Ephesians 5 - Summary

Historical setting

This letter was written to Gentile Christians in Ephesus, a major city in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), likely in the latter part of the first century. The church consisted of people recently converted from pagan worship and Greco-Roman society. Paul addresses them as those who were formerly outside God's covenant but are now included through Christ. He writes from prison, possibly in Rome, to strengthen communities separated from him geographically.

The recipients lived in a pagan environment where sexual behavior, idolatry, and material excess were normal parts of civic and religious life. The Christian communities formed countercultural islands within this world, and Paul writes to reinforce boundaries between Christian conduct and the practices surrounding them.

Life and customs

Greco-Roman society had no biblical sexual ethic. Fornication and covetousness were not moral concerns but expressions of personal freedom and status. The household was organized hierarchically: the male householder held absolute authority over wife, children, and slaves. A wife's submission to her husband was the legal and social norm, not a Christian innovation. Marriage was primarily a practical and economic arrangement, often arranged without the couple's prior choice.

When Paul speaks of "saints," he uses a Jewish term for God's set-apart people, now applied to Gentile believers. The "kingdom of Christ and of God" refers to God's future rule breaking into the present through Christ. Excess in wine was common at banquets and festivals; drunkenness was not condemned as severely as Paul condemns it here. The phrase "washing of water by the word" draws on both Jewish purification practices and Greco-Roman associations of water with cleansing, though the theological meaning is specifically Christian.

What the text says

The passage begins with an appeal to imitate God as beloved children (verse 1) and to walk in love as Christ did, giving himself as "an offering and a sacrifice" with a "sweetsmelling savour" (verse 2). Verses 3 through 5 warn that sexual sin, uncleanness, and covetousness must not even be mentioned among the saints, since covetousness is idolatry and those guilty of such things have "no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

Verses 6 through 13 develop this theme through contrast with darkness and light. The Christians are now light in the Lord (verse 8) and should have no fellowship with "unfruitful works of darkness" but should reprove them (verse 11). Verse 14 quotes or alludes to a saying about awakening from sleep and rising from the dead, with Christ giving light.

Verses 15 through 21 move to practical conduct: walking wisely and circumspectly (verse 15), making good use of time because days are evil (verse 16), understanding the Lord's will (verse 17), avoiding drunkenness but being "filled with the Spirit" (verse 18), and singing and giving thanks (verses 19 and 20). Verse 21 introduces mutual submission "in the fear of God."

Verses 22 through 33 address wives and husbands specifically. Wives are to submit to husbands "as unto the Lord" (verse 22) because "the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church" (verse 23). Husbands are commanded to love their wives "even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it" (verse 25). Verses 26 and 27 describe Christ sanctifying and cleansing the church "that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle." Verses 28 and 29 state that men ought to love their wives as their own bodies, "even as the Lord the church." Verse 31 quotes Genesis about a man leaving father and mother and joining his wife, "and they two shall be one flesh," which verse 32 calls "a great mystery" but says Paul speaks of it "concerning Christ and the church." Verse 33 concludes that each husband should love his wife as himself, and the wife should reverence her husband.

Takeaways

• The chapter uses the married couple as a living image of Christ's covenant relationship with the church, not as the source of that relationship.
• Practical Christian living begins with imitation of God's love shown in Christ's self-giving, which shapes conduct in household, community, and speech.
• The church's submission to Christ is the model for wives' submission, and Christ's loving self-sacrifice is the model for husbands' love, creating mutual rather than one-sided obligation.