The passage in Ephesians we look at in this chapter is again in three sections - (I wonder why divisions of three are so popular with preachers ... I suppose because it suggests that at least you have a beginning, a middle and an end, and can thereby deceive your congregation into thinking you'll know when to stop!) -
1. 5:22 - 33 Husbands and wives
2. 6: 1 - 4 Children and parents
3. 6: 5 - 9 Management and labour
All three come under the general heading of 5:21 - "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Let's ponder that first, because the verb in the Greek - hupotassomai - is the same word exactly that you have in all three of the following paragraphs. Whatever "submissiveness" means for wives, children and workers, it means exactly what Paul means here in v. 21 when he says we're to be submissive to one another, all of us.
Remember too that this thought which binds these three paragraphs together, itself stands under the over-riding theme of the whole epistle, which is the unity Christ's people are to demonstrate in their life together. Obviously there never will be such unity among us unless something pretty drastic is done about our appetite for self-assertion.
If all the players on the field want to be solo performers, there'll be no team spirit.
To put it in a nutshell, what Paul says in these paragraphs is that the attitude "Me, me, me" has to disappear and be replaced by the attitude, "You, you, you."
That's what "being subject (or submissive) to one another" is all about. It's an attitude that's to show in all our relationships - it's the way we're all to be with one another, because (and here's the point we mustn't miss) it's the only attitude to others we can have if we're responding rightly to Christ. We're to be subject to one another "out of reverence for Christ".
We're to defer to one another, not in response to their irresistible charm, or to their superior wisdom, or to their higher sanctity, or to their seniority, but in response to Christ.
To understand why, we need to look first, therefore at Him. And the best place to do so, so as to see why this humble attitude is the only right and proper one among those who follow Him, is in Philippians ch.2.
... which leads me to add that the exhortation here in Ephesians to be submissive to one another is common to all the letters in the New Testament. You have it in Peter, for example: "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another", I Peter 5:5. What Paul says here about wives being subject to their husbands is no isolated demand "out of the blue" ... it's not an anti-feminist prejudice peculiar to Paul which in these enlightened days we may rightly ignore. It's all part and parcel of an attitude to others generally which the very Gospel requires of us. It's part of the "pattern of sound words" which all New Testament Christians were taught - and not just by Paul, but by all the apostles. All Paul does here is to apply this general principle to particular situations.
That general principle, as we've said, is spelled out for us in Phil. 2.
Read Philippians 2:1-8
That's the attitude of submissiveness, of servitude, commended to us who follow in His steps.
You are serious about "following Jesus" are you? Well, here is spelled out what it means to do so. You're to follow Him in this - in His attitude to others. Christ Himself is submissive to you; indeed, to use the bold language Paul doesn't hesitate to use here, He has made Himself a slave to your interests.
The altogether astonishing thing this passage tells us about Christ is not that He became incarnate, but that He became a slave. Paul uses two Greek words translated "form" - He was in the 'form' of God, He took the 'form' of a servant, He was found in the 'form' or 'fashion' of a man. The two Greek words are "morphe" and "schema". Morphe means the very essence of a thing, schema means the changing shape it wears. Your morphe doesn't change, because your morphe is your person-hood, the "you" that you are; but your schema changes all the time as you grow out of childhood into youth and mid-life and old age.
Now what Paul says in this passage is that the Lord Jesus had the morphe of God and the morphe of a slave, and that in the interests of both He assumed the schema of a man. The slave-status was native to Him in exactly the way His God-status is native to Him ... that's the way He is! ... whatever schema He might assume. Indeed, He's that way because that's the way GOD IS! God Himself is servant to His creation, and that's why "the Son of Man came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)
That's the only way to be God-like!
What it means is that the Son of God has submitted Himself to you ... to me. He puts your interests, my interests, above His own.
Isn't that why He was born in Bethlehem?
Isn't that why He wrought and taught in Galilee?
Isn't that why He suffered and died on Calvary?
Isn't that why He rose up from the grave and ascended into Heaven, so
that He might there for ever intercede for us?
If His Spirit is communicated to us, that's the spirit it will be: the spirit of self-forgetting service to others, putting their interests above our own. The submissiveness that Paul pleads for, you see, is simply another word for "Christ-likeness". That's what it means that we're to be that way "out of reverence for Christ", or to translate it literally, "in the fear of Christ" ... for to enjoy all the advantages of His servitude to you, and then be mean and selfish toward others is a fearful thing to do.
Paul's way of pleading for it here appears over and over again in the New Testament, almost to the point of monotony ... in Romans, in Corinthians, in Philippians, in Colossians, in Ephesians, in the Pastoral Epistles, in Peter, in John ...
We're to behave toward others in such a way that we serve God's best interests in them.
Wives, you're to serve God's best interests in your husbands.
Husbands, you're to serve God's best interests in your wives.
Children, you're to serve God's best interests in your parents.
Parents, you're to serve God's best interests in your children.
Workers, you're to serve God's best interests in your bosses.
Bosses, you're to serve God's best interests in your workers.
That's what Jesus did. That's what He's doing all the time - for you - for me.
To soak up all the benefit from it, and give none of it back to others is simply wicked.
But you'll understand from all this that Paul does not mean that we're to yield unquestioning submission to all others so as to be ruled by their whims!
Jesus didn't do that. He once declined to intervene in family litigation over a will, for example, because to do so would only encourage covetousness, and that didn't represent His Father's interests in the person concerned.
What did He do?
He put Himself at God's disposal to do for others - not what they wanted ... and not even what He Himself wanted either ... but what His Father wanted.
That's what we're to do: put ourselves at God's disposal to do for others what He wants for them ... not what they want you to do for them, nor what you might fancy doing for them.
Are you clear about this?
The submissiveness we're called to means putting ourselves at Christ's disposal so as to serve His interests in others.
All right. So for wives, to take them first as Paul does, that means so serving your husband's interests as to make him strong - to strengthen him in the leadership rôle that God has assigned to him in the family unit.
And for husbands, it means so serving your wife's interests as to make her beautiful, to support her in the creative and nurturing rôle God has assigned to her in the home. For the wife and mother is the chief creator of an entire world ... of the home and the family. Isn't that what Paul is saying?
The wife's attitude to the husband should be such as supports and promotes his headship - just as the Church's attitude to her Lord is to support and promote His headship.
And the husband's attitude to the wife should be such as promotes her beauty and sanctity - just as Christ's attitude to the church is to support and promote her sanctity.
Each is to be devoted to Christ's interests in the other.
Having said that, there are three points especially to be noted if we're not to fall into the silly trap so many have fallen into of making Paul say what he didn't mean.
Do be clear about this. This paragraph has very little application to the modern Women's Liberation Movement. It says nothing at all about women in general holding positions of leadership in society at large. In fact, in Greece, many women did, and Paul never suggested that they shouldn't. Lydia, whose hospitality he enjoyed in Philippi, was a prosperous business woman in her own right. Many of Paul's converts in Thessalonica were described as "leading women" (Acts 17:4) and there's never a hint that because they became Christians they were obliged to give up their leadership rôle in society.
It's quite unfair and stupid to apply what Paul says about Christian marriage in particular to society in general.
The reason very simply is, as we've already hinted, that in the marriage relationship authority belongs by God's will and intent to the husband and father, not to the wife and mother.
That, you may not like. But that's the way it is.
It is a creation ordinance; God created Eve for Adam, not Adam for Eve. And because it's a creation ordinance it means that it is God's intention for marriage generally, whether the partners to it be Christians or not.
Even so, do be clear what it means. It is not a divine approval for male dominance. The husband is to bear rule over his wife and family the way Christ bears rule over the Church, and He so rules the church as gladly to bear any sacrifice, and even lay down his very life to make her perfect and glorious.
To rule at home in any other way, or in any other spirit, you husbands, is to pervert the Word of God. This ordinance does not entitle you to treat your wife as cheap labour, or as a mere sex object, or as a creature comfort, or even as a baby doll. It obliges you to serve her interests as a child of God, as a whole person whose dignity and freedom as a person are the equal of your own ... for at the Cross Christ put the same worth on her as He did on you. Indeed you're to serve her as an immortal spirit who belongs to God.
But with all that said, leadership in the marriage relationship does belong rightly to the husband and father. And I submit to you that that's "according to nature" as well as "according to Scripture". If you doubt that, let me ask you a simple test question: "Would you feel it to be more fitting if, in the marriage relationship between Christ and His church, the Church were the male partner and Christ Himself the bride?"
So the wife is to be subject to her husband (in the sense defined) in all things. Does that still irk you?
But it shouldn't. It's only consistent with the wholeness of marriage. It is after all in the sum of little things that the overall worth and direction of our lives is set.
But wives are to be subject in all things as to the Lord, note. She is to encourage him in his authority rôle as God intends him to exercise it ... that way!
It most certainly does not mean that she is to submit if he demands of her something that is contrary to the Lord's will ... if he requires her to collaborate with him in the perpetration of a crime, say, or a wife-swapping orgy.
Yet it must be said that the woman who "wears the pants" at home and "rules the roost" there undermines her husband's manhood and strips him of the dignity which is properly his as husband and father. That's why Paul says she's to submit, but not he.
But to you husbands I'd say what I say to almost all the couples I marry in the marriage preparation I offer them, "Remember, son, it's tenderness that wins in the end."
Where one of them is not, I think the headship of the husband still holds good because it's a Creation, not a Grace Ordinance.
In a mixed marriage, the Christian partner's first loyalty has to be to Christ and to God, and how he or she works that out in any given marriage is by no means easy to say - and even then it's easier said than done! The first six verses of I Peter 3:1-6 and I Cor 7:12-16 say about as much as the Scriptures say on the matter and I commend those passages to your prayerful study if you're in that situation. I know that in many mixed marriages, great grace is needed by the believing partner, and they would be helped if they were met with more compassion and understanding and prayerful support from their brothers and sisters in the church who don't have so hard a row to hoe than - sadly - they sometimes do.
Comment on the other two sections will have to be of the very briefest kind.
Just note the balance in the things Scripture says here, of the same sort as the balance we've noted in what it says to husbands and wives.
Yes, children are to obey. But parents are to rule them in the same spirit we began with - the spirit in which you set the children's best interests, as God defines them, above your own.
This Scripture affords no parents the right to demand obedience of their children simply to suit their own convenience, or to satisfy some neurotic need in themselves, like bossing their kids about to compensate for their lack of influence elsewhere in life. We're to rear our children to be free spirits. We're not to reduce them to life-long cripples, dependent on us. You're to train your children to be - not your children - but God's children.
Children, obey - yes: but fathers, don't provoke.
Incidentally, may I comment that the promise attached to the commandment has a social rather than an individual application. The promise is to "you" in the plural, not in the singular. What it means, in other words, is not that if you're a good boy at home you'll live to be an old man - as though personal longevity is what's promised; but rather that a society that honours the family unit rightly will be a stable society, and will long endure because it's strong.
Finally, in the work area, Paul addresses himself to the only situation he could address himself to in that society: slavery.
Conditions were far harsher, and far more unjust for slaves than ever they are today for workers. Nonetheless, he urges the same mutuality of consideration and respect for each other.
You must respect management's authority, you workers, for you'll have to answer to God how you did your job.
And you have to respect the rights and the person of your workers, you bosses, for you'll have to answer to God for the way you treated them.
The worker should do such a job as he can present to Christ with pride, and the boss must manage his employees as if each of them were Christ Himself.
Think what a difference it would make to labour relations if both management and labour took their orders from God!
CONCLUSION
The last thing to say is that all the way through, this Scripture like all Scripture, emphasises what we owe to others, not what others owe to us.
The Christian spirit always does.
That's what's different about it.
When we're obsessed with notions of what others owe to us, rather than of what we owe to them, we've fallen away from Christ ... a long way.
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