In my detailed engagement with Andrew Bartlett’s book, “Men and Women in Christ, we’ve got to the bit where he engages with Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3. You will probably have picked up that I think he should have made this his starting point Now, you might think that maybe this reflects my own bias, after all this is where I focused my MTH dissertation work and indeed I love the whole book of Ephesians, so would happily be talking and writing about this without the presence of the specific controversy. In fact I wish I could do that!
On the other hand, my love for Ephesians grew out of that dissertation work and it is fair to say that I deliberately chose that passage because I believed it was a good and obvious place, in fact, the good and obvious place to start.
I believe that Ephesians 5 is the obvious place to start because it is the most comprehensive of the passages in terms of describing how relationships should look, it includes mutual submission, wives submitting and husbands loving, and developing reasoning, so it looks to being filled with the Spirit, Christ as head and saviour of the body, and the one flesh nature of marriage going back to Genesis. Finally it explicitly pushes us to see marriage as pointing to Christ’s relationship to the church. So, the reasoning is not just pragmatic, it is theological.
So, I thought it might be helpful to flesh out my understanding of Ephesians 5 here.
Context
The big picture in Ephesians is that Paul wants his audience to grasp the wonder of God’s overwhelming love for them. So, he begins by describing what it means to be chosen, redeemed and seated with Christ, the benefits of these things. Whilst these blessings are to our benefit, we are not meant to confuse this with thinking that it is all about us. Rather, it is all about Christ, he is the exalted head and all things come together in him. This means that these blessings are given to us, so that we as liberated captives, saved by grace can do good works so that we become like a trophy that shows off God’s glory to his enemies. This means that there should be a resulting change in our lives and Paul will use the imagery of darkness and light to highlight the difference.
Paul then uses the distinction between foolishness and wisdom in order to further demonstrate the difference that the Gospel makes. Foolishness is represented by drunkenness, when alcohol fills and controls us. On the other hand, wisdom is characterised by being filled with the Spirit and so controlled and influenced by him (5:18).
Paul then spells out what the result is of being filled with the Spirit, what spirit filled believers look like. Verse 19-21 provides a list of participles that hang off of the imperative “be filled”. Someone who is filled with the Spirit is someone who is:
- Speaking to each other (with Psalms and hymns etc)
- Singing and making music
- Giving thanks
- Submitting to one another
In other words, the Spirit influences how we relate to God, with gratitude and to each other through encouragement and exhortation and through humble service. Submission is something we do to one another. It’s mutual.
This is the context, the build up to the instruction “wives submit to your husbands
Wives …to husbands (v22)
In fact, the imperative “submit” is missing from Ephesians 5:22, it is implied but that Paul doesn’t include the verb is a reminder, if we needed one that this isn’t a new section. The instructions to wives and husbands hang off of v18-21 and specifically v21. They are intended to help us understand how we are to submit to each other. Indeed, I would argue that this is happen with all of the household code examples, parents and children, slaves and masters too.
This means that whilst there is a general sense in which we all submit to each other, there is something specific and exclusive about the relationship between husbands and wives. Note that there is even a difference in language where wives “submit” whereas children and slaves “obey.” A wife’s submission to her husband is not an indicator of how all women are meant to relate to all men. This is mirrored by the fact that a husband has a specific duty to sacrificially love his wife, that is an exclusive duty to that relationship too.
A wife submits to her husband “as to the Lord”, which suggests that we are to think in terms of how we are meant to submit to him. Well, Ephesians has already told us how we are to submit to him, in particular where it uses “headship language. Christ is the head of all things for, or given to, the church (Ephesians 1:22) and specifically of the church as his body (Ephesians 4:15). This relates to his pre-eminence, his authority and also his life giving nature. He fills all things and so our lives are meant to be filled with Jesus. This is perhaps picked up in the language of fear, reverence or respect.
So, what are wives to do when it comes to submitting to their husbands, I want to suggest that it means that they should entrust themselves to their husbands, to seek to be united in will with them, to delight in them. Now, if a husband is called to love his wife, then that should be the will she is uniting to and I believe that you could fairly paraphrase this section as “husbands love your wives, wives let them love you.”
So, she submits to her husband as she does to the Lord and then the reason is given:
Because the husband is the head of the woman (v23)
Her submission is rooted in her relationship to her husband. He is her “head” or “kephale”. This mirrors the way in which Christ relates to the church. The church is his body and he is its head. There has been much discussion about what exactly is meant by “kephale”. Is it to do with the authority or life-source? The word can be used metaphorically to indicate “a being of higher status”[1] or “of things, the uppermost part, extremity and point.”[2]
Latin, Hebrew and English all use head metaphorically to indicate a leader. However, this is not so common in the Greek of Paul’s day. In fact, Cohick notes that kephale would not automatically be used to translate “rosh” from Hebrew when referring to a leader. So why would Paul use it here? I think the simple answer is that Paul is using one of his preferred metaphors for the church. He is describing the church as “the body.”
In fact, whether or not, the word is meant to indicate a leader or a source is perhaps a bit of a red herring. This doesn’t feel like the type of question we are meant to be asking and in any case, as I’ve noted above, the context of Ephesians 1 and 4 suggest that “head” includes the ideas of both source and authority. We are perhaps not meant to over divide the two.
The important question here then is not abo8t whether men have special status or authority over women, in the family or wider (though this will have implications for wide and narrow complementarianism). Rather, the point is that in some way, the husband relates to his wife as Christ to the Church.
Note, that Paul adds that Christ is the saviour of his body, the church and that indicates the nature of his love for the church as life giving (v25). Does this mean that the husband is his wife’s saviour? Well, clearly not in anyway that suggests he mediates between her and God for her salvation, that would contradict Peter’s teaching that we are co-heirs in Christ and Pauls’ that we are all one in Christ Jesus. Does it link to his thinking in 1 Timothy 2:15 that women will be saved though childbearing. There, the focus is possibly more on the idea of restoration and perhaps a Christian marriage where a husband genuinely loves his wife can do something to restore and heal the brokenness of relationships caused by the Fall.
This is perhaps worthy of further study and discussion but I would tread cautiously. For the moment I would stick simply with the thought that in some way, marriage is meant to reflect and point to the relationship between Christ and the church which we will come to again later. Husbands and wives are head and body, just like Christ and the church are head and body.
In all things (v24)
Notice that how a wife relates to her husband, submitting to him is relevant to all aspects of her life. It is not restricted to spiritual matters such as Bible instruction. “as to theç en Scripture does not.
Husbands love your wives (v25-27)
This is the first imperative since we have been instructed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Husbands are commanded to love their wives. They are to do this in the same way that “Christ loved the church.” In other words, it is a sacrificial love, a willingness to lay down your life. Jesus did this so that his bride would be presented pure and beautiful. A husband’s love for his wife means that he puts her first so that she can meet her potential.
“…as their own bodies” (v28-30).
Laying down your life, putting the other’s needs first seem to me to be good examples of submission, we have been told to submit to one another (v21) and I don’t think that we can read an exception clause in for husbands. Yes, they are to submit to their wives by loving them sacrificially and seeking their wellbeing. You feed and look after your body, you protect it. A husband is to provide for and protect his wife.
If the reasoning for a wife’s relationship to her husband is that she is to view him as her head, like Christ is the head of the church, so too, the husband’s relationship to his wife is based on viewing her as like his body, just as the church is the body of Christ. Again, we perhaps should give more attention to the question of what it means for the wife to be like a body, like the church.
For this reason …. (v31)
Because the wife is now her husband’s body, they are connected together and so his relationship to her becomes exclusive. This is his primary focus. He is no longer connected in the same way as in the past to his parents. Where he looked to them for provision and protection, he now has this responsibility to her and through/with her to their offspring. So, Paul reminds us of the commentary at the end of Genesis 2, they have become “one flesh” and so he leaves his parents to cleave to her.
This is a mystery (v32)
Paul tells us that the Genesis quote was not simply a description of how marriage worked but is intended to point to God’s relationship to his people, Christ’s relationship to the Church. The Gospel is present in Genesis 2 in seed form!
However (v33)
This doesn’t mean that Paul is only making the theological point about the church, the practical application for husbands and wives still counts. Husbands are to love and wives are to fear/revere/respect
It’s Christ and the church that matters
Rather than focusing our attention on the lexical meanings of individual words, though those meanings matter, we might do better to pick up on Paul’s big hint in v32. If we are to understand marriage and understand how husbands and wives are to relate to each other, then our starting point must be Christ and the Church.
Christ is the head of the church, he left the glory of heaven in order to give his life for his people, so that the church may be presented glorious and beautiful. This is of course a big theme throughout Paul’s letter (se 3:10). The end point is that the church will receive through beng united with Christ all the blessings of Ephesians 1. Christ’s love means that through his death, we are saved (Ephesians 2:8-10). We the church are united with Christ. We are his body and this should lead to reverence. The church submits to Christ, her head as he provides for and protects her.
Implications for marriage
It is by looking to how Christ relates to the church that we both learn by example about how we are to relate to each other. It is more than that though. The goal of our marriages is to portray the unity between Christ and his church.
The important question then is “does your marriage do that? Does it draw on the example of Christ’s relationship to the church? Does it portray the Gospel?” We might ask “Husbands are you being Christlike in your relationship? Wives are you being Churchlike?”
We will note, cautiously that submission appears to be mutual both because we are all asked to submit to one another and because husbands are to show sacrificial love and care indicating that they are to put their wives first. However, we cannot ignore the presence of authority within the concept of headship. Perhaps we need to go cautiously here too in seeking to define what we mean by it. However, we must contra some versions of egalitarianism recognised that the relationship is asymmetrical.
Implications for complementarianism and egalitarianism
My understanding of Ephesians 5 is that it presents marriage as involving mutual submission within the context of a body metaphor with the husband as head and the wife as body. This is in order to reflect and image Christ’s relationship to the church. Headship is neither narrowly about authority or source but the imagery includes both.
A “soft/narrow complementarianism” in my opinion best applies the passage. It is soft in that there is mutual submission and we should be cautious about over boldly stating what authority looks like. I prefer therefore not to use overly hierarchical language. It is narrow in that because the reasoning for the nature of the relationship is rooted specifically in the image of Christ’s relationship to his bride and body, the Church. Therefore, it is specific to marriage. There isn’t a general Scriptural instruction for men to exercise authority over women or women to submit to men. There are specific Scriptural instructions about how men and women are to serve in church life and I believe that these relate to/are implications from the marriage instructions. However, we should not presume wider implications for life in society unless they can be clearly and categorically demonstrated.
[1] BDAG, 542.
[2] BDAG, 542.
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