Dennis Tuuri

# Marriage and the Holy Spirit, Part 2

All humility and gentleness with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way unto him who is the head into Christ. From whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you. Thank you for this wonderful section that lays out this grand and glorious plan of yours for the salvation of the world and the building of your church to fill all. We thank you Father for your Holy Spirit. We pray that you would bless us today, transform us by that Spirit. Grant us the Lord Jesus Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension today by your Spirit. And may we be equipped by that Spirit for lives of holiness and commitment to Jesus both in our individual lives and in our relationship to our spouses, those that have them, friends and fellow laborers in the Lord. Bless us, Lord God, to that end. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Please be seated. I thought I’d start with a little William Blake this morning. William Blake has had a bit of a resurgence in the last week or so. His poem, one of his poems that was part of Jerusalem—a poem written by him—was sung at the beginning of the opening celebration of the Olympics by one of those young English choir boys and then the dark satanic mills kind of overtook the beautiful agrarian landscape.

There is this poem that represents this and this poem, by the way, is also the inspiration for one of the last lines for the movie Chariots of Fire some years ago, which some of us older folks remember well. And I’m going to recite Jerusalem here, which is probably William Blake’s most famous poem:

“And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England’s mountain green? And was the holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold. Bring me my arrows of desire. Bring me my spear, oh cloud unfold. Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, until we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.”

Beautiful. Now, maybe some reference to a fabled early visit by Jesus as a child to England, but maybe not. Maybe he’s thinking of the incarnational nature of the Church of God, strolling around England’s pastures. And it’s a song that calls us to warfare and to engage till we build once more Jerusalem in the midst of our land. Building marriages and building strong churches is the way that’s accomplished. And I think that what we’re going to look for today is more equipping by God, and we will for the next few months on this very task to apply ourselves in Christian marriage and Christian service to the body of Christ and to our community so that indeed we might actually engage in the last lines of this poem—that we would see Jerusalem built in our particular places of residence in our states and cities.

But actually, it’s another poem of William Blake that has more direct relationship to how this war is waged in the context of our churches and very specifically in our marriages as well that I want to read. This little poem is called “The Cloud and the Pebble.” Probably a number of you might know it. It’s short. Blake wrote this:

“Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease and builds a heaven in hell’s despair. So sung a little cloud of clay trodden with the cattle’s feet. But a pebble of the brook warbled out these meters meet: Love seeketh only self to please, to bind another to its delight, joys in another’s loss of ease and builds a hell in heaven’s despite.”

Well, that’s a wonderful picture of the paths we have every time we engage in relationships with each other. It’s a wonderful picture of the two paths that marriages can tread—building heaven in the middle of dark times, perhaps a beautiful picture of paradise through self-sacrificial love, or having a selfish love that in the midst of the paradise of Christian marriage, the gift of God that it is, produces a hell instead. That’s the choice. And that choice is not just in relationship to marriage. That choice is essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ and gets right down to the very purpose for which Jesus Christ died for the sins of his people on that cross 2,000 years ago, was raised for their justification, and ascended to the right hand of the Father.

And he is now ruling all things by means of his Spirit and his people. And he’s doing that to affect a redemption of mankind from selfish Adam to self-giving Adam, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, and those who bear his image. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that very thing—that Jesus didn’t die for us because we were lovely. He died to make us lovely. He did that—first part of Blake’s poem, the bit of clay, the cloud of clay trodden under cattle’s feet. Man comes from that clay. Jesus was in that manger and that cloud of clay tells us what our love is to be like and what the scriptures tell us.

Now that kind of love is impossible. Truly, I mean, we can do things for other people for a sense of self-satisfaction and self-worth and it’s really still selfish. But to have self-giving love? I think it’s impossible for the fallen race. It’s only possible through the redemption of Jesus Christ. And then it’s only possible by the work of the Holy Spirit. And so we’re taking another Lord’s Day today to look at the Holy Spirit and what’s told us about him in this sweep of passages in Ephesians 4 and leading into the second half of Ephesians 5.

To have self-giving love means you have something to give, right? You can’t give away something you don’t have. If you’re going to be a philanthropist, you need to have put together some money to do that with and the individual who is not in relationship to Jesus Christ and doesn’t know the love of God for himself or herself and doesn’t have that great store of love—that God says God has shed abroad this love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit—if we don’t have that love we can’t give that love. So the first step to Christian marriage is our own relationship to Jesus Christ, giving us that store of grace and love and kindness and patience and longsuffering that we then can give to spouses, friends, people that we meet, et cetera.

Apart from the gospel, there is no way to fulfill and be happy in the context of Christian marriage. But the gospel says exactly that. Jesus didn’t just die for our sins so we can go to heaven and live eternally with him—yes, praise God, wonderful, ineffable, beautiful story, cause for the highest of praise—but the gospel is the good news that the effect of that is here on earth as well. And he’s changed us.

In Romans 15, we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. The gospel calls us to that self-giving love that Blake wrote about, that produces a paradise here in this world. “Let each of you please his neighbor, labor for his good to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.’” Jesus is the example, and not just the example, he is the power and pattern for us in his death for us—not pleasing himself, but coming to die sacrificially for us.

Galatians 5:13 says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. The gospel: you’ve been freed from sin. You’ve been freed from damnation and the judgment of the law. You’ve been called to freedom. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” There is no marriage that will fail when both parties are, through love, serving one another. And some marriages are absolutely unrecoverable if one party obstinately and steadfastly refuses to do that thing.

God says the gospel has freed us. But we’re to use that freedom to love one another and to not think of ourselves first, but as Philippians says, to have the mind of God and to consider other people as more important than yourself. “Through love serve one another.” And then 2 Corinthians 5:15, which we read last week: “He died for all—the gospel—that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” So we don’t live for ourselves. The gospel is the great truth that we’ve been freed to serve other people, live for Christ by serving him and those that he has placed into the context of our lives.

This is an antithetical, complete antithesis to the spirit of the age, the post-enlightenment age that says it’s our own, you know, identity. It’s who we are. We’ve got to gratify ourselves. The whole therapeutic culture that emerged after Freud in psychology, where it’s self-actualization and every person’s a god. You see, that’s exactly the opposite of the Christian faith. And what that means is this: the world in which western civilization now lives—that’s the air we breathe. And what it means is it’s very difficult, you know, to go about doing what we’re called to do both in the context of the church and friendships, but very particularly in marriage where two people come together only to find out they’re not really the people they knew beforehand and to see the sin.

And by the way, it’s always easier to see other people’s sins than your own sins. And what that bodes for marriage is yet another weight and encumbrance that makes it a difficult thing. Marriage is grand and glorious. The connection between marriage and the gospel is pointed out so clearly in various texts. It is wonderful and something to give great praise to God for. On the other hand, it is also a very difficult and hard thing. It’s always that, and it’s particularly that in the context of the age in which we live where it’s exactly the opposite of what the world would have us to do.

And that’s why in today’s text we’ll see the antithesis—the change of life that’s supposed to accompany commitment to Jesus Christ—is so critical for our age. It’s so critical for our age because the spirit of our age is radical selfishness and self-centeredness. So it is hard when we see the sin in other people’s lives, when we see the sin in our spouse’s lives so clearly—clearer than our own usually. You know what it’s going to lead to? Anger. It’s going to lead to bitterness. It’s going to lead eventually to despair. And that is inevitable apart from seeing instead that Jesus—like us, like Jesus—don’t give ourselves to somebody ultimately because they’re what they need to be perfectly, but rather to help them and to help sanctify them. And we’ll talk about that in a couple of weeks—the relationship of marriage and sanctification.

Now, this is hard work. That’s the point of this introduction. It’s work that we must work at diligently and we must look at the biblical pattern. And before we get to husbands and wives and all that stuff in Ephesians 5, we want to make sure we understand what that means—walking in the Holy Spirit—because that’s the predicate for what follows then in terms of marriage. And it broadens out the whole topic to every person rather than just to married couples.

It’s work. On your outlines, I’ve got a website address for the Prepare & Enrich people. Actually, it’s the website address for Date Night PDX. And in one of those boxes that come up, you know, you’ll see “Prepare & Enrich.” And you can click on that box. It’ll take you to a marriage assessment, and you can do that for free for at least the next month, maybe two. We’re not quite sure. You should do it in the next couple of weeks.

I honestly don’t see any reason it takes about twenty minutes, is what they say. I don’t know why a couple wouldn’t do it. I don’t know anybody here today who wouldn’t find twenty minutes to do a little bit of work preparing yourself to improve your marriage. Hmm, yeah, maybe it won’t help you, maybe it will. Your pastors seem to think it’s probably more likely than not that it will help you. And it will help us because we’ll get an assessment of the entire church. The code you punch in is a unique identifier for our church, and we’ll know then better, you know, what to preach on and teach on and what small groups to organize, et cetera, after we get those results back.

So I would just love it if we had fifty couples from this church do this assessment and, you know, invest twenty minutes of your time so that you can then begin to work in a little smarter way than you might have before the assessment. So I encourage everybody to do that.

Marriage is hard work. It’s a wonderful thing, and because it’s hard work, we should do it. We should get at it because it’s such a wonderful thing. Now, marriage is impossible apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit brings us Jesus. We’re going to talk about what that looks like in Ephesians 4 and 5. But first, a quote from Tim Keller: “The Holy Spirit’s task is to unfold the meaning of Jesus’s person and work to believers in such a way that the glory of it, its infinite importance and beauty, is brought home to the mind and the heart.” The Holy Spirit comes to bring us Jesus. It’s that simple. The Spirit points not to himself. The Spirit points to Jesus. And the Spirit brings the reality of the resurrected and ascended Jesus Christ to us, as we’ll see here in a couple of minutes, which is absolutely essential and indeed identified with our sanctification.

So the Spirit is required, and that’s why we’re starting this series with knowing where to go to get help, and where you go to get help is the Holy Spirit.

Peter Leithart has this nice quote that I came across a couple of weeks ago. “Marriage is a means of receiving the fullness of the Spirit. In a faithful Christian marriage, the Spirit circulates from a man to his wife and back again, transforming each and both from glory to glory. When the gap closes and a man kisses his bride in genuine Christian love, the Spirit breathes in, with, and under the mingled breath of the kiss.” Beautiful picture. And we’ll talk about that in the future. The relationship between the Holy Spirit—one of the probably the most important persons if you’re married—and your sanctification. The work of the Holy Spirit in your life isn’t your pastor. It’s your wife or your husband. And Leithart, I think, does a good job of showing that.

So God planned marriage with the gospel in mind. We know that at the end of Ephesians, Paul talks about Genesis and marriage itself. He says, “But really what this is talking about is the union of Christ and his Church.” Christ and his Church. So when God instituted marriage in Genesis, he has his Church in mind. And specifically, he has the gospel of Jesus Christ because in Ephesians 5 it relates it specifically to Jesus and the Church. So God planned marriage with the gospel in mind.

Marriage is a wonderful and hard reflecting of the gospel. Reflection of the gospel. It’s wonderful, but it’s hard. And because of that, it reflects the gospel. Jesus Christ suffered, right, and was raised up. Marriage involves suffering, self-sacrifice, but at the end of that is tremendous blessing and delight on the far side of sacrifice and suffering. The gospel includes suffering, and so does marriage. Denying yourself is always a hard thing to do, but it’s a wonderful thing to do. And what you end up finding out is that on the far side, tremendous satisfaction and blessing are yours.

And this is true as well, you know, for people who aren’t married. When you serve in the Church, when you serve in work, when you serve in relationships of various kinds, that also is a reflection of the gospel. It’s also hard, and it’s also involves suffering, but it’s what you’re supposed to do because God says to serve and he says you’re supposed to be happy to be served. The gospel is about grace. And for some people, it’s harder to let somebody else serve you than it is to serve other people. But part of this exchange of the Holy Spirit back and forth is being willing to be served by the other.

Power for marriage comes from the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the source of power. The Spirit brings us Jesus. So the power is the Spirit as he brings and empowers us for Jesus Christ.

All right, quick overview of Ephesians 4 and 5. And the first thing we’re going to talk about is the unity that begins here. The Church—it takes a village, a parish, pastors, and what else? Maybe other things, okay.

So this, going back to the text that we just read in Ephesians 4: What did we read? Now, this is the agenda part of the letter, right? Ephesians 1-3 is what you believe. Ephesians 4-6 basically is what you’re supposed to do—the agenda. And so he begins by, “I therefore,” on the basis of all the doctrine that he’s laid out, he then says to do some things. And what does he say? “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” We’re going to emphasize walking in the third point down here, but walk is a big deal. Walk is used a number of times. It’s used throughout this section particularly.

And what it immediately tells us is he’s not wanting you to have a portion of your life, but your walk refers to everything you do. It refers to your conduct in the world. And so right away, there’s walk stuff here. Let me just read a couple of verses having to do with walk. Actually, there are seven of them in Ephesians. There are fourteen references to the Holy Spirit. There are seven references to walk. The word walk is used, and I’m going to read every one of them here.

Ephesians 2—”In which you once walked following the course of this world.” The first reference to walk is our old walk, our old converts. Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” So we’re removed out of the old walk into a new walk that’s characterized by good works. Chapter 4:1, which we just read: “I, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” So he’s summing up everything he’s going to talk about in these last three chapters as our walk. Yes, so what that means is it’s comprehensive.

Verse 17 of chapter 4: “Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do.” So there’s a putting off of that old walk again, right? A church that is properly missional doesn’t have much to fear because it’s bringing people into the body of Christ and teaching them to break with the old way they walked. And we’ll see more of that as we proceed today.

Ephesians 5:2: “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” The gospel again—the gospel and the fruit of the gospel is our walk. Ephesians 5:8: “At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” And finally, verse 15: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise.” So the section begins with the call to walk in a particular way. And throughout this epistle, there are seven references to our walk, the fullness of the Spirit in delivering us from our old way of being into the newness of life in Christ and then explaining what that walk is to look like.

Well, what does he say about that walk? What is a walk worthy of the call? It begins with the most important thing—with all humility. Humility. Pride, self-centeredness—that’s the beginning of everything. That’s the core sin. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, but it was seen as the root of the other six as well. So what does it start with? Humility, gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

All right. So Paul tells us that if we’re going to have the power of the Holy Spirit—which is the power for Christian marriage and for successful lives generally, right? Blessed lives—it’s the way to go about doing what Blake calls us to do: to build a paradise here and to build Jerusalem again in the context of our land. The power for doing that is the Holy Spirit. And Paul says that humility is demonstrated first of all by you being part of a body of people. You’re to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. “There is one body and one Spirit.” The body and the Spirit are joined together. And yes, he’s talking ultimately about the Church universal. But the way that’s expressed to the Ephesians is in their personal relationship to the church that they’re part of.

The first thing Paul talks about before he gets to talking about the home is your relationship to the body, which means your relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ, which is applied by saying your relationship to a local church. Some people say God, family, church. In one sense, I understand that there are different churches. You’re only going to have one family. And so from that perspective, it’s true. But the order here for Paul is God, Church, family. And we recognize the Church can involve different local churches that you attend or move from this church to that and that’s fine, but family really is addressed as a subset of your relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ, okay?

And so that, you know, there’s not a one-for-one identification of the local church with that, but a local church is where that’s lived out. That’s where your commitment to the body of Christ is seen. And so the beginning work of the Holy Spirit—the power of the Spirit for marriage—begins with the spouses being good church men and church women. They’re good church people. They’re committed to the body of Jesus Christ. And the whole reference here to having humility, gentleness, and patience—it’s community stuff. It doesn’t mean in your individual actions. It’s talking about your relationship to people. This is what it’s about, yeah. Couple hundred people here. This is what all this is talking about. And you know, it goes beyond that to other Christians and other people, but this is the training ground. This is the core element of it.

And Paul says that the walk of the Holy Spirit—the walk—begins with humility that submits itself to a local body or manifestation of the Church of Jesus Christ. Then he talks about this unity. “You are called to one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” And then he says that grace is given to you. So the beginning point of the power of the Holy Spirit is having the humility to live in the context of a church, a local church, a manifestation of the broader Church, the body of Jesus Christ. That’s the power for marriage.

You know, so many husbands, they want to get around to saying, “Wife, submit to me,” but I’m not submitting to the Church or I’m not submitting to a boss or I’m not submitting to this, that, or the other thing. That’s got nothing to do with Ephesians 5, okay? That kind of attitude has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches about the relationship of husband and wife. Completely out of sync with it, completely wrong, because it ignores the beginning point from which those instructions flow forth—humility and being part of the body of Jesus Christ.

So you know, it’s men love to use the second half of Ephesians 5—tyrannical men, and women suffer because of it, over and over and over. But it has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches because the Bible starts here and it says submission, mutual submission to one another, that immediately precedes the submission of wife to husband, is in the context of the body of Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ. So where the Holy Spirit works begins is in building up, being part of the body of Christ.

Now the bigger a church gets, the more difficult that becomes. It takes a village, by which I would say it takes a church—not a village, a church—and that church, however, has difficulties really caring for everybody well enough. And probably what it takes is a parish or maybe a community group or some kind of manifestation of smaller groups in the context of the church. Pray for your elders. We’re working with the deacons. We’re coming up with revisioning somewhat our parish groups and leadership of those parish groups. We’re talking about it, thinking about it. It’s on the elders’ agenda again for this coming Wednesday. And I think there are good, great things that’ll be coming forth to make these groups a better vehicle for you to strengthen your walk, to help disciple you better, and help you to disciple other people better and to be part of a little more active part of the ongoing work of the Church in the place in which you live.

So, you know, pray for that. But that’s one of the things that’s specifically going on. I think this is akin to what we did a couple of years ago when we changed the structure to team leadership and sub-teams for a lot of activities here at the church. And now what we’re doing is looking at revisioning, to some degree, parish groups and looking at how they can take what we’re talking about today—the work of the Holy Spirit—into smaller groups.

You can’t really be pastored by three elders, three hundred people or whatever it is, right? And if we grow—if the Lord blesses with growth—it’s really going to become difficult. So the idea of decentralizing some of those things—what we already have done to a certain extent and maybe a few more things—this is important and good. So I think it takes a church. I know it does. That’s what it starts with here, this power for marriage and power for godly living.

You know, the Belgic Confession—the church has taken a lot of hits here in our culture because of the radical individualism. Listen to what the Belgic Confession says. Now the Belgic Confession is one of the three forms of unity that the continental Reformed churches use as their secondary standard. The island Reformers used the Westminster standards. RCC, early in our development and makeup, were graciously, by God, he super-gifted us by having us relationships with Presbyterians using the Westminster standards, but also with Reformed people who use the three forms of unity. So this is, you know, the continental Reformed confession of faith that they adhere to. And this is what it says in Article 28, the obligations of church members:

“We believe that since this holy assembly and congregation is the gathering of those who are saved, and there is no salvation apart from it, no one ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself, regardless of his status or condition. But all people are obliged to join and unite with it, keeping the unity of the Church by submitting to its instruction and discipline, by bending their necks under the yoke of Jesus Christ, and by serving to build up one another according to the gifts God has given them as members of each other in the same body. And to preserve this unity more effectively, it is the duty of all believers according to God’s word to separate themselves from those who do not belong to the Church in order to join this assembly wherever God has established it, even as civil authorities and royal decrees forbid and death and physical punishment result. And so all who withdraw from the Church or do not join it act contrary to God’s ordinance.”

Now, a mouthful, but notice a couple of things there. There’s no salvation outside of the Church. That’s strange words, right? Listen, this is a significant element of Reformed Christianity. This Confession has been part of their secondary documents, and by the way, they don’t take exceptions to the Belgic Confession. It’s a different sort of system. And so this is what they affirm. And this is what Jesus is talking about through his word here. The word says that what you have done when you’re placed into the body of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ, is that body. That’s where salvation is. And then they say by way of application of that, everybody’s obligated to be part of a local church, to submit to it—that humility that Paul talks about—but also to serve it.

Put out an email this last week looking for three different things. I think we looked for people to help rotate into the sound booth. We were looking—what else?—Sunday school team members that can kind of help us vision Sunday school and do some of that stuff, get some teacher training going. There was something else. Oh yeah, to replace Rose, who graciously stepped in when we lost Flynn A., calling the Oregon City Church—an Oregon City Church each week, a CRC church, and a member, a civic leader in the city or county for prayer requests for the Church in Oregon City.

So we’re going to put out emails like that. When it says ministry opportunities, you should say, “Wow, maybe this is it. Maybe this is my job at the church. Maybe this is how I contribute to the strengthening and unity of the saints of Jesus Christ at Reformation Covenant Church.” We’re going to be talking to different people who may be stepping up to be parish leaders, you know, some younger guys perhaps, you know, so get ready for that. Get ready to serve.

If you’re not willing to follow this first step of the Holy Spirit—which is commitment to the body of Christ—and I know all you are, I know you all are. But if you weren’t, see, then probably I can’t help you a lot with your marriage because this is the beginning work of the Spirit: is putting you into the body and having you exist in the context of that body and being part of the Church, being ministered to by it and also ministering to others in its context.

The Bible gives us God’s plan for our lives, and that Bible tells us that this plan begins with a commitment to church and that other people are the key to our sanctification. This is a section on what happens as we grow, right? Going to grow to maturity. How does that happen? It happens with other people. It doesn’t happen through personal Bible reading and prayer off in isolation in a cabin for the next fifteen years. It’s not the way it works. God says it works by being placed in the context of people and as we’ll talk about in a couple of weeks, very specifically in the context of marriage as well.

RCC’s parish groups can be quite helpful to this process. Now, Ephesians 4 goes on to say that then he gives gifts to people in this section. He ascended on high. He’s given gifts to men, and those gifts—evangelists, prophets—evangel, uh, pastors, teachers. He gives us pastors, men in the Church to do the function of God’s leadership function in the Church. And so an important part of building a godly marriage is having good relationship to the men that God has called up to lead in the local church.

So it’s not just abstractly a commitment to a group of people. It’s commitment to specific men that God has given to you to help equip you for the work of ministry. And so in addition to the Church and the village and the parish groups, it takes pastors. It takes men who fulfill these various tasks that are articulated here. And it takes those people in your lives in some way to have the work of the Holy Spirit going on that will help you in your marriages.

A commitment to Christ’s body involves commitment to her pastors, to her pastors. It’s very incarnational. It’s easy to say I’ve got relationship to Jesus or I’ve got relationship to the Church. I don’t go to any particular church. I’m not a member of a church. I’ve got no commitments. I’m not under the discipline of the church. You know, they don’t even know I’m going there probably. It’s easy to say I’m part of the Church of Jesus Christ, but it’s not really true in the sense that this text tells us. And then it’s easy to be part of the church, but you know, the leaders—those guys are kind of funky, you know—and not to be in right relationship to them.

And you know, if that’s who you are, then probably when you get married you’re going to have the same thing going on there, yeah? Marriage as a concept was cool and neat, and you know, all that, but man, working it out’s difficult. The Church is where the Holy Spirit works in personal relationships to mature and train you. And that happens not abstractly with the Church universal, not even abstractly as a member of a particular church where I can get together with the people I like, but it happens in the context of parishes and it happens in the context of fall guys doing their best to try to minister to you in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So it’s very personal. The work of the Holy Spirit is very personal, very incarnational, and through that mechanism develops tremendous blessings for us as we do that.

If you don’t have some kind of ministry here at the church—as you see these emails go out, as I said—please consider stepping up at least for a season. One of the things we’re also going to do, that I apologize we hadn’t done it before, is have time commitments for these things. You know, one of the dangers of volunteering for a task at a church is you might be doing it forever. So we’re going to have time commitments for most of the things we want you to step up and commit to. And so, hopefully that’s an encouragement to you to work through your sanctification in the context of the church.

Now, what’s the purpose of this? Well, the purpose is maturity. Outline point number two: the goal is maturity. This is—these men are given for building up the body of Christ. In verse 13 of chapter 4: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.”

So the goal of this is maturity. It’s to man up and become mature. I’ve mentioned Tim Keller’s book. I mentioned it again—great book. I’m on chapter three of Mark Driscoll’s book called Real Marriage. Chapter one, I would actually recommend skipping. Get right to chapters two and three. They’re really good stuff. And chapter three is written for guys particularly, and it’s about this: it’s about being mature men. And if you want to know in very simple language, you know, if you’re a mature guy or not, read chapter three of Driscoll’s book.

Now, I don’t agree with necessarily everything he says, and he’s got that way about him, right? But you know, that way about him is going to reach people at a more practical, down-to-earth level that is properly applying Keller’s stuff but in very clear-cut words. So I would actually encourage guys—wives, don’t read it because then you’ll just get ticked off that your husband is a, well, what does Driscoll call him? A “boy who shaves.”

I think of better things for our men. But boy, who shaves—maturity in Jesus Christ. To be mature like Jesus Christ is the goal here. We are supposed to be—did those feet in ancient times tread upon Oregon City? In a way, they are treading on Oregon City because we’re supposed to be the incarnation of Christ, right? We’re the incarnational—now, that’s probably the wrong way to say it—but we’re the incarnational manifestation of Jesus and the power of the Spirit. The Bible says men and women are part of the body of Christ. We represent him. We represent, and Jesus is a mature man who died and perfected his bride.

And so, husbands, this is tremendous implication for us, right? The goal is maturity.

And you know, again, I would just recommend—I can’t—don’t want to spend a lot of time on it now—but I’d recommend Driscoll’s book to you.

It says we’re to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

Okay, here we’ve got the headship stuff, right? Man, don’t you dare go to the second half of Ephesians 5 and start telling your wife you’re the head of her the way Christ is the church if you haven’t thought through what it first says about Jesus being the head, right? Jesus were to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body builds itself up in love.”

Men, if you’re not building up your wife in love, you’re not a head like Jesus is the head, okay? So this informs us. This headship language begins here and actually it began earlier in the book. Listen to this verse by the way. Ephesians 1:22-23: “He put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

Now did you hear that little difference? It’s—this okay. So these two passages—chapter 4, verses 15 and 16, and then chapter 1, verses 22 and 23—this is the headship stuff that’s general, that then becomes applied specifically in the context of marriage. Don’t think you know what headship is about down there if you haven’t figured out what it means up here in these first two references to head and body. And listen to this: “He put all things under his feet. He gave him his head over all things.” So his headship extends to all things, to the Church. Jesus is head over all things and he gives—God gives—Jesus as head over all things to the Church. You see the difference?

Headship doesn’t mean here so much ruling. Yeah, it’s that, but it is gift to the Church. Jesus is head over all things and God has given Jesus as head over all things. This is incredible language, and he’s done that as a gift to his bride—all things. Christ is head over all things. That’s biblical headship as it’s developed in the first couple verses, in the first two references before you get to Ephesians 5.

But again, it’s the unity thing, right? It’s the unity thing, uh, unity producing maturity in the power of the Spirit. So the Spirit of God empowers you by bringing you into humility and unity with a local congregation. That local congregation and the relationships that you form, and very specifically the pastors, produce a maturity in you. The goal of all that is maturity, and that to the honor and glory of God.

Now, one little thing here in this movement is speaking the truth in love, right? So on either side—if you look—well, okay. So in the verses I read—verses 13, 14, 15 or 13 and 14, and then 16 and 17—they’re wrapped around verse 15. “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way and to him who is the head, the Christ.” The mechanism that’s put in the context of that maturity—the very specific mechanism that’s placed in the middle of how maturity happens—is speaking the truth in love. Speaking the truth in love.

This is a big topic and in terms of marriage we’re going to talk about this one whole sermon. But just to let you know—related to all maturity—this is how it works. You speak the truth to me about things I’m doing wrong or things I’m doing right, but usually corrective things. And you speak them in love, in a way that makes my heart soft to receive those things. It’s not your fault if I don’t, but you’re supposed to try to minister grace with your tongue to me.

And I, when I talk to people in my office, I’ve got to bring them the truth. If I don’t bring them the truth and I just love them, that isn’t biblical love. That’s some kind of sentimental nonsense gush that doesn’t help anybody. I have to speak the truth of what those people are doing relative, in their office, talking with me about sin. But I’ve got to—if all I do is tell them about their sin and I don’t minister love, that’s not the gospel.

The gospel is Jesus came to address our sin in a way that perfects us and builds us up. And that’s what we’re supposed to do, and that’s how maturity happens in the context of the local Church, a parish group—very specifically in the context of our marriages. We’ve got to do both those things at the same time. We’ve got to speak truth to each other about sin and we’ve got to do it in a way that is winsome and gracious and loving.

Now, sometimes love means pop right on the nose. It does. It just does. That’s what we get to with excommunication, right? I mean, usually excommunication—the last one in this church, the one we’re in the process of now—years of working hard with people, speaking the truth in love and a particular kind of love. All kinds of people trying to help these guys. But at some point, God says love is expressed in truth to them. They’re so calloused over. You’ve got to just, you know, be very tough with them. And so that’s speaking the truth in love. But that’s the way maturity happens.

Unity, humility, being part of a church, being part of a community group, parish group, small group, whatever you call it, having relationship to pastors, and in the context of those relationships, speaking the truth to each other in love. And as a result of that, manning up, becoming mature men and women in the context of what Jesus Christ is and what he looks like, okay?

And then finally—so God says to have soft hearts when others correct us. We grow by putting off—oh, I missed that whole thing. We grow by putting off and putting on. We’ll talk about that in just a minute. So the fourth thing: walk in love. The method is the right walk in the gospel of death and resurrection.

So the final point. Moving on to chapter 4, verses 17-19, 20-22, 23-24. Let’s read. So this is now a new section. He’s moved past unity and maturity. “Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God.” So now he’s talking about separating from that old walk and the people that walk contrary to Christ in our world.

“They have become callous. He says, ‘And they have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.’” But that is not the way you learned Christ. How do you learn Christ? The Spirit teaches you Christ. Jesus said, “The Spirit will take of things of mine and minister them to you. He’ll bring to mind all things that I’ve taught you.” He’ll take the word of God and make it real in your heart, in your life. The Spirit brings us Jesus. But what does that mean? Learn Christ. And what does it go on to say?

“Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Christ, to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

So sanctification happens by a putting off and a putting on. Fine enough. We all know that. We talk about that all the time. But connect it to this: this is how we learn Christ. He died so that he would be raised up. And when we put on Christ, we’re to put on the renewed person that we are. “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Death and resurrection is what we learn about Jesus. And death and resurrection is how our sanctification proceeds.

Putting away things like the world does and the Gentiles they oppose, outside of Jesus, do. And if we weren’t Christians most of our lives, putting that stuff aside and putting on habitual walking in the context of who Jesus is—the gospel is the point here—is the key to our sanctification. The engine that drives this whole thing, the reason we can be humble, stay in the church, speak the truth to one another, have relationship with pastors, small groups, parish groups that’ll help us mature—the engine that drives that whole thing is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is this continual reminder to put off those sins that he died to free us from and to put on the renewed mind and life of Jesus Christ. That’s how we’re supposed to walk. The Holy Spirit is mentioned seven times—well, actually, the Spirit is mentioned seven times in this section. The Spirit’s job is to bring that gospel of Jesus Christ to renew our own spirit and to bring us into resurrection life.

So as we move up to Ephesians 5, this is the way it works. It works through humility, obligations in the context of the church, relationships with people, bringing us to maturity, bringing us to a continual application of the gospel of Christ, putting to death the old man, living in the context of the new man by the power of the Holy Spirit, who brings us the way we learned Christ. We learn Jesus by his death and resurrection on the Cross and his ascension to the right hand of God. And that’s then the introduction to this section—”and not grieving the Holy Spirit.”

The book ends at Ephesians 4 and 5 that we’ve been talking about here with the Spirit. At the beginning it talks about you know, the Holy Spirit doing these things for us. At the end, it talks about that. And in the middle, there’s this warning—not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. In chapter 4, verses 25-32. So the Spirit of God can be grieved, and that grieving—let me read this verse 30: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander be put away from you with all malice.”

Remember what I said last week? Anger and slander. Well, here they are. Here they are. How do you grieve the Holy Spirit? By personal sin hidden off in a corner? Well, probably yeah, but that’s not what’s being talked about here. What’s being talked about here is you grieve the Spirit through anger, clamor, slander of one another. You grieve the Holy Spirit through those disruptions of relationship that we were urged to have.

The Spirit comes to bring us unity. And to grieve the Holy Spirit is entering into those particular sins of unresolved anger and conflict—for instance—that leads then in this text to slander. And that’s the same thing in marriage. You grieve the Holy Spirit that brought you together when you have unresolved anger and conflict that leads to slander, that leads to little comments you make that you hope the spouse doesn’t—maybe the spouse should or shouldn’t hear. You know what I’m talking about? Bitterness, clamor is the result in the context of our lives.

And so that grieving the Holy Spirit is what’s to avoid in the context of this. And then on the other hand, you’re to be filled with the Spirit. And we talked about this last week—to be filled with the Spirit through the mechanism. I’ve added that onto your outline. Won’t go over it again, but that’s what you’re supposed to do to be filled with the Spirit. It’s pretty easy. You don’t wait for the manifestation of speaking in tongues. You don’t do that. You become mutually submissive to each other. You give thanks.

By the way, it says “give thanks to the Father through Christ,” right? So prayer to the Father is again reinforced in that text. But you give thanks in everything and you speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Like I said last week, we get filled with the Spirit here. And one way that happens is we unify. Look at you. You’re all listening, trying to stay awake or cool or whatever it is, but you’re all right there. You’re unified listening. And pretty soon you’re all going to be there coming up here and offering yourselves to Christ to try to obey the prayer and this word that he’s given to you today by the power of the Holy Spirit. And then you’re all going to sing, and you’re going to hear people singing next to you. And some of you will sing in parts. You harmonize with other people. And whether you try to sing in parts or not, your voice is different than your neighbor’s. And you’re all going to sound like one song going up to God.

This is what being filled with the Spirit is. Filled of the Spirit is doing those things. So we’re right back at the end of this section that prepares us for marriage where we began in Ephesians 4, the first couple of verses, that the Spirit comes upon us to bring us into unity in the context of the church. And in that church, we mutually submit to one another in the worship service. We sing songs to and with one another in the worship service. The service itself is a giving of thanks. And that life of the service, the drill that we do today, moves out into our week. And that becomes who we are: a singing people, a thankful people, a mutually submissive people serving one another in the gospel of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

There’s a real nice quote from C.S. Lewis that Tim Keller uses in his book. The Spirit brings Jesus to us, and C.S. Lewis said this: “When Jesus Christ went to the Cross he was simply acting in character.” That’s actually accelerating that. Then he quotes Lewis: “When Jesus sacrificed himself for us, he did it quote ‘in the wild weather of his outlying provinces, that which from all eternity, quote, he had done at home in glory and gladness.’”

What he had done in the context of the Trinity—self-sacrificial love for each other, you know, serving one another and receiving gifts from each other in the eternal Trinity—in that beautiful place, he comes to the wild weather, to the difficult, howling wind. And he does the same thing here when he takes your sin and mine on that Cross and dies for us and suffers what we deserve to suffer for our sins. He was acting in character.

And when you do these things we’ve talked about today—mature through mutual submission, speaking the truth in love, relying upon the Holy Spirit to minister the gospel to you, to put off and to put on, to be renewed in your mind and to not act like the world round about you or what your former life might have been—when you do that, you’re acting in character because your life now is hidden in Christ. You are in Jesus Christ. You are connected to him. It is what he has made you to do. And the Holy Spirit indwells you and empowers you to do nothing other than that very thing.

Don’t lie today, tomorrow, and the next day by acting out of that character that the Lord Jesus Christ brought from the Trinity itself and brought us into the context of all of that. And that is who we are now. That our citizenship is in heaven, in that eternal community. That’s who you are, Christian. Now, it’s going to be hard tomorrow. Wild weather, different storms and trials and troubles—but you know, we have this little sanctuary today. We go to heaven to meet with God. And he reminds us of who we are in Jesus Christ.

And that’s what Ephesians 4 and 5 does and prepares us for our marriages. So that tomorrow when the wind blows—whatever it does, or when it gets too hot or whatever the trials and tribulations are—you rely on who you are in Jesus Christ. You act in character.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your Holy Spirit that indwells us. We thank you for who we are now, that you’ve renewed us in holiness, righteousness, knowledge, and dominion. You’ve made us new creations in Christ. Help us this week, Lord God, to act in the context of Jesus brought to us by the power of the Spirit, that we might act in character by being those people who glorify you through self-sacrificial service to one another. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.