1 Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, 2 and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, k a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. 3 But sexual immorality l and any impurity m or greed n should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints. 4 Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks. 5 For know and recognize this: Every sexually immoral o or impure p or greedy q person, who is an idolater, does not have an inheritance in the kingdom r of Christ and of God.
Light versus Darkness
6 Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath s is coming on the disobedient because of these things. 7 Therefore, do not become their partners. 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light t in the Lord. Live as children of light u— 9 for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth v— 10 testing w what is pleasing x to the Lord. 11 Don’t participate in the fruitless y works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret. 13 Everything exposed by the light is made visible, z 14 for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said:
Get up, sleeper, a and rise up from the dead, b
and Christ will shine on you. c
Consistency in the Christian Life
15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you live—not as unwise people but as wise— 16 making the most of the time, ,d because the days are evil. 17 So don’t be foolish, but understand e what the Lord’s will f is. 18 And don’t get drunk g with wine, h which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit: i 19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. j
Wives and Husbands
22 Wives, k submit ,l to your husbands m as to the Lord, 23 because the husband is the head of the wife n as Christ is the head o of the church. He is the Savior of the body. p 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, q just as Christ loved r the church and gave himself s for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. 27 He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. t 28 In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 since we are members of his body. 31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, u and the two will become one flesh. ,v 32 This mystery w is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.
C. Therefore live in love (5:1–6). 5:1–2. Paul now directs readers to imitate God as children imitate their parents (5:1). They are loved by their Father; “therefore,” they can “walk in love” toward one another (5:2). The definition of this lifestyle of love is the self-sacrificial love of Christ for us, says Paul. Because of Christ’s giving himself up in love for us, we are secure in our position and future with God. We are secure enough to sacrifice our own interests as an offering to God on behalf of the interests of other people.
5:3–4. The loving lifestyle that fosters unity within the family can take any number of forms; for the moment, Paul focuses on what might be called “appropriate conversation,” both in the sense of interpersonal relations and in the usual sense of speech (5:3–6).
5:5–6. Paul warns that those who practice such sins have no part in the kingdom of Christ and God (5:5; the lists in 5:3, 5 correspond); worshiping their own lusts, they cannot enjoy the peaceable rule of God. This of course includes all human beings in their fallen state, and that deceitful “old self” (4:22) misleads them even here. Thus 5:5 means that persons having no part in God’s family are idolaters. They have not received the grace of God in Christ but insist on worshiping and protecting the independent old nature. Putting to death the old nature, laying off the old self in repentance, is the only way by which people enter the life of God. Thinking otherwise, assuming that God is either obligated to reward morality or too gracious to mind about idolatry, is stupid. God’s wrath is real; the disobedient are promised it (5:6).
D. Therefore live as light (5:7–14). 5:7–10. Because of the serious dangers facing the disobedient, Paul warns his readers not to be led astray by worthless talk (5:6) into participation in the deeds of such persons (5:7). Disobedience works against God’s design for unity in his re-created family and is thus characterized as darkness, the opposite of the light of the Lord. Outside Christ, Paul’s readers “were once darkness,” but no longer. In the Lord, they now “are light” (5:8). As light, humans conduct themselves in correspondence to the goodness, righteousness, and truth of God’s nature (contrast 5:3), seeking to know what pleases Christ, which is indispensable for living this way (5:9–10).
5:11–14. In addition, enlightened living refuses to share in what does not please the Lord. Enlightened living means being a light in dark places (5:11–12), which has the effect of transforming darkness into light. The light of Christ shining out from his light-filled followers exposes hidden, dark deeds for what they are (5:13–14a).
E. Therefore live in wisdom (5:15–21). 5:15–17. In the fifth and final instruction on walking in unity, Paul enjoins wisdom-guided behavior. The contrasts between wise and unwise (5:15) and between foolishness and understanding (5:17) echo OT wisdom literature, as does the reference to “evil” days (5:16). Walking in wisdom, says Paul, implies understanding “what the Lord’s will is” (5:17). God will take care of the wicked; the readers need not worry about it. After all, as members of God’s new family in Christ, they are already members and representatives of the new age to come.
5:18–21. Instead, readers must be Spirit-filled, busy with what the Lord has given them to do and not forfeiting precious opportunities by wallowing in self-pity like those drunk with wine (5:18). It is the Spirit who, as God’s seal on the church, implements Christlike behavior in the lives of the family members.
F. Wisdom as mutual submission (5:22–6:9). 5:22–24. Paul explains mutual submission in three domestic relationships as a mark of Spirit-filled living. In each, the “weaker” party is addressed first. Thus in the first set (5:22–33), wives are instructed to submit to their (own) husbands in everything, as they would to the Lord Jesus (5:22). Paul’s rationale is that just as Christ is head and Savior of the church, so the husband is head of the wife (5:23–24). There is nothing surprising here; it is standard cultural wisdom. Yet with tragic irony this text has served for centuries to sanctify the abuse of women within Christ’s church, a travesty occurring in part because interpreters stop interpreting at verse 24.
5:25–32. Paul Christianizes the marital section of the household code not only by introducing the model of Christ and the church but also through what he proceeds to say to husbands. His instructions to them (5:25–33) occupy three times the space he uses for wives, with obvious implications. The entire section is governed by 5:21: husbands are to submit to their wives. As if that were not enough, the manner of submission, also modeled on Christ and the church, requires a husband to love his wife by giving himself up for her (5:25).
5:33. In terms of mutual submission, a husband is perhaps just as likely to submit willingly to a wife who genuinely “dies” for him as a wife is to a husband who loves her like this. However that may be, Paul has called for mutual submission (5:33), which at least implies that husbands die to themselves for the sake of their wives, and probably that wives die to themselves for the sake of respecting their husbands. There could hardly be a more profound way to express the home-based lifestyle that promotes “the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (4:3).