Jesus desires us to be in unity with one another. Many reasons could be offered to explain why Jesus wants us to be in unity. But Christ mentioned one reason that shoots the importance of unity to the top of the list. This week’s memory text brings out that we are all to be one in the Father and Son, “so that the world may believe that you [Father] have sent me [Jesus]” (John 17:21, ESV). So, the world’s belief in who Jesus really is, and where He is from, hinges, in some respects, on the unity of believers.
So, how are we doing? The burden of Christian unity on a global scale is overwhelming. But unity at the family level is realistic. The onus for such unity, therefore, lies squarely on our shoulders.
The burden, though, was first on Christ’s shoulders. His triumph over evil (1 John 3:8), the reconciling nature of the cross (Eph. 2:13–16, Col. 1:21–23), and the availability of the Spirit (Acts 2, 1 Cor. 12:13) pave the way for unity among His people. Couple these events with Christ’s new commandment to love as He loved (John 13:34), dying to self and selfishness (Rom. 6:3–7), along with submitting to one another (Eph. 5:21), and the family becomes empowered to mirror the oneness for which Jesus prayed (John 17).
Part II: Commentary
Devotional on Unity
True unity is a beautiful thing to behold. The recipe is simple: otherness and submission. Of course, one could say “No, you need love” or “You need the Holy Spirit.” True enough. But there is something about the word submission that hones all the other necessary ingredients to a sharp edge. We get away too easily with volleying the word love back and forth within our families and then wonder why this love is unable to produce the warm unity for which we hoped. Perhaps if the quantity of spoken “I love you’s” were matched by genuine acts of submission, things would be different.
Either submission exists as an ethos within the family or it doesn’t exist at all. If there is a single family member whose will demands, but never participates in, submission, their familial situation may be called many things, but it can’t be called unity.
The paragon of submission is the life of Jesus. The apex of that submission is heard in Gethsemane: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). Here is one of the keys to the profound unity between the Father and the Son. Jesus explained that the Father had not left Him alone, and was with Him because He (Jesus) did “always those things that please him” (John 8:29). It is telling that Jesus Himself did not shun submission. This point is crucial because of late the term submission has been entangled in ecclesiastical controversies concerning ordination, gender roles, and headship. Regardless of those important concerns, the fact that the King of kings lived a life of submission elevates personal acts of submission across the board with those serious about Christlikeness. And if there is one institution that requires unity through submission more than another, it’s marriage.
Illustration
Couples can have breakthroughs in a moment that can change the course of their marriages. Joseph married a woman whose family dynamics dictated that disagreements were opportunities for “lively” discussions aimed at producing one winner and one loser. When the game rules are such, a posture of defense and attack becomes the norm. The “olive wreath” is awarded to one who outwits, belittles, or verbally shocks his or her opponent. No submission is allowed, no unity is achieved, and relationships become stunted.
Neither Joseph nor his wife wanted this outcome. But he wrestled with how best to communicate to his wife that the contexts for their disagreements could be radically changed to something more constructive. Joseph needed to convince his wife that they did not have to be two separate individuals locked in a contest for superiority and that it was in his best interests never to leverage her vulnerability, mistakes, or weaknesses against her in order to “win” an argument. Finally, Joseph decided to use what the late, great marriage counselor Gary Smalley called an “emotional word picture” (a parable intended to communicate insight and emotion from one person to another).
Around this time, Joseph and his wife were backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas. As they sat beside a cool creek with stunning mountains in the background, these mountains suddenly became the source of Joseph’s
parable. He said to his wife, “Every time we have a conflict, picture ourselves
on the summit of one of these mountains. Now, many couples think they are playing King of the Mountain during a relational conflict. The ‘winner’ is the one who is able to verbally dominate the other to the point of pushing him or her off the cliff. But this victory is an artificial win. I will never play this way with you, not because I’m a nice guy but because marriage has tied our ankles together with a long and sturdy rope—if you go over, I go over. It is true, there are two of us, but there is only one marriage, one relationship. It will be in both our best interests if we do, say, and think only those things that will benefit this third entity between us now called marriage. There are no winners and losers—we either both win or we both lose.” This philosophy has been a key to the unity within Joseph’s marriage and family.
Basically, marriage is a unique experiment to see if two potentially radically different people can operate as one. Mike Mason presents the struggle this way: “Even the closest of couples will inevitably find themselves engaged in a struggle of wills, for marriage is a wild, audacious attempt at an almost impossible degree of cooperation between two powerful centers of self-assertion. Marriage cannot help being a furnace of conflict, a crucible in which these two wills must be melted down and purified and made to conform.”—The Mystery of Marriage (Sisters, Oreg.: Multnomah Press, 1985), p. 167. In his brilliant chapter entitled “Submission,” Mason puts his finger on how this can happen. It sounds a bit like the rope parable. “ ‘He who is least among you,’ says Jesus, ‘he is the greatest’ (Luke 9:48). . . . Marriage at its best is a sort of contest in what might be called ‘one-downmanship,’ a backwards tug of war between two wills each equally determined not to win. That is really the only attitude which works in marriage because that is the way the Lord designed it.” —Page 167.
Scripture
“Wives, submit to your own husbands. . . . Children, obey your parents. . . . Bondservants, obey your earthly masters” (Eph. 5:22, 6:1, 6:5, ESV). When Scripture is abused, sooner or later people are too. One can only imagine the frequency these three texts have been invoked to carry out the opposite of the Spirit’s intentions. Ironically, being filled with the Spirit versus being drunk on alcohol is the broader context of these passages (Eph. 5:18). Alcohol makes a poor interpreter. It’s the socially weaker counterpart that often feels the slap of its influence. At times, culture progresses in such a way that it becomes just as important to say what texts don’t mean than to say what they do mean. Perhaps that is the case here.
Paul’s list and attendant comments on these social doublets contrast with nonbiblical lists of his day that encouraged harsh treatments to protect the honor of husband, parent, and slave owner.—See Jon Dybdahl, ed., Andrews Study Bible (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 2010), p. 1549. Paul has something different in mind. Though much could be said (and should be said) on the slave/master portion of Paul’s thoughts, this quarter’s theme on family narrows our focus.
In terms of this week’s lesson on family unity, themes such as submission, love, and Christ’s relationship to His church can all be found here in Ephesians 5. Indeed, they must be found together. Otherwise, interpreters may come to such conclusions as it is only for wives to submit and husbands to be submitted to. True, the word submit is not directly applied to husbands, but the fact that the previous text of “submitting to one another” (Eph. 5:21) is a generalized result of being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), makes it highly unlikely that Paul was exclusively thinking of wives when he wrote Ephesians 5:21, unless one ventures to say only wives are filled with the Holy Spirit (a conclusion the most patriarchal of interpreters may find hard to swallow). Paul certainly doesn’t think wives shouldn’t submit to their husbands. But he sees such submission as paralleling the relationship between Christ and His people (Eph. 5:22–24). However, the parallel is valid only as husbands are living metaphors of the love of Christ (Eph. 5:25). Christ’s voluntary death for the saving of His bride is the greatest act of submission the universe has ever known. It may be that Paul’s phrase “submitting yourselves one to another” applies to marriage in that the husband’s submission is subsumed under the imperative to love as Christ loves.
Part III: Life Application
Modern-day idolatry is expressed through self-worship in which absolute autonomy is the prized ethic: my importance, my desires, my preferences, my ambitions, and my way of folding clothes or doing dishes are all nonnegotiables. “As long as I’m not hurting anyone else,” this ethic exclaims, “I can do what I want.” And, of course, one can do what he or she wants; but one can’t just get what one wants if Christian maturity, loving relationships, and family unity are anywhere on the horizons. Now let the class take the profound but abstract themes of the lesson and share what these ideas look like when translated into actions.
How could a husband or wife, who feels the marriage relationship unfairly favors only his or her spouse’s desires, start a conversation as a way of taking steps toward unity? Be specific.
What family strategies could help estranged children feel that their opinions and desires are of value within the family without inverting the parent/child authority paradigm?
Submission, love, and commitment need to be expressed, not just in words but in hundreds of little actions each day within families. What are some of these actions that you use to keep your family unified?
Adjust My Preferences
Welcome! Please set your reading preferences below.
You can access this panel later by clicking the
preference icon
in the top right of the page.
Jesus desires us to be in unity with one another. Many reasons could be offered to explain why Jesus wants us to be in unity. But Christ mentioned one reason that shoots the importance of unity to the top of the list. This week’s memory text brings out that we are all to be one in the Father and Son, “so that the world may believe that you [Father] have sent me [Jesus]” (John 17:21, ESV). So, the world’s belief in who Jesus really is, and where He is from, hinges, in some respects, on the unity of believers.
So, how are we doing? The burden of Christian unity on a global scale is overwhelming. But unity at the family level is realistic. The onus for such unity, therefore, lies squarely on our shoulders.
The burden, though, was first on Christ’s shoulders. His triumph over evil (1 John 3:8), the reconciling nature of the cross (Eph. 2:13–16, Col. 1:21–23), and the availability of the Spirit (Acts 2, 1 Cor. 12:13) pave the way for unity among His people. Couple these events with Christ’s new commandment to love as He loved (John 13:34), dying to self and selfishness (Rom. 6:3–7), along with submitting to one another (Eph. 5:21), and the family becomes empowered to mirror the oneness for which Jesus prayed (John 17).
Part II: Commentary
Devotional on Unity
True unity is a beautiful thing to behold. The recipe is simple: otherness and submission. Of course, one could say “No, you need love” or “You need the Holy Spirit.” True enough. But there is something about the word submission that hones all the other necessary ingredients to a sharp edge. We get away too easily with volleying the word love back and forth within our families and then wonder why this love is unable to produce the warm unity for which we hoped. Perhaps if the quantity of spoken “I love you’s” were matched by genuine acts of submission, things would be different.
Either submission exists as an ethos within the family or it doesn’t exist at all. If there is a single family member whose will demands, but never participates in, submission, their familial situation may be called many things, but it can’t be called unity.
The paragon of submission is the life of Jesus. The apex of that submission is heard in Gethsemane: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). Here is one of the keys to the profound unity between the Father and the Son. Jesus explained that the Father had not left Him alone, and was with Him because He (Jesus) did “always those things that please him” (John 8:29). It is telling that Jesus Himself did not shun submission. This point is crucial because of late the term submission has been entangled in ecclesiastical controversies concerning ordination, gender roles, and headship. Regardless of those important concerns, the fact that the King of kings lived a life of submission elevates personal acts of submission across the board with those serious about Christlikeness. And if there is one institution that requires unity through submission more than another, it’s marriage.
Illustration
Couples can have breakthroughs in a moment that can change the course of their marriages. Joseph married a woman whose family dynamics dictated that disagreements were opportunities for “lively” discussions aimed at producing one winner and one loser. When the game rules are such, a posture of defense and attack becomes the norm. The “olive wreath” is awarded to one who outwits, belittles, or verbally shocks his or her opponent. No submission is allowed, no unity is achieved, and relationships become stunted.
Neither Joseph nor his wife wanted this outcome. But he wrestled with how best to communicate to his wife that the contexts for their disagreements could be radically changed to something more constructive. Joseph needed to convince his wife that they did not have to be two separate individuals locked in a contest for superiority and that it was in his best interests never to leverage her vulnerability, mistakes, or weaknesses against her in order to “win” an argument. Finally, Joseph decided to use what the late, great marriage counselor Gary Smalley called an “emotional word picture” (a parable intended to communicate insight and emotion from one person to another).
Around this time, Joseph and his wife were backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas. As they sat beside a cool creek with stunning mountains in the background, these mountains suddenly became the source of Joseph’s
parable. He said to his wife, “Every time we have a conflict, picture ourselves
on the summit of one of these mountains. Now, many couples think they are playing King of the Mountain during a relational conflict. The ‘winner’ is the one who is able to verbally dominate the other to the point of pushing him or her off the cliff. But this victory is an artificial win. I will never play this way with you, not because I’m a nice guy but because marriage has tied our ankles together with a long and sturdy rope—if you go over, I go over. It is true, there are two of us, but there is only one marriage, one relationship. It will be in both our best interests if we do, say, and think only those things that will benefit this third entity between us now called marriage. There are no winners and losers—we either both win or we both lose.” This philosophy has been a key to the unity within Joseph’s marriage and family.
Basically, marriage is a unique experiment to see if two potentially radically different people can operate as one. Mike Mason presents the struggle this way: “Even the closest of couples will inevitably find themselves engaged in a struggle of wills, for marriage is a wild, audacious attempt at an almost impossible degree of cooperation between two powerful centers of self-assertion. Marriage cannot help being a furnace of conflict, a crucible in which these two wills must be melted down and purified and made to conform.”—The Mystery of Marriage (Sisters, Oreg.: Multnomah Press, 1985), p. 167. In his brilliant chapter entitled “Submission,” Mason puts his finger on how this can happen. It sounds a bit like the rope parable. “ ‘He who is least among you,’ says Jesus, ‘he is the greatest’ (Luke 9:48). . . . Marriage at its best is a sort of contest in what might be called ‘one-downmanship,’ a backwards tug of war between two wills each equally determined not to win. That is really the only attitude which works in marriage because that is the way the Lord designed it.” —Page 167.
Scripture
“Wives, submit to your own husbands. . . . Children, obey your parents. . . . Bondservants, obey your earthly masters” (Eph. 5:22, 6:1, 6:5, ESV). When Scripture is abused, sooner or later people are too. One can only imagine the frequency these three texts have been invoked to carry out the opposite of the Spirit’s intentions. Ironically, being filled with the Spirit versus being drunk on alcohol is the broader context of these passages (Eph. 5:18). Alcohol makes a poor interpreter. It’s the socially weaker counterpart that often feels the slap of its influence. At times, culture progresses in such a way that it becomes just as important to say what texts don’t mean than to say what they do mean. Perhaps that is the case here.
Paul’s list and attendant comments on these social doublets contrast with nonbiblical lists of his day that encouraged harsh treatments to protect the honor of husband, parent, and slave owner.—See Jon Dybdahl, ed., Andrews Study Bible (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 2010), p. 1549. Paul has something different in mind. Though much could be said (and should be said) on the slave/master portion of Paul’s thoughts, this quarter’s theme on family narrows our focus.
In terms of this week’s lesson on family unity, themes such as submission, love, and Christ’s relationship to His church can all be found here in Ephesians 5. Indeed, they must be found together. Otherwise, interpreters may come to such conclusions as it is only for wives to submit and husbands to be submitted to. True, the word submit is not directly applied to husbands, but the fact that the previous text of “submitting to one another” (Eph. 5:21) is a generalized result of being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), makes it highly unlikely that Paul was exclusively thinking of wives when he wrote Ephesians 5:21, unless one ventures to say only wives are filled with the Holy Spirit (a conclusion the most patriarchal of interpreters may find hard to swallow). Paul certainly doesn’t think wives shouldn’t submit to their husbands. But he sees such submission as paralleling the relationship between Christ and His people (Eph. 5:22–24). However, the parallel is valid only as husbands are living metaphors of the love of Christ (Eph. 5:25). Christ’s voluntary death for the saving of His bride is the greatest act of submission the universe has ever known. It may be that Paul’s phrase “submitting yourselves one to another” applies to marriage in that the husband’s submission is subsumed under the imperative to love as Christ loves.
Part III: Life Application
Modern-day idolatry is expressed through self-worship in which absolute autonomy is the prized ethic: my importance, my desires, my preferences, my ambitions, and my way of folding clothes or doing dishes are all nonnegotiables. “As long as I’m not hurting anyone else,” this ethic exclaims, “I can do what I want.” And, of course, one can do what he or she wants; but one can’t just get what one wants if Christian maturity, loving relationships, and family unity are anywhere on the horizons. Now let the class take the profound but abstract themes of the lesson and share what these ideas look like when translated into actions.