In many cultures, racial minorities (or even majorities, in the case of South Africa), women, children and workers are exploited, and Christians have sometimes been guilty of upholding the status quo rather than working for justice. Jesus welcomed foreigners, treated women with respect and dignity, blessed the children, and dignified work. So Paul says the sinful, divisive barriers of race, sex, age or rank have been abolished by Christ.
Martin Luther drew a distinction between 'person' and 'office'. The person you were born has the same status as every other person. But God gives each person a role - doctor, magistrate, teacher, child, father, etc. (25) Some of these roles carry a God-given authority, particularly husband, parent, employer; and there is a concomitant duty by relevant others to 'submit' to that authority, insofar as it operates within the will of God. However, as John Stott reminds us, although Paul 'presupposes an authority (exousia) in the husbands, parents and masters ... yet the word exousia is not once used in the passage ... he warns them against the improper use of their authority, forbids them to exploit their position, and urges them instead to remember their responsibilities and the other party's rights. Thus, husbands are to love their wives and to care for them, parents are not to provoke their children but bring them up sensitively, and masters are not to threaten their slaves, but treat them with justice'. (26)
3-1 Race: Jews and Gentiles (2:11-18)
Paul uses the verb apallotrioo (estrange, exclude, alienate) twice in Ephesians, to describe non-Christians' alienation from God (4:18; cf Colossians 1:20,21) and alienation from 'God's chosen people' (2:12). The nation Israel had been chosen to be a 'light to the nations' (Genesis 12:1-3; Isaiah 42:1-6; 49:6) but had neglected their missionary calling, despising the people - Gentiles - they were supposed to be redeeming.
Barclay writes: 'The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. The Gentiles, said the Jews, were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell. God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations he had made ... It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, for that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world. Until Christ came the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews. The barrier between them was absolute. If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death'. (27)
The Jews had constructed a stone fence around the Temple beyond which a Gentile could not go without being liable to be executed. This 'dividing wall of hostility', this symbol of the alienation of Jews from Gentiles has been removed by Christ (although while Paul was writing it was still standing: it was not physically destroyed until the Roman legions conquered Jerusalem in AD 70). Specifically, in his death, Christ abolished the ceremonial law, and the moral law as a route to (as distinct from its being the 'fruit' of ) salvation.
'When the early church visibly demonstrated that all racial and social barriers had been broken down by the cross of Christ, and that through the power of the Spirit, people from every background were now one in Christ, there could have no greater evidence for the truth of the gospel in that ancient world'. (28)
To this cynical and unbelieving world the early church presented a two-fold witness: kerygma (proclamation) and koinonia (fellowship).
3-2 Marriage: Husbands and wives (5:22-33)
Every day, in the prayer of daily thanksgiving, a Jew thanked God he was not born a woman. In many cultures still boys are prized more than girls; women are possessions rather than partners. Paul emphasized rather that in Christ men and women have equal rights (Galatians 3:28). Jesus treated women with respect. Sexual relationships in marriage were to be based on mutuality (1 Corinthians 7:3-5). And now, the most revolutionary statement of all: husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church!
The picture of the church as the Bride of Christ was first painted by John the Baptist (John 3:29); Jesus used this imagery in his teaching on the Kingdom of God (Matthew 25); and the Book of Revelation completes the picture (Revelation 21). Paul does not call the church directly 'the bride of Christ' but says the relationship between husband and wife is analogous to that between Christ and the church. Spouses are one flesh; Christ and the church are one. The marriage metaphor also encompasses the idea of a relationship of love, and of submission. Implicit is the notion (common in the East rather than the West) of the father of the groom choosing the bride (hence the emphasis on predestination, election, choosing in Ephesians 1, and the action of God in giving new life to those previously dead and unable to help themselves 2:1, 4-7, for even faith is a gift of God, 2:8-9).
3-3 Home: Children and parents (6:1-4)
Modern threats to the traditional values of home, marriage and family should encourage 'renewed' churches to give parents and children all the help they can to relate the gospel to life in the home. The Christian church itself is a family, and Paul is apparently assuming that children will be 'in church' to receive his exhortations. Jesus put a high priority on the role of children in the Kingdom, and the importance of adults becoming humbly childlike as they enter that Kingdom. Children, unlike wives, are to include obedience in their submissiveness. (29) Children are to obey their parents: the promise of material prosperity is linked with the solidarity of a well-ordered homes. And fathers must not act unreasonably towards their children.
3-4 Work: Employees and employers (6:5-9)
In most ancient societies slaves were treated as the property of their masters, although significant affection could exist between them. Old Testament laws give slaves the right to rest on the sabbath (Exodus 20:10; 23:12), participate in religious feasts (Deuteronomy 12:12), or even gain freedom if injured or abused by the master (Exodus 21:26-7). Israel had suffered the humiliation of slavery in Egypt and so the exodus-event played a significant role in her law-making.
Similarly, the Christian church, the new Israel, formulated its life based on its experience of the Easter-event, and laid the foundation for reform and renewal in these relationships. For example, the early church was well ahead of its culture in granting freedom and personhood to women. (Most churches are still un-renewed in the sense that they are behind their cultures in granting to women the sorts of ministries consonant with their God-given gifts. If God were to raise another Deborah to lead the whole people of God, many of us wouldn't let him!). Paul's injunction to husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church was nothing if not revolutionary. Similarly, his admonition to fathers not to 'goad' their children was the product of an authentic Judeo-Christian compassion. Similarly the relationship between masters and slaves was recast in the light of the cross. God's kingdom, incarnated and exemplified in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Christ calls us to use power in a Godly fashion. Husbands must use their superior physical power to care for their wives and children. Masters must use their economic and legal power to treat slaves Christianly. Treating persons of another race (particularly 'aliens' or strangers away from home) unjustly, or even regarding them as inferior is out of the question this side of Easter.
Indeed, back to the slavery issue, the early Christians sometimes freed slaves at Easter. Slaves were sometimes leaders in the church, and might even become bishops. But in the Roman Empire the church as not powerful enough to change the whole social system; and later, unfortunately, church and culture became too enmeshed and the church lost its critical prophetic stance. Augustine's view that slavery was a consequence of sin might have been a slight improvement on Aristotle's notion that some are born to be slaves but that sort of attitude did nothing to stop slavery flourishing later in the period of the Crusades and the founding of the 'New World'. In the USA and in South Africa, Christians have used the Bible both to attack and defend slavery and other inequitable social institutions. But the essential Christian stance has always been that in Christ the old distinctions between women and men, slaves and freepersons, Gentiles and Jews were abolished at the Cross. It was the prophetic stand of minority Christian groups (Quakers, Moravians, Methodists, etc.) which conscientized the church again about its acquiescence in selfish and unjust political and economic systems.
Justice is nothing more nor less than the right use of power. Injustice is the abuse, misuse or non-use of power. Those with power (in Ephesians, dominant racial groups, husbands/fathers, and slave-owners) are accountable to the God who relinquished power when he became one of us, identified with the powerless (thus earning the vilification of the powerful) and even died for us. Surrendering or challenging power for the enhancement of the lives of the powerless is an essential component of Kingdom ethics. Challenging - or even 'judging' in the name of the Lord - those who misuse their power is the prophetic mandate Christ has given to his church, having set the example himself in the so-called 'Woes' diatribes.
And, within the renewed church itself, leaders essentially 'empower' others. This is the focus of the next section of our study.
Authentic Christian living cannot be understood apart from the Christian community. Solitary Christians are an anomaly not foreseen in the New Testament. We have been brought together and united 'for better, for worse, for richer, or poorer, in sickness and in health until death parts us'.
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