Submit or Obey

Ephesians 5:15-33

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

OK, so the word submit in this passage (all of them) happens to be the same submit in the passage in James from yesterday's study. So, verse 21 can look something like this: OBEY one another out of fear for God. Now, just as the original translation of the NIV above and the JRV in this paragraph, this can be taken out of context and run with in such a way that there is... well, let's just put it this way, you can read a scripture and respond with a humble heart and with a prideful heart. The later can manipulate it to do the evil things they want to do, whereas the humble one will use it to correct his life. Which one am I? Well, I have used this passage to do harm and to do good. And things always tend to be so much better when I do the later. You see, in verse 22, you can use that verse to man-handle your wife. I am not talking about abuse, but I can see how it can be turned around into that. But, it can be used to "stiffle" the voice of the woman. It would look something like, "You better submit!" and you can certainly expound on it from there... but verse 21 says to submit to each other. So, the guy need s to submit, as well. Are we submitting to our spouse, because we love them? How about loving God? Would our spouse say that we love God by our actions of how we treat our spouse? Tough questions.

Well, I'm over 72%... Now, I should start eyeballing 73%. Johnny Out.

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