Ephesians 5:21 - Explained
"Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God."
The reason this verse is often very confused is because right afterwards it talks about wives and husbands until the end of the chapter. The very next verse says "wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord" — meaning wives go underneath their husbands, like a submarine underneath the water. And the question is, wait a minute, why did it just say in the previous verse that we should submit one to another, and then the next verse says wives submit to husbands? It seems to contradict. But actually verse 21 is not a reference merely to the relationship of wives and husbands. It is actually a reference to any situation of authority and somebody underneath that authority found in the Bible.
What the Bible is actually going to do is give you three examples of this in Ephesians 5 and Ephesians chapter 6. Now there is this false idea that when you get to the end of a chapter it is automatically a new thought. Many times that actually gets you into trouble because the thought is not actually over. Originally when the Bible was written there were no chapters at all. These epistles were meant to be read as one letter that ties together. The chapters are nice, but you have to realise that the end of one chapter and the start of the next is not necessarily a new thought.
So in Ephesians 5:21 it says submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God, and the first example it gives is wives submitting to husbands. That is the first example of submitting in the fear of God. Then at the beginning of chapter 6 it says "children, obey your parents" — so children submit to parents. Then it gives the example of servants to masters. And of course there are other examples as well. When you walk into a company or a grocery store, they are the authority — you go by their rules, you submit underneath them. We submit under government. All of us, even if we are powerful people in some areas of life, have situations where we are in a position of submission. And what the Bible is saying is that whatever situation you find yourself in where there is an authority over you — submitting yourselves one to another — submit to that authority in the fear of God.
Pastor Matthew Stucky
