St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition

by Charles Gore

How pitiable it was that, in face of all Christian experience and of the authoritative language of the New Testament, unmarried women should have no prospect opened to them but such as was drearily summed up in the phrase 'old maids.' St. Paul, if in this epistle he is glorifying the married state, certainly also glorifies both for men and women the freedom of the celibate life consecrated to the service of God—the consecration of those who in a special sense are the virgin-brides of Christ. We may be thankful indeed that now, if somewhat tardily, it has received from the largest assembly of Anglican bishops ever gathered together an altogether ungrudging recognition[[23]].

It has been very frequently observed that, especially in Asia Minor, women in St. Paul's day were attaining in non-Christian society positions of great influence and dignity. We find them very commonly holding priesthoods and public offices and magistracies. It would appear, however, that too much may be made of this. The populations of the Asiatic towns loved to be entertained with expensive games and largesses of money and grain, and to have temples built and endowed for them. Wealthy women of noble families were elected to priesthoods and offices where they could exercise their acceptable liberality in these ways. But the offices were rather of dignity than of practical government, and were closely associated with priesthoods. There is no evidence that women in Asiatic cities could assist at assemblies, or give votes, or speak in public, or serve on legations, or enter into political relations with the Roman authorities. There were women among the Asiarchs, but probably only when they were associated in an honorary manner with their husbands. In the early Christian church the influence of women was put to far nobler uses than in Asiatic cities; but their position relatively to men was not far different from what would have been recognized in the general society of that region[[24]]. In other parts of the empire the women of the Christian church were conspicuously in advance of those outside.

In somewhat later days of the Church there was some resentment at the high and free position assigned to women in the New Testament documents. Thus one celebrated MS. of the New Testament[[25]]—the Codex Bezae—changes 'not a few of the honourable Greek women and of men' (Acts xvii. 12) into 'of the Greeks and the honourable, many men and women.' In xvii. 34 it cuts out Damaris. And in xvii. 4 it changes the 'leading women' into 'wives of the leading men.' The spirit which prompted these changes in an early Christian scribe and reviser, has not been wanting in much later ages, though it had not a chance of tampering with our sacred texts.

B. PARENTS AND CHILDREN. VI. 1-4.

Parents and children

After laying down the principles which determined the relation of wives to their husbands, St. Paul turns to the relation of children to their parents. The wives are to be subordinate to their husbands. Children are to be obedient to their parents as part of their duty 'in the Lord,' as members of His body. They are to show honour to their parents as directed by the commandment which we call the fifth, but which St. Paul here probably calls 'a commandment standing first accompanied with promise.' It stands first among those which refer to our neighbour grouped apart—as our Lord also says 'Thou knowest the commandments,' and then specifies those six alone[[26]]. And it is accompanied with a promise implied in the words 'that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long in the land[[27]]'—a promise that the prosperity and permanence of the nation shall be bound up with the observance of the natural law of obedience to those from whom we derive our life. I say the prosperity of the nation, and so no doubt secondly of the individual; but all through the Ten Commandments the individual is regarded only as part of the nation.

The other translation of these words—'which is the first commandment with promise'—is one to which the original Greek does not seem to give any preference, and which does not give a good sense, for the fifth commandment has neither more nor less of promise than the second, and in what we now call 'the second table' it stands alone as having a promise implied.

Here again in dealing with children St. Paul passes from the duty of the subject to that of the authority. Fathers are exhorted not to irritate their children, as in the Epistle to the Colossians they are not to provoke them, or, as the word may perhaps mean, overstimulate them so as to lead to their losing heart[[28]]. A broken spirit and a sullen spirit are alike bad signs in youth. But this does not mean that they are not to be disciplined; discipline is God's purpose for us all through life, and in childhood and youth parents are the ministers of God to discipline their children and put them in mind to obey God.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord.

We may notice in this passage the implication of infant baptism. The children are addressed 'in the Lord,' that is as already members of the body of Christ. The children of any one Christian parent are, in 1 Cor. vii. 14, described as 'holy'—that is consecrated or dedicated by the circumstances of their birth and the opportunity which it supplies for Christian education—and thus fit subjects for baptism. In fact it is probable that Christianity took from the Jews the practice of infant baptism. Within their own race indeed there was no need of a ceremony of incorporation. For the son of Jewish parents was born a member of the chosen people. But a proselyte was—certainly before our Lord's time—made a Jew with a baptism[[29]] which was regarded as his new birth, his naturalization into a new and higher race. And if the proselyte had children they were baptized with him as 'little proselytes[[30]].' With a new depth of meaning this practice of infant baptism was taken over by the Christian church in the case of those already dedicated to God by the spiritual opportunities of their birth and education, so that the beginnings of growth might be sanctified, like our Lord's childhood, in the Spirit.