Deciphering Complex New Testament Texts about Women Part Four: Ephesians 5
This is a 1296 mosaic by Jacopo Torriti from the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Mary presents the Christ-child at the temple. Joseph stands beside her holding two doves. Simeon and Anna stand to the right.
Image source: Shala Graham, Visual Museum of Women in Christianity
Ephesians 5
In this series, we’ll now transition to the so-called “household codes” which appear in various forms three times in the New Testament: Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and 1 Peter 3. In the context of what a marriage between followers of Christ ought to look like, Ephesians 5 is the most detailed, so let’s start there.[1] As with all the articles in this series, I intend to briefly provide what I consider to be the most convincing egalitarian interpretations for this passage. There are books upon books written on these topics – I encourage you to dive in deep. But for our purposes here, I will attempt brevity.
Context
This morning, I used a Bible app to listen to Ephesians twice through, once with a male NIV reader, and once with a female NLT reader. It was fun to hear both versions in two different voices. As I listened, I noted a strong theme in the first half of Ephesians is an emphasis on unity among believers, particularly between Jewish and Gentile believers. All are saved by grace through faith as God’s gift (Ephesians 2:8). In the second half of Ephesians, Paul shifts his focus to answering the question “So how should believers live?” In the middle of this second half, we find Paul’s words for husbands and wives.
Ephesians 5:15-33 (NIV)[2]
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 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.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Submission: Verses 21-24
It so often comes back to this: how do wives submit? Surely, they do. Paul says wives must submit to their husbands twice in this passage (verses 22 and 24). Let me summarize some thoughts.
In Greco-Roman society, wives were expected to submit to their husbands. Verses 22 and 24 would not have caused the debate we have in our churches today for the first-century readers/listeners.
In the Greek, “submit” does not appear in verse 22. Rather, there’s a continuation of thought from verses 21 to 22. These verses could be translated something like this: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” In other words, verse 21 is incredibly important for understanding this entire section on wives and husbands.
Verse 21 qualifies verses 22 and 24. Paul tells ALL believers to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Presumably, husbands count in the “all believers” category, as do wives. So, logically, husbands also submit to their wives. This would have been revolutionary for the time! What does this husbandly submission look like? I believe verses 25-33 answer that question.
Verse 23 is sandwiched between the two “wives submit” verses – this is an ancient literary device called an inclusio, designed to draw attention to the middle verse. Verse 23 provides Paul’s reasoning for verses 22 and 24; it’s the “meat” if you will. We will come back to verse 23 shortly.
In verses 22 and 24, notice who the active participant is in submission. It is not the husband. The wife submits herself of her own agency and volition. The husband neither demands his wife’s submission nor actively participates in the process. The wife is the actor in verses 22 and 24. She is not told to obey her husband; Paul’s words to her are not a command as they are to the husband in subsequent verses.[3]
Paul “does not say that the husband is the lord of the wife, but that the wife’s submission to the husband is as valuable as if it is done to Christ himself.”[4] Further, Dr. Cohick points out that the husband is not “a substitute for Christ or her intermediary with Christ.”[5] The wife should not submit herself to anything immoral. She is also not a doormat for an abusive or dominating husband. Abuse is immoral behavior; we do not accept it as something a wife or any woman or any human being ought to endure.[6]
Nowhere in this passage does Paul call the husband the leader in the home. Some will argue that “head” means leader or person in authority. More on that below.
In a moment, we’ll move ahead with these ideas as we build a more cohesive understanding of the entire passage in question. But allow me to pause here briefly to address the evangelical elephant in the room.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard verses 22-24 applied to decision-making in marriage. I’ve been asked repeatedly “But who will be the decision maker in the marriage?” or “But who will be the tie-breaker if we can’t agree, and a decision needs to be made?” I have my own thoughts regarding these questions that make sense for my own marriage. However, for our purposes here, let me ask a question: Where in these verses does Paul mention decision-making?
…nowhere. Not once.
Probably because Paul is not talking about decision-making. How do I know this? When Paul proceeds by addressing husbands directly in verses 25-33, he does not talk about decision-making either. Nothing in this entire passage talks about decision-making. Paul is talking about something much bigger, much more important than who tiebreaks martial conflict. He’s talking about ways of being between husbands and wives. And he uses the marital illustration to point us to Christ.
Head
Now we come to the crux of the issue. What on earth does Paul mean by “head” in verse 23? “Head” (Greek: kephalē) could mean so many different things in the first century: a physical head, authority/ruler, source/origin, first principle, and more. It’s not the usual Greek word Paul uses for authority or ruler. When this same word is used in 1 Corinthians 11:3, Dr. Lucy Peppiatt believes the most reasonable meaning is that there is unity in each pairing (man + Christ united, wife + husband united, Christ + God united – see my article on 1 Corinthians for more on these verses).[7] I think “unity” makes good sense of this passage as well, especially considering Paul’s wider emphasis on unity in the body of Christ elsewhere in the letter. Sure, a head might be more visible than the rest of the body, but so are men in a patriarchal society. Being called the “head” doesn’t default to him being the leader.
The husband and wife share a body as Christ and the church share a body. The difference is that Christ is the Savior of the church, but the husband is absolutely not the savior of the wife. That would be heretical, friends. Only Christ saves.
If you take a step back from all the debates, it’s nice to take a moment to appreciate the beauty in these verses. Marriage takes two people and brings them to oneness. They do not lose who they are in the process, yet they are united in a way unique to marriage. This leads us to dwell on how that oneness exists between us and Christ as well. A beautiful image of who we are in Christ - the main point of this passage in my view.
So, then, the wife submits herself to her own body, which is her husband. What does the husband do? We shall see in the remainder of the passage that he, too, submits himself to his wife in the way he treats her as his own body. They are united as one flesh, one union, one body.
Mutual Submission
In the remainder of this passage, Paul speaks directly to the husbands. Paul uses detailed language to describe exactly how he expects the husbands to treat their wives: with love and care. I’ve heard many refer to this passage as an example of how husbands are to be “servant leaders.” Again, nowhere does Paul call the husbands leaders.
I love Dr. Esau McCaulley’s words in his commentary of Ephesians 5:25-30, so I will quote him at length:
“Placing flourishing and life of the wife as a priority clarifies Paul’s instructions to the husband in Ephesians 5:25-30. He calls on the husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church by giving himself up for her (Eph 5:25). As we can see, the central connecting point of the analogy between Christ and the husband is not Christ’s exercise of power, but his sacrifice. The work of washing and cleansing that Paul describes was often work reserved for women. It now becomes the work that Christ does for his body, and by extension husbands for their wives.”[8]
The husband serves his wife through self-sacrificial care, which points us to what Christ does for His church. The husband submits himself willingly to his wife by giving up his cultural power (a given in Paul’s day) to serve her and love her.
The picture of mutual submission is this: the wife is not called to submit herself to her husband in a way that is not reciprocated by the husband. They submit themselves to one another, placing premium value on the flourishing of one another. It is not about power. It is never about who has power when it comes to relationships between believers. Power is not something Christians ought to seek. We seek to be like Christ. For me Ephesians 5 always recalls Paul’s beautiful words in Philippians 2:1-11:
“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 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.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
Love & Respect?
In verse 33, Paul says “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” Indeed, the husband loves his wife as himself seeing as she is an extension of his own body, one flesh with him. He lords nothing over her, demands nothing of her. He treats her with care and creates conditions in which she can flourish. Abuse in any form is not welcome here and violates Paul’s command[9] that the husband love his wife in these specific ways. Spousal abuse is a clear violation of the marriage covenant. As a mysterious illustration of Christ’s relationship with the church, Christian marriage cannot deem any form of abuse acceptable. Abuse violates our status as image-bearers of God.
Among evangelicals, there is also an absurd tendency to use verse 33 as justification for teaching that women primarily want love and men primarily want respect. Huh? I am a woman. I desire love and respect. Marital love and respect are intricately connected for me. I want to be loved in a way that feels respectful. If my husband were to cross my personal boundaries in his quest to love me, that would not feel loving to me (he doesn’t; he’s wonderful). Likewise, my husband has told me many times that he desires love and respect from me. I am dumbfounded by this idea that women and men are somehow defined by their deeper desire for either love or respect. All humans need and deserve both.
Rather, verse 33 points us in another direction. Paul summarizes his theological musings on marriage in Ephesians 5 by reminding husbands again to love their wives as themselves and then reminding wives to respect their husbands. I think Paul’s reference to respect connects back to verses 22-24, encouraging the wife to submit herself respectfully to her husband as her husband seeks to submit himself to her in loving care.
Summary of the Passage & Possible Meaning
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
We must start here. Every believer, without qualification, submits to one another. This means husbands also submit to their wives.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
This is nothing new to wives at this time who would already be expected to submit to their husbands.
23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
“Head” (Greek: kephalē) could mean so many different things: a physical head, authority/ruler, source/origin, first principle, and more. It’s not the usual Greek word Paul uses for authority or ruler. I think “unity” makes good sense of this passage, especially considering Paul’s wider emphasis on unity in the body of Christ elsewhere in the letter. The husband and wife share a body as Christ and the church share a body. Paul continues the body metaphor to discuss the way husbands will care for their wives as they do their own bodies in 5:28 and how the two become one united flesh (5:31). In no way is the husband the Savior of the wife. Only Christ saves.
Again, Paul repeats that wives submit to their husbands, forming an inclusio emphasizing verse 23.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
The love husbands are called to embody is self-sacrificial, as Christ’s love for the church is self-sacrificial. Christ gave himself up for the church, making us holy by His sacrifice. We are washed clean and presented as perfect because of the work of Christ in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body.
With a similar self-sacrificial love as Christ has for His church, the husband loves his wife as his own body (flesh). Notice the unity. The measure of self-love for a husband is the love he has for his wife. He is to care for her. Christ cares for and nourishes the church as we are members of His body (united with Christ).
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.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
This is a reference to Genesis 2:24, describing the intimate union of marriage. The two become one flesh. The profound mystery is that Christ and the church can be so united.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
I believe this points to mutual submission and self-sacrifice in the marital relationship.
References & Notes
[1] In no way am I arguing that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Same-sex marriage was not a reality in the first century. I will use the language of husband/man and wife/woman because that is what this passage uses.
[2] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture in this article is from the New International Version (NIV).
[3] Lynn Cohick, The Letter to the Ephesians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 352.
[4] Cohick, Ephesians, 353. Italics original.
[5] Cohick, Ephesians, 353.
[6] Domestic abuse is a complex issue. In no way do I place blame on a woman caught in an abusive situation. Abuse is the sin of the abuser.
[7] Lucy Peppiatt, Unveiling Paul’s Women (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 56-67.
[8] Esau McCaulley, “Letter to the Ephesians,” in The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary, ed. Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, Amy Peeler (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024), 433.
[9] Dr. Cohick clarifies that Paul’s language is commanding when telling husbands to love their wives. See Cohick, Ephesians, 359.
