Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4:3 to “make every effort to keep united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.”
This applies to marriage as well.
Because when we are united in marriage, it has the potential to preach the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in the world. It’s sown through the ways we love our spouses, the way we treat one another at home and in the world, and pours into how we relate to creation, others, and the church at large.
The problem is, unity is jeopardized in marriage due to disrespect and a lack of love.
So how do we stay unified in Christ?
Paul writes the plan in Ephesians 5:21, 33: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ… each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
According to Richard and Nathan Foster, submission is…
- Submission is giving way to the will of the other. It’s holding our interests lightly and holding the other person’s interest above our own.
- It’s the art of resisting the everlasting burden of always needing to get our own way.
Pastor Bryan says it like this: Submission is the belief that my spouse’s positions, plans and perspectives are good ideas and made with good intentions because my spouse is a good person.
How do you know if you’re a submissive person? You can ask yourself these two questions:
- When was the last time I listened, obeyed, and responded positively without making comments or criticisms and simply and willingly did what my spouse wanted?
- When was the last time I jumped to give the benefit of the doubt (charitable explanations) rather than jump to conclusions, assuming the worst of my spouse’s intentions?
So how do we practice the art of submission?
We give up our ways once in a while.
We give way for our spouse’s interests and perspectives
We give them the B. O. D. (benefit of the doubt)
We give of ourselves – our minds, bodies and souls.
This week let’s try something with our spouses to practice submission: Just say “yes” to everything they ask.
Let’s see what happens. See how their hearts soften.
(Advanced assignment for those who want a bit of a challenge: anticipate what they will ask for, and do it beforehand.)
This is how we practice submission.
Submission says to our spouse,
“I can give you the benefit of the doubt because there is no doubt that you are good, smart, kind, and loving. I believe in what God sees in you.”
Another way to practice submission is giving yourself to your spouse—all of you.
Last sermon, we talked about how the biblical view of self includes your body, mind, and soul. So submission also looks like giving all of you (emotionally and physically) to your spouse daily, weekly and yearly.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality – the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to ‘stand up for
your rights.’ Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out. Abstaining from sex is permissible for a period of time if you both agree to it, and if it’s for the purposes of prayer and fasting – but only for such times. Then come back together again. Satan has an ingenious way of tempting us when we least expect it.”
Sex takes discipline. Just as communication and emotional connection.
All of these take discipline in order to grow a loving an respectful marriage.
Withholding your body exposes the fact that there are parts of you that are either hurt, offended or bothered… but we must seek forgiveness, reconciliation and connection.
The real problem is that we don’t want sex enough!
The reality is: Your spouse wants sex all day.
Because as Dr. John Gottman says, “Everything is sex… Just getting up in the morning and telling your wife that she smells good. It’s all foreplay. I can make the coffee and empty the dishwasher — I can look at the kitchen the way she looks at it so that when she comes in, and thinks, ‘Geez, I have to clean this all up.’ She’ll be working very sleepily and I’ll say, ‘Are you ready for your coffee?’ And she goes, ‘Yeah,’ and here’s the coffee. So you’re always making love. You’re always connecting emotionally in some way, whether you mean to or not.”
We can’t just want to make love to our spouse’s body, we must make love to his or her mind and soul as well. Hence, he or she wants sex all day, and we must give that to our spouses in loving submission.
In the largest study ever done on sex (70,000 people from 24 different countries by the University of Washington), researchers asked those who said they had a great sex life and found several things in common.
Those who had a vibrant and healthy sex life all did these things:
- They say, “I love you” every day, and mean it.
- They give their partner compliments.
- They have weekly romantic dates.
- They have romantic getaways.
- They make time for each other.
- They cuddle. Even if they’re watching TV on the couch, they’re touching each other.
- They express affection in public.
Submission is asking your spouse: How would he/she like to be touched? How would he/she like to spend time? And how would he/she want to talk?
Submission says this to our spouse, “You are good and valuable, inside and out, and you are worth giving my trust, heart, and body, over and over again.”
Let’s re-offer our bodies to God by promising it to our spouse. Pray this prayer with your spouse this week.
You can listen to the sermon Becoming and Staying One Pt. I from the Ephesians series that inspired this post here.
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Further resources:
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepherd, Experts on Expert: John Gottman