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The Setting

We will discuss the issues surrounding the historical and biblical contexts as they arise and will start with the literal context. It is easy to see the Bible as discrete units of teaching, digesting them in a piecemeal fashion, because of chapter and verse structure. However, it is important to remember the books of the Bible were not divided up into chapters and verses until the 13th century. While it is true one can understand the book of Proverbs at the verse level and Psalms at the chapter level, most of the books of the Bible were written to be understood as a whole. The book of Ephesians was written as a single letter and should be approached on that basis. There is a reason the material in chapter five occurs at the location it does, before the material in chapter six and after the material in the earlier chapters.

What follows is a brief outline of the letter up to the teaching on marriage. There are several points in this discussion which are disputed by some scholars, such as, did Paul write the letter and was it written to the Ephesians, but I will not attempt to address these or the other issues, nor will I defend my conclusions about them here. These issues are outside the scope of this book and for the most part do not directly concern the teachings on marriage we are discussing. Keep in mind, this is only a brief outline, and I would strongly encourage you to read the entire book of Ephesians and not rely simply on this summary.

The Book of Ephesians is a letter written by Paul to the church in Ephesus. It opens with a mostly standard opening for a first-century letter: From, To, Greetings, though as he does in most of his letters, Paul modifies the Greeting portion to be statements of grace and peace instead. He would frequently follow this with statements of thanksgiving and prayer, but here, Paul has the second longest sentence in the New Testament, a sentence on God’s role in salvation (1:3-14). The sentence emphasizes the Father “chose us in the Messiah before the creation of the world” (1:4), to live for the praise and glory of Christ (1:12) and we “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (1:13). Following this, Paul returns to his normal thanksgiving (1:15-16) and prayer (1:17-19) ending with a magnificent statement on the power of Christ, making clear God has the power to carry out the plan he has made.

Chapter two continues the discussion but changes the focus from God’s role in salvation to ours; a role dismally beginning with “You used to be dead.” It proceeds to paint a dark picture of the hopelessness of our former state. This all changes beginning in verse four where Paul abandons this dreary line of discussion in mid-sentence with “But God…made us alive.” Verses 8-9 summarize this change, “For by such grace you have been saved through faith. This does not come from you; it is the gift of God and not the result of actions, to put a stop to all boasting.” Here we begin to get an idea of the reason for the letter: evidently some in Ephesus were boasting of their new status.

Paul continues by contrasting his readers with the Jews (2:11) and how his readers were “excluded from citizenship in Israel” but now they have been brought near (2:13). The picture here is very much a Jewish one, where closeness to God is related to physical closeness to Jerusalem. He then calls for the ending of hostilities and for a peace rooted in Christ, who is “reconciling both groups to God in one body through the cross, on which he eliminated the hostility” (2:16).

It would seem, as in many places, there were Gentile – Jewish tensions in the city of Ephesus, but unlike other locations, here the main problem was with the Gentile believers who saw themselves as superior and the Jews as inferior. This would account for the emphasis on God’s role in choosing us before the beginning of creation, and the warning about boasting, along with the calls for peace.

Chapter three starts with “For this reason,” a thought Paul will not finish until verse 14, as he goes instead into discussion of the secret of the Gentiles, a secret made known to Paul (3:2) and which we can understand (3:4); a secret that was hidden but was now being revealed (3:5). “This is that secret: The Gentiles are heirs-in-common, members-in-common of the body, and common participants in what was promised by the Messiah Jesus through the gospel” (3:6). Paul was called to proclaim the secret (3:7-9) the church is the union of God’s people, the Jews and the Gentiles, and it is through his people God works in the world.

Paul completes the thought he had started in verse 3:1 and again writing, “for this reason” adding “I bow my knee…” and begins his closing prayer for this section (3:14-19) making three requests, that we would be given strength, understanding, and filled with the fullness of God. He closes the first part of the letter with a doxology, the only one to mention the Church.

This teaching about the Church has ramifications as to how we should live, and that is what Paul now focuses on in the second half of the letter. This part of the letter can be divided into five exhortations, each one centered around the concept of how we are to “live” (literally walk), the first one beginning, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to live in a way that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (4:1).

The first exhortation (4:1-16), and the exhortation that serves as a foundation for all the rest, is a call for unity. The second (4:17-32) is a negative exhortation not to live as the Gentiles do. The third exhortation (5:1-5) is to live in Love, while the fourth (5:6-14) is a call to live in the light.

This brings us to the exhortation that contains the teaching on marriage. Building on the earlier part of the letter, this exhortation starts, “So, then, be careful how you live. Do not be unwise but wise.” (5:15) The main part of the exhortation starts with a long sentence beginning with the dual commands to “Stop getting drunk with wine, which leads to wild living, but keep on being filled with the Spirit” (5:18) which is then followed by a series of participles describing the results of being filled with the Spirit.

In most translations, this long sentence is broken up primarily to avoid long sentences in English, and the participles changed to regular verbs to make the sentences complete. Thus in the translation quoted in this book, the International Standard Version (ISV), the participle for “reciting” is translated as “Then you will recite”; “singing and making music” becomes “you will sing and make music”; while “giving thanks” becomes “you will give thanks” (5:19-20). Normally this does not cause any problems, but it does, at times, make what was a result seem to be a command, as when “singing and making music” is translated as “Sing and make music.” This brings us to the text on which we will be focusing.