Welcome to the family! How Gentiles can live the privilege of being God’s people II (Ephesians 5:21-6:9)
Family relationships then and now
There isn't really a break in Ephesians 5: Paul continues talking about how the Gentiles can join the privileged way of life that God's people have been enjoying for centuries. However, there is a slight change in focus. Up until 5:20, Paul explains the general morality that comes from being God’s new dwelling place. From about Ephesians 5:21, however, Paul focuses specifically on the family relationship Gentile believers now have (along with all God's people) and how they can embody the privilege of being in God's family through the own family relationships, just as God's people have done for centuries before them.
Again, as with the previous section, I have chosen a particular book in the Old Testament (Exodus) to demonstrate this, but really, these concepts are throughout the whole first five books of the Old Testament – known as the Law.
Paul goes through three types of relationships: husbands/wives, parents/children, masters/servants. In each case, these relationships are perfectly exemplified by Christ's relationship with the Church. In each case, Christians are called to try to follow the model typified by Christ and his relationship with the Church. But also, in each case, what Jesus has done is a continuation of the relationship that God has had with his people ever since the Exodus. God and his people having a husband/wife, parent/child or master/servant relationship is nothing new. This has just been demonstrated and expanded even more by Jesus.
Husbands and wives… and other complications
When it comes to husbands and wives, though, Paul doesn’t merely say that God's relationship with his people is like a marriage relationship. That would be far too simple! All he'd have to do would be to go to Hosea, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, and find one of many passages which talk about the relationship in this way. He could have gone to Exodus 20:14, where he prohibits adultery in the ten commandments, or any number of commands relating to marriage from there. Instead, Paul chucks in another relationship, which he has used in Ephesians: the relationship between a head and its body.
In Ephesians 4:15, Paul showed that the Church is the body of which Christ is the head. At this point, Paul must have seen another opportunity to throw in a reference to Genesis. Just like Christ's relationship with you is that of a head with a body, so a Christian's relationship with their spouse is that of a head with a body. This has actually been part of God's design since the very beginning of the world: that husbands and wives should be so interdependent in their relationship that they resemble one body rather than two.
I wonder whether this helps us to be more precise in the way we talk about our human relationships being modelled on the relationship between God and His people. I've often heard it said that God's relationship with His people comes first, and our relationships with each other are modelled on that. So, God decided to design marriage so that it would reflect the relationship that He would have with His people. That may be right, but it doesn't seem to be the particular point Ephesians is making. Yes, we should choose to imitate the ideal marriage relationship Christ has with his people, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that human marriage is itself derived from that relationship. It could be, for example, that God uses the metaphor of a marriage relationship simply because that is something His people will understand from their daily experience. Is human marriage modelled on the Christ/church relationship, or is it a helpful illustration to explain the Christ/church relationship?
What Paul seems to say here in Ephesians is slightly different to either of these possibilities. A marriage relationship (whether regular husband/wife marriage or Christ/Church marriage) is based on something else: a head/body relationship. Two different, and utterly interdependent parts, neither of which could sensibly be described as more important than the other, both of which are crucial to each other's success, happiness and pleasure, and clearly both of which are also non-interchangeable. When you think about how you relate either to your spouse or to Christ, think about the relationship between your own head and your own body. “No one ever hated his own flesh” (5:29) is meant as a statement of the obvious. In the same way, it is completely and utterly counterproductive to try to do something contrary to the best interests of your spouse. And similarly, it makes no sense whatsoever to try to harm Christ, or refuse to submit to him, when we have the privilege of being his own body! Instead, Gentile and Jewish believers in Jesus have the privilege of treating our spouses with the gloriously self-sacrificial love that Jesus has shown us (5:25-27).
Parents and children
After the marriage relationship, Paul moves onto the relationship between parents and children. The parent/child relationship between God and His people is massive in Exodus, right from Exodus 4:22. And it is clear that Paul is thinking about Exodus (or at the very least the Law) when he gives instructions to Christians about this relationship in Ephesians 6:1-4. In the second half of 6:2, he uses two big Old Testament categories to make his point: commandment and promise. He could have simply reiterated the instruction, by saying “Honour your father and mother.” Instead, he went out of his way to point out that this instruction was a “commandment” - part of the family blueprint that God has given for his people for centuries, based on His relationship with them, and which these Gentiles are now invited into. And that this commandment came with a “promise” about life in the inheritance ahead of them, which is now a promise available to Gentile believers too in Christ.
His instructions to fathers also uses some big Old Testament concepts, of “discipline and instruction”. This might be a reference to Proverbs, where a father seems to be giving his son instruction for how to live in a rightly God-fearing way. Overall, this short passage in Ephesians has less emphasis on the relationship between Christ and his people, but continues to use Old-Testament categories. This helps newly-included Gentile Christians to feel the privilege of being invited to conduct their family lives in this wise Old-Testament centred way.
Masters and slaves
Finally, in Ephesians 6:5-9 Paul talks about the relationship between masters and servants, or, probably more accurately, masters and slaves. Before I continue, it's worth saying briefly that the Bible, especially Paul, is really anti-slavery. Paul is clear that Christians should not now be involved in slave-trading (e.g. 1 Timothy 1:10 shows slave-trading to be a condemned practice) or ultimately slave-owning (I think that the whole letter of Philemon makes this case quite strongly, e.g. Philemon 16). Slavery was a constant reality of the ancient world, and much of the Bible is written to help Christians in the situations they are in, even if they are in situations of great suffering.
This passage in Ephesians has been used to justify slavery, and that is completely wrong. During the Atlantic slave trade, there were Christians who did this, very wrongly. Throughout history, when the prevailing culture has shifted away from God’s ideals, there have usually been many Christians who have followed suit. They have been attracted by the benefits they can gain from being more like other people, at first by ignoring the Bible or questioning its clarity, and then by spuriously claiming that the Bible actually supports the world’s position. Abolition of slavery within the British Empire was eventually brought about through the struggles of a great number of individuals, some famous, some not. One key reason for this was the constant effort within parliament of Bible-believing Christians. The Bible, and especially Paul, are anti-slavery.
The horrors of slavery
When it comes to Ephesians, some people think that “slave” is a poor translation. In most Westerners' minds, the word “slave” is virtually synonymous with “slaves from the Atlantic slave trade”, and slavery back then wasn’t like that. It is true that slavery in the ancient world was very different, but I'm not personally convinced that either “bondservant” or “servant” get across how bad slavery could have been back then. It was generally not nice to be a slave. It was bad, but it was bad in different ways to the Atlantic slave trade. Bible-lovers of the ancient world would not have used the Atlantic slave trade as their picture of the horrors of slavery, but likely would have used the experience of Israel in Egypt.
This takes us back to the book of Exodus. The Egyptians “made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves” (Exodus 1:14). Pharaoh tried to kill all the male children (1:16) and cast them into the Nile (1:22). They were given large quotas to produce but without being given the correct materials (5:17-18). The biblical category of slavery (or whatever we choose to call it) has to at least include some seriously horrible treatment, which makes me think that “servant” is not a strong enough word. Incidentally, the story of God rescuing his people from this slavery in Exodus became a message of great hope for many people who were treated terribly in the Atlantic slave trade.
The joys of having a master like the Lord Jesus Christ
While slavery could be this horrible, the same word in the ancient languages can also be used for a nicer arrangement. When we think of slavery, we generally only think about the horrible end of this semantic range, whereas in those languages, there is a much more positive end as well. Though I don't know Hebrew, I have it on reasonably strong authority that the word for “serve” or “worship” in Exodus 3:12 is basically the same as the word for being a slave. God presents his rescue of His people not as merely being rescued from harsh slavery, but to a really good type of slavery (or perhaps “service” for those of us who really can't bear the idea that “slavery” should be the word used if it is good). Maybe this is simply because the word had a wide range of meanings, or maybe God was deliberately making a contrast to show how much better it is to be in His service. Whatever the reason, God being His people's “master” or “lord” is a hugely positive within the Bible. It comes as a relief, especially as opposed to the other people or gods who make such lousy masters.
And God's lordship over His people provides a template for how they should be masters if they are ever in that position. Many of the specific points of law in Exodus 20-24 are polemical against the way things used to be done in Egypt. One non-slavery example of this is in the treatment of very young children. Whereas male Israelite babies were killed under Pharaoh, God is very clear that amongst His people, not only should new-borns have maximum protection, but even children who haven't been born yet (i.e. are still in their mothers' wombs) should get a far higher quality of protection and care than they ever got in Egypt (Exodus 21:22-25).
In a similar way, God's lordship over his people provides a template that means that no Israelite should ever be kept as a slave permanently against their will (21:2), but only for a maximum of a six-year contract. They should never be sold to a different nation (21:8). The aspiration is that a slave in a Israelite household might be made to feel such a valued part of the household that they say, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free.”
Now that the Gentiles to whom Ephesians have been written have come under the Lordship of Christ, they have also moved from being Pharaoh-like to Israelite-like in the master/slave relationships. This means that slaves have a duty to serve with sincerity, and in the full knowledge that their slavery to their current earthly master is temporary. Similarly, masters are to be like Israelite masters, and not modelled on the pagan world around them like Pharaoh was. Threatening behaviour is not acceptable now we are in a household where Christ is our Lord.
Welcome to the family
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