SHOW NOTES:
When read in light of Aristotle’s household codes, Ephesians 5 means something completely different than what we’ve made it mean today. If Christ is the head and collectively, we are the body and bride of Christ, what does this mean for the way we live out our faith, our family relationships, and our fellowship with the family of God?
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Podcasting by: Kensi Duszynski, MA, LMFT, CPC
Editing by: Evan Duszynski, MA
Music by: John Tibbs
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey friends, welcome back this week to the Brave Marriage Podcast. If you’re just joining us, we’re in the middle of a series on Marriage, Mutuality, and Gender Roles, and so far, we’ve covered the history of Christian marriage in the modern word, mid-century teachings on Christian marriage, for better or worse, we’ve talked to a few couples who would consider themselves mutualists or egalitarians, and a few weeks ago, we took a look at what Genesis 1–3 has to say about marriage, mutuality, and gender roles, so if you haven’t taken a listen to that, you can find it, it’s episode 136. And today, we’re taking a look at the infamous Ephesians 5 passage to see what Paul has to say about marriage, mutuality, and gender roles.
I gave a talk a few weeks ago to Asbury’s gender equality club on the differences between a male headship model of marriage and a true partnership model of marriage, and as some of the students and I got to talking at the end, one thing that came up was how in evangelical Christianity, we can tend to pick and choose Paul’s words based on what we want him to say, without realizing that Paul’s letters to the Colossians, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, Timothy—they are not letters primarily about marriage or gender roles, they are letters to the earliest Christ followers on Christian living in that time and culture, based on the teachings and ministry of Christ! In all of Paul’s teaching, unlike ours a lot of times, His theology and Christology is rich.
But today, or it seems to me since the ‘70s and even more so in the ‘90s and early 2000s, we the church have gotten caught up in cherry-picking parts of Paul’s writing that apply specifically to marriage and qualifications for ministry in that time and culture, while neglecting to whole of Paul’s writings, which are relaying a foundation for the Christian faith, based on the teachings, ministry, and life of Jesus Christ, encouraging each of the early churches to remember that they are family, that together, they make up the body and bride of Christ, and that together, Christ has called us to unity, to be one—not a false unity, where people in the church are peacekeepers rather than peacemakers, not a false unity, where people aren’t allowed to think or discern or discuss truth amongst themselves, but a differentiated unity, where each member of the body is valued because of what he or she brings spiritually, and where each member is allowed to be whom God created him or her to be, while at the same time, living in righteousness and right relationship with God and with each other. It’s only after putting Christ above all else that Paul then gives specific instructions to each particular church on how they are to live, based on what they’re struggling with in their cultural contexts.
In the episode I did on Genesis 1-3, the question we asked at the end was, if God is good, if He is loving, if He created us with full equality and co-rulership over creation, then how, as Christian couples who await the return of Christ, should we live in the here and now? Well, after Jesus ascended after his earthly ministry and left us with the Holy Spirit who helps us and empowers us to be the kingdom of God on earth, Paul spent the rest of his life trying to tell various people and churches how to do just that. And so I believe we could be helped by taking a look at how Jesus taught us to do that before reading Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
As mentioned in episode 136, when the religious leaders came to test Jesus to ask which of God’s commandments was the greatest, Jesus replied in Matthew 22:36-40: “‘Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
In John 13, Jesus tells us to love and serve one another.
In John 15:12, He said, “My command is this: Love one another as I have loved you.”
Are you seeing a theme here? Jesus’ heart and vision for the church was much bigger than the nuclear family. His desire was that people of every tribe, tongue, and nation, Jew, Gentile, slave, free, rich, poor, male, female, would know God, love Him, serve Him, and follow His example. We’ll talk in a little while about what Jesus had to say about marriage, but what I want us to understand is that Jesus was concerned with the whole world, and especially the least of these. That His kingdom be expanded in an upside down way, at least, from what we’re all too familiar with in the world.
In John 17, in His prayer for His followers, His church, His bride, Jesus declares Himself as having authority over all mankind. He prays for those who believe in Him to have eternal life, that they may know God the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Himself who glorified God while on earth by accomplishing the work the Father had given him to do.
Then He asks the Father, He says in verse 11-12: “I am no longer going to be in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are,” moving to verse 22, “that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You loved Me.”
Are you seeing a theme here?
Okay, so Jesus’ teachings are what Paul has on the forefront of his mind when he writes his letters to the earliest churches, including his letter to the Ephesians. In fact, Paul instructs the churches to love one another as often as Jesus did, and what’s more is that he gives the Church instructions for how to treat one another on 59 different occasions, which one author, Robert Sang, has broken down into 4 themes: love, unity, humble servanthood, and edification and encouragement.
I’ll link his article and this next list in the full transcript on my website, but this is how we are to treat one another as believers as the body and bride of Christ. We are all, as one body, instructed to live in the following ways with one another:
With love, honor, devotion, harmony, encouragement, acceptance, admonishment, teaching, care, service, confession, forgiveness, patience, truth, kindness, compassion, submission, humility, forbearance, prayer, comfort, exhortation, edification, hospitality, likemindedness, stewardship of our spiritual gifts for the sake of one another, and mutually spurring one another on to love and good works.
Thus, having started with the teachings of Jesus, which informed the teachings of Paul as he relayed them to various churches, it’s from this place that I want us to come to the book of Ephesians.
In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul recounts the goodness of God, the blessing of redemption, and the headship of Christ in verse 22. In Ephesians 2-4, Paul reminds the church that all of them, Jews and Gentiles alike, are saved by faith in Jesus Christ so that no one should boast about their righteousness, their privileges, or any religious or cultural entitlements. Rather, Paul wants the early church in Ephesus to understand that unity and oneness are the priority, and that everyone is responsible for stewarding their spiritual gifts and building up the body of Christ. Everyone is responsible for leaving hardness of heart and sin behind them, and instead, walking together as one, just the way Christ taught us and prayed for us before he died, so that the church may be built up as a place for the Spirit of God to dwell, and as signpost for the world at-large, that they may know Jesus—just as Jesus prayed in John 17.
In Ephesians 3, Paul talks about his work on behalf of the Gentile believers, helping them understand the mystery of Christ and the Church—that the Gentiles, like the Jews, are fellow heirs and members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise. Remember the promise that God made when He told the serpent He’d send His Son to make a way for all of humanity, for those who believe, to be reconciled with Him? This—Christ—is the mystery that’s recently been revealed to believers in the 1st century AD.
In Ephesians 4, Paul turns from a recap of Christian theology, to instructions for Christian practice. Paul tells the Ephesian church to walk in a manner worthy of their callings in Christ, so that every member of the church might mature and grow up into Him who is the head, that is, Christ.
Are you getting a good picture of these metaphors? Christ is the head; we are His body. Paul has now emphasized this twice. Christ is the bridegroom; we are the bride. His desire for us is oneness, unity, togetherness, that we might serve Him, and point to Him, by mutually submitting to one another.
This is the mystery of the Gospel that Paul is referring to. That in Christ, we are no longer Jew nor Gentile (Eph. 3:4-6), man nor woman (Eph. 5:31-32), slave nor free (Eph. 6:9)—we are one.
So, given Paul’s culture, he gives instructions for how various culturally hierarchical relationships should operate—husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters. But counter to his culture, Paul boldly proclaims a different household code, and then in chapter 6, asks the Ephesian church for prayer, that he might keep boldly proclaiming this mystery of the Gospel and its radically countercultural implications!
So get this, here’s what I mean by household code: The Greco-Roman culture had their own hierarchical structure for family life, known as paterfamilias, a Latin word for “male head of the household.” This meant that families were structured with husbands as heads of households and owners of family estates, unless a woman was single and had inherited an estate herself. And culturally, their household codes were based on the teachings of Greek philosophers', which structured authority in the family and in society, hierarchically. Aristotle, in particular, called this the science of household management, basing his ideas on the belief that only the culturally dominant male was fully rational, whereas everyone else had lesser deliberative and reasoning capacities. To quote Aristotle in work, Politics: “the slave has not got the deliberative part at all…the woman has it, but without full authority…[and] the child has it, but in an underdeveloped form.”
Now, I’d heard about the ancient household codes that families, or paterfamilias, abided by during this time, but I’d never taken the time to read Aristotle’s translated writing until a couple of weeks ago. So I want to read parts of Politics to you so that you can see for yourself how radically different Paul’s teaching to the Ephesian church was.
From Book 1 [1259a]:
“And since, as we saw, the science of household management has three divisions, one the relation of master to slave, of which we have spoken before, one the paternal relation, and the third the conjugal—for it is a part of the household science to rule over wife and children (over both as over freemen, yet not with the same mode of government)…[1259b] …for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female (except in some cases where their union has been formed contrary to nature) and the older and fully developed person than the younger and immature.
Aristotle goes on to say that a man rules over his children as a monarch, whereas a man rules over his wife as an interactive republic, yet with the permanency of husband as ruler, and the wife as ruled; same for master and slave. The logic here is, men, women, children, and slaves have different reasoning capacities and moral virtues which determine the positions they hold within the domestic economy. Furthermore, the point of this social structure is, very clearly, what Aristotle calls, “the art of wealth-getting.” He says that all are needed within this economy to play their appropriate parts, because without male rulers to delegate, wives to focus exclusively on domestic and administrative duties, and slaves to carry out manual labor and other menial tasks within the household, the household system will fail to operate in a way that makes the art of wealth-getting inefficient and unproductive. But Aristotle does ruminate over whether or not everyone within the household is a full human being…and here’s what he concludes:
Book 1 [1260a]:
“It is evident therefore that both must possess virtue, but that there are differences in their virtue (as also there are differences between those who are by nature ruled).
…Hence there are by nature various classes of rulers and ruled. For the free rules the slave, the male the female, and the man the child in a different way. …Hence it is manifest that all the personas mentioned have a moral virtue of their own, and that the temperance of a woman and that of a man are not the same…one is the courage of command, and the other that of subordination…”
I don’t know about you, but the Greco-Roman household codes sound a lot like the logic behind Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood to me, which is disappointing because we’re thousands of years from Aristotle and yet, his and others’ ideas linger, despite research, modernity, and common sense totally refuting them. Nonetheless, this is the philosophical and familial context in which Paul was delivering a Christ-centered message to the Jews and the Gentiles.
So with an understanding of the hierarchical household codes, which were in place for economic efficiency, political gain, and designed for the art of wealth-getting, we now return to Ephesians 5.
Ephesians 5:1-2:
[Verse 1-2]: “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…”
So, God’s example is love for His children and we are to walk in His ways. How do we do that? Well, take Christ, for example, the Son of God who came in human form, took on flesh, loved us as God does, and laid down His life that we might live. Jesus did not concern himself with political gain or wealth-building; rather, He explicitly taught and modeled that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. That is how we, as men and women, are to live as the church, loving each other and laying down our lives for one another, as the metaphorical representation of the body and bride of Christ.
Ephesians 5:3-7:
[Verse 3-7]: “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. There should not be obscenity, foolish talk, or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure, or greedy person…has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God (remember, we got a picture of that kingdom in Revelation 22, with the throne of the Lamb and of God in the city of the tree of life). Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Do not be partners with them.”
Okay, let’s think about this. Let’s think about what kinds of sexual immorality are being exposed in evangelical church leadership right now. Let’s think about the impurity that goes on between couples even in marriage, as Hebrews 13:4 says. Let’s think about the greed and vanity metrics that are often sought after in Christian circles. Or the obscenity or foolish talking (of which I, myself, have been guilty) or the coarse joking that goes on (of which others have been guilty, like telling members of the body of Christ “to go home”). Equally as serious as the instructions Paul gives for how husbands and wives are to live in marriage, Paul says, no immoral, impure, or greedy person has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God, just as Jesus told the religious leaders and Pharisees in Matthew 23, among other places! This is serious business, but conveniently, this gets forgotten by the time we get to Ephesians 5:22.
That’s why, as the Church, we have to talk about these things openly and honestly. So that we can confess our sins and grow in maturity and into him, who is the head, Christ.
Ephesians 5:8, 11-13:
[Verse 8; 11-13]: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light and find out what pleases the Lord…. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It’s shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”
Now, this is a refrain from how Paul starts his instructions for Christian living in Ephesians 4:17-25. And we’re going to leave the middle of chapter 5 for a moment to understand what Paul wrote in chapter 4. In chapter 4, Paul says, essentially, do not live as those who listen to Aristotle’s teachings live. They’re darkened in understanding and separated from God due to the hardness of their hearts. They’ve given themselves over to sensuality, impurity, and they are full of greed. But that is not the teaching of Christ or obedience to the Truth that is in Jesus.
And if this language sounds familiar to you, it’s because Paul, in chapter 4, is using the language of Jesus to talk to the church in Ephesus. Let’s take a look at Jesus’ conversation with the Jewish religious elite in Matthew 19:3-8
“Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?’ And He answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no person is to separate.” They said to Him, ‘Why, then, did Moses give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
In other words, everything may be permissible, but not everything is beneficial, especially when you are to be living as one in Jesus Christ. So you can structure your families and paterfamilias as the Greco-Roman household codes instruct. But know that as Christ-followers, you are called to something different, a different way of life! You’ve been given a new life, a new self, so put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, Paul says in Ephesians 4:25, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
And what does Paul say about being one body? Oh yeah, that Christ, the head, gave the church, the members of his body, new life, new status, new legacy, and gifts to equip his people for works of service, until we all reach unity in the faith and in knowledge of the Son of God. And Paul says in 4:14 that once we, Christ’s body, live like this, then we will no longer be infants in our understanding of Scripture, but we will be mature, full grown ups in Christ, who is the head. So whether we’re male, female, black, white, rich, poor, do you think that Christ desires for us to be an immature, greedy, underdeveloped body? No, chapter 4 verse 16 says that from Christ, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting part, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
This is a very different model from the art of wealth-getting that Aristotle describes, where humans are thought of not entirely equally, but hierarchically according to Aristotle’s philosophy of people’s mental capacities. In Greco-Roman culture, the family is structured: husband-wife-child-slave. But in Christ, according to Paul’s letter, the family is structured: Christ-Church. Period. We are one, all of us seen as children and valued members of His household, His kingdom.
And if one, then this is how we are to live. Paul addresses everyone in the church at Ephesus as dearly loved children, asking them, as a parent would ask siblings to be kind to one another, to sacrifice for one another, and to submit to one another in love for the sake of the family of God, and in submission to Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Furthermore, in contrast to Aristotle’s teaching, Paul does not disrespect women, children, or slaves at that time by talking to the men in the church about them.
Instead, after calling them siblings and children and God, Paul totally subverts Aristotle’s pairings, his three divisions of household management, by directly addressing wives first, and husbands second, giving husbands nearly double the instructions for Christian living. Paul then addresses children first and fathers second, and in chapter 6, slaves first and masters second—reminding all that God does not show favoritism. Just as Jesus would’ve done. And Paul, even in his teaching and writing, is modeling the way of Christ in laying down his place as a Jewish man and Roman citizen in that culture by directly engaging women, children, and the cultural “least of these.”
Jumping to Ephesians 5:21-24:
[Verse 21-24]: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, (submit yourselves) to your own husbands as (you do) 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.
Now, how is Christ the head of the church? Well, I’ll tell you what, he doesn’t proclaim his status in any sort of entitled way or come down on others, except when speaking Truth to those who are acting entitled, proud, and hypocritical, as He does in Matthew 23. Instead, Christ is the head of the church in that He modeled what He told us in Matthew 23:11-12, that “the greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Just as Paul wrote Christ was, in Philippians 2:3-9, when he said:
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness…therefore God exalted him to the highest place…”
This is how Christ is the head of the church. In other words, when Paul says “the husband is the head of the wife” or “wives, submit to your own husbands,” we tend to stop our reading there rather than completing Paul’s thoughts. The actual phrase is “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, which Paul goes on to explain. In other words, “Your cultural context is telling you that your husband is the head of the household, and this is nothing new to you. But what I’m telling you is that, husbands, you are to demonstrate your headship, or your privilege as paterfamilia, in the same way that Christ demonstrated his headship with you. He didn’t lord it over you. He didn’t pride himself on leading you well. Instead, he made himself nothing, caring more about people than profit, more about being faithful to the least of these than being first, and more about subverting cultural expectations and challenging the worst in human nature than sanctifying cultural expectations and the worst in human nature.
Therefore, husbands were to radically love their wives in the same way Christ did, in submission to her; while wives were to radically respect their husbands, from a place of full personhood, as they would Christ, in submission to him.
Ephesians 5:25-30:
[Verses 25-30]: “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 their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of His body.”
Now, I did a word study, as Haley mentioned in our last episode, where we got to see what mutuality in marriage looks like in real life. And in my word study, using an interlinear Bible that puts the Greek above the English translation, where it talks about us being members of His body, in the Greek, it actually reads something like, “for members we are of the body of Him of the flesh of him and of the bones of him.”
Then we come to verse 31:
[Verse 31]: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
Paul is always talking about Christ and the Church, because the Bible is a love story about God’s love for His people and the life-giving relationality and spirituality we find in Him and in relationship with each other.
And I love this, the interconnectedness of the biblical emphasis on love and oneness, from being introduced to God and his plans for men and women and marriage in the book of Genesis, to reading about God’s faithfulness and fidelity in books like Song of Solomon, Hosea, and Malachi, to being introduced to Jesus and His heart for marriage in the book of Matthew, and finally, for Paul’s emphasis on the bride’s unity and oneness in Christ. And even though Paul was single, and preferred that we all be like him in single-minded devotion to Christ, he takes the time to present a picture of what marriage should look like when starting from a place of mutual submission out of reverence for, and service to, God.
Now in episode 136, we talked about how male headship and hierarchy were introduced after the Fall, nowhere reflected in creation or the original state. But again, to borrow some of my husband Evan's words, because I think he describes this passage well when talking to students: Patriarchy is a result of sin and we still live under its effects today. But in Christ, we are to steward our privilege—just as Jesus did, and just as Paul did—to lay down our lives for others so that they may be empowered, and so that there might be relational equity, so that together, we can model kingdom marriages, living in mutual submission, mutual love and respect, and in differentiated unity, as we were created to from the beginning.
To conclude Paul’s letter, after he gives instructions for the way Christian children and fathers and slaves and masters are to live, Paul concludes:
Ephesians 6:10-17:
[Verses 10-11]: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.
And what are the devil’s schemes? We talked about those as well in episode 136.
[Verses 12-15]: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that come from the Gospel of peace.”
So again, Paul is subverting worldly, cultural expectations of Christ and His coming kingdom. Our fight is not against each other but against the hierarchical powers in this dark world and in the spiritual realm. Therefore, subverting what one would expect of battle, Paul tells the church to arm herself with what? With ammo, with sharp comebacks, with a spirit ready to fight? No, we as the Church, the body and bride of Christ, are to arm ourselves with truth, righteousness, and readiness for peace. That is to be our offense! And then Paul describes our defense:
[Verses 16-17]: In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
I hope you’re beginning to see how bold and radical this letter is that Paul has written. And that’s why he ends the letter by saying:
[Ephesians 6:18-20]: “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions…being alert and always keeping on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.”
Paul is not delivering a message similar to that of Aristotle, similar to those who promote male entitlement or female subordination, as in the church in Ephesus, nor is Paul promoting female entitlement and male subordination, as Haley mentioned last week, regarding Paul’s letter to Timothy. What Paul is doing is radically proclaiming the Good News in his cultural context. And he is crazily, self-sacrificially chasing freedom for people while he, himself, is in chains.
I’ll leave you with similar questions as last time: Did anything stand out to you from the text that perhaps hadn’t before? How is this rendering of the book of Ephesians or of the Ephesians 5 passage different from the way you’ve perhaps been taught it in the past? And if the primary message of Jesus Christ is love for God and one another, and unity within the Church, what might this mean for you, your marriage, your family, your church, and your community?
I’ll leave you with a benediction from the last sentence in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
“Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
This has been episode 138 of The Brave Marriage Podcast. I’m your host, Kensi Duszynski. Podcast Editing is by Evan Duszynski. Music is by John Tibbs. Have a great couple of weeks and stay tuned to hear Blake Dean and Erin Moniz talk about why mutuality matters. See you next time.
