Ephesians 5:22-6:9

Context

I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God chooses to operate in specific time and place. The Bible is not sent down from heaven, but is spoken through the lives and faith and work of actual people. Understanding something of the cultural context in which this passage was written is important for us to be able to apply it to our own culture and society.

1^st century culture was significantly more patriarchal than 21^st century Western culture. By contemporary standards, the instructions we find here may seem bigoted when it comes to husbands and wives (5:22-33). Even worse…