*We start at verse 21: "Submit to one another out of reverence to christ." What does that mean exactly? Constant submission to others is not healthy. It opens the avenue for abuse by those who are willing to use the command to submit to manipulate those around them. Paul is going to get specific.
*Verse 22: "Wives submit to your husbands as to the lord." In other words, pretend your husband is your personal savior. If you don't think that is what it means, just wait. Why should you act like your husband is your savior? "For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is The Savior." Told you. Paul is going to continue in this vein with the analogy of the husband being like christ, the wife being like the church, christ being like the groom, the church being like the bride. It's kind of wierd, with sexual undertones in the relationship of christ to the church.
*I find it interesting to note that there are no Old Testament scriptures that are addressed to women about how they should submit to their spouses. There are many scriptures in some of the books of prophecy that equate the relationship of god to Israel as one of husband and wife, but I don't recall submission being an issue, just adultery. That analogy was used to describe Israel's supposed unfaithfulness to Yahweh when it followed after other gods. Not that a command for submission was necessary. What options did a wife have, when she was literally owned by her husband? I wonder if first century women in the Roman empire had more freedom? Perhaps that was why Paul felt the necessity to say "Now as the church submits to christ, so also should wives submit to their husbands in everything." (Verse 24) In Everything. That doesn't leave any wiggle room, does it?
*I have looked up this section in the Greek interlinear version and "submission" in these verses of Ephesians clearly means to obey or be subject to, as a person would be subject to a ruler or deity.
*Verse 25: Husbands are not told to submit to their wives, but to love them as christ loved the church. It is christ's loving self sacrifice that made the church holy, so he could give himself a radiant, unwrinkled, and unblemished church. By inference wives are also made holy by a husband's love. What were they before they were wives, before their husbands "loved" them? Unholy? Verse 28: "In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies, feeding and caring for them, as christ does the church." This appears to be an oblique reference to the story of Adam and Eve, where Eve is created from Adam's rib and he calls her " bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." However, the man is the head, the part with all the brains and all the control over the body.
*The body analogy is carried further to say that not only is the wife part of the husband's body, the church is part of the christ's body. Now we have proof the author was thinking of Genesis and the creation story when he quotes "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh." (Gen. 2:24) Not only are male and female one body because of the way women were supposedly created, but they are also united in sexual union as husband and wife. How does this apply to the church? Paul says that is a profound mystery. (He doesn't know.) Then he says this whole analogy was a an object lesson about Christ and the church, but all husbands should still love their wives as they love themselves, and women should respect their husbands. (Verse 33)
*See that word "respect" in that last verse? A quick look up of that word in the greek shows that its root is phobeo- a verb that mean to frighten or terrify. It is from where we get our word phobia. Almost every verse in the new testament that has a word with that root is translated as some form of fear or fright, except this one. Here the translators decided "respect" would be a better fit. Why do you suppose that is?
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