Ephesians – Part 9

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Exhortation Regarding Personal Relationships

In the following passages, Sha’ul emphasizes mutual submission. If you’re feeling tension in your home, consider initiating a family meeting where every member can share their feelings without interruption. This creates an atmosphere of love and respect, allowing everyone to express their needs. Aim to serve one another by prioritizing your family’s well-being, whether that means helping with chores, lending an ear, or simply spending quality time together. By practicing humility and openness, you can dispel conflict and cultivate a closer-knit family.

Mutual Submission

5 ²¹ Submit to one another in fear of the Messiah.

This verse serves as a hinge to connect what is prior (our last post) with what follows in this post.

²² Wives should submit to their husbands as they do to the Lord; ²³ because the husband is head of the wife, just as the Messiah, as head of the Messianic Community, is himself the one who keeps the body safe. ²⁴ Just as the Messianic Community submits to the Messiah, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Wives should submit to their husbands as they do to the Lord (compare 1 Corinthians 11:3). As for husbands, love your wives (verse 25 below). The asymmetry in the commands epitomizes the asymmetry in the marriage relationship. Sha’ul could have written, “Wives, love your husbands,” and “Husbands, rule your wives.” But men often find it all too easy to throw their weight around, but hard to communicate love sensitively, in a self-giving fashion—for the standard Sha’ul sets is very high, just as the Messiah loved the Messianic Community.

Elsewhere, Sha’ul says that “the head of a wife is her husband” (1 Corinthians 11:3). Being the head, he is responsible for going first, to create the order of married life. But to do this, he must be loving first, unconditionally, without waiting for or insisting on his wife’s submitting first.

²⁵ As for husbands, love your wives, just as the Messiah loved the Messianic Community, indeed, gave himself up on its behalf,

Sha’ul turned to the duties of husbands. The society in which Sha’ul wrote recognized the responsibilities of wives to husbands but not necessarily of husbands to wives. As in Colossians 3:19, Sha’ul exhorted husbands to love their wives, but Ephesians presents Yeshua’s self-sacrificing love for the Kehilah as the pattern for the husband’s love for his wife. Husbands are to love their wives continually as Yeshua loves the Kehilah. The tense of the Greek word translated “love” indicates a love that continues. Love is more than family affection or sexual passion. Instead, it is a deliberate attitude leading to action that concerns itself with another’s well-being. A husband should love his wife: (1) as Yeshua loved the Kehilah (vv. 25–27); (2) as his own body (vv. 28–30); and (3) with a love transcending all other human relationships (vv. 31–33).

²⁶ in order to set it apart for God, making it clean through immersion in the mikveh, so to speak,

A Jewish bride enters the mikveh (ritual bath) in order to be purified prior to the marriage ceremony, which is called kiddushin (literally, “being set apart for God”).

 ²⁷ in order to present the Messianic Community to himself as a bride to be proud of, without a spot, wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without defect. ²⁸ This is how husbands ought to love their wives—like their own bodies; for the man who loves his wife is loving himself.

Since husbands are to love their wives as Yeshua loved the Kehilah, they give up their personal rights for the good of their wives. It is a solemn picture of covenant love.

²⁹ Why, no one ever hated his own flesh! On the contrary, he feeds it well and takes care of it, just as the Messiah does the Messianic Community, ³⁰ because we are parts of his Body.

On first sight, Sha’ul seems to have descended from the lofty standard of Yeshua’s love to the low standard of self-love when he says no one ever hates his own flesh, but he reminded Messianic couples of their oneness, their “one-flesh” relationship. For this reason, a husband’s obligation to cherish his wife as he does his own body is more than a helpful guide. His sacrificial love is an expression of the sacred marital union. True love is evidenced when husbands and wives have this spiritual, emotional, and physical oneness.

³¹ “Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and remain with his wife, and the two will become one.” (Genesis 2:24) ³² There is profound truth hidden here, which I say concerns the Messiah and the Messianic Community.

Sha’ul appealed to Genesis 2:24, which is God’s initial statement in the Scriptures regarding marriage. The marriage commitment takes precedence over every other human relationship.

³³ However, the text also applies to each of you individually: let each man love his wife as he does himself, and see that the wife respects her husband.

Parent-Child Relationships

6 ¹ Children, what you should do in union with the Lord is obey your parents, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother”—this is the first commandment that embodies a promise—³ “so that it may go well with you, and you may live long in the Land.” (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16)

⁴ Fathers, don’t irritate your children and make them resentful; instead, raise them with the Lord’s kind of discipline and guidance.

Parents have the responsibility both to discipline and to instruct their children. Sha’ul indicated that fathers are to take the lead in this responsibility. Parents are not to stir up anger in their children. Discipline is not to be arbitrary or something done out of anger.

Master-Servant Attitudes

⁵ Slaves, obey your human masters with the same fear, trembling, and single-heartedness with which you obey the Messiah. ⁶ Don’t obey just to win their favor, serving only when they are watching you; but serve as slaves of the Messiah, doing what God wants with all your heart. ⁷ Work willingly as slaves, as people do who are serving not merely human beings but the Lord. ⁸ Remember that whoever does good work, whether he be a slave or a free man, will be rewarded by the Lord.

⁹ And masters, treat your slaves the same way. Don’t threaten them. Remember that in heaven, both you and they have the same Master, and he has no favorites. ^[1]

With the necessary changes, these verses apply to employer-employee relationships. The Brit Hadashah, as well as the Tanakh, includes guidelines for slaves and slavery. These guidelines do not condone slavery, but provide ethical guidance for times and places where slavery existed. Sha’ul’s claim that slaves and masters are equal before God would have shocked his contemporaries. Where the Roman law unfairly discriminated between master and slave, heavenly law does not. Sha’ul’s words in this context provided groundwork for a new sense of brotherhood between races, which were later used to help inspire the anti-slavery movement.

In our next post, we continue to examine Sha’ul’s Letter to the Ephesians.

Click here for the PDF version.

^[1] Ephesians 5:21-6:9.