Your Family the Choir

Ephesians 5:18-21

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; 20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; 21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

Whenever a Christian understanding of marriage is discussed, if it is not the place where we started, we always make our way around to the 5th chapter of Ephesians. Ephesians gives the clearest and longest explanation of the Christian family. It discusses the roles of husband and wife (Eph. 5:22-24), the need for love and respect (Eph. 5:22, 25) and the fact that marriage is created by God to point away from itself to God and his relationship with creation, as Christ and the Church are brought together in a relationship of the same shape as a husband and wife. Marriage is a sign and a symbol, created by God to be lived and experienced by people (Eph. 5:32). “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church,” Paul says as he wraps up his explanation of married life.

But what we often miss is the context of Paul's 'marriage code.' Paul has just told the Ephesians that they are to be filled with the Spirit. And they are to be filled with the Spirit in the same sort of way you are drunk with wine (vv. 18). When someone is drunk, their entire self is drunk. You cannot be drunk but still have a sober hand. You cannot be drunk, but still have a sober mind. If you are drunk, then all of you is drunk. Christians are to be filled with the Spirit that way. And as they are filled with the Spirit in that way, music will come pouring out of their hearts (vv. 19) and thanksgiving will come pouring out of their souls (vv. 20). When you sing together, it is important that submission defines your choir (vv. 21). Singing together begins with learning to submit to one another.

Paul sticks to his subject as he turns to God's intentions for the family. The husband and wife are to sing their lives in harmony. They have different melodies to sing, but they are to sing in such a way that beautiful music comes out. When the call for the wife to submit is put in the context of Paul's larger concern of the music of the Spirit in the church, it takes on a beautiful subtlety that is lost when the verse is read out of context. The husband is the choir director and is to set the key with his love, while the wife is to submit her melody to her husband's song. The husband's song is to surround his wife in love, providing a sturdy base line and steady rhythm for his wife's melody to run and dance on.

In the story of these two melodies, harmonizing and playing off of one another to produce something greater than what a single melody can, even the dissonance can become, in the final product, part of the beauty of the whole. When two melodies run up against one another, the result is grating, but music without dissonance never goes anywhere. Music without dissonance has no story. Music without dissonance is called exercise; playing scales. So embrace the dissonance as it arises, knowing that it is part of the music. It is what moves the melody forward. But look for resolution. Long term dissonance is no way to sing. Turn from your sin, open up your ears, and get back to working towards singing together.

Of course, as a husband and wife sing together, other voices are born into the choir. Children learn to sing along by learning to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1-3), but the commands that they are required to obey should bring them into the choir, not press them out of it. This is one of the reasons that it is so important for parents to be working on loving and respecting one another. If these miniature people are called to join into the song of their parents, the melodies do not need to be complicated, only consistent. Your children are called to be living breathing melodies that harmonize with you. If they always have to pick whether to harmonize with Mom or with Dad, then they will struggle to sing well, because they will always be trying to sing in two keys at once. A united front is not just for the sake of the parents getting their children to obey. A united front is where a child can most successfully flourish in discovering who God has created them to be.

So be filled with the Spirit, and learn to live your life as a harmony to the melody of Christ who died for you, and as you submit to the Master Choir Director, you will discover harmony with one another.