We have often heard this text used when we talk about marriage relationships, but unless we read the verses that come before it, we will miss what the main point here is.

The main point: Lovingly submit to the Holy Spirit so that He can transform us to lovingly submit to one another and this impacts all relationships include marriage.

-1) What does it mean to be “filled with the Spirit” (v. 15-18)

-2) What does being filled with the Spirit look like (v. 19-21)

-3) An example from marriage (v. 22-33)

 

When Paul talks about being filled with the Holy Spirit, we must ask what he is talking about in that phrase, yet it is simple: The Holy Spirit is God and He is the presence of Christ in us.

Remember last week: The Holy Spirit is a person. He is not a force or set of rules but a person, and he must be a person because only a person can change us from the inside.

If you have submitted to Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you. Every believer has Him, for He is the only reason we are here. He converted us.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit drew us to Himself.

So, how are we filled? The question is not how much of the Holy Spirit we have, but how much of us He has.

Does God have control over your life? Do we surrender all to Him? To be filled with the Spirit is to submit to God daily, to be constantly turning our lives over to Him.

How can we do this? Ask. The Holy Spirit conveys the presence of Jesus. Faith gives us access to Him.

We have access to God, and we are in Him because He is in us. We are all on a journey, and we must walk and live so that we will fulfill our purpose: so that Jesus will become more evident in our lives, touching every area with His light of life.

In Him doing so, we don’t lose our personalities, instead we are transformed into who God meant for us to be: Just like His Son.

If we fail to understand what it means to submit to God, the rest of this text won’t make any sense to us.

What does being filled with the Holy Spirit look like? Speaking in tongues? Powerful preaching? Not quite what you might think.

Filled with the Spirit means to submit to God by worship, and to submit to others by serving and loving them.

Often we ask what worship style we should have in our church. Traditional? Contemporary? The question we need to be asking instead is: “What is my heart attitude right now?” “Am I coming to worship the Lord with my heart open and ready to experience the living Jesus, powerful and real?”

When we come to God, being honest about our hurts and troubles, yet always remembering His love for us, the hymns and songs we sing will take on a whole new personal meaning for us.

When we submit to God by worship (daily, not just in church), it gives us the foundation for submitting to one another.

To be filled with the Spirit is to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, and every Spirit-filled Christian is a humble and submissive one because Jesus’ standard of greatness was “if you wish to be the greatest you must be willing to become the least and if you wish to be a master you must be willing to be a servant”

We submit to others and to God because He first submitted to us. In Jesus Christ, God submitted to humanity in order to show us His love and draw us to Him.

This also impacts our home life: In the Gospel, we have a freedom no other source can give and nothing can take it away. We are free from sin, free from worry about opinions, etc.

We are free to serve others unconditionally and not because we have to, but because we genuinely love them. We read about wives submitting to their husbands, but Paul does not let husbands have dictatorial rule, instead he says, “husbands since you have more power, you have more responsibility to use that power for your wife’s betterment”.

In today’s world we hear many talk about “rights” and “equality”, yet I guarantee that if husbands and wives would submit and lovingly sacrifice for each other, divorces in this country would plummet. After all, it is hard to divorce someone who puts you first!

What we often do not see here is that the primary focus is not husbands wives, but Christ and the church. When Paul cites Gen. 2:24, it is meaning that we in the church are one with Christ and one in Christ!

This is the basis for everything we do as believers, for our morals, behavior, everything. The point of Ephesians: We are part of Christ and part of each other. To be effective witnesses we need to tell others the need to be united with Jesus and the possibility of being united, for only that living, dynamic relationship is what changes lives.