The Text: Ephesians 5:21–33
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject 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, and is himself its Saviour. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.” This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Introduction: The Ideal Government
Pawson opens with one of the perennial questions of human life: what is the ideal form of government for people living together? As more and more people crowd onto this small planet, the question grows more urgent — how do we balance law and liberty, form and freedom? The world’s governments today, he observes, divide roughly between democracy and dictatorship — and he ventures a prediction: democracy is on the way out, already crumbling, and being replaced by dictatorship of one stripe or another, precisely because when everyone insists on their own say, conflicting interests eventually produce anarchy, and frustrated people reach for control.
What does this have to do with a Bible study on marriage? Everything. Verse 21, Pawson argues, is God’s own answer to the question of ideal human government: a combination of leadership and responsibility. It is not God’s will that everyone try to run everything. Wherever more than one person must live together — whether a marriage of two or a nation of millions — God has the same pattern: some are given responsibility for leadership, and all are responsible to Christ. That is neither democracy nor dictatorship, but something else entirely — the best of both, with the dangers of both removed.
Modern democratic instinct recoils from the word subject. But God says: if people are to live together at all, someone must be subject to someone else, or the result is chaos. Crucially, this subjection must be accompanied by reverence — not mere cringing submission, but genuine respect — and that reverence is not ultimately for the person in authority, but for Christ, who has delegated his authority to them. The same pattern, Pawson notes in passing, governs healthy church leadership too: leaders are not chosen by popular vote but discerned as those to whom Christ has delegated leadership, and the congregation then submits out of reverence for him, not merely for the leader.
This is God’s blueprint for every human group, from a marriage of two to a nation of millions. But selfishness quickly erodes it: as soon as anyone begins speaking of their rights rather than their responsibilities, they have stepped outside God’s plan. Scripture, notably, never speaks of the rights of husbands or the rights of wives — only of their responsibilities to one another.
Both Have Responsibilities — But Different Ones
Paul first addresses wife and husband individually, then draws them together as one unity. Two things stand out immediately: both have responsibilities — not just one party — and their responsibilities are different, not identical. Pawson is careful to insist that difference of function does not mean difference of value or status. Husband and wife are equally precious in God’s sight, equally sinners in need of grace. But they are not given the same role, and that distinction is not a hierarchy of worth.
What actually happens in marriage? Not simply two people agreeing to live together, or splitting household costs, or formalising romance. According to Scripture, two people become one person. That word one is the heart of the wedding service — not “two going forward together” but “two becoming one.” Before marriage there were two bodies and two heads; a two-headed marriage, Pawson says bluntly, would be a grotesque monster. God’s design is one body with one head — and the husband is appointed the head, the wife the body, together forming one new person.
From this follow the distinct callings: wives are to treat their husbands as their head; husbands are to treat their wives as their own body. Pawson notes that Paul says considerably more to husbands than to wives — a point he will return to, and one that shapes the greater share of the sermon.
To the Wives: Imagine You Are Married to Jesus
Pawson puts the wife’s calling in the most vivid terms he can find: imagine that you are married to Jesus, and behave toward your husband exactly as you would toward him. Though Jesus never proposed marriage or married while on earth, he is himself coming for a bride, and understands what it is to love, to protect, and to sacrifice for the one he loves. A wife’s simple test for any attitude or action becomes: if I were married to Jesus, would I be doing this? A second standard is the church’s own relationship with Christ — has anyone ever heard of a true church arguing with Christ, answering back, or trying to tell him what to do?
Christ’s plan, without exception, places leadership in the marriage with the husband, just as leadership of the church rests with Christ and not the other way round. Nothing damages a marriage more quickly than a wife who comes to look down on her husband rather than up to him. Pawson offers direct counsel to unmarried women: do not marry a man you cannot look up to, telling yourself you will reform him, improve him, or make a man of him — that starts the marriage on the wrong foot entirely. Wait instead for a man who will lift you up. He recalls, with evident sadness, hearing wives say things like “I’m the better Christian” or “I have more willpower than he does” — words that reveal they have stopped looking up to the man they married.
Answering a Common Objection
Pawson addresses directly the common criticism that Paul is merely reflecting the patriarchal customs of his day — the same customs found among Jews, Greeks, and Romans, who all spoke of the husband’s rights and the wife’s responsibilities. His answer: Paul’s teaching is fundamentally different, because he goes on to give the husband responsibilities too — something entirely absent from Greco-Roman thought, where the husband had rights and the wife alone bore obligations. Jesus introduced something new: those who lead also carry responsibility, and Scripture consistently places the heavier accountability before God on the leader, not the follower. That is why Paul says far more to husbands than to wives.
To the Husbands: Love Like Christ
If wives are to imagine they are married to Christ, husbands must not make that imagination too great a stretch — they are called to be, as far as possible, what Christ would be to their wife. A wife’s submission is only rightly asked for when it flows from a husband’s own submission to Jesus; without that, a man has no true grounds for expecting it. Pawson warns against husbands twisting this teaching into an excuse for petty domestic tyranny — “I have biblical authority to boss you” — noting wryly that a wife has equal biblical authority to reply that Christ has authority to boss him too.
Just as the wife is to model herself on the church’s posture toward Christ, the husband is to model himself on Christ’s posture toward the church — and that is summed up in one word: love. A wife does not resent submitting to a husband who loves her deeply; she wants to be able to trust and respond to a leader who loves her that way. Neither democracy nor dictatorship works as a pattern for marriage — democracy collapses because no majority vote can be reached when each insists on their own say; dictatorship fails because the husband simply rides roughshod over the wife. Christ’s love is the third way.
Three Marks of Christ’s Love
1. A Love That Counts No Cost
Christ’s love is prepared to make any sacrifice, even the ultimate one — it does not calculate, does not ration itself to a few token gifts, but is willing to give everything, even life itself. A wife who knows she is loved that sacrificially — not with the occasional bunch of flowers but with the very self of her husband — submits gladly and lovingly in response. Pawson notes ruefully that he would be a wealthy man for every wife who has told him, “my husband doesn’t talk to me” — because to talk to someone, genuinely, is itself a gift of self, and part of this costly love.
2. A Love That Cleanses
Christ’s love leaves a person better than it found them. He gave himself for the church precisely to cleanse her, sanctify her, and present her in splendour, without spot or wrinkle. Every husband, likewise, wants a beautiful bride — and, Pawson observes, a husband bears real responsibility for his wife’s beauty: not the glamour she may have had before marriage, but the beauty of character that comes from being nurtured, encouraged, and helped to flourish. That beauty of character, over time, shows through the face itself.
3. A Love That Nourishes and Cherishes
Paul points out plainly that before marriage, a man fed, clothed, and looked after his own body — some bachelors, Pawson notes wryly, become quite expert at it. Now that he is married, he is to treat his wife exactly so, because she is now his own body. Nourish means to supply what is necessary; cherish goes further, adding the extras beyond mere necessity. That is exactly how Christ treats the church — not merely providing what is needed, but lavishing extra tenderness besides. It is the extras that reveal the true depth of love.
One Flesh: Leaving and Cleaving
Having addressed the two individually, Paul now brings them together, quoting Genesis 2:24 — a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Pawson finds two meanings in this verse: a physical meaning, and a deeper spiritual one.
The Physical Meaning: A Breaking and a Making
Marriage has two sides — it breaks some relationships and forges others; it is a leaving as well as a cleaving. Pawson recalls the wedding service the day before: “Who giveth this woman to this man?” answered not by the bride or groom but by the bride’s father. Weddings, he notes, are sad occasions as well as glad ones — tears and laughter sit very close together, because in a real sense a family relationship is ending even as a new one begins. Much of the humour (and tension) around in-laws, he suggests, would dissolve if this leaving were properly understood and honoured rather than resisted.
This is why marriage requires a public ceremony rather than simply two people deciding privately to live together: it is not merely a private relationship between two individuals, but a public, social leaving — the recognised departure from one household to form another. It must be openly acknowledged.
And then the cleaving — a word meaning to hold on, and to hold on for life. When asked about divorce, Jesus himself quoted this very verse from Genesis, explaining that in a divorce, you are not separating two people but dismembering one. Only death can rightly dismember a body — no human authority should presume to. Pawson does not shy from the hard implication: while both parties remain alive, neither can become a fully separate, whole person again in the way they were before marriage. He acknowledges that Scripture allows for separation in extremity, but distinguishes this carefully from remarriage, which he describes soberly as, in effect, marrying half a person.
The Spiritual Meaning: Christ and the Church
Paul then reveals a second, hidden meaning in the same verse: it speaks of Christ himself. Just as Jesus told his hearers to search the Scriptures because they testify of him, Paul reads Genesis 2:24 and finds Christ there. Jesus left his Father’s throne above and came all the way down to seek a bride — a real leaving, a real departure from glory. Having found that bride — the church — he cleaves to her forever.
If Christ has found you and you belong to his church, he will never divorce you. He holds on forever, and none can pluck you from his hand. One day, Pawson says, all believers will attend the ultimate wedding reception — the marriage supper of the Lamb — and will live with Christ forever, their love consummated in glory.
Even death does not part a Christian marriage in the deepest sense. Though in heaven there will be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, believers will enjoy a closer and more wonderful relationship with one another in glory than was ever possible on earth. The one difference: on earth, the marriage relationship is exclusive, too intimate and sacred to share with others. In heaven, that quality of relationship will be shared among the whole bride — the entire church — and all will know perfect love together.
Closing Reflections
Pawson acknowledges this has not been an easy passage to study — precisely because it is so practical, so down to earth, so clear. It is God’s pattern not only for marriage but for every level of human society, from the family to the nation. The following Sunday, he notes, the same pattern would be traced into the family — the leadership of parents and the submission of children — and into the workplace, employer and employee, because the same principle of godly government is written over every human relationship: be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Closing Prayer
Father, we confess to you that we go wrong through disobedience rather than ignorance. You make your way so plain to us, and yet we can find a hundred reasons to justify our own way. We pray, O Lord, that you will deliver us from being conformed to this world with all its modern ideas, and that we may come back to you, our eternal Father, and ask what is your will, knowing that it is good and acceptable and perfect. Grant that your will may be seen in all our relationships — in our homes, in our families, at our work, in our church — and may we submit to one another out of reverence for your Son. Amen.
© David Pawson Ministry CIO
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© David Pawson Ministry — Transcript prepared for Koinonia.nu | koinonia.nu