Before we read today's text I want to put it in the context of where we've been so far, or at least part of where we've been so far, picking up last week.

Last week we saw from Ephesians 5, verse 32, that marriage is a mystery. That is, God

designed marriage a long time ago and he gave it a meaning which was kept secret or at least partly

secret for a long time and then through the Apostle Paul in the book of

Ephesians especially in other places in the New Testament, its meaning was unfolded

fully for us to see and the meaning of the mystery of marriage was this. God designed

marriage to be a parable or a picture or an image of Christ and the church.

Marriage is meant to be a display to the world of how Christ and his bride the church relate to each other.

So when God created man and woman, the way we are with our differences of manhood and womanhood, he did so so that we could

fit into these complementary roles of Christ and the Church in marriage and the other expressions of

complementarity outside of marriage. And in this drama, man was meant to

represent Christ in his servant leadership and love toward his wife and the wife was

meant to represent the bride of Christ in her free and glad response and support and honor

of her husband's leadership.

And we stressed, in fact we've stressed for five weeks now, that these differences are not the result of sin.

Manhood and womanhood did not come into existence because of sin, God made them.

And the diversified complementary roles of male and female, marriage and in the church were not the result of sin.

They were the result of God's loving and wise ordinance. Before sin ever entered the world, God ordained and fitted Adam to be a loving,

caring, strong leader in relationship to Eve.

And before sin ever entered the world, God ordained and fitted Eve to be one who supports and honors that leadership and helps carry it through according to

her gifts. Both in the image of God, both equal in their godlike personhood, but different in their manhood and womanhood.

The pattern was beautiful.

...