How a Jesus-Blessed Follower Behaves

Don’t Be Pretenders; Be Imitators of God (1-2)

In this chapter, Paul continued with his conversation on how followers, being so blessed in Christ, should live their lives. Paul dove into the heart of “walking worthy” (4:1) as he called the Ephesians to “imitate God” by “walking in love,” and then Paul illustrated God’s love in the sacrificial death of Jesus (1-2). In Paul’s mind, example-following was integral to character development, and walking in or living in love was at the heart of a worthy walk.

Don’t Be Impure at Any Level; Be Morally Pure in All Things (3-6)

The culture of Paul’s day had no pervasive sexual standards, so it was common for the average man to sleep with his slave girl, commit incest, and engage in temple prostitution and homosexuality. It was all part of everyday life and a part of their culture (3). Beyond sex, believers struggled with the usual list of bad behaviors such as covetousness, filthy talk, and crude sarcasm (4), but immorality and covetousness were the particular problems in keeping followers alienated from Kingdom life with Jesus (5). As it is in our day, they were deceived into thinking that practicing a feelings-driven life had no consequences; Paul warned differently (6).

Don’t Partner with Darkness; Walk in the Light (7-14)

Paul called the Ephesians to a change of behavior, different from non-followers of Jesus. Their differences were obvious; they were full of the light of the gospel given to them by Jesus, so they were people of light. The light from Jesus or the gospel was what was producing a changed life (7-9). Because they had the gospel, they were to be careful to discern what pleased the Lord because, as those transformed by the gospel, pleasing the Lord had become a delight to their hearts and lives (10). They were to expose darkness of their deceitful ways, not by shamefully talking about what had been done in darkness, but by living in the light, living accountable to the gospel, and, most of all, living to please the Lord. What was most pleasing to the Lord was for them to do only those things that they would never need to keep secret from anyone else (11-13).

Paul called the Ephesians to arise and let the light of Christ shine on them, doing nothing in secret (14). In so doing, they would be exposing the darkness, those things they would have previously tried to do in secret. Paul's premise was simple: if they never did anything they would be ashamed of, then they would be living in the light of the Good News and every action would be pleasing to the Lord. (By the way, this passage in no way is an encouragement to accuse or reveal what others have done in secret.)

Don’t Be a Fool; Be Wise (15-20)

Next, Paul encouraged the Ephesians to live carefully and to walk as wise people, understanding the will of God, and then making every moment count by not giving in to feelings and sensual gratification, using drunkenness as an example. In Paul’s mind, when someone drank too much they were exercising excess, and anyone who did anything to excess was living in the grips of another god—Jesus having slipped from the center of their lives. Some translations would call such an excess lifestyle “debauchery.” They were to be aware that the evil of the days they lived in was seeking their destruction by filling them with a desire-driven life (15-17).

Instead, Paul urged them to be full of the Spirit as they humbled themselves and sang from their hearts to Jesus. They were to sing psalms—Scripture put to music. They were to sing hymns—songs composed by those who meditated on Scripture. Finally, they were to sing “spiritual songs,” or songs spontaneously flowing from their hearts. 

Their Holy Spirit-filled singing would be flowing with thanks for everything and would lead them to be so full of love that they would be able to submit to one another by willingly serving instead of greedily taking. Their lives would be filled with reverence for Christ as their hearts filled with melody (18-20). All of this was Paul's remedy for the sensual, gratification-driven lifestyle common in the Roman world. 

Don’t Be Independent; Be Submitted (21-32)

As followers full of the Holy Spirit, the Ephesians could do something they would never be able to do without being filled: they could submit to one another. The word “submit” implies voluntary compliance to someone above in a hierarchy. Here, Paul was calling on believers to treat other believers as above themselves (21) (Philippians 2:2-3). From this heart of mutually submitting to one another (21), Paul called for the husband to make it his mission to love his wife and the wife to make it her mission to respect her husband. This, of course, was going to be illustrative of the true and eternal relationship existing between Christ and His Church. 

The wife was to respond to her husband’s loving leadership with submissive honor because her husband had been called and created by God to take up leading his wife in love, just as Christ leads the Church in love and treats the Church as His own body. The wives, like the Church, were not second-class in any way, nor were they or the Church to be treated like slaves or puppets, but the wives, like the Church, were to be treated like the very body of their prospective husbands. They were to be loved as themselves, each as her very own person (22-24).

The husband’s response to being honored was a commitment to love in a specific way. 

• Husbands were to love with sacrificial, giving-up-their-lives kind of love (25).

• Husbands were to love with kind words, washing his wife’s soul of shame, hurt, and lies (26).

• Husbands were to love their wives by pouring all their effort into removing from her every spot of shame and embarrassment, filling her with words that build confidence (27).

• Husbands were to love their wives as their own bodies, protecting them from harm and caring for their comfort, even considering the body of their wife as their own body (28-30).

Paul then makes an interesting note. The whole purpose behind a man being led by God to leave his parents is for the cause of focusing his love on his wife; the very love Paul had just been describing is the same exact love Christ has for His Church (31).

Finally, Paul admitted the mystery of love in marriage was really an illustration of the way Christ is united to and loves His Church (32). Because his point is so important, Paul ends by repeating the basis of what unites a marriage as one: the love of the husband for his wife and the honor a wife shows her husband.