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Scripture
Reflections
Note: These questions have been prepared to follow the pattern of the series based on the sermon content from Pastor Josh Lilly.
Sermon: Display the Gospel — The Role of a Christian Wife
Text: Ephesians 5:22–24, 33
“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… Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. … Let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
— Ephesians 5:22–24, 33
Big idea: A Christian wife displays the gospel by willingly and respectfully following her husband’s leadership as an act of devotion to Christ.
Day 1 — Marriage Exists to Display Christ and the Church
Read: Ephesians 5:22–33; Genesis 2:24; Revelation 19:6–9
1. Paul does not begin with household tips. He begins with Christ and the church. Why does that order matter before anyone talks about a wife’s role?
2. The sermon named other true purposes of marriage—companionship and procreation—then said Ephesians 5 shows a purpose older still. How does “display Christ and the church” change the way you measure a “successful” marriage?
3. The wife’s role is to represent the church’s response to Jesus. In your own words, what does the church’s response to Jesus actually look like?
4. Pastor Josh said this calling is impossible apart from the Spirit of Christ. Where have you treated a marriage role as if grit, personality, or fairness could carry it?
5. If someone watched your home this week and never heard a sermon, what story about Christ and the church would they most likely see?
Prayer: Father, You designed marriage before the foundation of the world to tell the story of Your Son and His people. Forgive us for making marriage mainly about our comfort, our scorekeeping, or our plans. Teach us to live this calling as an act of devotion to Christ.
Day 2 — Equal Honor, Distinct Design
Read: Genesis 1:26–27; Galatians 3:28; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 1:3–8
1. God made male and female as equal image-bearers. How does that truth guard a wife from believing she is less loved, less valuable, or farther from Jesus than her husband?
2. Galatians 3:28 does not erase gender. It announces equal standing in Christ. Where have you heard—or felt—the lie that a woman must go through her husband to get to Jesus?
3. The sermon described culture as a pendulum: historically treating women as property, then insisting that honor requires sameness of role. Which swing have you felt most, and how has it shaped you?
4. “The world either diminishes dignity or erases design. The gospel restores both.” Where do you need the gospel to restore dignity? Where do you need it to restore design?
5. If male leadership in your life has been absent or harmful, the world’s answer is to step out of God’s design and take control. Why is that answer compelling—and why is it not healing?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, You honored the church with Your life before the church ever honored You. Restore in us both the dignity You give and the design You wrote. Heal the places where we have been treated as less than, and free us from the lie that sameness is the only path to honor.
Day 3 — As to the Lord
Read: Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 3:18; Acts 5:29; Matthew 28:18
1. The text does not say, “Wives, submit to every man.” It says, “your own husband.” Why is that small phrase a word of liberation rather than a technicality?
2. “Your husband is not your Lord. Jesus is your Lord.” How does that sentence protect a wife from both idolizing her husband and dismissing him?
3. Submission “as to the Lord” never means following a husband into sin. What would a respectful refusal sound like if a husband asked for something ungodly?
4. Where have you seen this passage misunderstood, misapplied, or used as a tool to get a wife to do what is not in alignment with Jesus? How does Christ’s own leadership expose that misuse?
5. Jesus never leads His people into sin. How does His perfect headship become the pattern—and the limit—of a wife’s following?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are the only Lord of Your people. Teach wives to follow their husbands as an act of obedience to You—and to refuse, with honor, any path that would take them out of Your will. Let no one use Your Word as a weapon against the women You love.
Day 4 — Willing Honor, Not Coerced Obedience
Read: Ephesians 5:22–24; 1 Peter 3:1–6; Philippians 2:5–8
1. The sermon insisted that submission is not what creates a wife’s value. Jesus has already valued her with His life. How does that free submission from becoming a performance?
2. Scripture does not say, “Wives, obey your husbands.” That is a different Greek word. What changes when you hear submission as a willing choice rather than enforced compliance?
3. Parents have the authority of command with children; governments bear the sword. Husbands have the authority of counsel. Why does that distinction matter for how a husband leads and how a wife responds?
4. “You no longer have willful submission when you have to enforce it.” Where have you seen leadership try to coerce what only love can call forth?
5. Husbands will give an account for how they lead; wives will give an account for how they respond. Which account are you most tempted to manage for the other person instead of bringing to the Lord?
Prayer: Father, You honored us first. We do not submit in order to become valuable; we respond because Christ has already loved us fully. Keep husbands from command-and-control, and keep wives from confusing willingness with weakness. Form in us the mind of Christ.
Day 5 — Strength in the Spirit, Not in the Flesh
Read: Ephesians 5:18–21; Genesis 3:16; John 15:4–5; Galatians 5:16–25
1. The command to wives sits downstream of “be filled with the Spirit.” Why must a wife start there rather than with her husband’s performance?
2. Genesis 3 names a fracture after the fall: instead of being helped and led, the woman will want to rule. How have you seen that pull—quietly or openly—in your own heart or home?
3. The first question the sermon gave wives was not for a husband but for herself: “In whose strength are you trying to submit?” What is your honest answer this week?
4. Men cannot bootstrap Christ’s love. Wives cannot white-knuckle the church’s response. Where are you still trying to live a Spirit-sized calling on self-sized fuel?
5. What would it look like to begin this week by telling the Lord, “I know Your call, and I cannot do it—but I want to. Fill me”?
Prayer: Holy Spirit, fill us. We cannot love like Jesus or respond like the church in our own strength. Break the curse-pattern of abdication in husbands and of grasping in wives. Empower us to live the roles You have given, not as a burden we carry alone, but as a life You inhabit.
Day 6 — Follow Imperfect Leadership; Refuse Control
Read: Ephesians 5:24; Genesis 3:1–6; Proverbs 3:5–6; 1 Peter 3:5–6
1. There is a line between sin and imperfection, between evil and “I would have done it differently.” Why does biblical submission actually begin on the side of disagreement rather than agreement?
2. Sarah’s word in the sermon’s story was, “I’ve been waiting for you to submit to the Lord’s call, and I’m in.” What does it look like to support a husband’s imperfect, non-sinful leadership when the cost is real?
3. “Everything” in verse 24 does not mean sin. It also does not mean only the things a wife enjoys. Which ordinary decisions most tempt you to treat preference as a veto?
4. The picture was simple: his hands on the wheel, her hands on her husband. Where are you reaching for the wheel? What fear sits underneath that reach?
5. A desire for control often reveals distrust of God before it reveals distrust of a husband. How would trusting the Father change the way you speak into a decision this week—including when you raise a yellow or red flag he should hear?
Prayer: Father, You are a good Father. You do not withhold what is good from those who love You. Teach wives to support imperfect leadership without following sin, to give wise counsel without seizing the wheel, and to trust You when the road is not the one they would have chosen.
Day 7 — Respect That Can Be Seen and Heard
Read: Ephesians 5:33; Proverbs 31:10–12, 26; Ephesians 4:29; James 3:5–10
1. “Respect is visible submission.” If someone knew your husband only by what you say about him, what would they believe is true?
2. Respect is not only the words; it is the tone and the attitude underneath them. Where does your speech honor him in public and undercut him in private—or the reverse?
3. The sermon warned that even good church community can become a place to speak poorly of a husband. How will you refuse that pattern, and how will you lovingly interrupt it if you hear it?
4. A complaint belongs first with the Lord and then privately with your husband. What conversation have you been having with everyone except him?
5. God’s design for marriage is for flourishing, not harm. The sermon was plain: abuse is not Christ’s leadership, and a wife is not called to remain in a situation of harm. If that names your story, who will you tell so the church can help?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, let our words give life. Teach wives to respect their husbands in speech and tone, and husbands to love as You love. Where marriages are wounded, bring help. Where they are hidden in harm, bring safety and light.
Family or Group Discussion
1. Which part of the sermon most challenged or encouraged you, and why? If this passage has been painful because it was misused against you, name that honestly before you try to apply it.
2. Where is our marriage or group most tempted to treat equality as sameness—or headship as control?
3. Husbands: do you lead in a way that calls for a response, or in a way that tries to coerce one? Wives: do you feel like a help or a hindrance to his leadership? Use the “sandwich” the sermon commended—honor, then truth, then gratitude.
4. Take time to pray for one another: for Spirit-filled strength, for marriages that display the gospel, for anyone in harm who needs help, and for those not yet in Christ.
Weekly Practice
• Begin each morning by asking the Spirit to fill you before you take up your role. Say out loud: “Jesus is Lord of this house.”
• Husbands, if you have not asked last week’s questions, lead first. Wives, ask for a set time to talk—do not ambush, and do not dump the whole can at once.
• Wives, carry these two questions to your husband this week: “Do you feel supported by me—help or hindrance?” and “Do you feel respected by me?” Husbands, answer with the sandwich: where you see honor, where you need change, then gratitude and love.
• Wives, ask yourself: “In whose strength am I trying to submit? Where am I resisting leadership that is not sin? Where am I reaching for the wheel? Do my words and tone communicate respect?”
• If a complaint rises, take it first to the Lord, then privately to your spouse. Do not rehearse it in a group.
• If you are in an abusive or harmful situation, tell a pastor, elder, or trusted member. Christ’s leadership never looks like harm. Seek safety; the church is called to help.
• Write and finish the sentence: “A life that displays Christ and the church would change __________ in me this week.” Then take one step.
A marriage that lives this way becomes a living parable—not because anyone is perfect, but because both have surrendered to Jesus. These questions are prepared for personal, family, and small-group study as we continue the Ephesians series. May the Spirit who fills the church form in us marriages that display the gospel—for the glory of Christ and the flourishing of His church at Crossroads.