Letters from Paul

A taste of the study room coming with Paul — pull open whatever you'd like to sit with.

The reading — Ephesians 5:22-33

²²Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the assembly, being himself the savior of the body. ²⁴But as the assembly is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their own husbands in everything. ²⁵Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave himself up for it; ²⁶that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷that he might present the assembly to himself gloriously, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without defect. ²⁸Even so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. ²⁹For no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord also does the assembly; ³⁰because we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. ³¹“For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will be joined to his wife. The two will become one flesh.” ³²This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and of the assembly. ³³Nevertheless each of you must also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

World English Bible

The words behind the words

When I wrote "submit" (Ephesians 5:22), the word I used carries the sense of ordering oneself under, taking one's place willingly — not being crushed down, but freely yielding. And note: before ever I name the wife or the husband, I wrote "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:21). The whole passage stands under that. And when I charged the husband to "love" (Ephesians 5:25), I did not reach for the word of fondness or desire, but for agapē — the love that spends itself, that gives its body over as Christ gave his. That is the weight the husband must carry.

Where else you say this

I take up this same thread in other letters. To the Colossians I wrote it more briefly: "Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them" (Colossians 3:18-19). And the pattern of love that does not seek its own — that is the same love I set before the Corinthians: "Love is patient and kind... it does not insist on its own way" (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). And the self-emptying I hold up to husbands is the very mind I urged on the Philippians: Christ "emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7).

The situation

I wrote this from Rome, in chains, to the saints in Ephesus and the churches near them. These were households fresh out of the pagan world, where a wife was often counted property and a husband ruled by right of power. Into that I spoke a strange and holy word: not that the husband was freed to command, but that he was bound to die — to love as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. To the ears of that age, the heavy charge fell not on the wife but on the man. I meant it to. The home was to become a small picture of Christ and his bride.

The hard question

You may ask honestly: does this not simply chain the wife beneath the husband and bless an old injustice? Look again at what I actually wrote. I laid on the husband the harder burden by far — not to be served but to give his very self, to nourish and cherish her as his own flesh (Ephesians 5:28-29). No man who truly loves as Christ loved will ever lord it over his wife; such love makes tyranny impossible. And do not miss where I finally point: "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church" (Ephesians 5:32). Marriage was never the main thing here. It is a window. Read it, and look through it to him.

This is a small window into what a study room with Paul will hold — word by word, letter by letter, and the maps and journeys behind them. Get notified when it opens →

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