Biblical marriage is not a contract you can walk away from when it stops working. It is a covenant that reflects the Gospel itself. This past Sunday, Pastor Chip continued the Counterculture series with a message from Ephesians 5 that was direct, honest, and unafraid to go where most sermons stop short.
What the Culture Says vs. What God Says
Pastor Chip opened by naming the culture’s view of marriage plainly. It is optional. It is just a piece of paper. It is a fifty-fifty contract where if you stop meeting my needs, stop making me happy, or stop being attractive, I am out.
The Word of God says something entirely different. Marriage is not a contract. Marriage is a covenant.
He also pointed out the strange inversion happening today. Single people want to be married. Married people want to be single. Some single people are living like they are married. Some married people are living like they are single. The enemy is working both angles at once.
The Bible, he reminded the room, is the best book on marriage ever written. It opens with a marriage in the garden and closes with a marriage in Revelation. It is full of marriages that were every bit as messy as ours. What Scripture says about marriage is not just good. It is best. The health of your marriage or your singleness is tied directly to your obedience to God’s Word.
Marriage Is About Jesus and His Bride
The first movement of the message came from Ephesians 5:22-24. Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church.
Pastor Chip made the point before anyone could get uncomfortable. Marriage is not first about the wife. It is not first about the husband. Marriage is first and foremost about Jesus.
He compared it to buying furniture at IKEA. You do not walk around the store reading instruction manuals. You look at the finished product. You look at the blueprint. God has given us a blueprint for marriage, and the blueprint is Christ and His Church.
Revelation 21 describes the holy city coming down from heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. God started the world with a marriage in Eden and He will start eternity with a marriage between Jesus and His Church. That is why marriage exists.
The practical application landed hard. The more a couple looks at the world, the further apart they drift. The more they look at the Word, the closer they get to each other. So the question becomes simple. Are you spending time with Jesus so He can bless your marriage? Are you in His Church, in a group, serving, growing? That is where God does the work of sanctification that makes marriages flourish.
A Biblical Wife Lovingly Submits
Pastor Chip spent real time unpacking the word submit because so many people misunderstand it.
In the original Greek, the word is hypotasso. It was a military term. It meant to voluntarily line up in formation for the purpose of battle. An army under a general, positioned and aligned, so that the unit could win. It was never a word about worth. It was a word about order and victory.
He also pointed to the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each fully God. Equal in every way. And yet the Spirit submits to the Son and the Son submits to the Father. Authority and submission exist inside the Godhead itself without any inequality whatsoever. That is the model.
Then he was specific about what submission is not. It is not from inferiority. It is not silence, no voice, and no choice. In fact, he told the men in the room that when you make a major decision without consulting your wife, you are only thinking with half your brain. It is not sinfulness, meaning a wife never submits to something that violates God’s Word. It is not to all men. It is to her own husband only. It is not tradition. It is a reflection of the Gospel.
He also drew out the last line of Ephesians 5:33. Let the wife see that she respects her husband. In the original language, respect means to hold in high honor, deep reverence, and profound esteem. Pastor Chip was candid. Men run on respect. When a wife speaks to her husband with an honoring tone, something changes in him. It fills him with courage and joy and love. He encouraged wives to offer that respect the way Jesus offers grace, even when it is not deserved.
A Biblical Husband Sacrificially Loves
Ephesians 5:25 says husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. The word for love there is agape. Unconditional. Gracious. Merciful. The kind of love Jesus has for a bride who has sinned against Him more than anyone has ever sinned against us.
Pastor Chip set the historical context. In Roman culture at the time this was written, the law allowed a husband to treat his wife and children as legal property. He could mistreat her, abandon her, or spend every family resource on himself. Into that world, Paul wrote husbands, love your wives the way Christ loved the Church.
He also made a distinction worth sitting with. God did not call husbands to lead. He called them to love. The only way a man leads well is through sacrificial love for his wife and family.
He listed what biblical love is and is not. It is not like the culture, it is like Christ. It is not selfish, it is selfless. It is not self-satisfying, it is sanctifying. It is not found in the world, it is found in the Word. It is not focused on right now, it is focused on eternity.
Ephesians 5:26-27 says Christ gave Himself for the Church to present her without spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless. Pastor Chip asked every husband in the room a question that is hard to shake. One day your wife will be presented to God. Is she closer to Jesus because of your love, or further away?
He also noted that being the head of the home is not measured by how many decisions you get to make. It is measured by how many sacrifices you are willing to take.
Marriage Is a Sexual Union
Ephesians 5:31 says a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
Pastor Chip pointed out that the top two questions at any marriage conference are always sex and in-laws, and this single verse addresses both. Leave your father and mother. Cleave to your wife. Become one flesh.
He said people typically view sex in one of three ways. As a god, which becomes idolatry and addiction. As something gross, dirty, and shameful, which some churches have unfortunately taught. Or as what it actually is, a gift from God given within the covenant of marriage.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 says this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. First Corinthians 7:3 says the husband should meet his wife’s needs and the wife should do the same for her husband.
For single people, he had a word of encouragement. God is not holding out on you. There is greater pleasure found in purity than there is in immorality. God is giving you joy in your singleness as you trust Him.
For married couples, he shared something worth remembering. You are the only legitimate source of romance for your spouse. Do not deprive them. Intimacy is not just the icing on the cake for when things are good. It is also the oven that bakes the cake, bringing a couple back together when they feel distant.
For anyone struggling in this area, he offered a clear path. Seek the Lord in prayer for power to obey. Find a godly mentor of the same gender who is further down the road. If the issue runs deeper, get counseling. The Church exists to help, not to judge.
It Is All About the Gospel
Ephesians 5:32 calls this a profound mystery, and Paul says he is talking about Christ and the Church.
That is why God instituted marriage in the first place. Marriage is the clearest physical picture of the Gospel on planet earth. When a husband sacrificially loves and a wife lovingly respects, the world sees a living illustration of what Jesus did for His bride.
Pastor Chip closed with something personal. His three-year-old son Cruz was in the hospital this past week with a medical emergency. Pastor Chip spent thirty hours in that hospital room. Through the treatments, the shots, the IV, and the medicine, Cruz fought every bit of it. Screaming. Begging his dad to make them stop. Pastor Chip had to physically restrain his own son ten different times so the doctors could give him what he needed to live.
Then he made the connection. How often do we fight against the very thing we desperately need? We resist the Word of God, the ways of God, the design of God, and then wonder why our marriages cannot breathe.
The invitation he left the room with was simple. Stop fighting it. If God said it, it is right. It is good. It is true. It is best. So live it.
Live It Out
This week, do not begin by evaluating your spouse. Begin by allowing God to evaluate you. If you are married, ask the Lord what it would look like for your marriage to display the Gospel more clearly. Husbands, consider one tangible way you can sacrificially love your wife this week. Wives, consider one intentional way you can communicate genuine honor and respect to your husband. Then together, make Jesus the direction you are both moving toward.
If you are single, do not believe the lie that your life is incomplete until you are married. God is at work in your life right now. Pursue purity, grow in Christ, invest in His Church, and trust Him with your future.
For all of us, the invitation is the same. Stop looking to the world for the blueprint and return to the Word.
There’s a Seat for You
Whether your marriage is thriving, struggling, or you are single and wondering what God has for you, you belong here. We are a church that believes God’s design for marriage is not outdated. It is the blueprint for something far better than what the culture is selling.
Plan Your Visit and come be part of what God is doing here. Or take your next step and Get Connected with our church family. We would love to walk alongside you.