2. Foundations
Before you begin, be sure you’ve each listened to this message from Jon Tyson. Bring your notes and questions to today’s meeting and be ready to discuss them together.
The goal of this meeting is to understand biblical marriage and illustrate how we can love our spouse in the way of Jesus.
Foundations Discussion Guide
Begin by reading this passage together:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “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.
Ephesians 5:21-33 NIV
Paul is preaching the way of Jesus into the everyday lives of the Ephesians. He explains the gospel in light of the context they intimately live and know.
How does this historical context illuminate the text for you? Does it help you understand it better, or in a new way?
“Spirit-filled mutual submission is the operating system of marriages inside of the Church.”
Paul positions marriage in the context of living not by the flesh, but by the Spirit. The implication is that we cannot participate in the kind of marriage he describes apart from the power of God.
Tyson explains this way of living as “Spirit-filled mutual submission”.
How does this help you articulate a distinctive difference between a biblical marriage, and marriage as the wider culture understands it?
“The Christian life is fundamentally about self denial, and that’s why it’s in such stark contrast to a culture of self-fulfillment. It’s about sacrificial love for the sake of others.
Our primary identity as disciples is learning to love sacrificially for everybody... as Christ himself did.
And the goal in marriage is to make sure that that same sacrificial love is mediated through the person of Jesus and brought to our spouses in the process.”
Men and women are equal, but not equivalent; gender is complex and matters very much. Gender is not a human-made tool to oppress or place people under categories, but a gift of God to express who he is in the world (we are, after all, made in his image). This is illustrated in a particular way in marriage as men and women partner together to embody the love of God to one another and the world.
You don’t need to fit under typical gender roles to see this at play, but you are, certainly, different from one another in many ways.
How do you complement one another? How does mutually submitting to one another form you into fuller, healthier people?
Consider the kind of love Paul is talking about in Ephesians 5.
How does agape love create a distinctive difference between a biblical marriage, and marriage as the world sees it?
Many loves may be present in a biblical marriage, but which one is required? What does this mean for your relationship today and in the future?
Tyson describes marriage in the way of Jesus as sacrificial, sanctifying, and satisfying.
In your own words, what do each of these mean? How do you see these at play in your relationship?
Which of the three feels strongest to you? Which feels weakest? Why?
“The vision of the gospel is to make us not just sexually attracted beings... but God-honoring companions who walk together in our loves.”
Before you move on, take out your journals and complete this statement in your own words.*
The purpose of our marriage is to __________________________________.
*Don’t lose this! You’ll need it later.
Practice
Is your partner thriving more because you are together, or thriving even in spite of you? For 30 days, do an experiment in mutual submission as a gift to one another.
Men, nourish, cherish, sacrifice, sanctify, and satisfy your partner in any way you can, eagerly. Women, submit to and respect your partner, because you love him.
Don’t discuss it. Just actually do it. Lose count of how many times you silently choose to mutually submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Your mentor couple will pray over you to close.
Next Time
Set the time and date for your next meeting.
Before then, read Chapters 1 and 2 of The Road Back to You, and try to narrow down which type seems closest to you. Resist the temptation to “type” your partner. Give each other space to consider this on your own, but when needed, help each other out.
You’ll discuss how the enneagram can help you relate to one another in your next meeting, so bring your book and notes along.