Curt Harlow [00:00:00]:
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to my favorite half hour, sometimes 45 minutes of the week, the Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Pastor Curt Harlow of Bayside, Auburn, and we are, as always, or almost always, joined by the frontal lobe of Thrive College, Dena Davidson. How you doing, Dena?
Dena Davidson [00:00:18]:
I'm great.
Curt Harlow [00:00:18]:
Good. Of course you're great, because we are joined by the one and only Josh Powers. Josh works on a spectacular team. He does something very important here at Bayside. Josh, this is your first time on the podcast.
Josh Powers [00:00:31]:
Second. Second.
Curt Harlow [00:00:32]:
Okay, tell them. Just remind them. Second time. What do you do?
Josh Powers [00:00:36]:
What I do is the executive pastor at the Auburn campus, so I get to hang out with Pastor Curt as often as possible and, you know, straighten him out when his theology starts to stray a little bit.
Curt Harlow [00:00:44]:
That's pretty much every meeting.
Josh Powers [00:00:46]:
So.
Curt Harlow [00:00:46]:
All right, we are in Ephesians 5. If you got your Bible, pull it out to Ephesians 5. We're going to start in verse 31. Now, if you're driving, don't pull your Bible out, but if you are, it's really important we set the context here because there's one statement Paul makes, and if you ignore that statement, you can get to all sorts of trouble. To our point, we make every single week on this podcast. Context, context, context. And that is found in verse 21, where Paul writes, submit one to another one. Submit one to another out of reverence for Christ.
Curt Harlow [00:01:22]:
And you have this idea that every single instruction he's going to give comes from reverence for what Jesus has done for us is the whole theme of the first three chapters of Ephesians. God's love, God's commitment, God's unmeasurable love for us. Out of reverence for that, we submit. The word submit, we talked about it last week, is. It's a military word for voluntary arrangement underneath. Now other words, get in the spot in the army and get ready to fight together. If we organize ourselves well, well, we have a chance of winning. Dino.
Curt Harlow [00:01:56]:
Then Paul takes this shift. It's kind of a he, he. He's got a reveal at the end here. After giving instructions for husband, for wives first, then for husbands, he goes to verse 31. Which verse 31 is from where? Adina.
Dena Davidson [00:02:15]:
That's from Genesis.
Curt Harlow [00:02:17]:
From Genesis, chapter two. Go ahead and read the passage for us, and then we'll all give a take and see what we can come up with here on what Paul's goal, what the Holy Spirit's goal is in this passage.
Dena Davidson [00:02:30]:
Good. Okay. So he picks up verse 31, quoting Genesis 2 for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Curt Harlow [00:02:52]:
All right, there we have it. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands love your wife like Christ loved and died for the church. And then, boom. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother. And then. This is a profound mystery. Josh, what do you make of this? The only three verses.
Curt Harlow [00:03:11]:
A lot going on in here. You're sitting in your office, you're studying the Bible, you want to get the original meaning, the original intent of the Holy Spirit. How do you approach this passage?
Josh Powers [00:03:19]:
I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is there's such a tension between what I'm hearing from a cultural approach to understanding this passage today and the fact that it's actually anchored as a source text all the way back to Genesis chapter two, which is pre fall. So there's this tension of someone going, how dare you say in the modern age, anybody submit to anybody. We should all be able to just not and it will be the best. And then you go all the way back to. But Genesis 2 was before the fall of humanity, so in perfect union with God and people. This was the plan. And the tension of that actually is really interesting to me because I was, I was sort of torn. You know, I'm sitting in my office, hypothetically, of course.
Curt Harlow [00:03:59]:
Right.
Josh Powers [00:04:00]:
And it's assuming I have an office.
Curt Harlow [00:04:01]:
And, and assuming not the entire Auburn staff is in your office, which is usually the.
Josh Powers [00:04:06]:
Well, Carsten, you know, they're all, they're all in there. No, but I think it's just such an interesting thing. So oftentimes we are torn with trying to interpret the Bible in our modern day understanding. And this is such a good reminder to go, no, no, no. This was written to an audience who would have naturally understood this connection to like the original God and people connection. And that if we lose that understanding of looking at this, then we're going to come up with this really stunted version of what we were supposed to hear out of this. And that was the thing that as I was literally studying this passage, I spent probably more time than I should have trying to process and digest that reality.
Dena Davidson [00:04:43]:
That's so good because the classic saying is the Bible was written for us, but it wasn't written to us. And I was struck just while we were reviewing this. I Was struck at how he gives this little blip. It's like I had two verses or three verses about wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands. And then he goes for like 1, 2, 3, 4, like a length of time explaining what it looks like for the husbands to love your wives. Why? Well, like, as a wife, I would like a little bit more clarification about when I should submit and when I shouldn't submit. But in the cultural context, the controversial thing, the thing that needed clarification was not wives submit. It was husband's love and sacrifice for them and be willing to die for them.
Curt Harlow [00:05:27]:
Yeah, wife submit was old news.
Dena Davidson [00:05:29]:
It's like that.
Curt Harlow [00:05:30]:
We get old news.
Dena Davidson [00:05:30]:
We understand that it doesn't need clarification.
Curt Harlow [00:05:33]:
What are you really trying to say, Paul? We've heard that one before.
Dena Davidson [00:05:35]:
Yeah, exactly. So. So he literally. It's like this is the part that needed clarification. That's why he goes on, I think for so many more verses. Husbands, you have to love your wives. Just like your wife owes you something, you owe your wife something. You have a spirit specific thing that God has appointed you to do in her life.
Dena Davidson [00:05:52]:
If you don't play that role, then the marriage relationship gets messed up.
Curt Harlow [00:05:56]:
So I can hear a bunch of our listeners and watchers right now saying, well, what do you really think about should a wife submit to her husband? Well, okay, that was last week's podcast. Go watch it. Because we, we really do break it down in detail on Spectacular Podcast. Here's my take. I, I love what you said, Josh, about why go back to pre fall. I think this is a summary statement. So wives, submit your husband as the head of, of the, as the head of the household, as Christ is the head of the church. Husbands, love your wives with gentleness and patience and all that stuff he's been saying before all the way unto death.
Curt Harlow [00:06:35]:
Okay, Then he says, if you do this, here's this go here's the goal you'll achieve, which was set out from the very beginning. The two of you will become one flesh.
Josh Powers [00:06:45]:
Right?
Curt Harlow [00:06:46]:
The two of you will become united and harmonious. So he's saying with the credibility I know you have in the Old Testament Christian Jews and the credibility. You're learning pagan now. Christian Gentiles. This is. Here we go. This is the target from the beginning. So again, the target isn't to make sure that the man has authority and gets his way all the time.
Curt Harlow [00:07:09]:
The target isn't to make sure that the husband is never upset or the wife is never upset, or they Figured out who gets to change the oil and who has to unload. Paul's not saying that's not the goal. It's a much bigger goal, that the two will become one flesh. Now, I also believe that not only does it make. It's the goal of the marriage when he says this is a profound mystery. It's the goal.
Dena Davidson [00:07:39]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:07:40]:
Of everything. The. The reunification of everything under the kingdom of Jesus, the Christ of God. So what is it that Jesus came to do? He came to advance his rule and reign. So the goal of the bride of Christ being cleansed and washed and mature and. And gentle and peaceful and verse 18 in chapter 5, the full of the Spirit. What is the goal of all of that? That we would become one body, one faith, one, in this metaphor, one flesh. That there would be harmony and unity where there's brokenness and chaos.
Curt Harlow [00:08:19]:
So he's saying marriage, couples, this is the goal. And by the way, kingdom for the whole kingdom.
Josh Powers [00:08:24]:
And it does build off the idea that. I mean, the first half of the book of Ephesians is about unity, and the second half is maturity, which means showing unity. And this is like the. The paramount example of that. It's sort of the culmination. And I love. It's classic Paul. He's like, okay, I'll give you the overarching summary.
Josh Powers [00:08:41]:
I'll give you some really practical examples, because you guys need bullet points. Husbands check, wives check. Like, it's all there. And then he goes back to. But honestly, it's such a mystery. I'm trying to figure it out as we go here. The humility that's found there is actually incredibly refreshing, especially given this temptation to go, okay, so here's like, a broad brush, very general statement that I should build all of my theology around is found in this passage. It's like.
Josh Powers [00:09:05]:
Well, he just then wrapped it up with this humility point that if we Chuck, we can come to some really strange conclusions above it without it.
Curt Harlow [00:09:13]:
Yeah. I think one of the problems we have with this whole section is that we want absolute clarity. On a Tuesday when the couple is sitting down, going over the budget, and the son interrupts with a homework problem. What's the father's role?
Josh Powers [00:09:26]:
What's the right.
Curt Harlow [00:09:26]:
And this is Dr. Bob Utley, the great, incredible Baptist theologian. We want clarity. God wants tension. The tension of mutual submission, the tension of the mystery that we are. Now, I love that Paul is admitting here. I. I have thought about this, and I'm not done thinking about it.
Curt Harlow [00:09:46]:
I am not done thinking about it. Dena. Let me ask you this question. When we go back to Genesis chapter, you know, I'm going to go to the apologetics right here. When we go back to Genesis chapter two, I can already hear multiple people going, oh, Genesis, man. Okay, let's have this fight. What is the purpose and point of Genesis? Hermeneutically? What. What do we.
Curt Harlow [00:10:11]:
What are we supposed to. It's okay to talk about everything, but what are we supposed to mainly be talking about when we get to the book of Genesis?
Dena Davidson [00:10:18]:
Yes. Well, wherever you land on what the book of Genesis says, scientifically, everyone agrees this is an origin story. Origin stories are meant to give us the answers to the meaning of life. Why am I here? Why is there something instead of nothing? What is my ultimate purpose? What type of person, what type of world am I living in? That's what an origin story seeks to answer.
Josh Powers [00:10:45]:
And.
Dena Davidson [00:10:46]:
And, you know, the Genesis origin story is not the only origin story, but it is beautiful and unique, and it makes me sad that some people would be willing to chuck it all because of what they understand to be scientific discrepancies with the text, when the truth is that Christians throughout the years have had different understandings of what the book of Genesis says about the age of the earth, about the flood, about dinosaurs, about all of these things that we like to argue about. Don't let the scientific questions hang you up on not really grasping the origin story that God wants to communicate because he was communicating to the Israelites. He was trying to reveal to them who they were and who he was. And so he wrote this story to help them understand those questions. So I think we do a grave injustice to the text when we try to get it to answer questions that are not the questions that the original hearers would have been asking. Age of the earth. I don't know, maybe. Maybe that was in their purview, but what definitely was in their purview was, who am I and who is God? And I think Genesis speaks so beautifully to that.
Dena Davidson [00:12:01]:
So I would plead with anyone that just wants to throw out Genesis, don't do it. If you throw out Genesis, the rest of the Bible is going to be.
Curt Harlow [00:12:08]:
So confusing if you decide that the book of Genesis was written as an origin story. And I love that because I'm a. I'm a superhero guy. Yeah, I like origin stories.
Dena Davidson [00:12:17]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:12:18]:
If you decide that, it's inexhaustibly wise.
Dena Davidson [00:12:21]:
Oh, so it's, it's.
Curt Harlow [00:12:23]:
It transcends era, it transcends culture, transcends race, and it speaks to so many fundamental Human ideas and it's just profound. Is it wrong to ask the, you know, is this a legend? Is this meant to be, you know, fable? Is this meant to be scientific? I think all those are very interesting questions and I think you'll be surprised at how many great answers come out of an honest look at this without lowering the inspiration of scripture at all. But if you only are worried about that issue you miss so much. I like to say it this way, Dena. I think origin story is perfect way to set. This genre is about dysfunctional families and what causes dysfunction of families. And especially if you decide to not just put all your weight and time into the first three chapters. But if you look the first family, there's a murder between the siblings.
Curt Harlow [00:13:18]:
You get all the way up to Noah. He's a hero. Noah's incredible. Oh no. When Noah finds dry land, he immediately plants a vineyard and gets drunk. And then there's favoritism in that family and of course Jacob favoritism, Isaac trying to steal the, you know, all just one after another. If you want to feel great about your family, read the book of Genesis. Okay, so, and here's what I want to say.
Curt Harlow [00:13:41]:
There's some practical stuff in here too. So this is a mystery. This is Paul kind of going. Here's the big goal. One, I want you guys to have a marriage that really feels like one flesh. But packed in this verse 31 is I would this one sentence is a whole marriage encounter conference. Okay, so here's my favorite one. Then I'll let you guys make a couple of comments on what you see in this verse.
Curt Harlow [00:14:06]:
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother. I can't tell you now, 27 years, Josh, of working with college age people. You do incredible with that age group. The amount of young married couples that have come before me in a crisis and they're on year one, year two, they've had a couple of Christmases and a couple of Easters and a couple of summers together and we got a problem. What's the problem with this, this, that thing? And it boils down to they haven't really left their mom and dad. That, that, that the, the husband is putting his mom over his wife, the wife is putting her dad over the husband or some version of this. I, I, I remember one couple in particular where he was great, she was great. They did the pre marriage counseling.
Curt Harlow [00:14:57]:
Amazing parents on both sides. Amazing mature Christian believers, great people. And they get a year and a half in their marriage and she gets diagnosed with a very, very Serious illness to where she is hospitalized. It's a financial issue, it's a health issue. It's a. There's a good chance that she's going to die from this disease. And it became a very difficult thing letting this young husband be the husband. It became very.
Curt Harlow [00:15:30]:
Now I'll say that story finished spectacularly. Everyone realized what was going on. They backed up, he stepped up. But I'll tell you, even with really mature and God honoring people in a crisis, you can kind of go back to the family of origin in a way that's really destructive to your marriage. So there it is, right there. At the beginning of mankind, a man will leave his father and mother. Boom. If you just leave and grow up, some really good things have a chance of happening.
Curt Harlow [00:16:01]:
If you don't leave some really. Or the way Kelly and I say it in laws or outlaws, your choice. Okay, so what else do you guys see in here? I mean there's so much in just this one sentence.
Dena Davidson [00:16:14]:
Well, I also. Oh, go ahead.
Josh Powers [00:16:16]:
No, please, you. I got. That's a follow up.
Dena Davidson [00:16:19]:
I think that that is sage advice. I also see Jesus leaving the Father in heaven and coming to earth in this verse. And this is just what the Old Testament does. It is always foreshadowing what was going to happen in the New Testament. So for this reason a man will leave his father and mother. Jesus had no mother, but Jesus in heaven, sacrificed heaven and came down to earth ultimately to come get his bride. So it's a little mini. What is the word I'm looking for when Jesus came from heaven to earth? Some big fancy theological word.
Dena Davidson [00:16:57]:
Doesn't matter. But what Jesus did.
Curt Harlow [00:16:59]:
You're talking about the appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament.
Dena Davidson [00:17:02]:
Yes. Yeah, yes.
Josh Powers [00:17:04]:
Foreshadowing.
Dena Davidson [00:17:05]:
Yes. And it's so incredible here. I think this is just one of the reasons that it makes me sad that we lose the Old Testament because we're in the New. We're solidly in the New Testament right here. And if we haven't read, digested, understood and believed the Old Testament, then we just miss moments like this. Jesus was willing to do this for us to leave his father to be united with his bride. And we're his bride.
Josh Powers [00:17:31]:
The church super good. I mean, I think even like Curt, you said there's this practical meets mystery component here that Paul talks about. And you know, I think marital advice. What should you do? It's really funny when you wrap it up as a 20something who's trying to figure it all out, but it feels like in some ways we're always there again and again as we're relearning through stages of life and marriage and then kids and then all the rest. But this idea of submission is such an interesting way for him to frame how to then understand, like marriage. Because submission versus or over perfection is such the tension all the time in my personal life. And then you put that over the top of a marriage, you're like, this is a lot. Submission is ultimately where we find freedom.
Josh Powers [00:18:19]:
It's the ability to say, I would really like for it to go this way, but together we'll both give that up. And then we usually achieve something better together. Where perfection is, this I gotta know. Because then it proves to me and my family and everybody who's watching, I have figured out what I learned last time. And this, like, constant tension that's found between the two, I think is part of why you said going back to a family of origin makes so much sense. There's some safety there. Whether it was a healthy family of origin or a really toxic one, each of them would have reasons. Someone would revert to that, especially in this moment of perfection being the outcome, because we're not really sure where we're at anymore.
Josh Powers [00:18:57]:
And I think this sort of practical tension between submission and perfection as a marriage couple, when you're supposed to leave, it really forces us. Like you said, Paul goes, it's a mystery. I'm still working through it. And I think if you commit to doing that with your spouse, it's going to lead to a lot of progress in a healthy way.
Curt Harlow [00:19:14]:
Yeah. You know, it. This might be way too reading into it or parsing it, but I look at it and it says, you got three stages here. Number one, it's the leaving. Number two, it's the uniting. So the uniting is like, you know, I tell all the young couples this. I say, listen, what you hear in pre engagement counseling and what you hear in engagement counseling is really important. But I actually like mentor counseling in the first year of your marriage, because I say, find one couple that has a great marriage that is above you in age significantly, and say, can we have dinner with you once a month this year? And then go to that dinner and say, is it normal? When is it normal? When? Because there's a leaving and then there's the uniting.
Curt Harlow [00:20:10]:
And what does the uniting mean? The uniting means how are we going to spend our money? Where are we going to go for Christmas? Your folks are my folks.
Dena Davidson [00:20:21]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:20:22]:
How are we going to argue? Kelly and I had to become united in how we Argue, because our origin family. My origin family argued one way, very destructive. And her origin family didn't argue because they just left the door, left the room, and slammed the door.
Josh Powers [00:20:39]:
Yep.
Curt Harlow [00:20:39]:
It's also very destructive. So you can't put those two family of origins together. We had to become united in a different and third way. My family of origin had no gender roles. You know, guys did dishes and. And sisters. My sisters changed oil. There was none of that.
Curt Harlow [00:20:56]:
We didn't even know that existed. We just. Everyone had chores. And in Kelly's family, that was not the expectation. So we had to come together. In my family, one person cooked, the other person cleaned, because there was nine of us. And you split it up. And Kelly's family, if you cooked it, you cleaned it.
Curt Harlow [00:21:13]:
What are you doing? Leaving your mess out. Which I was really disappointed to learn that because I like cooking. So there's this coming. So the first stage leaving, second stage uniting, and then the third stage is become one flesh. Yeah, you become one flesh. You know, you don't ever get there. So this is the old marriage adage that there is no such thing as a good marriage that isn't worked on, no matter how much it's love at first sight and soulmate feeling. It's.
Curt Harlow [00:21:41]:
You know, people say this thing. And now that I've been married 38 years, I really understand it. Like, right around 30 years of marriage, I started to understand. At 35, I think I started a really. And that is, I love you. I love you now more than ever. Now I think about how much I love Kelly at the very beginning, how passionate I felt about it, how excruciatingly painful it was to be separated from her. I love Kelly more now than.
Curt Harlow [00:22:08]:
Than ever, and that is because we've been through 30 different wars together. We've got. I just did this vow renewal for my dentist, and. And I said, do you guys want the traditional vows? And they said, well, let's do the I do thing, because we had a Vietnamese wedding and you don't do. I do. And now that we're Christians, we want to do that, but we don't want to say to having to hold in sickness, because we've done that. We've. We're not recommitting to that.
Curt Harlow [00:22:35]:
So we want to write our own vows. It's, like, great. Write your own vows. And what both of them did, it was so beautiful, is they went through all of the worst and best moments of their life together. Other. And they vowed to go through any worst and all the best moments in the future.
Dena Davidson [00:22:54]:
Wow.
Curt Harlow [00:22:55]:
So they literally. She got sick. They had their kids, and this happened to their kids, and that happened to their kids. That was wonderful. And then this happened financially. They were ripped off by someone in a business deal. And I loved you then, and I'll love you when if that happens again. And it was just.
Curt Harlow [00:23:12]:
It was the becoming of one flesh. It was the constant work of submission that leads to greater unity just in a. Just a powerful power. Like, that's your whole marriage book right there.
Dena Davidson [00:23:26]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:23:26]:
In one sentence.
Dena Davidson [00:23:28]:
Amen. I love the 32. He says, this is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ in the church. And I think about the joy, the pleasure and the bonding that happens when a husband and a wife become one flesh. And obviously we're talking about sex here. So obviously, if you're reading this out loud in church in Ephesus, you're like, wait, what? Like, record scratch. Like, Jesus is going to like, what are we talking about here? And that's why he says this is a profound mystery. But essentially what he's saying is that what healthy couples experience, the intimacy they experience as husband and wife is meant to be a pointer to what we are going to experience with Jesus.
Dena Davidson [00:24:13]:
That joy, that pleasure, and that bonding that a husband and wife get to enjoy in the bedroom. We are going to get to enjoy an eternity from being united with Christ. And our language. Paul says our language fails here. Right. This is a profound mystery. Words are not adequately going to make this conversation anything but a little bit awkward. But it's beautiful still.
Dena Davidson [00:24:37]:
We can approach heaven knowing that every single pleasure here on earth is just a pointer to a greater pleasure that we will one day experience in heaven.
Josh Powers [00:24:46]:
And to that end, though, it's. It's really beautiful language. Right? The idea of took out God took out of Adam's side a rib. And, like, you know the joke of, like, oh, so guys have one those ribs, huh? Like, you know, that's not a real thing, by the way. Go get your ribs counted. But it's actually the idea of pulling out of Adam's side, like, his flesh, part of him was taken, and that without what was created on the other half, it wasn't a complete picture of the fullness of God. So to your point, this idea of this oneness in all the different categories, physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually, the becoming of one as the picture of Christ in the church is like. That's the part where I think this audience would have had the record scratch, because it was like equating this idea of of bringing a wife's value up to the level where it wouldn't be without this connection that the fullness of God could be reflected.
Josh Powers [00:25:40]:
This idea that somehow the New Testament is diminishing the value of women is absurd. If you look at it in that context, it's saying, without this, you can't even have the fullness of understanding.
Dena Davidson [00:25:51]:
Think of all of our great stories where the man dies for the woman. Like, think of that and how. Like, we just know that that's how it was supposed to be, right? Like when.
Josh Powers [00:26:00]:
When you think of Titanic just now.
Dena Davidson [00:26:02]:
I unfortunately did, because I ha movie. But it's like, we all move over. We all know.
Josh Powers [00:26:08]:
I just saw for the first time, like, two months ago.
Curt Harlow [00:26:10]:
Really?
Josh Powers [00:26:10]:
Apparently that's a problem.
Dena Davidson [00:26:11]:
That. Okay, that's good.
Josh Powers [00:26:13]:
There you go.
Dena Davidson [00:26:14]:
I have so many questions for you.
Josh Powers [00:26:15]:
So much, barely.
Dena Davidson [00:26:16]:
But. But think about it, okay? Like, let's take Titanic. We get to that scene, and if, you know, Rose slides off and Leo gets on, we just know, right? Like, you die together, or he gets to sacrifice, or obviously, Rose, you move over and there's room for both to live. There is no part of us that says what should happen here is that the wife should die for the husband. We just. We know it in our soul. So in a healthy marriage, what is supposed to be happening is that the wife is submitting to the husband. Dying, right? Is saying, like, I'm going to let you play the role that God has assigned to you.
Dena Davidson [00:26:51]:
And in an unhealthy, broken marriage, oftentimes what a woman experiences is, I'm submitting to a fallen person. He's not doing his role of dying. This submission is very painful. I think that's where the rub of this passage goes. But when we read it, like Paul is saying, our job is just to submit to him dying. Sign me up for that, right? Like that. I want that marriage.
Josh Powers [00:27:13]:
You're okay with that?
Dena Davidson [00:27:14]:
I'm okay. Shane can die for me. I get what I want.
Curt Harlow [00:27:17]:
You have to also bring into it, as he says this. This is a profound mystery. So son will leave the father and be united to the wife. They would all be thinking about the engagement legality of the first century. So we enter into a marriage contract that's official engagement season. Now I go off and I prepare a place for us to live, usually my father's house. This is why Jesus says, I go to my father's house, where there is room for you in John. So the profound mystery is this.
Curt Harlow [00:27:53]:
Jesus left the Father in heaven, came, died for Us. And now we are in a legal marriage bond with Jesus, and he's going to prepare a place for us. Where is that place? What will that place look like? When will Jesus come back to take us to that place? The wedding starts when the groom gets back. All right, House is set up. Yeah, let's have a party. So I'm sure there the profound mystery of this is as I am being persecuted in the city of Ephesus, one of the ways to look at the profound mystery of this is I'm being persecuted for being a Christian in the city of Ephesus. And I don't know when Christ my is coming back. I don't know if it'll be tomorrow or at the very end of my life or after my life.
Curt Harlow [00:28:41]:
I don't know any of that. But I do know that he is coming back for me the way a groom comes back for a bride. And so this is. This is Paul speaking hope into them that, you know, the groom's away for now. But this is a profound mystery. Now he does then go back in verse 33 and gets really, really practical. However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself. So he goes.
Curt Harlow [00:29:07]:
Husbands take responsibility to the point of sacrificing yourself. To your point, Dena, and wife, you must respect your husband. I think what he's saying there is wife, you need to honor the position of husband. You don't honor every decision every husband makes because we don't enable sin. You know, we don't enable abuse, addiction, adultery. But the position of husband and father needs honor because it's so critical. It's so absolutely critical. And to your point, Josh, I think both are critical.
Curt Harlow [00:29:45]:
I think the word in the Genesis there is a is literally side, not rib. And so Adam is split in two. When Adam comes back together, he is the one whole imago dei, the image of God. But. But here, there, even though there's. There's equal amount of sacrifice, equal amounts of submit to each other, it's slightly a distinction. And the distinction is love your wife to the point of death. Love your wife like she's your very own body.
Curt Harlow [00:30:18]:
Wife, love your husband in a way that brings him honor. And it. When I just think when that happens in a marriage, to your point, when I go, listen, there is. There is no demanding of my way. There is no veto voting. There is no my way or the highway. It's all just, how can I lead in sacrifice? And my wife says, how can I lead in honoring man? Do we get to one flesh pretty Quickly.
Josh Powers [00:30:44]:
But you're also not talking about false harmony either. I mean, it's not like, hey, everybody's hunky dory, and we get along and have no strong opinions. Like, I don't live in that world. Like, that's not me or my wife. And so I think this idea, too, of submission, sometimes we want to, like, make it into this thing that it's not. No. Submission implies that we probably have disagreed at some point and yet intentionally choose not to just set it aside without actually processing that. But, like, there should be intentional proactive communication.
Josh Powers [00:31:13]:
There should be the ability to go, hey, based on this, I'm going to bring it here and go, I don't understand how I can get from here to there. Can we together help me struggle through how? Submission, even, like. And it then increases the amount of communication.
Curt Harlow [00:31:28]:
Oh.
Josh Powers [00:31:29]:
Like, all the stuff we know that should be a part of a healthy relationship. And so you look at the fullness of this idea of submission, and it's a beautiful picture of not just people who are throwing it out there and mailing it in, but people who are actually proactively engaged in processing difficult things and then coming to a place where they could choose to dig in and fight for, or they could choose to mutually decide together. And that's a beautiful picture.
Curt Harlow [00:31:56]:
Yeah. Mutually fight for or mutually fight against.
Josh Powers [00:32:00]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:32:01]:
Okay, so, all right, let's get practical. I'll go first. How do you apply this all. This whole thing from verse 21 all the way down to verse 33. Wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, die for your wives. This is a profound mystery. Here's my thought on this, on how to apply this.
Curt Harlow [00:32:17]:
Stop trying to win. That's my application thought. And by the way, this is for single people, too, because mutual submission in marriage doesn't start the first morning of your marriage. It starts every morning of your life. This is something we walk in as Christians. Clearly, verse 21 is an umbrella over all the relationships. And to learn how to get this cooperative, mutual alignment, you have to walk in it right now. And the thought I've been just going over my head is this.
Curt Harlow [00:32:49]:
Jesus went through six trials. Three before the secular authorities, the Romans, and three before the Jewish authorities. So we always think one big dramatic trial and they crucified him. But he was marched across town and he was judged six different times in every single one of these trials. He did not defend himself in every single one. Now, you think about this. When he was a small boy and he came to the temple and he taught among the teachers as A small boy. They were astonished at his knowledge and ability to speak.
Curt Harlow [00:33:21]:
Then in his whole ministry, they're trying to trip him up left and right with legal questions, and he turns their tricks and their trip ups into tricks and trip ups against them, and he always wins the day and makes a higher point. There was no better communicator, legal understanding of the Bible, no better debater that ever lived in Jesus Christ. And yet he didn't use a single one of those skills against false accusations, false witnesses that were drummed up and clearly false. He could have destroyed every one of those trials. But instead of winning the trials, he made the decision to win us. Wow.
Dena Davidson [00:34:04]:
So good.
Curt Harlow [00:34:05]:
And that's the profound mystery of mutual submission. I don't want to win the argument. I want to win you. I don't want to be seen as right. My children go, dad's right. I want my children to say, I love my dad. I honor my dad because he's so easy to honor, because he's, you know, that's what, that's the goals, not to win. My marriage got a lot, lot better.
Curt Harlow [00:34:32]:
And it is a lot better every time I remember. Just don't win. You don't need to win. Stop trying to win.
Dena Davidson [00:34:38]:
So good.
Curt Harlow [00:34:40]:
All right, Follow that, Dena.
Josh Powers [00:34:41]:
Yeah, go for it.
Curt Harlow [00:34:43]:
How would you apply this, Dena?
Dena Davidson [00:34:45]:
Well, well, disclaimer. Go watch the last podcast. If you're currently walking through adultery or if your spouse is committing adultery, is involved with addiction, or is in any way involved in abuse, this is not the passage to meditate on and apply. So with that disclaimer, I find as a wife, that oftentimes I have a critical spirit. Like, Shane is a great man.
Curt Harlow [00:35:11]:
Yeah, I can't. No one has a critical spirit against Shane except me. Right.
Dena Davidson [00:35:16]:
I often just find myself cataloging his flaws. It's like, I know what he could do to be a better person, to be a better father, to be a better, you know, whatever. And I just think that is so antithetical to what this verse has called me to do. So I just encourage you to, if you are a wife, if you're married, to go into God's presence and to say, God, do I have a critical spirit towards my husband? And if so, please dismantle that. I trust you to correct him. I trust you to lead him. And my job is I'm going to look for the good in this human and ask God to give you eyes to see your spouse as God himself sees him.
Curt Harlow [00:36:00]:
Very good, Very good. And I like the disclaimer. I should have said that same disclaimer over mine. This is not enabling sin. This is assuming that both partners, in a mature way, want to go after God. Josh, last word and thanks for being on the episode today.
Josh Powers [00:36:15]:
Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I'd say that there's. When it comes to the marriage conversation, there's two levels of marriage and super practically keeping these out in front of us. Level one is attachment and level two is skills. Attachment being how connected are we? Do each of us feel seen, valued, heard these kinds of things? And so often what's easiest to do is to focus on developing better skills. Let's learn how to argue well. Let's learn how to manage money well.
Josh Powers [00:36:44]:
They're all tactical skills that we learn at the cost of fighting for being connected. I've got two kids under 10 in my house. Let me tell you, it's really easy to download an app, share access, and work on our budget that's AI infused. Come on, somebody. But it's a lot harder to get babysitting time and then actually make in that budget time to go and money to spend on a dinner. And then like, going and then you get there and fighting through the. We haven't done this long enough since the last time. And like, how do we do this again? Like, what.
Josh Powers [00:37:15]:
What do we used to talk about when we had, like, time and stuff?
Curt Harlow [00:37:18]:
Like, and now one of you is resentful that you haven't done it.
Josh Powers [00:37:21]:
Now we're cataloging and honestly, you're just.
Dena Davidson [00:37:24]:
Looking at each other saying, I just. Both of us, we just want to go take a nap.
Josh Powers [00:37:27]:
Yes.
Dena Davidson [00:37:27]:
As much as you're great. I just want to fall asleep right now.
Curt Harlow [00:37:30]:
Supposed to have a date. Now we just hit on dinos. Like, love language.
Josh Powers [00:37:33]:
Right.
Curt Harlow [00:37:33]:
Well, I just made up a new phrase. I. I say we're both supposed to have a date night. I said date nap. That was something you should do. Like, you go home, I get the.
Josh Powers [00:37:41]:
Car, they were going to have a date nap. Sounds okay.
Curt Harlow [00:37:45]:
What's your practical advice?
Josh Powers [00:37:46]:
The practical advice is that while skills are vital and important, do not forsake the focus on attack attachment. Take the time to remain connected to your spouse because then the skills will be useful. I heard Kevin Thompson joke the other day. He said, man, people who really focused on skills and never on attachment were great at arguing while getting a divorce. If we're not attached, we don't share it. The idea of us mutually fighting for what's best and submitting becomes an exercise in a bunch of boxes. To be checked and not a relationship anymore. And I'm speaking to myself here mostly.
Josh Powers [00:38:23]:
Guys, this is what I needed to hear.
Dena Davidson [00:38:24]:
I'll send this to Courtney so she can consume your confession.
Josh Powers [00:38:27]:
Thank you.
Curt Harlow [00:38:29]:
We went a little long on this one, but this is such a profound and amazing topic, and I'm sure we could go even longer on this. I want to encourage you to spread the word, especially these last two episodes, to any married couple that you have very, very, just profoundly, you know, what's important in marriage is being happy. And a lot of people, there's a lot to say about I'm just happy. And there's a lot of people that are missing that happiness because they don't understand the profundity of what the Holy Spirit's put here. Next week, Kevin Thompson is going to join us and we are going to have a conversation about Ephesians, chapter six, like the first seven or eight verses, which includes instructions to children, instructions to families, fathers, and instructions to slaves and masters. Obviously, a very, very intense issue is the Bible pro slavery. Was Paul pro slavery? We're going to deal with all of those topics next week. Don't miss out.
Curt Harlow [00:39:29]:
We, we probably, maybe, maybe we'll call an audible and bring in, like three other voices because there was such a great conversation today. You know, this podcast comes out of our sermon prep at all the Bayside campuses, and we had this conversation today on the passage in Man. That should have been the podcast because it was amazing. But join us next week. And especially if you've ever heard someone that has these questions, a lot of times when people deconvert this idea of how God handled slavery is a predominant idea in their deconversion. So if you know someone who needs this information, definitely, like, share, follow and make sure that they get the podcast. And as always, thank you for giving us your time here on the Bible Study podcast.