Ephesians6chapter 6

Ephesians 6:1-3

obey your parents in the Lord: The children are addressed directly, which assumes they sit in the assembly hearing the letter read. Paul cites the fifth commandment and marks it the first commandment with promise, quoting Exodus 20:12 with its pledge of wellbeing and long life. In the Lord bounds the obedience: the household order stands inside a higher allegiance, not above it.

Ephesians 6:4

The command cuts against the Roman father's absolute power: he is forbidden to exasperate the child he legally owned. Nurture and admonition translate paideia and nouthesia, discipline of act and discipline of word, and both are of the Lord, the home's instruction answering to a Master above the father. Wesley reads the verse as the whole of Christian education in one line.

Ephesians 6:5-8

The address regulates conduct inside Roman slavery; it does not endorse the institution, and according to the flesh already limits the master's claim to this present order. The slave's service is relocated: as unto Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, which gives the person the law refused to see a standing no master can touch. Verse 8 levels the ledger, whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.

Ephesians 6:9

Do the same things unto them turns the mutuality on the master, and forbearing threatening disarms the one instrument Roman law left unregulated. The ground is a Master in heaven with whom is no respect of persons, so the household's two ranks stand identically before him. Philemon is this verse worked out in a single case, and the seed planted here is the institution's slow death.

Ephesians 6:10-12

be strong in the Lord: The letter's last charge opens its real battlefield: we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places, the fifth beat of the heavenly-places thread. The ranks are the same beings named under Christ's feet at 1:21, real and organized, and the wrestling word is close combat, not distant artillery. The strength commanded is in the Lord and in the power of his might, never the believer's own.

Ephesians 6:13

Panoplia is the full kit of the heavy-armed soldier, nothing optional, and take unto you is a command to receive issued equipment, not to forge it. The evil day is read of the recurring hour of assault, with some holding a reference to a final crisis; having done all, to stand makes standing itself the victory in view. The soldier Paul watched daily in his chains supplies the picture.

Ephesians 6:14-15

The first pieces are the LORD's own wardrobe in Isaiah: righteousness the girdle of his loins in Isaiah 11:5, and he put on righteousness as a breastplate in Isaiah 59:17, so the church is issued her Messiah's own armor. The girdle bound every other piece for movement; truth holds the soldier together the same way. The shod feet carry Isaiah 52:7, how beautiful the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, the gospel of peace as marching readiness in a war.

Ephesians 6:16-17

the shield of faith: The shield is the thureos, the door-sized scutum that covered the whole man, and the fiery darts are the pitch-soaked arrows ancient armies loosed to burn as they struck; the great shields were soaked in water to quench exactly such fire. The helmet of salvation is again Isaiah 59:17, worn first by the LORD. The sword of the Spirit is the word of God, rhema, the spoken word for the moment of combat, and it is the one offensive piece in the kit.

Ephesians 6:18-20

Prayer follows the armor unnumbered, and the teachers divide over the count: many reckon it the seventh piece, others the atmosphere in which all six are worn; both reckonings are named and the text itself does not number it. It is in the Spirit, at all seasons, with all perseverance, and for all saints, four alls that Henry lays out as prayer's whole compass. Paul asks it for himself as an ambassador in bonds, an ambassador in chains being a contradiction Rome would have understood, that he may speak boldly as he ought to speak.

Ephesians 6:21-24

Tychicus of Asia (Acts 20:4) carries the letter and the news Paul leaves off the page, the same courier Colossians names in nearly the same words, one of the links binding the prison letters together. The benediction gives peace, love with faith, and grace to all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, where the last phrase is en aphtharsia, in incorruption, love for Christ of the undying kind. The letter that began in the heavenly places ends with grace on everyone who loves the Lord.