Awake, O sleeper,     and arise from the dead,and Christ will shine on you. (Ephesians 5:14)

With this poem, Paul grounds the often-quoted marriage instructions of Ephesians 5:22–33 in the transformative power of the gospel. The gospel rouses sleepers and quickens the dead. It calls those trapped in darkness into the shining light of Christ, where, for the first time, they can truly see and do what is good.

If the gospel can accomplish these feats, it can surely transform ordinary men into husbands who love their wives as Christ loved the church, and it can surely transform ordinary women into wives who respect and submit to their husbands’ leadership. But this transformation is not automatic, and it does not happen overnight. That’s why Paul offers this apostolic marriage advice: stay in the light (Ephesians 5:8–9).

While his advice applies to husbands and wives alike, this article addresses wives. Wives who want to see their marriages transformed must stay in the light, where Christ himself shines on them, revealing truths and exposing lies that shape their expectations for marriage. In particular, light-seeking wives embrace two foundational truths and reject two persistent lies about their marriages.

Truth #1: He is still a sinner.

The first expectation-shaping truth about marriage is that even though your husband is awake, alive, and in the light, he is still a sinner. And as a sinner, he will struggle in many ways common to humanity, some of which Paul warns us about in the rest of his letter to the Ephesians.

“God sees your husband’s faults more clearly than you do. His is the superior wisdom.”

At times, your husband may be proud, harsh, or impatient (Ephesians 4:2). His unique cocktail of deceitful desires will afflict him (Ephesians 4:22). He will stumble by not actively guarding his mind (Ephesians 4:25–32; 5:18). He may be tempted toward dishonesty, theft, laziness, destructive speech, resentment, selfishness, sexual immorality of various stripes, jealousies, greed, or substance abuse. In a word, he will falter in his charge to love you self-sacrificially.

As a native Texan, my mother-in-law strictly follows this rule: turn on the light during middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom. Failing to do so might mean a surprise encounter with a cockroach (at least in Texas).

When Christ shines on a marriage, his light exposes sins so that we can see them for the stealthy, invasive, dirty, creepy, darkness-loving, Texas-sized cockroaches that they are. The light protects us from surprise over our husband’s failures because our expectations are built on this foundational truth: he is still a sinner.

Truth #2: He is growing.

The light also trains us to shape our expectations around a second foundational truth: although your husband is still a sinner, he is growing. In the light, his sin is visible. And once seen, the way forward is clear.

In the case of a cockroach, a heavy-soled shoe is the clearest way forward, but sin requires a different kind of death — one of confession and turning and walking away, further and further from sleep’s darkness and the grave, and further into the light of Christ. The way forward may not be easy, but it is brightly lit.

If your husband is awake and alive, then Christ shines on him! He will increasingly see his sin, and he will know what to do about it. Equipped with more than a thick-soled shoe, he has everything he needs to crush the sins exposed by the light. (Ephesians 6:10–18 gives a full inventory of all the offensive and defensive weapons in his arsenal.)

These two foundational truths — your husband is a sinner, but he is growing — should shape your expectations about marriage, tempering your idealism with reality and your pessimism with hope.

Lie #1: ‘I’m more righteous than he is.’

Besides revealing two foundational truths for marriage, the light of Christ exposes two persistent lies in marriage. The first is the lie of superior righteousness. All of us indulge in pride from time to time, supposing ourselves better than our husbands. But if we stay in the light, we cannot escape the equalizing effect of the cross.

The light reminds us that we need the sin-cleansing blood of Jesus every bit as much as our husbands. Alongside them, we too must grow in detecting and killing sin. We must stand on guard against the temptations that hide behind our husband’s failures. Too often, we respond to their sin with sin of our own because the lie of superior righteousness tempts us to excuse our sin when it is provoked by theirs.

On this matter, Paul is far from silent: “Be angry and do not sin . . . and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26–27). Sin hurts. Anger is a natural response to pain. But the light helps us see beyond those moments of hurt and anger to the true enemy lurking behind them. Our husbands are not the enemy, but behind their failures, the devil strains to reassert his dominance over our lives. He would use our anger against us, seducing us to react in sinful ways — perhaps by lashing out with hateful words, by giving quarter to arrogance or self-righteousness, by plotting revenge, by cynically despairing, or by withholding forgiveness.

But these reactions are from the shadows, lining the path back to the grave. The way of light and life is to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). We should expect to find sin crouching at the door of our marital disappointments, so we proactively guard our hearts against the snare of anger by continually confessing our own sins and by cultivating a heart of forgiveness toward our husbands.

Then, when they confess their sins, we can eagerly, though not painlessly, extend all the mercy and grace to them that God has freely given us. In this way, we defend ourselves against the lie of superior righteousness that stalks us from the shadows of our husband’s failures.

Lie #2: ‘I know what’s best for him.’

Be wary also of a second persistent lie lurking in the shadows: the lie of superior wisdom. Doubtless, if you were God, you would choose a different path for your husband’s transformation than the one he is currently on. But the light of Christ breaks into our blind spots, challenging even our expectations about how our husbands should grow.

Perhaps you’d prioritize his inattentiveness or his [fill in the blank], but God sees your husband’s faults more clearly than you do. His is the superior wisdom. He exposes sin according to his curriculum and his calendar.

He may not transform your husband into the most attentive partner, but he might stir his heart to give more generously at church. Your husband may not notice a sink full of dirty dishes as much as you’d like, but he might begin to exercise more oversight when it comes to your children’s Internet access. He may continue struggling to remember what you’ve asked him to do, but over time he may grow in contentedness at work, faithfully laboring at an unsatisfying job to provide for your household.

“Stay in the light, where lies are exposed and faulty expectations transformed.”

In Christ, your husband is growing whether or not he is walking the precise path you’d prescribe. If you do not see growth in an area that is particularly grievous to you, invite Christ’s light to shine on your expectations so that you can truly see and wisely assess them. Is this trait that irks you truly sin, or could it simply be a dispositional weakness? Are you expecting your husband to do something God does not require? Stay in the light, where lies are exposed and faulty expectations transformed.

If unaddressed sin persists in your husband’s life, remember Paul’s divinely given counsel from another of his letters: rather than nagging, shaming, or despairing, “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12). Before you go to your husband, go to God! Recognize that God, better than anyone, can see your husband’s sin, and in his superior wisdom knows precisely what to do with it. (Even so, recognize that some patterns of sin may require outside counsel or help, especially if the sin endangers you or others.)

Let There Be Light

Stay in the light, and it will transform your marriage. Reconfigure your expectations around the truth that your husband is a sinner, and the light will protect you from surprise or disillusionment over his failures. Shape your expectations around the truth that he is growing, and the light will fill you with hope as you increasingly see your husband the way God sees him — as a dearly loved son gradually being transformed into the likeness of Christ, the only perfect husband.

And “finally . . . put on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10–11), rejecting the lies of your own superior righteousness and wisdom. Then, hand in hand with your husband, grow up together into the image of your Savior.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. We have been doing this podcast for almost a decade now. And over those ten years there have been some moving pastoral moments. I remember one from a long time ago. I looked it up. It was back in APJ 131. It’s an oldie. There, Pastor John was talking about important Bible verses to memorize, ones that he has found particularly useful in serving others. One such text was Psalm 130:3: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” There Pastor John testified, “How many times have I knelt down, put my arm on somebody who has just been broken over some sin that they have committed, and been able to pray over them this text: ‘Lord, if you would mark iniquities, who could stand?’” That’s a moving picture of a word spoken pastorally.

That image, and that text, comes to mind when I think of today’s sermon clip because there’s a question about how we approach God in the midst of our brokenness, particularly in this brokenness we experience over our own sins. This very question gets answered robustly in Nehemiah 9–10. God’s people are in distress. It’s distress caused by their own sins. They know it. And they know they deserve the distress itself. So how do we approach God now? Here’s Pastor John to explain, looking at Nehemiah 9.

Starting with Nehemiah 9:6–37, the Levites are praying. This chapter is a prayer. They’re praying to the end of verse 37, and they’re crying out “to you, O God.” The word you in reference to God occurs thirty times in these verses. What did they do? What did they say? How did they deal with God in great distress? That’s what we want to know. How did they do that?

Under God-Given Distress

Before we ask further, let’s get more specific about the distress, because this will clarify your situation. There are some of you right now who are perhaps arguing with yourself, if not with me, “What you’re about to say is not going to apply to me because you don’t understand how I got where I am.” Let’s see whether that’s true or not.

Back to verse 37. They’re not just in distress. They are in a distress that they deserve to be in because of their sin. And they are in a distress that God himself put them in. Let’s look at verse 37 to see that. “[The land’s] rich yield” — which we’re supposed to inherit as a promise — “goes to the kings whom you have set over us . . .” Slave masters. You put them over us, God, “. . . because of our sins” (Nehemiah 9:37). In other words, the great distress that we are in, we deserve to be in. And not only do we deserve to be in it, but it’s judgment sent from you.

So now we get clarity on this. Some of you might be tempted to say, “The rest of you in here, you can call upon God in your distress, but not me because I sinned my way into the mess I’m in. God put me here as a discipline or a punishment. So the rest of you can go on about your merry way, following this preacher and learning how to call upon God in your distress because it just came upon you. It didn’t just come upon me. I brought it on me.” That’s their situation.

If you’re in that category, you dare not talk like that. Don’t talk to God like that. Do not say to God, “This text is not addressing my need because I sinned my way into the mess I’m in, and you brought it on me.” That’s irrelevant. That’s the whole point of this text. These people are in a distress they deserve to be in, that God put them in. None of you may escape the good news of this text. You have no right to tell God he can’t give you good news.

“You have no right to tell God he can’t give you good news.”

Oh, how many people I have dealt with over the years who try to tell God they are beyond good news. And I get upset with them because they are belittling the cross, diminishing the blood, crying down the mercy, exalting themselves in their self-pity. I won’t have it, neither in this room nor in the counseling chamber. Don’t tell God that he can’t give you good news because you’ve sinned your way into your misery, and God himself brought you under his discipline. That’s exactly their situation. We’re in this together, and we want desperately to know, How do we approach God now? How do you talk to God in that situation? That’s what they’re doing, and I want to learn as best I can how they do it.

Rehearsing Stories of Hope

So what do they do? It’s astonishing what they do. They pray back to God the entire history of the Old Testament. This is the longest — or maybe the right word is that this is the fullest — retelling of the Old Testament in the Old Testament. Jim Hamilton says in his new commentary, “This is the fullest retelling of the Old Testament in a short space in the Old Testament.” And it’s a prayer, so they’re telling God what God did for a thousand years — more than a thousand. That’s a remarkable way to approach God in a deserved, God-ordained distress.

So in Nehemiah 9:6–31 they’re telling the story of the Old Testament. Why would they do that? Here’s why. God does not exist so that we can enjoy Bible stories. Bible stories exist so that we can enjoy God. And they desperately, desperately need to know whether our God is the kind of God in whom there’s any possibility of enjoyment in our great distress — well-deserved and given by God. Is there any hope at all that there’s a God in heaven that would give us hope that he could be enjoyed in this? That’s what they need to know.

And they know where to find the answer. It’s in the story, because that’s what the stories are for: to reveal God. They desperately need to know, What kind of God do we have? Is it over for us? Or is he the kind of God that perhaps there might be some hope in a deserved, God-given distress? That’s why they’re retelling the stories back to God.

Great and Only God

In Nehemiah 9:6–15, the Levites celebrate the power of God, the righteousness of God, and the covenant-keeping salvation of God. Verse 6 says, “You are the Lord” (Nehemiah 9:6). You know what that refers to: Yahweh. That’s his personal name. It’s like, “You are James,” only it’s not James — it’s Yahweh. “You are Yahweh.” And you know where the name came from. “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “I am has sent me to you”’” (Exodus 3:14). And the name Yahweh is built on “I am who I am,” which means every time you see big L-O-R-D, this is God saying, “I am God, and I have no competitors, and I depend on nobody and nothing. I had no beginning; I will have no end. Deal with me because that is reality.” That’s God.

“You don’t negotiate with God. He is absolute reality. We are defined, he is definer.”

So they began, “You are Yahweh.” It’s a good place to begin. You are absolute God. There’s no negotiation going on here at all. You don’t negotiate with God. He is absolute reality. We are defined; he is definer. We are dependent; he is totally independent. Our being comes into being; his being has always been, as inconceivable and glorious as that is. We begin here. This is a place of reverence and humility and lowliness. You begin your dealing with this God in your great distress by saying, “You are Yahweh, the great and only and absolute God.”

Verse 6 in the middle says, “You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you” (Nehemiah 9:6). You made everything; you uphold everything. Therefore, “the host” — I like the translation army — “the [army] of heaven worships you” (Nehemiah 9:6). You are exalted. “Your glorious name . . . is exalted above all blessing and praise” (Nehemiah 9:5).

That’s where you begin, right? In dealing with God, just lift him up. Now remember, these are people who are totally guilty, under distress given by God, okay? You lift up your soul in your guilt, and you lift up your soul in your distress, and you lift up your soul under the mighty hand of God, and you say, “You are God.” That’s a great place to begin.

Audio Transcript

Well, if you’ve read and studied the Gospels, you notice that in the life of Christ there’s not a lot of detail about temple practices — in particular, animal sacrifices. We know that Jesus, as a small child, was presented at the temple with an offering of turtledoves or pigeons (that’s told to us in Luke 2:24). This was the offering of a poor mother, in lieu of a lamb sacrifice (as permitted in Leviticus 12:8). But this is a pretty rare connection between Christ’s life and temple sacrifices. In fact, later in his ministry, Jesus will forgive sin all by himself, bypassing the whole Jewish sacrificial system altogether. And that leads to a question from Karen, a listener to the podcast who wants to know why.

Here’s her email: “Hello, Pastor John, my name is Karen, and I live in Germany. Thank you for this podcast. My question concerns the act of forgiveness mentioned in the Bible. I have learned that without blood there is no forgiveness. Hence the sacrifices in the Old Testament and the dying of Jesus in the New Testament. I understand that. But what I don’t understand is the period between the two. When Jesus walked on earth, he often addressed people by simply telling them that their sins were forgiven. He didn’t prescribe an offering in the temple. And he had not shed his own blood yet. So how was that possible, under the assumption that blood is still needed for forgiveness?”

This may sound like a question with limited application or a question of interest to only a tiny number of Christians. But I want to show that it touches on the issue that is at the heart of Christianity. Every Christian needs to be aware of it for our own stability and courage and joy. So, hang on.

Forgiveness Requires Blood

The question starts with a biblical assumption from Hebrews 9:22, which says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That’s what it says. So God instituted in the Old Testament the way, the plan, that there would be animal sacrifices, and that sinners who looked to God and, by faith, identified with this killed animal would be forgiven for their sins. The death of the animal would be counted, so to speak, as the punishment for their sin.

For example, in Leviticus 4:15, if the people as a whole have sinned, it says, “The elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord, and the bull shall be killed before the Lord.” Then verse 20 says, “The priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.” So that’s where Karen’s question starts. God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death, a blood-shedding, in order for sins not to be counted — that is, to be forgiven.

“God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death.”

Then the second premise of Karen’s question is that Christ has in fact shed his own blood for sinners so that, if we are united to Christ by faith, our sins are forgiven for his sake. His blood-shedding counts for us.

He became “a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He bore our condemnation in his flesh (Romans 8:3). This is the center and the glory of the gospel. So Paul says in Romans 5:9, “We have now been justified by his blood,” or in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood,” or in Ephesians 2:13, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

So Karen’s question is, When Jesus walked the earth, he often addressed people by telling them that their sins are forgiven, but (she says) there was no offering in the temple, and Jesus had not yet died — how’s that possible under the assumption that blood is needed in order to have the forgiveness of God from all the sins that we do or that take place?

Animal Blood Was Not Enough

Now let’s clarify the question, first of all. Whether or not there were sacrifices being offered in the temple, Jesus pronounced forgiveness on his own authority, without any reference to those sacrifices. For example, in Mark 2:5–7, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And the scribes say, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

So Karen wonders about this relationship of forgiveness that Jesus pronounced to the God-appointed shedding of blood, when Jesus hasn’t yet shed his blood and he isn’t pointing people to the blood-shedding of the animals. And here’s one of the keys that unlocks this puzzle for Karen. In Hebrews 10:4 and 11, the writer says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. . . . Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”

So now we get the startling revelation that all those animal sacrifices actually in themselves accomplished nothing. Oh, we’re not between two really effective seasons here — Old Testament, New Testament. The forgiveness that God pronounced on faithful worshipers in the Old Testament was not ultimately owing to animal sacrifices.

The true saints in the Old Testament, they grasped this — they did, at some level. For example, David said in Psalm 51:16–17, “You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrary heart, O God, you will not despise.” And God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” And Jesus quoted that verse, Hosea 6:6, twice to show how badly some of the Jewish leaders were misreading the Old Testament (in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7).

Every Sacrifice a Pointer

So now we can see that Karen’s question about forgiveness during Jesus’s lifetime really does apply to the entire history of Israel. The animal sacrifices were not achieving the forgiveness of sins — not ever. So what were they doing?

The answer is, they were pointing to Jesus — God’s final, once-for-all, decisive sacrifice for sins. They were foreshadowing the blood-shedding of Christ. So it says in Hebrews 9:12, “[Christ] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” So the reason all blood-shedding has ceased — animal blood-shedding has ceased; Christ’s blood-shedding has ceased once for all — is that Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.

“Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.”

If you have Christ, you have eternal forgiveness for all sins. Now I think Karen knows this, but what she may have overlooked (I don’t know) is that not only does the sacrifice of Christ extend forward as an eternal redemption but also backward in history as a redemption for all those saints who put their faith in God for his forgiveness — through the foreshadowing of the cross in the animal sacrifices. The cross worked effectively backward and forward.

And that’s what Paul makes clear in Romans 3:25. He says, “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” In other words, the reason God was righteous to pass over — that is, forgive — the sins of all Old Testament saints, and the sins that Jesus forgave during his lifetime, was that God was looking to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So just as our sins two thousand years after Christ are covered by the blood of Christ, so Abraham’s sins were covered by the cross of Christ two thousand years before Christ existed. And so it was with all the saints in between.

Glorious Divine Achievement

So, Karen’s question is not of limited significance. It takes us to the very center of the gospel — indeed, the center of reality. It shows us that all forgiveness, and all the benefits that flow from forgiveness through all time — as far back as you can go, as far forward as you can go, all of it — all of that forgiveness is based on those few hours when the Son of God suffered and bled and died for sinners.

If we grasp how central, how profound, how glorious was that divine moment, that divine achievement, our lives will be more stable, more courageous and more joyful.