Ephesians 5:31–32

Context

Ephesians has traditionally been regarded as a letter written by Paul from prison to the churches in the region of Ephesus. Some scholars hold that it was written after Paul's time by one of his disciples. Ephesians 5:21–6:9 addresses the relationships between wives and husbands, children and parents, and servants and masters. Paul opens this section with the exhortation "Submitting yourselves one to another" (Ephesians 5:21). He then tells wives to submit to their husbands and tells husbands to love their wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

Verse 31 is a direct quotation of Genesis 2:24. In verse 32 Paul declares that this saying contains a "great mystery" and that it concerns Christ and the church. "Mystery" (Greek mystērion) refers to God's will, once hidden but now made known by God, and the word appears several times in Ephesians (Ephesians 1:9; 3:3–9).

Interpretation

• Christ and the church: Many commentators hold that Paul read the marriage text of Genesis as a picture illuminating the union of Christ and the church.
• A basis for marital ethics: This reading points out that in verse 33 Paul immediately returns to the husband's love and the wife's respect. It locates the focus of the passage in making Christ's love the standard for married life. The two readings are usually held together.
• The Catholic reading: The Latin Vulgate rendered "mystery" as sacramentum. The Catholic Church treats this passage as a basis for its teaching that matrimony is one of the seven sacraments, a teaching the Council of Trent defined in 1563. The Eastern Orthodox Church likewise regards marriage as a sacrament (mystery).
• The Protestant reading: Martin Luther, in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), and John Calvin, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, argued along the same lines: the word in the original text is simply "mystery," and the mystery here refers not to marriage itself but to the relationship between Christ and the church. Accordingly, most Protestant churches in Korea—including Presbyterian, Methodist, Holiness, Baptist, and Full Gospel churches—honor marriage as an institution established by God but do not regard it as a sacrament. They recognize only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and Baptists sometimes call these "ordinances."

Debates and Issues

• The translation question: Protestants hold that the translation sacramentum gave rise to the doctrine of matrimony as a sacrament. Catholics explain that sacramental doctrine rests not on a single translation but on the whole tradition of the church.
• Gender roles: Interpretations diverge when the passage is read together with the immediately preceding verses 22–24. Some emphasize the headship of the husband, while others place the mutual submission of verse 21 at the center.
• The definition of marriage: Along with other texts that quote Genesis 2:24, this passage is frequently cited in the debate over same-sex marriage as a basis for understanding marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Those on the other side sometimes counter that the passage is concerned with the relationship between Christ and the church rather than with the definition of marriage.

In the Korean Church

• It is frequently read as the text for the officiant's sermon at wedding services, together with Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:22–33.
• In sermons and family seminars on the marital relationship, the phrase "leave his father and mother" is sometimes cited as a basis for the independence of a married couple.

Related Passages

• Genesis 2:20–24
• Matthew 19:3–9
• Ephesians 5:21–25
• 1 Corinthians 6:15–18
• Revelation 19:7–9