Ephesians 5: Verse 21 Belongs to the Sentence Before It

In Ephesians 5 verse 21 ends with a period and the verse after it starts a new sentence. Most of what gets said about this chapter happens on the far side of that period. The part that comes before it gets left out, and it changes how the chapter reads.

Here is verse 21 by itself.

Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
(Ephesians 5:21)

Read that way it's a short command with no clear start. It has one, though, and the start is back in verse 18.

Where does the sentence about submitting actually begin?

Verse 18 says "be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit." That's the command. What follows are the things the filling looks like, and in the English they all end in -ing: speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns (v19), singing and making melody in your heart (v19), giving thanks always (v20), and submitting yourselves one to another (v21). Submitting is the fourth item on a list whose first item is a hymn.

If you teach the household verses without 18 through 21, you've taken the last item off a list and made it the headline. People singing to each other, thanking God and then giving way to each other is a picture of a room you'd want to be in. A bare instruction to submit is a rule, and the same word in the two settings lands very differently.

"One to another" doesn't mean wives only and covers everybody in the room, which is why the instruction to wives in verse 22 reads, to my ear, as a case of something already asked of everyone. I won't tell you that settles every question about the next two verses. It doesn't. Verse 24 says "in every thing," and I'm not going to smooth that over for you. I'll only say that the sentence it belongs to starts somewhere gentler than most of us were taught.

What are husbands asked to do in verses 25 through 32?

Wives get three verses (22 to 24). Husbands get the rest of the chapter, with verse 33 turning to both. That's nine verses against three, if you count 25 to 33, and the longer share has the harder assignment.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
(Ephesians 5:25)

Go through the verbs and Christ loved and gave himself (v25), he sanctifies and cleanses (v26) and presents the church to himself (v27), and he nourishes and cherishes it (v29, in the King James spelling). Not one of them is about directing anybody, and nobody in this passage gets told to run anything.

Some of those verbs are things only Christ does, I'll grant. A husband can't sanctify his wife and nobody should try. But the two that Paul hands to the husband himself are in verse 29, where "no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." Feeding and keeping warm. That's a domestic job description. Verse 28 puts it the same way, "so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies," which means the standard is how you already treat yourself on an ordinary Tuesday, when you eat lunch and put a coat on without making a speech about it.

Commentators on the household codes of the period point out that the usual instructions ran toward the people lower in the house, and rarely told the man at the top what he owed. I can't verify that myself, so take it as what they say. What I can check is the text, and the text has a husband owing the most.

The Church's own wording for marriage is a partnership of equals. I don't find that in tension with verse 23, but I know people who do, and I won't pretend the two sit easily together.

Verse 33 is where Paul stops addressing husbands and wives separately and says "let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself." Every one of you, in particular. After eleven verses of Christ and the church he brings it down to a single man and a single wife, and the standard he sets for the man is the one from verse 28 again. The wife is told to "reverence" her husband in the same sentence, and I'd leave that word as the chapter has it. The last thing Paul asks of each of them is something he has already shown them how to do.

What does it mean to walk as children of light?

Three times the chapter says walk: in love (v2), as children of light (v8) and circumspectly (v15). The household verses come at the end of the third.

The light section, verses 8 to 14, is where I trust my own reading least, and I went through it Monday morning with the garden waiting outside. Verse 8 says "ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." Not "in the light." Light, and in the Lord. Then verse 11 says to reprove the works of darkness, verse 12 says it's a shame even to speak of them, and verse 13 says "all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light." Those three sit close together and I can't make them comfortable with each other, since you're told to reprove a thing and told it's a shame even to speak of it.

The warnings before it are blunt, and verse 5 puts the covetous man in the same list as the unclean person, and calls him an idolater. Verse 6 says to let no man deceive you "with vain words," and verse 7 is only seven words long: "Be not ye therefore partakers with them." After that the chapter turns to light, and it turns without a transition.

Then verse 14: "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." The chapter introduces it with "he saith" and doesn't tell us who. I don't know where it comes from. It reads like something people sang, and a few verses later he tells them to sing.

There's a smaller thing I'd point to, and it's easy to miss. Back in verse 4 the warnings about filthiness and foolish talking and jesting end with "but rather giving of thanks." Verse 20 has "giving thanks always for all things." Same two words, sixteen verses apart. Paul thinks the cure for most of the first list is gratitude and I find that more convincing than another rule would have been. The chapter doesn't say a word against humor, by the way, only against the kind that isn't "convenient," which I take to mean the kind that doesn't fit. I'll take that.

If you've read my post on Ephesians 1 you know I pay attention to small words. Here it's "one to another," and "in" the Lord. Paul writes another list about the Spirit in Galatians, and I went through it in the Galatians 5 post if you want to set the two side by side.

Why does verse 32 say the mystery is about Christ and the church?

Verse 31 borrows from the old account of the first marriage: "shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." Then comes the line I'd underline. "This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

I used to read that as Paul wandering off marriage onto a bigger subject. Having gone through the verbs, I read it the other way around. The whole second half has been using Christ and the church as the pattern, so the mystery is that the pattern runs in both directions. A husband learns what love costs by looking at what Christ gave, and the church's story gets a human size from a kitchen. Both are a way of understanding the other.

I'm leaning on one phrase there, "a great mystery," and Paul doesn't spell out what the mystery is. I'd keep my reading loose.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does verse 22 mean a wife has to do whatever her husband says?

The end of verse 24 says "in every thing," so I'm not going to tell you the text is gentler than it is. What I'd tell you is to read the verse in its place. It follows a verse that asks everyone to submit to everyone, and it's followed by the whole rest of the chapter on what the husband owes. Nowhere does the chapter tell a husband to enforce anything, and I'd say a man who uses these verses to get his way has read about a quarter of them.

What's "children of light" supposed to mean day to day?

The working answer is in verse 10, "proving what is acceptable unto the Lord." Proving there means testing, so it sounds like a habit of checking your own choices against the question, not a banner. Verse 9 says what comes of it: goodness, righteousness and truth. That's a short list and a hard one to fake for long.

Why is wine in the middle of a chapter about marriage?

Because verse 18 is a contrast and needs one side to be something people already know. Drunkenness is "excess" and the Spirit is the filling. I don't think Paul is writing a health rule there, since the point of the verse is the second half. Whatever you think of the first half, the hymns in verse 19 are what he actually wants to talk about.

Is Ephesians 5 only for married people?

The marriage verses are, obviously. The first twenty-one aren't. Walking in love, giving thanks, singing, deferring to the person beside you in church: those are for everybody, and you could read the entire opening of the chapter without ever finding a spouse in it.

If you're asked to teach this chapter, or you read it on your own with a spouse beside you, begin at verse 18 and read through verse 33 in one go. Then read verses 1 to 17 afterward, and see which half you'd have said was the chapter before you started.

— D.