(3) The Imitation of God (5:1–2)
1Therefore, become imitators of God, as (his) dear children,
2and lead your lives in love, as Christ for his part loved us1 and gave himself up for us,2 an offering and sacrifice to God, yielding a fragrant odor.
1 The readers, then, are urged to imitate their heavenly Father by showing the same large-hearted forgiveness to others as he has shown to them; by this it will be evident that they are his children, reproducing the family likeness.
The theme of imitation is a recurrent one in Paul. More than once he recommends his own example to his converts for their imitation—only because he was so careful to be an imitator of Christ (especially where it was a matter of considering the interests of others before his own, as in 1 Cor. 10:33–11:1).3 His converts for the most part had seen no example of Christian living before he and his companions came among them and evangelized them; in teaching them how Christians ought to live he made use of practice as well as precept (the verbal precept would in any case have been worthless if it had been contradicted by apostolic practice). To those whom he had not evangelized directly and with whom he enjoyed no face-to-face acquaintance he could not recommend his personal example in the same way. But in believing the gospel they had experienced the forgiving grace of God. No higher example of the grace of forgiveness was possible: let them imitate God in this regard, the more so as they had now been adopted into his family.4
Jesus had taken the same line in teaching his disciples: if they showed love to their enemies and did them good, then, he said, “you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35–36; cf. Matt. 5:44–48).5
2 The example of Christ is appealed to alongside the example of God: their way of life must be marked by love, as Christ’s was. He showed his love by giving himself up to death on their behalf; the practical implication is clear, even if Paul does not spell it out expressly here as John does: “by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).6
In an earlier letter Paul manifests his personal appreciation of this love when he speaks of “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). It is open to every believer to use the same language: Christ loved each one of them individually and gave himself up for them, just as he loved the whole church collectively and gave himself up for it (Eph. 5:25). Paul can speak of Christ as giving himself up (cf. Gal. 1:4)7 and of the Father as giving him up (cf. Rom. 8:32); in the whole ordo salutis the Father and the Son act as one. When the Son’s giving himself up is spoken of, the language of sacrifice lies ready to hand. The lifelong obedience of Christ was an acceptable sacrifice to God: willing obedience is the only kind of sacrifice that God desires.8 His crowning act of obedience in saying “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Mark 14:36 and parallels), and in embracing the cross in that spirit, was preeminently acceptable. The writer to the Hebrews consistently speaks of the work of Christ in terms of sacrifice: Paul does so occasionally.9 The “fragrant odor” of all the main types of sacrifice in the levitical ritual betokened their acceptance by God;10 in the NT the language, like the idea of sacrifice in its totality, is transferred to the spiritual and personal realm. It is used of the perfect self-offering of Christ and of his people’s dedication of themselves and their means. The one other place in the Pauline writings where this phrase—“a fragrant odor”—occurs is in Phil. 4:18, where Paul uses it of the gift which his friends in Philippi had sent him: “a fragrant odor, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God.”
(4) From Darkness to Light (5:3–14)
3As for fornication and every form of impurity or covetousness, let such things not even be named among you: such (reticence) is fitting for holy people.
4Have nothing to do with shameful talk and foolish speech or levity: such things are not fitting. (Let your conversation be marked) rather by thanksgiving.
5Of this you are well aware: no fornicator or impure or covetous person (that is, an idolater)11 has any inheritance in the kingdom which is Christ’s and God’s.12
6Let no one beguile you with empty arguments: it is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming on the disobedient.
7Therefore, do not become partakers with them.
8Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord: lead your lives as children of light—
9for the fruit of light13 (consists) in all goodness and righteousness and truth—
10and approve what is well pleasing to the Lord.14
11Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them;
12for their secret actions are shameful even to mention,
13but they are all exposed when they are revealed by the light. For “everything that is revealed is light.”
14Therefore, as it is said,
Wake up, O thou that sleepest,
And from the dead arouse thee,
And Christ will shine upon thee.15
3 Now comes a further list of vices to be avoided, partly overlapping those already mentioned, although here it is not simply their practice, but the very mention of them, that is deprecated. The injunction, “let such things not even be named among you,” does not imply a mealy-mouthed refusal to call a spade a spade,16 after the fashion of some modern Bible versions17 (else the vices would not be named so plainly as they are in this and similar lists); it means rather that such unholy things should not be acceptable subjects of conversation among people whom God has called to be holy. Fornication, impurity, and covetousness are included in the fivefold catalogue of vices in Col. 3:5.
4 If subjects of conversation are in view, further direction in this area of life is provided. “Shameful talk”18 might be foul language, or it might be talk about shameful things (as v. 12 may indicate). “Foolish speech”19 is at best a waste of time, but it can lead to grave trouble. Life is a serious matter, and provides ample material for serious and profitable discussion. The term rendered “levity” is defined by Aristotle as “cultured insolence”; he regards it as a quality characteristic of the young, who are “fond of laughter.”20 But here it is a quality not appropriate for the people of God. The Colossians have been urged to be known as thankful people (Col. 3:15); believers have received so many blessings from God, in grace as well as in nature, that thanksgiving should be a dominant note in their speech as well as in their thought.21
5 As for the practitioners of the vices mentioned in v. 3, they have no part or lot in the heavenly kingdom. They are not, indeed, left without hope; the gate of repentance stands open. But those who persist in such practices—even if, by some mischance, they bear the Christian name—show thereby that they are excluded from eternal life. Paul found it necessary to warn his converts repeatedly about this. He reminds the Corinthians that “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God,” and spells out what is meant by “the unrighteous” by listing practitioners of ten vices (including the three mentioned in Eph. 5:3, 5) whose way of life debars them from the kingdom.22 He adds a note of hope, however: “And such were some of you,” he says; “but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9–11). But the fact that they still have to be warned against such vices shows how strong, in a pagan environment, was the temptation to indulge in them even after conversion. The warning here is made the more emphatic by the double verb with which it is introduced: “Be well assured of this,” or, more probably, “you know very well.”23
If, as Col. 3:5 affirms, covetousness or avarice is idolatry, it follows that the covetous or avaricious person is an idolater, as is said here: he worships the created thing (whatever the object of his covetousness may be) instead of the Creator.
The kingdom in which such persons have no inheritance is described, more fully than elsewhere, as “the kingdom which is Christ’s and God’s.” There is a tendency in Paul’s letters to reserve the phrase “the kingdom of God” for the future and eternal phase of the heavenly kingdom and to consider the kingdom of Christ as the present phase, which is destined to merge with the future phase.24 But those whose lives are marred by the vices mentioned cannot be in any sense joint-heirs with the Christ who is at present reigning until all his enemies are subjugated, just as they cannot hope for admission to the eternal kingdom: they are self-excluded from the kingdom in all its phases—the kingdom which is both Christ’s and God’s.
6 Then, as now, sophistries encouraging ethical permissiveness were current; the readers are warned not to be misled by them, for they are “empty arguments,” having no more substance than the “empty illusion” of another kind against which the Colossian Christians are put on their guard (Col. 2:8).25 Those sophistries fail to reckon with God, and ignore the fact that he has set his canon against the practices and attitudes referred to—not by the imposition of an arbitrary ban but by implanting his law within the human constitution, in such a way that those who defy it reap a harvest of retribution. Whether the ongoing process of retribution is uppermost in the apostle’s mind (as in Rom. 1:18–32) or the “wrath to come” at the end-time (as in 1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9), it remains true (as was said in Col. 3:6) that these are the things that incur the wrath of God. Those on whom it falls are “the disobedient” (lit., “the sons of disobedience”), as they have been called already in Eph. 2:2.26 They are disobedient to the law of God, whether they know it in codified form or as “written on their hearts” and confirmed by the voice of conscience (Rom. 2:15).
7 “Do not become partakers with such people,” the readers are warned. It is not merely associating with them that is forbidden (as the RSV has it); those who associate with them run the risk of sharing their inheritance, which is at the farthest remove possible from “the inheritance of the saints in light” in which the people of Christ have a share (Col. 1:12). The word “partakers” is literally “joint-partakers”;27 it is the word used in Eph. 3:6 to emphasize Gentile believers’ full participation in the promises of God held out to faith. These two forms of “joint-partaking” are mutually exclusive.
8 “What fellowship has light with darkness?” asks Paul in another letter (2 Cor. 6:14)—the answer obviously implied being “None!”28 For believers to be joint-partakers with the “sons of disobedience” would be for the children of light to have fellowship with the children of darkness—a moral impossibility.
The Colossian Christians were reminded that God had rescued them from the dominion of darkness and transferred them to the kingdom of his Son. This was equally true of the recipients of this companion-letter. They too had once been under the dominion of darkness but now they had become “light in the Lord.” However characteristic the light-darkness vocabulary is of the thought and literature of the Qumran community,29 there is no need to conclude that the use of this vocabulary here implies anything like direct Qumran influence.30 In the NT the light-darkness vocabulary is a special mark of the Johannine writings, but it is not absent from Paul. “You are all sons of light and sons of the day,” the Thessalonian Christians are told; “we are not of the night or of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:5); the Philippian Christians are said to “shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15).31
The Qumran use of the light-darkness vocabulary has this in common with the NT use: it has a thoroughly ethical content. There is nothing here of the substantial dualism which the antithesis between light and darkness regularly expresses in gnostic teaching. In the NT, as at Qumran, the antithesis is between doing right and doing wrong. The children of light do the will of God; that is what is meant by the direction: “lead your lives as children of light.”
9 The lives of children of light will yield the “fruit of light”—that is, “all goodness and righteousness and truth.” The fruit of light, in fact, is identical with the “fruit of the Spirit” in Gal. 5:22–23; it is not surprising that the latter reading has found its way into the text of Eph. 5:9 in many manuscripts (including the oldest extant Pauline manuscript). This ethical sense of “fruit” seems to be unknown to the Qumran writers.
Goodness, righteousness, and truth are basic moral qualities. Goodness belongs to the “fruit of the Spirit” in Gal. 5:22 where, as a specific virtue among others, it may mean something like “generosity”; but its range of meaning is as wide as that of the adjective “good.” One may think of the “good works” for which, according to Eph. 2:10, God has created his people in Christ Jesus; similarly Paul prays that the Colossians may “bear fruit in every good work” (Col. 1:10). As for righteousness, the “new man” has been described above as “created according to God in righteousness” (Eph. 4:24). Paul prays that his Philippian friends may be “filled with the fruit of righteousness” (Phil. 1:11), and the writer to the Hebrews speaks of discipline as yielding “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). Truth is the antithesis of falsehood, which the readers have already been urged to “put off”; the truth of speech which they are exhorted to practice one with another (Eph. 4:25) should be the expression of that “truth in the inward being” which is divinely implanted in the children of light.
10 The followers of Christ will naturally desire to do what pleases him. This was Paul’s own ambition, and he cherished the same ambition for his Christian friends (1 Cor. 4:4; 2 Cor. 5:9).32 They should not only “try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (RSV) but have their minds so attuned to his that, when they have learned what pleases him, they may approve it. The same verb,33 which is capable of both shades of meaning, is used in Rom. 12:2, where the renewing of believers’ minds leads them to “prove—and thereby also to approve—what is the will of God, all that is good and acceptable and perfect.” Paul similarly prays that the church of Philippi may be given spiritual discernment to “approve what is excellent” (Phil. 1:9–10).34
11 The “works of darkness” are called “unfruitful” because, unlike the deeds that mark out the children of light, they are dead and sterile. We may compare the antithesis between “the works of the flesh” and “the fruit of the Spirit” in Gal. 5:19, 22. (In other contexts the figure of “fruit” may be used differently, as in Rom. 6:21, where it refers to the outcome of a sinful life.) There is no difference in practice between being joint-partakers with the children of darkness and sharing in their works.35 Such works must not be condoned or excused, but exposed for what they are.
It is not necessary to go along with K. G. Kuhn and recognize here a “continuity” of Essene tradition, but he does helpfully illustrate the duty of exposing the works of darkness from Qumran literature. It is laid down as the duty of each member of the community “who sees another member breaking God’s commandment … to rebuke the person concerned, i.e. to say to him, What you have done or are doing is not just in the eyes of God. He must not express this reprimand angrily or with pride or with hatred, but rather ‘with real faithfulness, humility and merciful love.’ But he must make the other aware of his sin on the same day and may not postpone the matter until the next day, otherwise he is held responsible before God for any further sinning on the part of the other.”36 The same procedure, it may be recalled, is laid down for the community of Jesus’ disciples in Matt. 18:15.37 But not only the sins of fellow-members of the community are to be rebuked: Kuhn adds that “when, according to Mark 6:18, John the Baptist comes before Herod and tells him, ‘… it is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife’, we have an instance of the Essene practice of ‘correction’.”38 (But John stood in the authentic prophetic tradition of Israel in thus pointing out to a ruler the error of his ways.)
12 If “their secret actions are shameful even to mention,” why expose them to the light of day? Perhaps because exposure to the light is the best way to make them wither and die. Schlier suggests that Paul may allude to the libertine rites of many mystery cults:39 if they were made public, they might lose their glamor (just as the spells of the Ephesian specialists in magic lost their potency when they were openly divulged, according to Acts 19:18). This could be so, but nothing in the context requires a reference to mystery cults. However, it is not by accident that the term orgia, used of mystery rites, has developed semantically into our word “orgies,” which, in the sense which it bears for us, may be very much what is intended here: such things are “unspeakably shameful.”40
13 That all things are “exposed when they are revealed by the light” takes up a proverbial saying, along the lines of Luke 8:17, “For nothing is hid that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light.” The words of John 3:20–21 are also apposite: “For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed; but he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.”
For the collocation of the verbs to be “exposed” and “revealed by the light” K. G. Kuhn compares a passage in the Damascus document, concerning an errant member of the Qumran community: “when his deeds are revealed by the light, he shall be sent away from the congregation like one whose lot has not fallen in the midst of those ‘taught by God.’ According to his sin shall men of discernment expose (correct) him, until the day when he shall stand again in the conclave of the men of perfect holiness.”41 But it does not appear to be fellow-Christians or their unworthy actions that are primarily in view in Eph. 5:13. If they do commit things that bring the Christian name into disrepute, then indeed their conduct calls for reproof; but the reference here is wider.
14 The paraenesis on light and darkness is clinched by a quotation, introduced by the same formula42 as the quotation from Ps. 68:18 in Eph. 4:8, but not identifiable as a biblical text. The words quoted do indeed echo one or two OT passages—Isa. 26:19 (“O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!”) and Isa. 60:1 (“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you”), and perhaps even Jon. 1:6 (“What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise … !”)—but the echo, especially in Greek, is a distant one. The quotation is a tristich, best interpreted as a primitive baptismal hymn, in which the congregation greets the new convert as he or she emerges sacramentally from the sleep of spiritual death into the light of life.43 The ethical admonition is reinforced by a call to the readers to remember their baptism and its significance, just as in Rom. 6:3–4 Paul refutes the suggestion that one should “continue in sin that grace may abound” by appealing to the Roman Christians’ baptismal experience: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” If ever the readers of the present letter were tempted to forget that, while once they had been children of darkness, they were now children of light, let them remember their baptism and the words they heard then: they would be left in no doubt about their present status and its moral implications.
Attempts have been made to strengthen the identification of the tristich as a baptismal hymn by the argument that its rhythm is that found in the initiation formulae of various Hellenistic cults. The formula most commonly adduced is one quoted by Firmicus Maternus as uttered by the person newly initiated into the Attis mystery.44 Such formal parallels are difficult to establish, and throw no light on the meaning of what is, in context and content, an explicitly Christian composition. Clement of Alexandria quotes this tristich and accompanies it with another tristich amplifying the reference to Christ in its third clause:
(5) “Be Filled with the Spirit” (5:15–20)
15So then, be careful about your conduct:46 do not live unwisely but as wise persons,
16buying up the present opportunity, because the days are evil.
17Therefore, do not be foolish, but discern47 what the Lord’s will48 is.
18Do not be intoxicated with wine—for with that comes dissipation—but be filled with the Spirit,
19addressing one another in psalms, hymns, and Spirit-inspired songs, singing49 and making melody in your hearts50 to the Lord,
20giving thanks at all times for everything to our God and Father51 in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 A further paraenetic paragraph now opens, setting out more general principles for Christian living. Like the Colossians, the recipients of this letter are admonished to conduct themselves wisely in the world (Col. 4:5). They form a small minority, and because of their distinctive ways their lives will be scrutinized by others: the reputation of the gospel is bound up with their public behavior. Hence the need for care and wisdom, lest the Christian cause should be inadvertently jeopardized by thoughtless speech or action on the part of Christians.
16 The injunction to “buy up the present opportunity”52 is repeated from Col. 4:5; in both places it has special reference to Christian witness in the world. The statement that “the days are evil” may imply that, whatever difficulties lie in the way of Christian witness now, they will increase as time goes on. It must be borne in mind not only that the present time remains an “evil age” (Gal. 1:4) even if it has been invaded by the powers of the age to come but also that, as the Corinthians were warned, “the appointed time has grown very short” (1 Cor. 7:29), so that opportunities must be exploited while they last.53 The perspective on the end-time has not changed radically since Paul’s earlier letters; moreover, from Rome to Judaea there were signs that the relative freedom from molestation currently enjoyed by Christians was liable shortly to be curtailed.
17 It is always incumbent on the people of Christ to know and to do his will—the readers have already been told to “approve what is well pleasing to the Lord” (v. 10)54—but it is doubly necessary in the present situation. The doing of his will is not a matter of irrational impulse but of intelligent reflection and action.
18 “Do not be intoxicated with wine” is yet another OT quotation—from Prov. 23:31 (LXX).55 It is introduced here not so much for its own sake (although such a warning is never untimely) as for the sake of its antithesis: “be filled with the Spirit.” Overindulgence in wine leads to dissipation, which is good neither for the winebibber nor for others; the fullness of the Spirit is helpful both for those who are filled with him and for those with whom they associate. The noun rendered “dissipation” appears also in Tit. 1:6 (where the children of church elders must not be chargeable with dissipation) and 1 Pet. 4:4 (in reference to the profligacy which marked the former lives of people recently converted from paganism to Christianity); the corresponding adverb is used of the “riotous living” in which the prodigal son wasted his substance (Luke 15:13).56
“Be filled with the Spirit” is literally “Be filled in spirit”;57 this has given rise to the question whether the human spirit of the believer or the Spirit of God is meant. The same phrase, “in spirit,” occurs in three other places in this letter—in Eph. 2:22, with regard to the new community of believers as the dwelling-place of God; in 3:5, with regard to the revelation of the “mystery” of the new community to God’s “holy apostles and prophets”; and in 6:18, with regard to the prayer life of Christians. In those three places the Holy Spirit is certainly intended, and equally certainly it is he that is intended here. The Holy Spirit is given to believers to fill them with his presence and power. The choice of drunkenness as an antithesis to the fullness of the Spirit is not unparalleled: when the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost the resultant phenomena moved some of the spectators to say in derision that they were “filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13),58 and Paul had to warn the Corinthians that a stranger, coming into their company when they were all exercising the spiritual gift of tongues, would conclude that they were mad (1 Cor. 14:23). But the Spirit given by God to his children is the Spirit “of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7);59 the normal exercise of intelligence is not eclipsed but enhanced when he is in control.
The antithesis between wine and the Spirit does not suggest that the Spirit is a sort of fluid with which one may be filled, any more than the collocation of baptism in water with baptism in the Spirit suggests that the Spirit is a sort of fluid in which one may be dipped.60 Whatever grammatical constructions are used, the Spirit operates as a personal subject—“the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
19 If the Spirit is the source of their fullness, then, instead of songs which celebrate the joys of Bacchus, their mouths will be filled with words which build up the lives of others and bring glory to the living and true God. The reference to “psalms, hymns, and Spirit-inspired songs” is reproduced from Col. 3:16.61 The construction of the clauses is rather different, but the general tenor is the same. The meetings of those early Christians must have been musical occasions, as they not only sang and made melody to the Lord, in their hearts as well as with their tongues, but addressed one another for mutual help and blessing in compositions already known to the community or in songs improvised under immediate inspiration. Testimonies to the prevalence of music in their fellowship and worship have been cited in the exposition and notes on Col. 3:16. One of these testimonies—Pliny’s report of antiphonal singing “to Christ as God”62—has a bearing on both clauses in this verse, where the singing is antiphonal (“addressing one another”) and is offered “to the Lord.” The hymn quoted in v. 14 could serve as one example of their “addressing one another.” If “singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord” in the present context has as its parallel in Col. 3:16 “singing with thanksgiving in your hearts to God,” it reminds us that in the church, from the earliest days, praise has been offered alike to God and to Christ. Thus in the Apocalypse, where the worship presented by the holy ones before the heavenly throne is echoed by the church on earth, “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, … for thou didst create all things” (Rev. 4:11) has as its counterpart the “new song”: “Worthy art thou, … for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst accomplish redemption” (Rev. 5:9), while both God and Christ are conjoined in the doxology: “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13).
20 The call for thanksgiving is made again (cf. the end of v. 4) in the most comprehensive terms, in language echoing Col. 3:17.63 The words “at all times for everything” sum up “whatever you do, in word or in action, do it all” in the Colossians passage, while “… in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” there has as its counterpart here: “giving thanks … to our God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”64 A life filled with such thanksgiving will find spontaneous expression in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
5. “BE SUBJECT” (5:21–6:9)
(1) Mutual Submission (5:21)
21Be subject one to another in the fear of Christ.65
21 The household code which follows (Eph. 5:22–6:9) is a special application of the Christian grace of submission;66 it is introduced by this general exhortation to mutual submissiveness. Christians should not be self-assertive, each insisting on getting his or her own way. As the Philippian believers are told, they should be humble enough to count others better than themselves and put the interests of others before their own, following the example of Christ, who “emptied himself,” “humbled himself,” and “became obedient,” even when the path of obedience led to death on the cross (Phil. 2:3–8). Out of reverence for their Lord, who set such a precedent, his followers should place themselves at one another’s disposal, living so that their forbearance is a matter of public knowledge (Phil. 4:7), even when others are encouraged on this account to take advantage of them (1 Cor. 6:7). Even those who fill positions of responsibility and honor in the Christian community, to whom their fellow-believers are urged to render submission and loving respect (1 Cor. 16:16; 1 Thess. 5:12–13), earn such recognition by being servants, not lords (cf. 1 Pet. 5:3). For all his exercise of apostolic authority when the situation called for it, Paul invites his converts to regard him and his colleagues as “your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5).67
(2) Wives and Husbands (5:22–33)
22Wives, (be subject)68 to your own husbands as to the Lord,
23for a husband is head of his wife, as also Christ is head of the church, being himself69 savior of the body.
24But as70 the church is subject to Christ, so also let wives be to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives,71 as also Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it,
26in order to sanctify it, purifying it by the washing of water with (the) word,
27in order to present the church to himself invested with glory, free from spot, wrinkle, or anything of the sort, but holy and blameless.
28So indeed72 husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.
29No one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ73 does the church,
30for we are members of his body.74
31“This is why a man will leave his father and mother75 and be joined to his wife,76 and the two will become one flesh.”
32This mystery is a deep one: I am quoting it in reference to Christ and to the church.77
33But as for you, individually, let each man love his own wife as he loves himself and let the wife reverence her husband.
While the household code is introduced by a plea for mutual submissiveness,78 the submissiveness enjoined in the code itself is not mutual. As in the parallel code in Col. 3:18–4:1, wives are directed to be subject to their husbands, children to be obedient to their parents, and slaves to their masters, but the submissiveness is not reciprocated: husbands are told to love their wives, parents to bring up their children wisely, and masters to treat their slaves considerately. As for the section dealing with wives and husbands, its distinctive feature in Ephesians is that the relationship between husband and wife is treated as analogical to that between Christ and the church.
22 No verb is expressed in v. 22, the imperative “be subject” (a participle in the Greek text) being understood from v. 21.79 There is no special emphasis on the pronoun “own” in “your own husbands” (as though a contrast were pointed between their own husbands and other women’s husbands); it might be said that we have here an instance of the “exhausted” use of this pronoun, but it seems to have been a feature of household codes.80
Whereas in Col. 3:18 wives are told to be subject to their husbands “as is fitting in the Lord,” the phrase here, “as to the Lord,”81 has a rather different force. “The Lord” is certainly Christ and not the husband (despite the analogy of 1 Pet. 3:6); the singular noun does not stand in apposition to the plural “husbands.” The implication rather is that Christian wives’ submission to their husbands is one aspect of their obedience to the Lord. This is found to be the more appropriate when their submission to their husbands is seen to have a counterpart in the church’s submission to Christ.
23 That “a husband is head of his wife” has been stated as part of the ordinance of creation in 1 Cor. 11:3, although there the sense is probably “woman’s head is man” (NEB), “head” meaning “source” or “origin.”82 The reference is to the narrative of Gen. 2:21–24, where the woman is made from the man (a narrative which has influenced the thought and language of the present passage too). As Adam was the source of his wife’s existence, so the husband is “head” of the wife. But in this context the word “head” has the idea of authority attached to it after the analogy of Christ’s headship over the church. As in 1 Cor. 11:3–15 the argument depends on an oscillation between the literal and figurative senses of “head,”83 so in the present argument from analogy different senses of the word are involved. For when Christ is said to be “head of the church,” that involves the correlative figure of the church as his body (Eph. 1:22–23; 4:15–16; cf. Col. 1:18; 2:19)—a correlative which is absent from the husband-wife relationship.84 (This is not the force of “their own bodies” in v. 28 or “his own flesh” in v. 29.)
The relevance of the appended statement that Christ is himself “savior of the body”85 is not obvious. That Christ is the Savior of his people is the essence of the gospel, but is it implied that in some sense the husband is “savior” of the wife? An analogy has been found in Tob. 6:18 (17) where Raphael, speaking to Tobias about his cousin Sarah, who is to be his wife, says, “you will save her”—but there it is Sarah’s deliverance from the disastrous attentions of the demon Asmodaeus that is in view. According to W. Foerster, Christ’s being “savior of the body” is elucidated in vv. 25–27, in the sense that by his self-sacrifice he has purified the church for himself in order to present it to himself in glory at the consummation, and the conduct of husbands to their wives is to be “in some sense” parallel to this conduct on Christ’s part.86 But, it may be asked, in what sense? A reference to the husband’s role as his wife’s protector may be implied, but anything more detailed is difficult to discern. At the other extreme J. P. Sampley thinks that in this particular respect there is a contrast between Christ and the earthly husband: “Christ, unlike the husband, is the savior of his own body.”87 The adversative particle “but” at the beginning of v. 24 is taken to indicate that a contrast is being pointed; but even if this is so, it is not clear that this is the contrast.
24 Referring to “many commentators” who give full adversative force to the conjunction “but” at the beginning of this verse by interpreting the preceding words “as intended to enhance the headship of Christ, as being vastly superior to that of the husband” (the conjunction then meaning “but notwithstanding this difference”), J. A. Robinson points out that the conjunction need not have adversative force. It is used here rather “to fix the attention on the special point of immediate interest.” The apostle, having made the general point that “it is the function of the head to plan for the safety of the body, to secure it from danger and to provide for its welfare,” checks himself from a fuller exposition of this and resumes his main line of thought: “but—for this is the matter in hand—as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything.”88 This is the most satisfactory account of the connection between vv. 23 and 24, since v. 24 is largely resumptive of v. 22, adding a reference to the church’s submission to Christ as the pattern for the wife’s submission to her husband. That wives should be submissive to their husbands “in everything”89 follows from the undoubted fact—too undoubted to call for specific mention—that the church is submissive to Christ in everything.90
25 As in Col. 3:19, husbands are exhorted to love their wives, but here the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church is set forth as the pattern for the husband’s love for his wife. This does not imply a nobler view of the institution of marriage than that expressed in the earlier Pauline letters: even there Paul shows himself to be a “philogamist,”91 regarding matrimony as the norm for the majority of Christians and commending it as a way of life sanctified by God (1 Cor. 7:3–14). In 2 Cor. 11:2–3 he has already used the marriage relationship as a figure for the union between Christ and the church; in the present household code this figure is worked out in greater detail. It is sometimes pointed out that the Greek word for “bride” appears neither here nor in 2 Cor. 11:2–392—as though its appearance were necessary when bridal language is so plainly used. In both places the bridal language is used by way of a simile; there is no reason to give ontological status to a figure of speech. The believing community is here compared to a maiden for whom Christ laid down his life that she might become his bride. In v. 2 of this chapter Paul has said that “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us”;93 now he repeats the statement, except that instead of “us” the object is “the church,” referred to by the feminine form of the third person singular pronoun (“her”). Christ’s love for the church is a self-sacrificing love, and the same, it is implied, should be true of husbands’ love for their wives. The idea of self-sacrifice inheres not in the verb “love” as such, but in its context.94
26 Before the bride was presented to the bridegroom she received a cleansing bath and was then dressed in her bridal array. This provides part of the imagery in Yahweh’s account of his treatment of the foundling in Ezek. 16:6–14, where he reminds her that, when she reached marriageable age, “I bathed you with water … I clothed you also with embroidered cloth … and I decked you with ornaments.”95 So here, the purpose of Christ’s giving himself up for the church is said to be her sanctification and cleansing with water. It is pointed out that the Hebrew verb “to sanctify” is used, in appropriate contexts, in the sense of betrothal (“to take someone apart for oneself as a wife”), so that the present passage might mean: “he gave himself up for her in order to betroth her to himself.”96 But it is unnecessary to see this special meaning here: the verb “sanctify” anticipates the adjective “holy” toward the end of v. 27.
The sanctification takes places by means of cleansing “by the washing of water with the word.” The verb “cleanse” or “purify” occurs in 2 Cor. 7:1, in the exhortation: “let us cleanse ourselves97 from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” But here it is not the believers who cleanse themselves, but Christ who cleanses them, as also in Tit. 2:14 (the only other instance of the verb in the Pauline corpus), where he is said to have given himself “for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”98 When believers are exhorted to purify themselves, something in the nature of ethical discipline is suggested; but when Christ is said to purify them (as in our present passage and in Tit. 2:14), the reference is probably to his activity as baptizer.99
The noun translated “washing” occurs in only one other place in the NT—in Tit. 3:5, where Christ is said to have saved his people “by the washing of regeneration100 and renewal in the Holy Spirit.” The reference is to Christian initiation, in which the bestowal of the Spirit and baptism in water play a central part—the baptism involving not only the external washing but the inward and spiritual grace which it signifies. When Ananias of Damascus said to Paul, “Rise and be baptized, and wash away101 your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16), he implied that the external washing symbolized the more important inward cleansing from sin. And the participial clause, “calling on his name”102 (that is, the name of Christ), throws light on the phrase “with the word” or “with a word” in our present text: the “word” or “utterance” is the convert’s confession of the name of Christ as baptism is administered.103 A similar emphasis, in slightly different language, is found in 1 Pet. 3:21: “baptism … now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as a pledge to God proceeding from a good conscience [a conscience cleansed from sin], through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The “pledge”104 in which the convert’s purified conscience makes its response to the saving act of God in Christ is the “word” which here accompanies the “washing of water.”
If “baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ … and our engagement to be the Lord’s,”105 the engagement, which is made in the heart but expressed with the lips, is the “word” of Ephesians and the “pledge” of 1 Peter. “Each individual member of the Church had become dedicated to God at the time of his symbolic purification from sin; and what happened to each separate individual is said to have happened to the entire New Society”;106 the whole church, personified as a bride, is said in effect to have been, “washed, … sanctified, … justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).107
27 In his earlier bridal analogy (2 Cor. 11:2) Paul speaks of himself as the paranymphios whose role it is to “present” the church to Christ “as a pure virgin.”108 He may have been acquainted with the Jewish conception of Moses as fulfilling a similar role in presenting Israel as a bride to Yahweh (although this is not attested in literature until later).109 Without the bridal imagery he speaks in Col. 1:28 of his purpose “to present everyone perfect in Christ.”110 There, as in 2 Cor. 11:2, the time of the presentation is probably the parousia of Christ; and here it is evidently at his parousia that Christ plans “to present the church to himself.”111 But here Christ is his own paranymphios, just as he has already done all that is necessary to make the church fit to be presented to him as his bride—sanctified and purified and now (at the parousia) “invested with glory.”112 So John in the Apocalypse sees the bride, the holy Jerusalem, “having the glory of God” (Rev. 21:9–11). The royal bride in Ps. 45:13 is described as “all-glorious within, clothed in gold embroidery”; the adornment of the glorified church is the perfection of character with which her Lord has endowed her, so that she is “free from spot, wrinkle, or anything of the sort.”113 The OT law envisaged a situation in which a husband, having married a wife, might find “something unseemly”114 in her (Deut. 24:1); no such possibility exists for the glorified church, whom her Lord has fitted for himself and graced with all the “seemliness” that he could desire to find in her. Spots, wrinkles,115 and the like are physical blemishes which might make an earthly bride distasteful to her bridegroom; here they are spiritual and ethical defects, which have been removed by the Lord’s sanctifying and cleansing act.
Thus the purpose of his sanctifying and cleansing act has been achieved: that the church should be “holy and blameless.” In Eph. 1:4 the purpose for which God chose his people in Christ “before the world’s foundation” is said to be that they should be “holy and blameless before him.”116 Similarly, in Col. 1:22, believers are told that Christ has reconciled them to God by his death “in order to present you holy, blameless, and irreproachable in his presence”—and there, be it noted (as in Eph. 5:27), it is Christ who presents them. The adjectives which are used in the plural in those two passages to describe individual believers are used here in the singular to describe the church.117
To this picture of the church’s being presented to Christ as his bride analogies have been found in the “sacred marriage”118 of ancient ritual and in the “heavenly syzygy”119 of some gnostic schemes. But such analogies are fortuitous; they are certainly not conscious. The sacred marriage of the fertility cults was designed to ensure the production of fruit; no such idea is present here. The gnostic “syzygy” probably owes something to the bridal terminology of the present passage and related NT texts. If a background for this terminology is sought, the OT portrayal of Israel as the bride of Yahweh provides all the background necessary.120
28 The statement that “husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies” applies to this special relationship the more general commandment of Lev. 19:18, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”121 There is a reason for the use of “their own bodies” in place of “themselves,” but the echo of the second of the two great commandments is scarcely to be missed. In more than one place in the Talmud this commandment is quoted as a reason for the husband’s behaving toward his wife with propriety, “lest he find something repulsive in her.”122 And the same word translated “neighbor,” in its feminine form, is used repeatedly by the lover in the Song of Songs when addressing his beloved or speaking about her to others (Cant. 1:9, 15; 2:2, 10, 13; 4:1, 7; 5:2; 6:4).123
The locution “as their own bodies” instead of “as themselves” is due to the influence of Gen. 2:24, the text quoted in v. 31 below. Since husband and wife are “one flesh” or one body, to love one’s wife is not merely a matter of loving someone else as oneself; it is in effect loving oneself. Adam recognized Eve as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23); to love her therefore was to love part of himself. Hence, “he who loves his own wife loves himself.”
29 That it is natural to love oneself is evident from the way in which most people care for themselves, and especially for their bodies. They feed their bodies, clothe their bodies, and do what they can for their comfort. To the statement that “no one ever hated his own flesh” it might be replied that some people have practiced severity to their bodies, starving them, subjecting them to all sorts of discomfort, flagellating them, and so forth. But such “severity to the body” is unnatural; it is deprecated in Col. 2:23 as powerless to promote true humility. It is natural conduct that is in view in the present context: just as a man provides for his own comfort and well-being, so he should provide for his wife’s. Again, Christ is invoked as the perfect exemplar: he makes every provision for the church. It is hardly necessary to say that the expression “his own flesh” has nothing to do with the distinctive Pauline use of “flesh” in the sense of that basically perverted element in human nature which puts self in the place of God;124 it is simply a synonym of “his own body” (under the influence of “one flesh” in Gen. 2:24).125
30 Because “we are members of his body,” and collectively “his body,” Christ “nourishes and cherishes” us. The church as the body of Christ and the church as the bride of Christ are two concepts with distinct origins, but a link between the two is found in Gen. 2:24, where husband and wife become “one flesh.” The fact that “no one ever hated his own flesh” underlies the maxim that one should love one’s neighbor—and preeminently one’s wife—as oneself. Christ’s love for his “neighbor,” and preeminently for the church, is the paradigm for a husband’s love of his wife; the paradigm is made the more effective by importing into it the thought of the church as the body of Christ, already expounded in this letter, together with the thought of individual believers as members of his body.126
The phrase “of his body” was later amplified by the epexegetic “of his flesh and of his bones” (as in the KJV). These additional words are self-evidently derived from Gen. 2:23. H. Schlier may be right in detecting an antignostic tendency in their insertion here; he points out that Irenaeus uses them as an antignostic argument.127
31 What has been said thus far about the unity of husband and wife is now reinforced by an OT quotation. In Gen. 2:24, after describing how woman was taken from the side of man to be his companion, the narrator adds the comment: “This is why a man128 will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” In Jesus’ response to a question about divorce in Mark 10:6–8 this comment is attached to the statement that “from the beginning of creation ‘God made them male and female’ ” (Gen. 1:27);129 the two texts together constitute an argument against divorce: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:9). (In the parallel passage in Matt. 19:4–5 the comment of Gen. 2:24 is quoted as an utterance of God: “he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘This is why a man will leave his father and mother….’ ”)130
It is evidently by sexual union that husband and wife are viewed as becoming “one flesh”; indeed, in 1 Cor. 6:16 Paul applies Gen. 2:24 to the most casual intercourse with a prostitute: “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot becomes one body with her?” (In taking this line, it has been said, Paul “displays a psychological insight into human sexuality which is altogether exceptional by first-century standards,” insisting that the sexual act is one “which, by reason of its very nature, engages and expresses the whole personality in such a way as to constitute a unique mode of self-disclosure and self-commitment.”)131 In 1 Cor. 6:17, by analogy (and contrast) with the “one flesh” or “one body” union of man and woman, the union of the believer and Christ is said to be one of spirit: “whoever is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” But the body language of Ephesians makes it natural for the union both of husband and wife and of Christ and the church to be equally expressed in terms of “one body.”
Referring to the use of Gen. 2:24 in rabbinical halakhah as providing a basis for divorce, J. P. Sampley asks, “Could the author of Ephesians be confronted with a need to reclaim Gen. 2:24 as … grounds for marriage, not divorce?”132
32 “This mystery is great” apparently refers to the scripture just quoted (Gen. 2:24). Attempts have been made to understand “mystery” here in a sense similar to that which it has earlier in Ephesians,133 but this is not easy. The “mystery” of Eph. 3:3–4, made known to Paul and manifested by his ministry, relates more particularly to the incorporation of believing Gentiles along with believing Jews as fellow-members of the one body of Christ. While the conception of the church as the body of Christ finds expression in the present context, it is incidental to the portrayal of the church as his bride, and the inclusion of Gentiles as well as Jews in the body receives no mention here. Here it is not God’s eternal plan of salvation in Christ that is in view so much as the relationship of life and love between Christ and the church, of which the husband-wife relationship is treated as a parable.134 It has, indeed, been suggested that “mystery” in this verse has much the same sense as “parable”; but it is better to take it as a reference to the OT text reproduced in the previous sentence.135
We have, in fact, an example here of the principle of exegesis found regularly in the Qumran commentaries and not unknown in the NT. To the Qumran commentators a text of scripture was a mystery, a rāz, as they called it in Hebrew.136 They treated all OT scripture as prophetic, and believed that, when God made known his purpose to the prophets, he revealed so much, but withheld part (especially the part relating to the time of its fulfilment).137 Thus the text of scripture, while it embodied a divine revelation, remained a mystery until God made known the interpretation to someone else. (In the belief of the Qumran community, this “someone else” was the Teacher of Righteousness, “to whom God disclosed all the mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets,”138 enabling him thus “to show to the last generations what God was about to do to the last generation.”)139 So here, Gen. 2:24, which on the surface explains why a man will leave his parents’ home and live with his wife, is taken to convey a deeper, hidden meaning, a “mystery,” which could not be understood until Christ, who loved his people from eternity, gave himself up for them in the fullness of time. In the light of his saving work, the hidden meaning of Gen. 2:24 now begins to appear: his people constitute his bride, united to him in “one body.” The formation of Eve to be Adam’s companion is seen to prefigure the creation of the church to be the bride of Christ. This seems to be the deep “mystery” contained in the text, which remains a mystery no longer to those who have received its interpretation.140
The following words, “but I am speaking with reference to Christ and to the church,” seem to contrast the writer’s preferred interpretation with other interpretations: the pronoun “I” is emphatic.141 But it is difficult to discover what the rival interpretations of the text might be, or who might have propounded them. “It is possible,” says J. P. Sampley, “that it is the recipients of Ephesians who have chosen Gen. 2:24 and have drawn conclusions about the relationship between a husband and a wife or perhaps about the relationship between Christ and the church”—conclusions which were deemed “dangerous and worthy of refutation”142—but on this there can be no certainty. What does seem to be certain is that Gen. 2:24 is being applied here to the relationship between Christ and the church.
33 The paragraph about the mutual duties and responsibilities of husband and wife, which has launched out into the realm where Christology embraces ecclesiology, is now concluded with an admonitory summing up in which these mutual duties and responsibilities are briefly recapitulated. “Do you at least grasp this”143—the practical lesson to be learned from the excursus on Christ and the church—that the husband is to love his wife as himself (a further echo of the commandment about neighborly love in Lev. 19:18), and that the wife is to reverence her husband.144 The verb “to reverence” is the ordinary verb meaning “to fear”; the character of the “fear” is suggested by v. 21: “Be subject one to another in the fear of Christ.”145 “Fear” in the sense of terror is not in the picture here: “there is no fear in love” (1 John 4:18).146 It is fear in the sense of terror that is excluded in the exhortation to Christian wives in 1 Pet. 3:6, where they are assured that they are true daughters of Sarah “if you do right and are not made afraid by any intimidation.”147 (Sarah, as 1 Pet. 3:6 has recalled, showed her husband reverence by calling him “my lord,”148 but the patriarchal narrative nowhere implies that she lived in fear of him: her record is marked by laughter149 rather than terror.)