Ch.16: “Stand”: Mode of Existence of God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (1): 6:10-20

          Finally we reach “the” point of the whole letter!  We saw earlier that Paul designed Ephesians to move just to this point.  The “Mystery” of God’s gracious plan, the “Memory” of God’s victories, the “Model” of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary, and “Membership” in that movement all flow into our calling and capacity to “stand” against the principalities and powers that oppose God’s will and way in the world.  Here is where we engage this struggle to implement Christ’s victory in the world by pointing to (sign), being (foretaste), and bringing into being (steward) right relationships in every aspect of life,

Though our tendency is to read Paul’s description of armor-bearing as referring to an individual equipping themselves for service to God, Yoder Neufeld is correct to observe:  “It is much more in keeping with the gist of Ephesians to see this summons to battle directed to the church as a whole, to the body of Christ acting as a unified divine force.”[1]  

          

 This concluding, brief, climactic section of the letter is governed by the third of our posture images:  stand (vv.11,13 [2x], 14).  To “stand firm” in the struggle against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” is the mode of existence for God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people in the world.  That’s why Paul has Ephesians build toward this point.  He has funneled everything in the letter to ground and buttress this call to arms!

6:10-13

          Early in the fourth chapter Paul exhorted his churches to grow to maturity, the “full stature of Christ” (4:13).  Now, here in ch.6, he assumes that maturity when he commands his churches “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (imperative).  Yoder Neufeld puts it even stronger, “Seize power! Fill yourselves with God’s power.”[2]  Paul can make this bold move only because of his confidence that the maturity to seize such power is itself a God-given gift.  Yet it I still a bold step indeed!  Only when God’s people are ready and able to live into this maturity are we ready to play our God-designed role in God’s purposes – to engage the struggle with the enemy.

          We are to “put on the whole armor of God” (v.11).  To “put on” is the same language as the baptismal command in 4:24.  It seems fair, then, to see this call to become battle-ready as the ultimate outcome of baptism.  Engaging the struggle in the “whole armor of God” is our baptismal vocation.  This is what we are here for!

          This armor is God’s own armor.  In fact, he draws several items of the armor from the description of God’s armor in Isa.59:17.  Unlike the ill-fitting armor Saul forced David to don to face Goliath (1 Sam.17), though, this divine armor is just what the church needs to face and fend off “the wiles of the devil” (v.11).

          Whether we believe in a literal, personal devil or not is less important than whether we believe that there is some form of organized, intentional, strategic (“wiles,” v.11) resistance to God at work in the cosmos.  That this kind of resistance to God exists is the crucial matter; how we conceptualize it is another matter, one that we can debate. 

          Paul makes it clear in the next verse how crucial the existence of such anti-God resistance is to his view of the world, indeed, to the worldview of the Bible as a whole.  It is this coterie of forces/beings that are the real culprits against whom God, Christ and his people are at war, not the human beings they deceive and agitate to resist and oppose God.  They are as much captives and victims of these powers as are those they victimize.  That’s what makes this divine counter-revolution unique – there are no human “bad guys”!  Some do bad things, very bad, horrible things, and they must be stopped.  But they themselves are deceived and spurred to do what they do by their own brokenness and the powers that brokenness opens them up to.  They need forgiveness for the brokenness, freedom from their illusions, and healing of their openness to such deceit.  That is why prayer is our first and primary response to such people.    

          “Therefore, take up the whole armor of God” (v.13):  Paul draws his exhortation to a conclusion.  We need the “armor of God,” indeed, the “whole armor of God” to carry out our commission.  Paul will detail our outfitting in the next section (vv.14-20).

          That commission Paul rehearses as a general or commander might just prior to leading his forces into battle:  “Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”

          In 5:16 Paul urged his churches to make wise use of their time because “the days are evil.”  Here he uses the singular “evil day.”[3]  What does this mean?  After v.10 sounds the theme statement of this section, vv.11 and 13 make parallel statements “sandwiching” and highlighting v.12 where Paul identifies our true enemies.  Look at vv.11 and 13

“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (v.11)

 “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on the evil day (v.13)

The “whole armor of God” is paralleled in each verse, so it stands to reason that Paul intended his closing phrases to be parallel, though not identical.  If we take the “wiles of the devil” and “on the evil day” as parallel ideas, the thought emerges that “the evil day” is any day we are subjected to attacks fashioned by devilish “wiles.”  And that, of course, is every day, every day, at least, that we seek to live obedient to our calling!

Paul concludes this section with a triumphant cry:  “and having done everything, to stand firm” (v.13).  Here is Paul’s vision of a mature community of faith, not giving in, giving up, or giving out in the daily struggle to serve as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  Having availed ourselves of all that Paul has shared in the sections leading up to this one, we have lived by and used such gracious and powerful gifts faithfully and fully, and at the end we “stand” in triumph.

6:14-20

          Paul’s picture of the “whole armor of God” is a favorite passage for preachers and teachers – and for good reason!  He draws on a well-known figure, the Roman soldier, and re-describes this figure as God’s idea of a faithful community of faith.  Yes, community of faith.  Most often this description is applied individualistically, as if each believer is so outfitted and must work in concert to succeed.  But Paul’s emphasis from the beginning to end of this letter has been on the church as a corporate community, receiving and sharing God’s gifts as one.  It would be strange indeed if Paul changed his imagery now and envisioned the church as a gathering of similarly armored individuals.  No, I think we must stick with the corporate imagery he has used throughout.  Paul envisions here a church equipped with all this armor, different people in the church wielding different items of the armor, none complete without the others, none able to “stand” without the others.  This picture of the church equipped for battle bearing the various pieces of God’s own armor is but the organic image of the body of Christ animated by all the ligaments working harmoniously together translated into Paul’s final and guiding image of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people!

         Here we are then at the point Paul has been pointing us to all along.  This is the summit of the letter.  Here’s the armor necessary to successfully wage war against the “principalities and powers”:  “truth” (belt, v.14), “righteousness/justice” (breastplate, v.14), “peace” (shoes, v.15), “faithfulness” (shield, v.16), “salvation/liberation” (helmet, v.17), “God’s Word” (sword, 
v.17), “prayer” (vv.18-20).  As noted earlier, most of the imagery Paul borrows from Isa.59 where God the Warrior intervenes with judgment against the rampant injustice of his people.  Paul wants us to know that God has given us his very own armor for the struggle.  In other words, God is fighting his battle through and in us!

 

Breastplate of Righteousness/Justice         Eph.4:24

Shoes of Peace                                      Eph.2:14,15,17; 4:3

Belt of Truth                                        Eph.1:13; 4:15,21,25

Sword of Spirit/Word of God Eph.1:13; 5:26

Shield of Faith                              Eph.2:8; 3:12,17; 4:13

Helmet of Salvation         Eph.1:13

Paul[4] begins with the “belt of truth” (v.14).  Paul uses truth in Ephesians in connection with God’s great overall plan (1:13), as the foundation of our growth toward maturity (4:15,25), and the milieu we indwell in Jesus (4:21).  The church is also to declare God’s wisdom to the powers through its truthful life and proclamation (3:10-11).  Thus, truth is critical to both the identity and internal functioning of God’s people, as well as its interaction with the world.  And this world is filled with “every wind of doctrine . . . people’s trickery. . . (and) craftiness in deceitful scheming” (4:14).  So the church’s interaction with the world is likely to be contested and the truth may at times take on a polemical edge.  God’s truth stakes out a place for us to stand as we engage this struggle.

 In Isa.59:17 YHWH dons the breastplate of righteousness among other pieces of armor to intervene among his people on behalf of the justice so appallingly missing there.  Paul borrows this imagery to apply to God’s people, his subversive counter-revolutionary movement.  It carries with it that sense of powerful active intervention on behalf of the right ordering of creation that it had in Isaiah.  We must remember that “justice” is an equally good translation of the original as is “righteousness.”  And it is this activist sense that is most appropriate to the armor God gifts his people with.  To bear the “breastplate of righteousness/justice” is to participate in God’s ongoing work to set the world to rights.

Paul adds his own touch to the picture with his depiction of the warrior’s footwear (v.15).  What drives God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people is God’s own passion to spread his peace into every area and aspect of his creation.  This suggests that the peace Paul envisions is the sure and certain hope that the peace won at the cross by Jesus is already the final reality toward which creation is moving.  To be ever ready to move out to share this news and practice it in ever new areas and ways in this certainty is a powerful energizer!

The footwear of the Roman army of his time had soles studded with sharp nails for balance and traction hobnails, like modern cleats (not well represented in the image above).[5]  They also protected the soldiers from snake bites and scorpion stings as they marched.  If Paul has this footwear in mind as he penned this part of Ephesians some further biblical resonances sound forth.  In Gen.3:15 God announces that the seed of the woman (Eve) and that of the snake will be in perpetual conflict throughout the ages.  The snake will wound her seed on the heel, but he will crush the snake’s head under his foot.  This points to Christ who though wounded to death but brought by God to new life so destroyed the evil serpent.  Paul carries this further when in Romans 16:20 he pronounces this benediction upon them:  “The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”   The footwear of peace Paul describes here in Eph.6 is just what God’s people need to do this!

Paul adds another new feature with the “shield of faith” (v.16).  Again Paul probably has the large rectangular shield of the Roman army of his day in mind (again not well represented in the picture). Nearly as tall as the soldier himself, the wooden shield was covered in leather and doused in water to better extinguish the flaming arrows their enemies used against them.  This is precisely the imagery Paul uses here:  “to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (v.16).

Here we meet again the issue of how to understand “faith.”  Does Paul mean our faith or trust in God through Christ?  Perhaps.  But more in keeping with the notion that these pieces of armor are donations of God’s own armor, it seems more likely that Paul intends the Greek word pistis in the sense of “faithfulness.”  God has given us his own faithfulness to fulfill his purposes to ward off the attacks of the enemy. 

This also tells us something about Paul’s view of the “wiles” of the devil (v.11).  These demonic attacks will seek to destabilize us as the snake did in the garden:  “Did God really say?”  Casting doubt on the truth and reliability of what God has promised to do, especially when there is little explicit evidence that this is happening, is a staple in the devil’s arsenal of “flaming arrows.”  The question at issue for us becomes “How do we “keep on keeping on” when doubt is cast on God’s faithfulness?

The shield of faithfulness, God’s action toward us and the world in Christ, is Paul’s answer.  Focusing on that complete and victorious work gives us the confident boldness to “keep on keeping on” even when things don’t seem to be going our way.  We continue to share in God’s faithfulness carrying on the struggle against the powers on behalf of the world because we know Christ has won the victory.

With the “helmet of salvation” we are back with Isa.59.  Here the imagery is of YHWH donning his headgear readying himself to go forth saving and liberating his people.  He gifts us with his own helmet of salvation to symbolize our being drafted into his service to go forth carrying out God’s own saving and liberating work.  YHWH the warrior makes us warriors too for the sake of the world!

The “sword of the Spirit,” “the Word of God,” is the weapon given for our battle.  This sword (machaira) is often identified with the dagger-like, short-sword of the Roman soldier.  But Paul is drawing his imagery largely from the Old Testament picture of YHWH as a divine warrior.  In the texts that speak to the image in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, machaira designates YHWH’s sword of judgment, a large sword of warfare (e.g. Isa.27:1).[6]

The Spirit wields this sword for judgment, or perhaps better, discernment, in the sense of Heb.4:12,13:

"Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged , piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”

This word of God, this sword of the Spirit, equips God’s people for their subversive counter-revolutionary work.  Their work rests under God’s classic affirmation of his word in Isa.55:11 speaks: 

“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
   it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
   and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”   

Now we are fully equipped with God’s own armor to be the people who carry on God’s work in the world fired by God’s own passion and power to bring about a world marked by right relationships on all levels.  Our provisions are abundant.  They have been tested and found more than sufficient.  One question remains: how do we participate in or “utilize” this armor we have been given?

Prayer is Paul’s answer.  It is “through” (dia) constant “prayer and supplication” in the power of the Spirit that we indwell and utilize the gifts of divine armor we have been given.  Prayer is, we might say, the environment in which our warfare is conducted.  A prime function of such prayer is wrapping our fellow subversive counter-revolutionaries (“all the saints”) in the protective and empowering love of God.

Paul then requests prayer for himself as a way for his readers to jump into this prayerful practice of their equipping.  ^“Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak” (vv.19-20).  He invites them to accept his present bondage as an ambassadorship on behalf of God, a point he labored to make earlier in the letter (ch.3 especially), and to pray that he may carry out his charge, declaring the “mystery of the gospel,” with a bold clarity.

We now can see what all goes into the making of God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.  We “sit,” allowing ourselves to soak in the love and goodness God has lavished on his in accord with the mystery of his gracious plan to gather up everything in the cosmos in Christ (1:10), the memory of the great victories God has won for us (ch.2), and the model we have in Paul for living out this (ch.3).

And we “walk” in membership in the community of faith (4:1-6:9).  There we learn and practice the skills necessary for living out our calling in the world.  In this community we demonstrate to a watching world the life God designed for humanity and announce God’s wisdom to the powers and principalities.

Finally, we “stand” face-to-face (as it were) with these powers and struggle against them in God’s power to set right what these powers have skewed.  The mode of our existence in the world is therefore “agonistic,” that is, engaged in a struggle (6:10-20).

Paul has skillfully woven all this together in a coherent and compelling vision of the reality to which God calls his people.  As his people live out this vision, the rest of the world discovers that they too are included!  God is going to bring everything together under Christ at the end.  Everyone has a place and a role in this “eternal purpose” (3:11) of God’s. 

We’ll take a further look at all of this in the “Postscript.”

We Practice “Standing” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People

6:10-20

Paul’s call to prayer as the environment or milieu in which we are to take up and use the “whole armor of God” is what strikes me most in this section.  Prayer is, I suspect, the most under-practiced aspect of Christian faith in our time and place.  That’s because Christianity is so deeply and profoundly relational with God and we’ve become so adept at holding God at arm’s lengths with our focus on programs and projects.  Paul, however, will not let us of the hook so easily.  By positing prayer as the reality to undergirds, surrounds, and even makes possible our life as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people, he grounds everything in our relationship to God.  Lack of prayer, then, is more than an oversight in our practice of spiritual disciplines, it is a failure in our relation to God.  And a failure to be God’s people and to be and do what God wants us to be and do for him and for the world he dearly loves.

The question looms, then: Why pray?  Ben Myers offers ten reasons, following the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.[7]  His reflections take us deep into the relational dynamics of our life with God.

1.    Our Father who art in heaven

Because without prayer there is only – myself. Between the heaven of prayer and the hell of the self there is no middle way. The more I try to find myself, the more I am lost. To call on God as Father is to discover myself as someone God calls child.

2. hallowed be thy name

Not because prayer will give me what I want, but because it will knead and pummel my wants, stretching them my whole life long, until at the last hour of my life I have learned to want one thing only, the only thing worth having. And so my whole life becomes a secret sigh, an inarticulate utterance of the hidden Name of God. And so even my death will be my prayer, the sigh by which I give myself up into the presence of the holy Name.

3. thy kingdom come

Because my prayer encompasses not my own life only but the entire world of which I am a part. What defines this world is scarcity, injustice, and oppression – in other words, hunger. To pray is to find in my own hunger an echo of the hunger of the world, in my own small cry an echo of the cry for justice that rises like smoke from the scorched earth.

4. thy will be done

Because prayer is the end of willing, the beginning of wisdom. The life of prayer is a slow dying into the will of God, a slow awakening into the freedom to live.

5. on earth as it is in heaven

Not because prayer is a technique of self-improvement or an instrument of spiritual experience, but because it is beyond all human competency, beyond all language and learning and control. Prayer is the speech of heaven. To pray is to live beyond the narrow walls of the self and beyond whatever I can merely control. As sunflowers open to the morning, so the praying life opens towards heaven, standing up straight into the bright burning presence of the Name.

6. give us this day our daily bread

Because every day, morning and night, I hunger. The stuff of my life is hunger, need, and lack. Technology and affluence blind me to this truth, but one day – a single morning – without food is enough to show me the truth of what I am. I live by lack: God lives by fullness. I am only hunger: God is only food.

7. and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

Because hurt and disappointment and resentment are always knocking at the door of my life. As soon as I drive one away another arrives, eager to come in and set up its home in the little house of my heart. I will die of resentment; I am destroyed by what I am owed. But I learn to forgive when God writes off my debts and makes me free. Now I can live, now I can clear the debts of enemies and friends, and speak the magic word of forgiveness that drives resentments back into the dark.

8. and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

Because this world is only trial. Yet it is God's world, and all the evils that crowd in upon my life can never hide my voice from the listening God.

9. for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever

Because God is glorious. All my life I was asleep within myself, but when I bowed my head to pray I opened my eyes to the glory of God. Glory should be seen. Just as it is right for a mountain to be seen or a piece of music to be heard or the body of a lover to be loved, so it is right to give God thanks and praise, for God is glorious.

10. Amen

Because the life of God is prayer itself. It is deep calling to deep, the endless giving and receiving of unbounded self-divesting self-communicating joy. My prayer is an eavesdropping on the Prayer that is God. God's speech is grace and truth, God's life is love, God's silence is the annunciation of the Name. The word of my life is a modest, small, yet glad and true, Amen.

---

[1] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 292.

[2] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 292.

[3] The NRSV has “that evil day” but there is no “that” in the Greek text.

[4] Yoder Neufeld has done the best and most creative work on the armor.  I will draw on his work in his exemplary 98commentary throughout this section.

[5]Robert Gundry, Commentary on Ephesians (Kindle Locations 1251-1252). Baker Book Group. Kindle Edition.

[6] Yoder Neufeld, Ephesians, 303.

[7] http://www.faith-theology.com/2012/01/why-pray.html.

Ch.15: “Walk”: Membership in God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (7):5:21-6:9

“Be Subject”

          It’s important to remember that this section grammatically and logically follows out of what’s gone before.  Like all the other verbal forms in v.21, “be subject” depends on the imperative “be filled with the Spirit” in 5:18.  “Be subject” itself then becomes the topic for the remaining section in this part of Ephesians.

          This section connects up with everything from 4:1 on as this larger section has  unfolded under the posture image “walk”.  Under this image Paul lays out in various ways what “membership” (4^th of the 5 M’s of the Missional Matrix which forms Ephesians) means in a “nuts and bolts” kind of way.  This “Walk” section is, to borrow the phrase Timothy Gombis gives to the “Be Subject” section, a “radical manifesto for the new humanity” Christ has given birth to through the cross.[1]

          This particular section of Ephesians has evoked more ink, I suspect, than any other.  It has the infamous “wives by subject to your husband” texts as well as similar instructions for slaves towards their masters.  You can easily imagine why there is such interest, both positive and negative, in them.  I can’t rehearse all that discussion in these few pages so I’m not going to try.  What I will do is lay out the way I approach these matters.  If you want to look deeper into them matters, I will provide some bibliography you can read to do so.

          What Paul tries to do in this section[2] is detail in terms of the normal Greco-Roman household structure what the new humanity birthed through Christ looked like in terms of his world.  Romans believed that this household structure was also a microcosm or model of the larger structures of society.  It was a template for those larger structures.  So, as Paul addresses the household relationships, he is at the same time sketching a vision for how the larger world should look and function too.  Radical changes at the smaller level of the household betoken, then, similar changes in the larger structures.  Paul is here providing us with a vision of “politics,” that is, the shape of the life and quality of people gathered together to live in a city (a polis).

          Politics is not primarily (or should not be, at least) about political parties and electoral campaigns.  Politics is primarily about the way we relate to each other, evaluate the worth and value of others, distribute power and access to the goods and services of the community, the expectations of others, in short, the nature and quality of our community.

          Christianity, then, theology, if you like, has definite ideas and convictions about these same matters.  Who is “one of us,” how we value others, the distribution and sharing (or not) of power and access to goods and services, what expectations we have of others, and so on.  And we believe our convictions about these things are the way God wants the world to work as well as the church.  So, Christian faith is in this sense inescapably political.

          So, if Paul is sketching this vision for how God wants the world to work, it’s doubly crucial to try and get this vision right.  Far more is at stake than merely proper family order. Yet this “Be Subject” section has suffered more than any other of the letter from misinterpretation!  This dilemma makes it necessary for me to make a few comments about how to interpret texts like these, especially since so many believe Paul is reinforcing what we would today call “traditional” forms of relationships which keep the power in them with husbands, parents, and masters over wives, children, and slaves.

          Many think Paul’s aim here is to show the larger world that Christianity offers no offense to its patterns and standards by presenting a view of family that basically replicates Greco-Roman models.  From what I just said it should be clear that the exact opposite is the case.  I think that runs counter to the whole thrust of the letter and would defeat Paul’s purpose thus far in writing.  But how he envisions that taking place is highly counter-intuitive to what we would normally expect. 

          Paul builds on Jesus’ way of practicing the freedom and power of God’s sovereign rule.  I have called this way “subversive counter-revolutionary practices.”  These practices are subversive because of the extraordinary freedom the gospel bequeaths on people.  No longer do status, roles, gender, wealth, honor, or ethnicity lock people into certain roles or expectations in the church - and if not in the church, not in the world either (as we have seen). 

          So the church had the freedom in Christ to order their lives in a completely new way. But in reality that was scarcely possible.  Christians lived in a culture that had it structures and mores and one they wanted to reach with this good news of freedom in Christ.  To live in way that struck others as bizarre (if not perverse) and made no attempt to show the difference this good news made within the structures of life they were familiar with would be largely self-defeating.  “The solution that Paul provides does not involve overthrowing such structures, but rather subjecting them to new creation dynamics so that relationships within the New Humanity take on a renewed character.”[3]  Therefore, Paul helps us think through how the freedom of the gospel subverted the day to day relationships his people lived in ways more appropriate to God’s original design in creation.

          It’s important to remember that Paul’s teaching here is an attempt to flesh out the dynamic of gospel freedom and equality in the forms of relationships that made up his culture.  The forms of these relationships – husband and wife, parent and child, master and slave - were as unavoidable to Paul’s churches as they may be repugnant to us.[4]  The trick is for us, first, to discern how the gospel has subverted those relationships.  Our task is then to carry over and extend the changes the gospel has wrought in those relationships to the relationships in our own time and place as possible. 

In other words, we are not to repeat the same kind of relationship Paul expounds for his time and place for our time and place are quite different.  Rather we must allow the gospel dynamic to continue to reshape the relationships we have in our world in the direction of great freedom and equality.  As this process unfolded throughout the centuries, marriage, parenting, and slavery have all been radically changed.  Partnership and not patriarchy (male dominance) is reshaping marriage, nurturing and guiding is replacing authoritarian rule in parenting, and slavery has been abolished in most places and is recognized as a completely unacceptable and even blasphemous practice. 

What Jesus and Paul set in motion have borne fruit in all these ways as the gospel has made its way through our history.  It has undoubtedly taken far too long, painfully too long, for some of this to season and shape the way we live.  And there is still much to do and long ways to go in seeking the continuing unfolding of this gospel dynamic in other areas of life.

So what is this gospel dynamic that Jesus and Paul used to instruct their followers in the first century?  We can see it at work as Paul develops a “Household Code” in 5:21-6:9.  These “Household Codes” were common in the ancient world.  They gave an overview of how all the relationships in a Greco-Roman household were to function.  A household in that world was very different from that of a modern nuclear family.  It was much larger, multigenerational, and included the staff of slaves that served the family in various capacities.  Guidance as to what was expected of whom was both needed and given in these codes.

Paul’s adaptation of these Household Codes shows how the gospel of freedom in Jesus leavens the dough of first century social relations.  First, he begins each pair of exhortations by addressing the partner in the relationship who was deemed by the culture of that day as inferior, of less value, without standing or right – wives, children, and slaves.  These are the folks who would have simply been told their place and expected to submit.  In the church, however, these socially disadvantaged folk are given the dignity of being addressed first in their relationship and the responsibility of deciding what to do. 

The freedom in Christ these folks received in baptism gave them a new future.  No longer was it inevitable, at least in the church, that their status would be assigned to them once and forever based on gender, age, financial standing or the like.  Now their future was something they could choose.  Paul’s instruction to his readers to “subordinate” themselves to one another in these relationships shows as much. 

That instruction also treats these folk from the underside of Greco-Roman society as responsible moral agents, treatment they never received in that society.  Wives, children, and slaves were “players” in their own lives in the church.

Further, the power-holders, the husband, Father, and Master, are addressed and charged with reciprocal responsibilities to the partners in their relationship.  This again was not a feature of the secular Household Codes which usually enumerated only the rights and privileges of the powerful.  Paul, on the hand, holds them accountable for subordinating themselves to their partners as well.

The upshot of all this is that the church seemed to have had three basic options in relating to the social order of its world.  First, was to simply fit in with things as they were, making no waves.  Second, was to revolt against these things as they were and seek to set up an alternative social structure.  Thirdly, they could seek to model new ways of relating within the structures presently in place.  The first option was theologically untenable.  The second practically impossible for Christians in the Roman empire.  The third was the only real option they had within the realities in which they lived.  This was the option Paul adopts here in Ephesians and his version of the Household Code bears this out.  This is the way of a subversive counter-revolutionary.  We’ll see how this works out in more detail as we look at the specifics of Paul’s “Household Code.”

In the marital relationship the counsel Paul offers differs in at least four key, “subversive” ways from the secular Household Codes.  First, whereas in the secular codes women were not directly addressed but the duties and responsibilities were addressed to her husband, Paul directly addresses the wife, and her first, granting her the dignity and respect as a moral agent equal to that of the husband.  Both now, are to choose to submit each other rather than simply following the cultural expectations of their time.

Secondly, to call the husband to “love” his wife is unique in these kinds of codes, as is Paul’s expectation that they will treat their wives sacrificially rather than dominating them for their own pleasure and comfort.  To live this way in marriage is part of what Paul means about the church’s mandate to announce the wisdom of God to the powers that seek to excite us to dominating, divisive, and dehumanizing ways of relating, as seen in the typical secular code.

Thirdly, Paul crafts Christ’s headship in terms of his giving himself up for our salvation.  Thus for the man to be “head” of the wife means a turning away from his own self-interest and to the nurturing and protection of those who “submit” to them. Scott Bartchy notes that “the aspect of God’s power that human beings should imitate must result in empowerment of others, which stands in striking contrast to the understanding of power on which every patriarchal system is based, namely, domination.”[5]  

          

 In the fourth place, if the contemporary codes privileged the benefit of the husband or the concern for order in society, Paul’s version, based on the relationship of Christ to the church, has as its chief concern that God’s people practice a subversive counter-revolutionary form of relationship even within the parameters of prevailing forms of marriage in the 1^st century in the Roman empire. Here each person has the dignity of having a role to play in this new way of relating.  And that role was essential to the people of God demonstrating to the world the new life they found in the risen Christ.

          Thus Paul takes the way of Jesus which was lived out within a Jewish setting and ethos and theologically and creatively refashioned that way to serve Jesus’ subversive counter-revolutionary purposes in the wider world of Greco-Roman society.  Our challenge, as I noted earlier, is not to replicate what Paul and his first-century contemporaries did, but to reproduce new forms of that same dynamic in the context of marriage in our own time and place.  In fact, that in the west we largely hold up equality, dignity, consensus, and so forth as a marital ideal is in large part tribute to the way the Christian counter-revolution has subverted other more models of marriage that allow men to domineer and oppress the women.

          While we may remain uneasy with terms like “submit” and “headship” (often for good reason), we cannot allow that uneasiness to blind us to the dynamic Paul is pointing us to, especially as it is played out in the relation of Christ to the church.  When viewed in its own setting and with a sympathetic historical imagination, Paul’s vision here is quite liberating and would have been experienced as such in his churches.  Ironically, the degree of subversion this vision has already worked in the cultural bloodstream from which we live here today is a chief reason we find Paul’s version for his first century churches somewhat troubling! 

But we can’t judge Paul by our models of marital equality and freedom.  We can only evaluate him in his own situation.  The question we have to ask is what difference the gospel makes in marriage as it existed for him and his churches.  And I have tried to show that in its own subversive way the gospel has radically transformed the relations between husband and wife in the direction we recognize today as genuinely Christian.  Our task, as I have said several times, is to expose our own marital relations to that same gospel and discover our own blind spots and unexamined aspects of that relation and grow into an even deeper experience of marriage!

          

 Next (6:1-4) Paul turns to parents and children.  Actually, he begins with parents but then zeros in on fathers (6:4), for they held all the power over their children.[6]  Again Paul addresses the lesser group, “children,” first as he did the wives earlier.  This does for children what it did for wives:  grants them a new dignity and makes them partners with their parents in the relationship.  Rather than owing unconditional allegiance to parents, children owe them obedience and respect because it is “right” (6:1) or “God’s right order of things.”  God is the one to whom they owe their ultimate love and loyalty because it is he under whose command and blessing as Creator they live (6:2).

          “Fathers,” the power brokers in the relationship, are warned not to “provoke your children to anger” but rather “raise them with discipline and instruction about the Lord” (v.4).  Since fathers held absolute authority over their children, the potential for them to use or abuse their children for their own ends, comforts, or convenience was legion.  The children’s anger was a very real likelihood.

          Positively, and here is the transformative dynamic of the gospel, fathers are to live under the Lord and responsible to him for the upbringing of their children,  Now it’s God’s desires for these kids that the father must discern and further, not his own dreams or intentions for them.  In essence, this is baptismal parenting Paul call for here.  In baptism we turn our children over to Christ, to die, be buried, and raised to new life in and with him (Rom.6:1-4).  In a real sense they are no longer ours.  They belong to Christ and live with and under us as younger disciples whose identity and vocation as believers are entrusted to us as their parents.  Hard to imagine a more radical recasting of a relationship than this!

          Slaves and masters are up next. Though Paul and the early church are regularly condemned for accepting or even condoning the existence of this institution and its relationships, it is hard to see what else they could have done.  They had no social or political power to advocate for abolishing it nor would the empire have acquiesced if they could have.  It’s worth pointing out that our visceral connection of the word “slavery” with what happened in the south up to the Civil War in our country is not historically accurate.  Slavery was less brutal and dehumanizing than what we experienced here.  That does not make it a relationship that should exist in God’s world but we ought to at least separate the two in our minds as we read Ephesians. 

          Nevertheless, even in this detestable institution Paul believes the gospel can do its transformative work.  If the institution could not be done away with, the relationships within it could be changed as with wives and husbands, and fathers and children.  So he applies the same gospel logic to the slave-master relation he had to the others. 

          Slaves are addressed first and the same dignity and responsibility Paul conferred on wives and children he now confers on slaves.  They too are to live and serve with “sincere devotion to Christ” (v.5).  Since slaves were often “property” of their owners and sometimes treated as such, this “transfer of ownership” from the master to the slave had to be liberating.  Now, they treat their masters according to God’s will, not because they belong to them but because they belong to Christ (“slaves of Christ,” v.6) and are answerable to him (v.8). 

“Serve your owners enthusiastically, as though you were serving the Lord and not human beings” (v.7).

          

 Incredibly, and it is hard for us to feel the force of this, Paul says Christian masters owe their slave the same treatment and respect (v.9a)!  A more radical command to a slave owner can scarcely be imagined in that context.  Yet it is just what Paul enjoins them to do. The reason:  both belong to God and stand together under his judgment – and this God does not discriminate based of social status (6:9b).

If we take seriously what Paul is doing here and don’t superficially write him off as simply condoning the institution of slavery and browbeating slaves into degrading submission.  What is really happening here, as in the other two relationships Paul addresses, is the redeeming of a relationship perverted through distorted and evil social dynamics (though pesky “powers” Paul mentioned several earlier in this letter).  Here, however, redemption ultimately means abolishing this relationship for there is no form in which it can ever be appropriate for one human being to own another!

          

 We are fortunate to have a case study of just such a relationship in the New Testament in Paul’s letter to Philemon.  Philemon was a slave owner whose slave Onesimus had run away and found his way to Paul who was imprisoned in Rome.  Onesimus apparently came to Christ under Paul and apprenticed himself to serve and learn from the apostle.  Onesimus made himself valuable as Paul’s assistant and Paul was loath to return him to Philemon.  But he knew it was the right thing to do and so he does.  But he tells Philemon that he returns Onesimus as a “dearly loved brother” whom Philemon should receive as such as well (v.16).  Paul hopes Philemon will return Onesimus to him and offers restitution for any loss Philemon has or might incur. 

          In this brief letter we see the transformation of a master-slave relation in action.  And this transformation is what ultimately proves the undoing of the institution itself.  How and family, brothers and sisters, own one another and abuse them with degrading and oppressive behavior.  Onesimus’ future was with Paul, and Paul hoped Philemon would see that and respond accordingly.  And apparently he did.

          As the transforming leaven of the gospel worked slowly and torturously in the consciousness of the western world slavery became more and more problematic.  Though it took a long time and cost many lives, eventually both the church and North American culture at large condemned and abolished slavery.  That said, we must acknowledge that slavery still exists in our world, even here were it is legally outlawed.  Its form has changed.  Now it is young girls caught and enslaved for sex that seems its primary form.  So the struggle is not over; the battle is not won.  The Gospel continues to shape us and move us into this fighting this battle in whatever form it pops up.  

Paul draws this section on “walking” by membership in the community of faith to a close by considering the relationship of wives and husbands, children and fathers, and slave and masters.  In each case, working subversively within the givens of his world, Paul applied the gospel to the transformation of those relationships.  The first two could be transformed in the direction of greater conformity to God’s intention for them in creation.  The last, the salve-master relationship could not.  It could only finally be abolished and declared in no way or ever appropriate for Christians or for God’s world.

          As we read and acknowledge these dynamics in the text, we should give thanks for the direction they point, the work they did in Paul’s time, and seek to discover further aspects in our own marriages and families that need redemption in the directions Paul has pointed us.    

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[1] Timothy G. Gombis, “A Radically New Humanity:  The Function of The Haustafel In Ephesians,” JETS 48 (2005), 317-330.

[2] I am dependent on Gombis, “A Radically New Humanity” in the section.

[3] Timothy Gombis, “A Radically New Humanity:  The Function of the Haustafel in Ephesians,” JETS 48/2 (June 2005), 325.

[4] We must remember that the early church had neither the standing nor the access to power to launch anything like a “abolitionist” movement in the 1^st century Roman empire.

[5] Scott Bartchy, “Who Should be Called Father?”……137

[6] Curiously, the CEB obscures this move by translating the Greek “fathers” as “parents” in 6:4.