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The Wake-Up Call
Why Love Is Blind and Marriage Is an Eye-Opener (Part 1 of 3)
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The Word of God reveals a model of power that centers around the surrender of control and the reversal of hierarchy.
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Foreign. Sower nation. It is Monday again, New week. It is actually May 11th in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. How about we start off with consecration today for a new week? We're meeting here together with Jesus. He's here. The Holy Spirit brings him right into our lives in the midst of our relationship. He's ready to meet. I'm ready, you're ready. So wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is entitled why Love is Blind and Marriage is an Eye Opener. This is part one of three. This is going to be a three part miniseries here within this journey through Ephesians. Our text today. And let's look. I think presumably now we'll go a little bit further, but today's text is Ephesians 5, 2124. You're now the word of the Lord submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to in everything to their husbands, the word of the Lord. Now consider this. Years ago, a wise old mentor gave me some advice on the eve of my wedding. I will always remember one thing he said. Love is blind, but marriage is an eye opener. We will unpack this text on Christian marriage in three parts. Here we go. What is your view of power? Nothing will more determine the way you read the Bible than the way you answered that question. How do you understand and appropriate power? I find it fascinating the way different translations, different translation teams approach Ephesians 5, verses 20 through 33. For instance, the text happens to appear in the English standard version. The ESV team opted to put a comma after verse 20 instead of a period. Also worth noting is where they chose to put the section heading, which incidentally is not part of the inspired text. The ESV team inserted the heading Wives and Husbands after verse 21. Here it goes. Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Now contrast this with the New International Version, the New Living Translation, the New Revised Standard Version, and others who opted to place a period after verse 20 and insert the heading prior to verse 20 21. So verses 2022 look like this in the NIV. Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Period. Wives, submit to your yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. Now don't let this be lost on you. It may seem like tedious, insignificant detail, but the placement of those headings makes a world of difference in the way we understand Christian marriage. It comes back to our view of power, which determines the lens through which we read the Bible. Our world sees and interfaces with power through primarily from a perspective of hierarchy. Who is at the top and who is at the bottom. So what is the opposite or the alternative to hierarchy? Do a Google search on the opposite of hierarchy and you get a host of terms ranging from anarchy to disjointedness, all of which hold in common some notion of disorder. This would seem to imply that a synonym for hierarchy might be control. Now consider verse 21. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Might verse 21 call us to an alternative power structure around mutual submission? Whereas a hierarchical model of marriage might be termed complementarian, this mutual submission model of marriage might be termed egalitarian. I think the mutual submission, also known as egalitarian model for marriage is more in keeping with the tenor of Scripture as it represents a shared power approach. I wish I could leave it there and let us go on and live happily ever after. I can't. I'm in the middle of a late breaking epiphany. It happens right now. As I write, I am coming to the conclusion that the Bible supports neither or a hierarchical model nor a mutual submission model. Both of these models are worldly models of power centered around control. The Word of God reveals a model of power that centers around the surrender of control and the reversal of hierarchy. Think about it. In the kingdom of heaven, the least is the most, the last is the first, and the servant is the greatest of all. I call it lower archy. Whereas hierarchy is the control of power and mutual submission is the sharing of power. Lower archy means the surrender of power. Is this not the shape of the love of God in Jesus Christ? Christian marriage means two people joined in union on the condition of an unconditional and complete surrender of their lives to Jesus Christ and living out that unconditional surrender in the practical details of their life together. This may strike us as lofty idealism. It's another reason why God became a person. He knew ideals would never get it done. One thing is for sure, it doesn't seem very practical. Then again, neither did the cross. So what is powerful about this model? Thanks for asking. Does the word resurrection mean ring a bell? Let's pray. Abba Father, we thank you for your son Jesus Christ, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing far from an ideal. The Son of God became a slave. It blows our minds. Would you show us how it might disrupt our lives and yes, our marriages? Praying in Jesus name Amen. Got some journal prompts today. Where do you disagree or push back on this reflection about marriage? Number two, it's hard to imagine the idea of Lower Archy working in a company or an organization. Could it? How about a marriage? How would it work there? And then number three, how might Lower Archy become more than an ideal in your own marriage? Where would you begin? Why does it challenge you so much? Ah man, there's a lot to say here and I've said a lot already. I think it may have been a little confusing how I came over with that the text, right here's the point is that the word says submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ. And then it immediately begins talking about marriage, husbands and wives. Now the point was that some translators completely disconnect that. Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ. They put that up and then they put the heading husbands and wives right under it. And then they say, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. And I think that's a wrong rendering. I think the heading is mutual submission. Lower Arche. It's what I call it, not hierarchy. Lower Archy. And we're going to deal with this the next two or three days here. This is, this is about how power works and particularly in a marriage. And the Bible will then tell us, it says submit yourselves one to another out of reverence for Christ. Then it gives you an example for women. Then it gives you example wives and it gives an example for husbands and then it gives the example of Jesus himself. Anyway, that's why I've kind of come down on like, you know, I don't really believe in the complementarian model of marriage. I don't really believe in the egalitarian model of marriage. Marriage. I believe in the Lower Archy, the, the mutual submission model, the surrender of power model of marriage. And you know, I know some people are saying, well, are you married? And this is a hard place for me. Most of you, maybe some of you know I have been married and I am divorced. It's interesting if you look at the, not that people are really searching for JD Walt on the Internet, but if you look at the number one search when it comes to J.D. walt, is this, is J.D. walt married? Isn't that funny? And I think it is because people, I don't know, it's. I am divorced. And that is controversial in the church. And even I, I'm. There's a long, long story. It's very, very difficult. I don't want to reflect poorly on my former wife. It's a sad story of what became an unfortunate, unavoidable slow motion train wreck. And it, it took a decade and everything possible was done to save this marriage, but it just could not be saved. I mean, I believe God was going to save this marriage. And, and, and ultimately it did not, it did not prevail. And it's the great, great sadness of my life for myself or my former wife or our children. Good gracious. And I know many of you have also suffered through this trial and tragedy. So clearly I'm not setting myself up as an expert. When this happened, I wrote everybody out there in the midst of the wake up call. It's been, you know, long time, I mean, a long time ago. It was 2020 when it finally ended, but it happened well before that. And, and I just said to everybody, I'm like, you know, you need to know this about me and I'll respect you if you in conscious can't continue to follow me, hear what I say, listen to me, follow my teaching, and I will let you, I will release you with blessing, nothing but blessing and respect your decision. But you just need to know, and I don't carry shame or guilt around this. I carry grief around it, a lot of grief because it's a tragedy and not something that I wanted for sure. And anybody anywhere within 100 miles of it knows the whole story. And I don't. I'll. And there's no point in going into it all. And yet it doesn't disqualify me from commenting on Scripture. So I'm going to continue to do my best to do that. And I'm still learning. How about we, this Monday, let's sing our Monday song through Ephesians. We're still Praying that prayer from Ephesians, chapter 1, where Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts will be opened, that we'd have the spirit of revelation and wisdom, that we might know Jesus better. Let's sing that. Open the eyes of my heart together, just as a prayer to the Lord.
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Open the eyes of my heart, Lord Would you Open the eyes of my heart? I want to see you, I want to see you Open the eyes of my heart, Lord Would you open the eyes of my heart? I want to see you, I want to see you to see you high and lifted up Shining in the light of your glory Pour out your power and love as we sing Holy, holy, holy Open the eyes of my heart, Lord Would you open the eyes of my heart? I want to see you, I want to see you
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Amen. Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And, you know, purity of heart is actually the gift of God. You can't make your heart pure. You can't purify your own heart. It's not a matter of, like, just being sincere or humble. Purity of heart is the gift of God. It's the presence of Jesus in us by the Holy Spirit, and we have to ask for it, right? Receive it, walk in it. All right, well, it's Monday. This is a tough kind of a challenging teaching to kick off the week, but Ephesians, you know, again, I'm not picking the. The tight the subjects here. We're following God's word. We're just reading it together. And Jesus is our teacher, and I submit it all to him. We'll come back tomorrow in part two of three. Meanwhile, we got a day of sowing ahead of us, so get your seats for the awakening. I'm J.D. walt, and I'll see you on the field.