [1] Unquote. So why did Paul use this term? Head in the Greek means, among other things, "source." That is, the Church comes from Christ – Christ is thus the "head" of the Church. The woman comes from man (Eve came from Adam) and therefore, man is the "head" or source of the woman. But this fact alone does not imply that because the man came first, he then gets to be the boss. We could just as well argue that since God's creation was in ascending order, the highest beings created last and Eve created last of all, that woman is of a higher order of being than man! That's silly, but I trust my point is made.

Man was the source of woman at creation, woman is the source of man in birth. As Noel Paul Stookey so beautifully put it in his song, "There is Love," "As it was in the beginning, is now until the end, woman draws her life from man and gives it back again." Love is a circle.

Finally on this topic, a little historical background may help. Theologian Craig S. Keener says, "The section [in Ephesians] 5:21-6:9 addresses what we call `household codes.' Philosophers from Aristotle on developed exhortations about how the head of a household should deal with members of his family, which usually broke down into discussions of husband-wife, father-child and master-slave relationships. Paul borrows this form of discussion straight from standard Greco-Roman moral writing. But unlike most ancient writers, Paul undermines the basic premise of these codes: the absolute authority of the male head of the house." [2] Unquote.

Despite all of that, my intention today is not primarily to preach an egalitarian or "mutuality" view of marriage, though I certainly believe in that instead of a traditionalist view of marriage as being male-dominant, female passive. But my main focus is to use this model of marriage as a blueprint or set of clues regarding how we ought to function together as members of one body, that is, the Church. It seems clear Paul intended us to make that connection; he makes analogy after analogy: the wife and the church, the husband and Christ, the church body and the wife's body, the church body and the husband's body… this is a powerful, multi-layered text which I cannot begin to do justice to in one sermon.

Ephesians 5 verse 21 is the all-important premise to the rest of this passage: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Note the combination in the verse of two ideas, which will become distinct as the passage goes on. First half, "be subject to one another," or as some versions put it, "submit one to another." Second half, "out of reverence for Christ." Reverence, another form of respect. Do those two ideas sound familiar? They should. They're shot through the marriage verses that follow that first verse. And notice the pattern? Love is a circle. Two persons in a marriage, or many persons in fellowship, bring their respective worlds together under this twin idea of mutual submission out of mutual reverence for the Lord. Love is not only a circle, but circles within circles. And a new world, a new reality, is born.

Let me offer seven points – which overlap fairly heavily - from Paul's admonitions to the married man and woman here, and see how they apply to our relationships with others overall.

First, Paul expects the couple to hear this word, to receive it, and to live it. That means he looks at both of them as fully human, fully empowered to choose right and to do right. As far as our ultimate choices, each of us stands alone before God. No one else can choose for me; I personally must choose God's Word as my reality. Community cannot save me, but if healthy it can and will help sustain my spiritual life and spiritual growth. It also provides me with a real place to live out my faith and exercise my gifts in service rather than stagnate alone. I risk, in that I'm trusting the other or others to remain true to our mutual commitment. But not to risk is to never have love. Love is a circle, surrounding those who trust and obey His Word.

Second, Paul expects a prior submission on the husband's part, a prior love on the wife's part, to the mutual submission and love they are to exercise toward one another. That prior submission and love is toward God, and trumps any private agendas the husband or wife might have toward the other. It provides both the blueprint and the basis for their marital mutuality. Likewise, community which exists merely for community's sake is doomed. Community exists for God, for its members, for its neighbors, for the poor, for the world. And if not rooted in God, community is at the same risk as a godless marriage would be. Rooted in God, love is a circle.

Third, mutual submission is to take place within a specifically defined context, that is, the will of God for each one of us. He has a specific goal in mind for not only husbands and wives, but for his people overall. Each of us has specific gifts, callings, and levels of maturity that will influence how we're used by God. Yet those gifts ought to function with love as both their source and their goal. This isn't a passive "giving in" but an active, co-participating "yes" to what we freely believe to be God's will. Love is a circle, completed by our "Yes, Lord."

Fourth, he expects each member of this marriage to put the other where Christ would put them—that is, before self. A godly submission out of respect on the one hand and love out of desire to emulate Christ on the other hand are actually two sides of the same coin, or even more accurately, waters from the same spring! They not only can co-exist, they virtually create one another and in fact MUST co-exist. Intersubmission and reverence are dependent on each other for their respective existence. This is true both in marriage and in the Church. Love is a circle, without hierarchical beginning or end.

Fifth, Paul draws a direct parallel between marital oneness and the Church's oneness with Christ. This parallel culminates in a comparison of the mystery of sexual union to the mystery of Christ's union with the Church -- "the two shall become one flesh." He notes that where applied to Christ and the Church, this is a great mystery, and then concludes by emphasizing love and respect for each other. Sexuality, of course, is limited to a husband and a wife in marriage. So what wider application could these passages have to the church? I think one answer might be this: Paul isn't primarily looking at sexuality in marriage as much as the result of sexuality in marriage, that is, the two becoming one. This marriage analogy shows up over and over again in the New Testament. The church's title is "The Bride of Christ." We hear in Revelation about the wedding feast. So here, Paul is looking at the relationship itself, the "oneness." Jesus and His Church, in a way Paul calls "a mystery," become one. Love is a circle because love is union.

Sixth, Paul's ideas of oneness – both for the married couple and the Church - are concrete and specific, "embodied" vs. "abstract." Paul makes an interesting assumption in verses 28 through 30, namely, that the body is good and that it is proper to love one's own body. From there, he goes directly to talking about the Church as a body. The Church is real; it isn't an idea or abstraction. It is flesh and blood human beings with sin, struggle, glory and love. We do love our own bodies, the specific material "stuff" of our selves, despite how unremarkable others might find us. And I love the body of believers God has placed me in, not as abstractions, but as real people, as Rick Mills and Karen Warne and Roger Heiss; as not-so-little Christopher Ramsey and Alison Jackson and Trevor Bytnar and Jason and Kat Seiler…. My own children… And more faces, names, lives that are embodied, concrete, and interlinked with mine in various ways. Love is a circle, unseen itself yet more real in its effects than what I do see.

Seventh, before we can hope to learn submission to one another, we must experience surrender and submission to the will of God for us. Paul used a word for "submit" that describes a "voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden." [3] Are you ready to carry a burden, to carry the cross that Jesus demands of you? Remember, He also said, "My yolk is easy, and my burden is light." Surrender your will to Jesus Christ – not to me, Jesus People USA, or any human institution or person. But surrender to Him Who died that you could begin to live, not only live, but love and be loved, find a family, a home, and a place where frail imperfect human beings dare to risk loving one another. That place is His church, any local congregation or even bible study: "wherever two or more are gathered in His name." Love is a circle, a threefold cord not easily broken.

All that said, though, my skeptical side accuses me. I don't always live what I just preached! I'm a hypocrite! And when I see my failure to love, every day, it makes me wish there was another way, a tidy, neat abstract way to do both my marriage and my relationships within this community of believers. Wouldn't it be great if I could just say to Carol, "Submit! Do what I say!" and she had to, and did? Wouldn't it be great if I could be my own little Gestapo, telling other community members what's wrong in their lives and why they need to change it right now? Ha, nobody could accuse me then. No more circles coming back to me. Only straight lines going out from me toward others, smashing them down into the molds my own desires and prejudices make for them.

Funny how law is so much easier than love. I guess it costs us less.

Just think if God would have opted for law and law alone. No need for Jesus' birth in a stable. No need for His sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. No need for Jesus experiencing Judas' betraying kiss or Peter's cowardly denials. No need for Herod's mockery, the soldiers' crown of thorns jammed onto Jesus' head. No need for the whipping, the flayed back with blood running down it. No need for silence in the face of Pilate's stupid question about truth – you wanted the truth, Pilate? It was standing in front of you. No need for the stumbling steps toward Golgotha, the falling down due to weariness and even loss of blood. And no need for the nails, the jarring thump of the cross as it dropped into place upright, the ripping muscles and inability to get His breath…. No need to plead for a drink, or in desperate sorrow cry out "Father! Why have you forsaken me?!!" No need for the death, the tomb, or even the resurrection. And no need for heaven.

You see, law doesn't require anything at all to happen, really. Law merely tells us what we already suspected. We're sinners, afloat without a paddle on a short river with a big waterfall. This was God's purpose regarding the Law all along.

But God did not choose law to save us. He chose love. And aren't you glad that love is a circle? A circle closed by God's forgiveness for us, and ours for one another. Forgiveness is that which comes from Grace – unmerited favor – and it is that grace that gives human community its life.

-Jon Trott, April 26, 2002 - This text may be reprinted for non-profit purposes, as long as the following is included: copyright (c) 2002, Jon Trott, all rights reserved. See http://www.cornerstonemag.com and http://www.highromance.com.

[1] http://www.cbeinternational.org/new/free_articles/challenge.html

[2] The Bible Background Commentary-NT by Craig S Keener, InterVarsity Press, 1993 p 551

[3] (Marcus Barth, "Ephesians," The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Vol.2 [New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1974], p 710.)