Thanksgiving dinner is one of my favorite meals. I suppose it has something to do with nostalgia, happy memories, and a chance...
Ephesians 5:20 urges us to give thanks to God the Father for everything. For everything? Really? ...
On Thursday of this week, citizens of the United States will celebrate Thanksgiving, a national holiday dedicated to thanking God for his...
This section of Ephesians 5 is based on a commonsensical observation: people nourish and take care of their own bodies. Of course...
Christ, as head of the church, loved the church and gave himself up for her. But his sacrifice was not merely a demonstration of ultimate love. It also had a purpose: to make...
Just about every commentary on Ephesians labels 5:22-33 something like “Instructions for Marriage,” and for good reason. This passage focuses on the...
Ephesians 5:25 tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Verse 28 adds that husbands should “love their wives...
Ephesians 5:23 gives a reason why wives should submit to their husbands: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which...
I expect that readers of this reflection may respond in a wide variety of ways to its title: Wives Submit to Your Husbands. Some will be curious. Some will be hopeful. Others might...
I suppose there are some people who find it easy to submit to others, but many of us struggle with the imperative...
As we have seen, the dictionary definition of hypotassō, the Greek verb translated in Ephesians 5:21, is “subject oneself, be subjected or...
In yesterday’s reflection, we saw that the basic meaning of the verb translated in Ephesians 5:21 as “submit” is “to be subordinate,”...
Ephesians 5:21 says that we are to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” But what does this mean?
Some morning, try to get up and spend the whole day without working. Unless it is one of those hyper-rare rainy days when the only demand is a good book or all-day ball...
In yesterday’s reflection, I explained how the imperative “Submit to one another” might be disturbing to us, even as it was almost...
Ephesians’ teaching on household relationships begins with what one might call a disturbing dictate: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” In fact, the original Greek of verse 21...
If you’ve spent a lot of your life reading the Bible, as I have, you might forget that it wasn’t written directly...
Today we begin looking at a new section of Ephesians. No, I did not forget about verse 20, which encourages us to give thanks to God. I’m saving this verse for a month...
According to Ephesians 5:18-19, as we are filled with the Spirit, we will, among other things, “sing and make music from [our]...
In yesterday’s reflection, we considered the first of two “audience temptations” of worship, the temptation to consider ourselves as the primary audience...
