Main Idea

Before we can build a better marriage we have to name what’s destroying it. It isn’t incompatibility, poor communication, or marrying the wrong person. It’s something that lives in all of us. This week we go to the foundation of Ephesians 5 and discover that the real enemy of marriage is.

Scripture

Ephesians 5: 21-31

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

Genesis 2:24

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Romans 5:8

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Discussion Questions

• Be honest how does the marriage you have compare to the marriage you imagined? Where is the gap and have you ever talked about it out loud with anyone?
• Augustine said our loves are disordered we love the right things in the wrong order. Where do you see that showing up in your marriage or relationships right now?
• In what area are you most tempted to expect your spouse to meet a need that only God can meet significance, security, feeling known, feeling like enough?
• If behavior change that isn’t rooted in gospel change never lasts what would it look like practically for the gospel to be the motivation for how you love your spouse this week?