Sex God by Rob Bell

Author:Rob Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

The You’s Are Plural

So the teaching of the passage in Ephesians is to love and serve the people around you, placing their needs ahead of your own, out of respect and reverence for Jesus, who gave his life for us, the ultimate act of love and sacrifice. Die to yourselves, so that others can live. Like Jesus.

This passage is being written to a church, to a group of people. The “you” here is plural, meaning many people are being addressed with these words. This church is being taught how to live together in such a way that when people observe their lives together, they will see what Jesus is like.

In Greek, the passage continues with verse 22: “Wives, to your husbands as to the Lord.”

Did you notice that a word is missing?

We’re missing a verb. The word submit is not in the verse. You have to go looking for the verb, which is in the verse before it.

The wife isn’t commanded to do anything different from what everybody is commanded to do in the previous verse, namely submitting. Placing the needs of others ahead of her own, especially in her most significant relationship—the one with her husband.

Verse 23 is next: “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.”

The word head is the word kephale in the Greek language. We could spend hours analyzing exactly what it means, but the larger point is that the husband is supposed to be like Christ. And what does that look like?

Notice how the text continues. Verse 24 repeats the submit command, and then verse 25 reads, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Christ’s “headship” comes from his giving himself up for the church.

His sacrifice.

His surrender.

His willingness to give himself away for her.

His death.

Whatever authority the word head carries with it is rooted in the sacrifice of Christ, and therefore the sacrifice of the husband.

So the husband is commanded to lay down his life for his wife, and the wife is commanded to submit to her husband, but they’re both commanded to submit to each other because everyone is commanded to submit to everyone else, and all of this is out of “reverence for Christ.”

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