Ephesians5chapter 5

Ephesians 5:1-2

The word behind followers is mimetai, imitators, and the call is to imitate God the way a dear child imitates a father, not from a distance but as family resemblance. That imitation is at once narrowed to one shape: walk in love, as Christ also loved us. His self gift is described in the language of Leviticus, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour, the burnt offering's fragrance applied to the cross itself.

Ephesians 5:3-4

Three sins are named as unfit even to be spoken of among saints: fornication, uncleanness, and covetousness, the last of which returns in verse 5 as a form of idolatry. Speech comes under the same discipline, filthiness, foolish talking, and eutrapelia, the coarse wit rendered jesting, all displaced by one fitting use of the tongue, giving of thanks. The saint's mouth is regulated as strictly as the saint's body.

Ephesians 5:5

Covetousness is named idolatry a second time, because it enthrones the desire for gain where God alone belongs. The phrase the kingdom of Christ and of God places both names under one reign without a second governing article in the Greek, a small grammatical hinge several commentators read as evidence the Son's kingdom and the Father's kingdom are one kingdom, not two. No such man, Paul says, has any share in it.

Ephesians 5:6-7

Vain words are empty arguments built to excuse the very sins just named, and Paul answers them with a plain fact rather than a rebuttal, because of these things cometh the wrath of God. The children of disobedience repeats the phrase already used of the Gentile past at 2:2, so the warning reaches back into the letter's own argument. Verse 7 draws the practical line, no partnership with them.

Ephesians 5:8-10

Paul does not say the Ephesians were once in darkness but that they were darkness itself, an identity rather than a location, and now are light in the Lord, the fourth beat of the letter's walk thread after 2:2, 2:10 and 4:1. Walking as children of light is tested by its fruit, named as goodness, righteousness and truth. Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord makes the Christian life an ongoing discernment, not a single decision made once.

Ephesians 5:11-13

Reprove is elencho, to expose and convict, so the command goes beyond avoiding the unfruitful works of darkness to actively bringing them into the light. Verse 12 echoes verse 3's it not be once named, some deeds too shameful even to describe. Verse 13 turns the picture again, light does not merely expose what it touches, it makes manifest, so that whatever is thus revealed is itself drawn into the light.

Ephesians 5:14

The source of he saith is genuinely disputed. Some read it as Paul's own paraphrase of Isaiah 60:1, arise, shine, for thy light is come, applied to the sleeper rather than to Zion. Others hold it a fragment of an early baptismal hymn or confession already known to the Ephesian church, which Paul quotes as scripture without further comment. Both readings are held by serious interpreters and the text itself does not settle which.

Ephesians 5:15-17

Circumspectly translates akribos, exactly, the word for a careful accountant checking every entry, and it names the fifth beat of the walk thread. Redeeming the time uses a market term, buying up the opportunity, because the days are evil and the opportunity will not return unbought. Understanding what the will of the Lord is stands opposite the fool of verse 15, who acts without asking what is wise.

Ephesians 5:18-20

be filled with the Spirit: Be filled is a present passive imperative, keep on being filled, naming a continuing filling rather than a single past event, and the standing continuationist reading of the letter receives it at that strength. Wine offers one kind of fullness that ends in excess, asotia, dissipation; the Spirit offers another that overflows into speech, addressing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and singing with melody in the heart to the Lord. Thanksgiving always for all things, offered in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, closes the string of participles that all flow from the one filling.

Ephesians 5:21

Submitting yourselves one to another continues the same participle chain as the filling of verse 18, so the mutual submission named here is itself a fruit of the Spirit rather than a separate command. In the fear of God grounds it, the same reverence that closes the chapter at verse 33. This verse stands as the hinge into the household instructions that follow, and its mutuality is kept in view through all of them.

Ephesians 5:22-24

Wives are told to submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, and interpreters divide over how this fits verse 21's mutual submission: some read an instituted headship distinct from that mutuality, others read the same submission simply particularized for the wife's side of one relationship. The husband is called head of the wife as Christ is head of the church, and the phrase is defined at once by what follows, he is the saviour of the body, so headship is measured by self giving care rather than by authority alone. The wife's subjection in every thing in verse 24 stays inside the frame already set, as unto the Lord, not a submission owed to any husband's whim.

Ephesians 5:25-27

The standard set for husbands is not a comparison but a person, Christ, who loved the church and gave himself for it, so headship's proof is self sacrifice rather than command. The washing of water by the word is itself read two ways, the rite of baptism, or the word of the gospel as the cleansing agent applied to the church, and both readings stand among the commentators. The aim named in verse 27 reaches past the present moment to a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish, the bride made ready rather than the bride as she now stands.

Ephesians 5:28-30

The analogy tightens from example to identity: husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies, because no man ever yet hated his own flesh, an instinct of self preservation now redirected toward the wife instead of ended by the command. Nourisheth and cherisheth describes the Lord's own care for the church, the same two verbs turned from the husband's table to Christ's care of his body. Verse 30 names that body directly, members of his flesh and of his bones, the same words Adam spoke over Eve in the garden now spoken of Christ and his church.

Ephesians 5:31

leave his father and mother: Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 outright, the founding text of marriage itself, this cause reaching back to the one flesh and one body language just used of Christ and the church. The joining named is leave and cleave, father and mother left behind, and a new flesh formed exceeding what either party brought alone. What Genesis instituted at creation, Paul now reads forward into its fuller meaning.

Ephesians 5:32

Musterion is not a puzzle but a secret once hidden and now published, and this is its fifth appearance in the letter after 1:9, 3:3, 3:4 and 3:9. Marriage carried a meaning from the beginning that Genesis itself could not yet declare, and Paul now names it plainly, concerning Christ and the church. Every earlier mystery in the letter followed the same shape, content once concealed and now disclosed, never a riddle left for the reader to solve.

Ephesians 5:33

Paul steps back from the type to the plain command, addressed to every one of you in particular, so no husband may hide the personal charge inside the corporate picture just given. Reverence translates phobetai, the same root as the fear of God that grounded verse 21's mutual submission, so wife and husband alike are called to a Spirit shaped posture rather than opposite postures. The chapter that opened with be ye followers of God closes with a single household living out that likeness in its nearest relationship.