I See You – Part 4

Review

The “I see you” series about openness, honesty and transparency with God and each other.

All of this happens within the context of fellowship with God and each other.

Fellowship is the Greek word κοινωνία (koinōnia). It means shared experience:

• Shared circumstances (responding to other people’s circumstances as if they were your own)
• Shared responsibility (taking ownership of an outcome even when you are not on the front lines)
• Share resources (Seeing the things in your possession as things that belong to you and not God)

To see you is to serve you.

Charity Begins at Home

For the believer, Marriage is a mini Christian community.

• All the ways that we defer to each other in a Christian community apply to marriage in concentrated form.
• A commitment to marriage is a commitment to a life of service.
• The principles of fellowship that apply to the church generally apply to marriage specifically.
  • Shared circumstances
  • Shared responsibility
  • Share resources

Submission: A Prickly Topic

• 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV) – ¹⁶ All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
• 2 Timothy 4:1–2 (ESV) – ¹ I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: ² preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

Two Ways to Respond

Ephesians 5:15–16 (ESV): 15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

The Holy Spirit is the Key

Ephesians 5:18 (ESV): 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

Ephesians 5:19-21 (ESV): 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

• Colossians 3:16 (ESV) – ¹⁶ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
• Submission to one another is a byproduct of submission to God in worship.
• Christianity is a culture of submission

The Power of Submission in Marriage

Ephesians 5:22 (ESV): 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

Being a good wife begins with being a good Christian. 

(Esther 1:12 (ESV) – ¹² But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command delivered by the eunuchs. At this the king became enraged, and his anger burned within him.)

Submission is first a matter of the heart.

Submission is voluntary. Compliance is coerced.

Obedience to God optimizes the good in your life.

1 Corinthians 11:8–10 (ESV) – ⁸ For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. ⁹ Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. ¹⁰ That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

1 Peter 5:5 (ESV) – 5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

There is no greater expression of empowered femininity than a woman who is submitted to God.

Ephesians 5:22 (ESV): 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

• Acts 5:1–2 (ESV) – 1 But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, 2 and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
• 1 Samuel 25:18–19 (ESV) – ¹⁸ Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared and five seahs of parched grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys. ¹⁹ And she said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.)
• The principle of submission does not negate the principle of mutual consent (1 Corinthians 7:5 (ESV) – ⁵ Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.)

© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2022