Putting ‘submit to your husbands’ and ‘obey your masters’ in context
Ephesians 5:21–6:9 is labeled in my NIV Bible, “Instructions for Christian Households.”
It deals with marital relationships, child rearing, and slavery—pretty touchy topics in our postmodern era.
They contain verses that are often misunderstood, if not taken out of context, by believers and non-believers.
Most problematic, “Wives submit to your husbands” (a phrase that has made the news this week), and “slaves obey your earthly masters.”
Is Paul promoting misogyny and approving of slavery?
No.
To understand this section of scripture, you must start with the introductory sentence: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
At the outset, Paul says submission is mutual. He is setting up not patriarchy but egalitarianism.
Reverence is an important word in this passage. In Greek, the word is “phobos.” Paul uses it twice in this passage. Like many words in the English language, and common in Greek, it has many meanings. It can mean fear, also respect, awe, caution, humility, and of course, reverence.
Husbands & Wives: Yes, wives are told to submit to husbands, in the way the Church submits to Christ, but that isn’t a one-way street. Husbands are told to love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church. He should “wash her in the water through word,” meaning he must be a godly man well-grounded in scripture. Like Christ, he should be blameless (that, for the record, rules out adultery or frolicking with underage girls). They should love their wives completely, taking care of them in all things. “Each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
This is mutual service and sacrifice. To love one as Christ loved us is to submit to others in service, put the needs of others before our own needs. A man who does this is worthy of his wife’s respect.
Far from misogyny, it breaks with the harshly misogynistic culture of the first century. In the first century, no one told men to love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” That was a call to self-sacrificing, protective, nurturing love — a standard utterly foreign to the Roman paterfamilias system. Without this radical egalitarianism being taught by Paul, the trajectory of women’s rights in the West might have been totally different.
Children and Parents: Here’s the egalitarian hidden subtext: Paul wrote this letter expecting it to be read to the entire congregation, meaning he assumed both husbands and wives, along with their children, were present. He addresses children directly. This again breaks with the patriarchal norms of the time. He tells children to honor both of their parents so they may flourish as adults. And warns fathers, who at the time could rule with an iron fist and face no consequences, to “not exasperate your children.”
The Greek for exasperate is parorgizō, combining para (to the point of) and orgizō (make angry/wrathful). It means to continually irritate or embitter someone so that their anger is stirred up to the point of resentment, frustration, or hostility. In the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek), the verb often describes provoking God by sinful actions—so it’s a forceful word, not just casual irritation, but aggravating someone to an angry response.
Fathers should not be harsh, make unreasonable demands, show favoritism, or engage in cruelty.
If only more fathers understood this command.
Slaves & Masters: So why wasn’t Paul an abolitionist? Shouldn’t we condemn him for his approval of slavery?
This passage shouldn’t be read as approval; rather, Paul is dealing with reality. He had no power. The church in 60 A.D. had no power. There were likely fewer than 10,000 Christians in the world. There were no elections, and protesting the empire could lead to death. Paul was apparently concerned enough about looking like a revolutionary that he rarely used the term “Kingdom of God” to describe the gospel (as Jesus often did). Paul didn’t call for a slavery revolt. Instead, he planted the seed of freedom by teaching that the master and the slave served the same Lord in heaven. That seed, once it worked through Christian ethics, made chattel slavery theologically indefensible in later centuries.
Slavery was a fact of life in antiquity. In fact, without Christianity spreading the truth that we are all made in the image of God, it might still be commonplace.
“Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear (there is that word, ‘phobos,’ again, carrying both respect and fear tied to the Greek haplotēs for sincerity of heart).”
Paul tells slaves this not to keep them enslaved; rather, he would like to see them set a good example of what it is to follow Jesus. Perhaps it might go well for them. Perhaps they might win their masters over to Christ. And in this egalitarian congregation, he also addresses masters, telling them, “treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no favoritism in him.”
So Paul opens this section of scripture with an egalitarian statement and closes with an egalitarian statement—an absolutely revolutionary philosophy for the Greco-Roman world. We must all serve each other without favoritism.
It frustrates me when non-Christians misrepresent these passages to attack Christianity, and it grieves me when believers use these verses to misrepresent Christianity.