Ephesians 5.15–33
A sermon from St Margaret’s Nedlands 27th September 2026
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husband, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (ESV)
Wives, submit to your husbands! Wow, them’s fightin’ words! What once was a favourite reading and sermon topic at weddings is now avoided like the plague. What are we to make of it? Is it the final proof that Paul was a crazy misogenist?
The first thing to observe here is the obvious fact that 2000 years ago a man in Rome writing to a community of people in what is now Türkiye speaks of the marriage of one man and one woman. How is that in a world with not a single church building, where it was common for a man to have multiple wives and lovers?
If we go back another 2000 years we find Abraham and Sarah, life partners. There was a hiccup with a concubine, but read the story and you will be impressed by their devotion to each other, even to making plans for the life to come. And their son, Isaac: his marriage to Rebekah is the model of marriage in our Prayer Book service. How can we explain this?
Jesus’ words in Mark 10 takes us back to the very beginning of the human story, where, according to Israel’s Scriptures (and Jesus), God created a man, and then a woman because it was not good for him to be alone, and Genesis records: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh.”[1]
However, if you read on in the Old Testament you will find that it was commonplace to have more than one wife, and the law did not forbid it; Welcome to the world of men! Nevertheless, by the time of Jesus and Paul, in Israel one man one woman was the general rule, though not so among the Greeks and Romans. Jesus (and Paul) determined the future of Christianity when he referred back to Genesis 2 as God’s original plan, and said the breaking of the marriage relationship did not please God—”God hates divorce,”[2] and marriage was meant to be for life.
When Muhammad took up parts of Judaism and Christianity and crafted a faith for the Arab world, he baulked at this and allowed more than one wife; for much of his life had 9 at the one time. And, because the imitation of Muhammad is important among Muslims, having more than one wife is favoured, though Muslim law limits the number to 4.
Our bus driver in Israel was a Muslim named Nuach (Noah). He told me the one thing he liked about Christianity was its insistence on one wife. “I have 4,” he said, “and it’s terrible.”
Anyway, the first point I make is that the one-man-one-woman partnership is a very ancient arrangement; in English it was called “marriage,” and until the enactment of laws to allow the “marriage” of same-sex couples, Western societies essentially held to a Christian understanding of it.
Paul takes up the subject as part of a discussion of unequal relationships—relationships in which there is an order requiring different things of the different parties involved. He states a general principal that we are to submit to one another, and then gives three examples: wives are to submit to their husbands, children to parents, and slaves to masters. The idea that submitting to each other means everyone should submit to everyone is a popular interpretation of this passage, but it misunderstands what Paul is saying, and is impossible anyway. The question is how do we carry ourselves in an unequal relationship.
We need first to be clear what it means to submit? The word should better be “subordinate yourself”, but that sounds clumsy. The Greek word apotassomai assumes there is some sort of order, and the person who is lower down subordinates him or herself to the person who is above them. It doesn’t imply inferiority, and it doesn’t always mean obey. A good way to translate it would be, “Wives accept the leadership of your husband …”
The next thing to grasp is that Paul is speaking here to wives. “Husbands, get lost; go and boil your head while I talk to your wife.” He doesn’t tell the husbands to dominate their wives, or force them obey. Nothing like that. If a woman accepts the leadership of her husband, she does so voluntarily. That is the whole point of this passage. It is the alternative to coercion.
Next, Paul tells the wives to get lost, and turns to the husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her … Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.
There’s no question that what Paul asks of the wife is difficult; it can be frustrating being in one of these up-down relationships. When the boss at work asks you to do something you don’t like, its difficult. When the traffic cop pulls you up and tells you to slow down, it’s nasty. When the captain of a team tells a player he is to play in this position, but he would rather be in another, its unpleasant, but that is how it is in our world. Otherwise we would have chaos, and, let me say it again: coercion, the will to power (Nietzsche)—the strong would prevail. Just because Paul mentions three of these relationships doesn’t mean there aren’t more. And this has nothing to do with inferiority and superiority. You may accept the leadership of the minister of your church, but he may also join a club where you are the president, and need to accept your leadership there.
But it is not always easy, and Paul tells the husband to love his life. Last Sunday we thought about the meaning of love. It means wanting the best for the other person—wanting to lift them higher. Husbands are to have the happiness and welfare of their wife always in mind. That sort of relationship will work.
Let’s think about the alternative: we are told husband and wife should be equal. It sounds good. Equality is great if you can do it. Most couples when are in love want to please each other. It can get quite stupid. “What would you like to do today?” “No, what would you like to do?” “No, I want to do what you want to do?” and so on. No problem. The problem comes when they disagree. The protocol Scripture lays down is that the wife will accept her husband’s leadership. Does that mean he will always get his way? Not if he loves his wife and wants the best for her. He will often do what he knows she wants—if he is any sort of husband and values their marriage.
But what if she says to him, “I am equal to you, and I am saying we do this.” Here something must give. In the extreme case it may mean divorce. I don’t mean after one disagreement, but as the culmination of a pattern of disagreement and conflict, because there may be no way to resolve disagreements, except by argument, since they are equal. Or he may resort to physical strength and enforce his will—or he may give in, since they are equal—and become submissive. And if that continues, they are not equal; she has become the leader, and he withdraws for the sake of peace. This is the quandary that I fear many marriages are in today.
But let’s go further. Paul tells us to model our marriages on the relationship of Christ with the Church. Christ loves his Church and seeks the very best for it; he wants it to be beautiful and happy; the Church is his body and he nurtures it. When I become a Christian I enter into a covenant for life, just like marriage, and I become part of Christ’s body; the relationship could not be closer. The Christian welcomes Christ’s leadership. There is no coercion.
We may now be in a position to follow the rest of Paul’s thinking. He quotes Genesis 2: “Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a passage which clearly teaches about husband and wife, but Paul says is actually about Christ and the Church.
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
Somehow Paul has come to see things upside down, and this is not the first time. We saw earlier in the letter how what to us is the human relationship of father and son, for Paul sheets back to the fatherhood of God.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family [every fatherhood] in heaven and on earth is named …[3]
Something we think of as a purely human arrangement turns out to be modelled on the very person of the trinitarian God. It is the same with man and woman in marriage. Throughout the Old Testament the relationship of God to his covenant people is likened to a marriage. God took this slave people from Egypt and entered into a covenant with them at Mt Sinai. Each promised faithfulness to the other, and the bond was formally solemnized. At the heart of the new relationship was love: God loves and rescued his people, and provides for them a new home. They in turn are to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and have no other gods but him. So, when Israel turned its back on him and went after foreign gods, he was forced to divorce them, and they were turned out of their land. Nevertheless, he promised this would not be the end of the story. He would one day return to his bride and reclaim her. “I will be your God, and you will be my people,” is the refrain than runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
So now Paul is seeing the big picture. God is at the beginning and the centre, and the end, and God has now revealed himself. He comes to us in the person of Jesus and invites us into relationship with himself. We are enmeshed in a slavery that is leading us to death, and he puts his life on the line to rescue us. We surrender to his love, and pledge ourselves to be his person, and his people. Paul realizes that at the very beginning, when God made male and female, and brought them together as man and wife, he was modelling the ultimate relationship he would have with the human race, and we with him: “I understand this of Christ and the Church.” When we monkey around with gender and marriage, we are playing with holy things. Whoever messes with holy things kommt um. I am quoting the great Hans Schürmann. “Whoever messes with holy things dies!”
But of course, we will monkey around, because when God is banished from his place and humans put themselves at the centre, anything goes. As Paul says in Romans 1, “claiming to be wise they became fools … giving themselves up to all kinds of unnatural passions.” When we lose God, we also lose what it is to be human. Christians have to live in the world as it is, with all its confusion.
But now let me draw this to a close. When we approach marriage we approach the union of Christ and the community of the new world. But Paul doesn’t leave it there. Our life is now, on the stage he has set for us.
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
He is not speaking here of romance. Falling in love has its place, and is a precious and wonderful thing. It is the mechanism God has established to bring about this partnership of a man and a woman to become one flesh, and to stick with each other through the ups and downs of life “until death us do part.” At that point we enter upon the reality of what has been imaged for us in our marriage all these years. Blessed is the man and woman who still have each other to care and to nurture into their latter years.
But come back to Paul’s bigger meaning in verses 15 on. How then shall we live? We are to live wisely and carefully, seeking God’s will, seeking to be filled with his Spirit, living together with thankfulness and joy—and it does not stop there. This is one long sentence from 5.15 to 33.
Ephesians 5.15: Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives, to your husbands, as to the Lord—And husbands, love your wives …
How are we to be wise, how are we to be filled with the Spirit? By making the most of every opportunity, singing praises to God, but also in the living out of the structured relationships we find ourselves in.
… submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, wives, to your husbands, as to the Lord … And husbands, love your wives. …
Christians who believe in marriage are onto a good thing. There is very little in this world that is as beautiful as when a man and a woman stand together before God and a group of people and say I do, and someone pronounces them man and wife.
My friend in Mozambique was approached by the man I told you about last Sunday, who had never heard of love. He asked my friend would be marry him and his wife. My firend protested that they were already married and did not need to be married again; Christians recognize Muslim marriages and vice-versa. But they had lived a wild life and had separated until my firend led her to Jesus, and then him. “No,” he said, we know all that, but we want to be married Christian. And (re)married they were, in the city which knew all about their former way of life, she tall and regal and dressed in white. I get choked up whenever I think of it.
We have something wonderful in marriage and must honour and treasure it. When Russia got over its intoxication with Marxism and realized there would be no new world, life became meaningless, and all that was left was vodka. When the Woke generation realizes the same, and discovers it has murdered the things that once gave meaning … well, let us pray that churches are still around, shining the light and showing the way. Who knows that weddings may not be a big part of that renaissance?
[1] Genesis 2.
[2] Malachi 2.16.
[3] Ephesians 3.14.