Ephesians Lesson 6

Ephesians Chapter 5:21 to 6:9

This week Paul continues to give us instructions for moving on into spiritual maturity.  This week Paul describes submission in our sexual natures, our generations, and in our economic roles.

Ephesians 5:21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

All the following hangs on verse 21.  Remember the connection between this scripture and those that follow.

Ephesians 5:22-24 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

This is how women submit and then the submission for the husbands follows.  Women graciously submit by allowing their husbands to lead.  We have a natural need to be respected by our wives.  Sometimes we don’t deserve it but our wives graciously (given as a gift) allow us to lead.  The submission is to the office of husband rooted in the way we are as humans.

Ephesians 5:25-31 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

Husbands submit by ministering to the needs of their wife.  Christ sets the standard and responsibility demands a sort of submission.  Christ humbled Himself and became a servant.  I have trouble seeing this as male dominance.  I see it as something entirely different.  It is a call to being a servant in a deep and profound way.  We as men should stagger at the call and acknowledge we are unable to comply except as enabled by the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:32-33 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.  However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Marriage is elevated to a higher status than we would imagine and we are called to picture Christ in our service to our wife.  

Now, we hear how children submit.

Ephesians 6:1-3 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

Now, we hear how fathers, in a sense, are in submission to their children.  Responsibility brings submission.  

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Next we hear how slaves submit.  This applies to those we work for.    

Ephesians 6:5-8 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

And even masters must, in a sense, submit to those they have responsibility for.

Ephesians 6:9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Notice that this entire list is about submitting one to another.  Even the command to masters is a command to submit to the role and to God’s authority in the role.