Ephesians 5-6 The Household Code

​Winter is setting in. I hope you are keeping warm.

I’ve really loved spending time in the book of Ephesians over the last month. This Sunday will be more challenging though! We have come to one of the most difficult, misinterpreted, and abused passages in all of the New Testament: Ephesians 5.21-6.9, which includes instructions for wives to submit to their husbands and for slaves to serve their masters.

To make matters even harder, Paul grounds these instructions within the metaphor of Christ-and-his-body, giving them a theological weight. Thus, it can be hard for us in the twenty-first century to look at these instructions. We know they can perpetuate violence and abuse. They have done over many years of misunderstanding and misuse.

So, we will need to take a fresh look and consider the culture and setting they were originally given in, before we can discern how best to interpret and apply them today.

As we look at these commands, we will see that Paul (the writer) is a spiritual revolutionary, not a political or social one. He grounds his household code here not in social norms (as he does in Titus and 1 Timothy), but in his understanding of the relationship between Christ and the Church.

So, let me here remind you of who you/we/the church are in relation to Christ, in accordance with God’s plan:

God has ‘blessed’, ‘chosen’, ‘adopted’, ‘redeemed,’ ‘forgiven,’ and ‘lavished grace upon’ us (1.3-8)
God has placed all spiritual powers that threaten the Church ‘under Christ’s feet’ (1.20-22)
Christ is the head of the Church, which is his body (1.22-23)
God has raised and glorified the faithful with Christ (2.4-6)
God calls everyone in the Church to grow up into the fullness of Christ (4.13-16)
Each person in the Church has a role to play in its health and wellbeing (4.16)
God renews the minds of the faithful, enabling them to see the world clearly (4.23)
The faithful are exhorted to imitate God’s love as manifested in Christ’s life and death (5.1-2), to live as ‘children of the light’ (5.8), and to be filled with the Spirit (2.18), which involves submitting to one another (5.21).

Adding to this list, the description of Christ and the Church in the Household Code says that:

The Church is the body of Christ, and his ‘flesh and bones’ (5.23, 30, cf. 1.22-23)
The Church is loved by Christ (5.24, cf. 5.29)
Christ gave himself for the Church, which is ‘sanctified’ and ‘cleansed’ through baptism into Christ, and is therefore ‘honoured,’ ‘holy’, and ‘spotless (5.25-27)
Christ’s whole goal and purpose is for us to grow into everything that he was and is, irrespective of our gender, age, ethnicity, class or citizenship status. We are all called to be ‘Christs’ to one another; we are all also called to ‘submit’ to one another, as the Church submits to Christ. We are all commanded to love one another (not just wives and husbands). This is the ideal to work towards in a broken fallen world.

May God help us all to live faithful lives toward Him and one another.

In Christ,

Reverend Tanya Cummings