Ephesians Part 89

INTRO: We have been working on Paul's instructions to walk circumspectly. We looked at it as he covered the circumspect walk in general and now we are looking at the specifics. Paul transitioned from the generals to the specifics in the last of four participles which we find in 5:21. Paul's instructions were that they were to submit one another in the fear of God. He now will deal with several areas of submission. The first is wives to husbands. The second is children to parents. And the last is workers to bosses.

The matter of wife and husband relationship is covered in 5:22-33. In the last message we looked at the instructions to the wife to submit to the husband. This is in verses 22-24. The one major instruction given is for the wife to submit to the husband. She is to submit to him as to the Lord and she is to submit to him in everything.

I took the view that she is to submit to her husband as to the Lord in everything means her submission to her husband is in everything the Lord desires for her to submit to him. The Lord would never wish her to submit to him in sinful things. As I began working on this message I realized I had failed to do my exegetical work properly in the previous message. It is my normal procedure to diagram the passage grammatically and interpret from that. Because the passage was quite simple, I failed to do that. Well, for this message I went back and did that to verses 22-24 as well, and had I done that earlier it would have helped me.