Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry
My experience, my mom functioned as the parent a good portion of my childhood. Raised the five of us and did not have continual employment until my youngest brother was in high school.
Ephesians 5:23 is a good verse. However that does not imply the husband should lord over his wife. Rather begin with verse 21 "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ".
Ephesians 5:21-26
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
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Let's read what an expert in NT Greek says:
"v 21 is a programmatic statement ("being submissive to one another in the fear of Christ"), applicable to all in the church in a general sense. Only by exegetical gymnastics can it be made directly applicable to both halves of the three groups in 5:22-6:9 (should parents be submissive to children?).... The house tables thus do not advance the argument per se, but answer an implicit question growing out of 2:11-22, viz., If Jew and Gentile are on equal footing in the body of Christ, does this mean that all social hierarchies are abolished? The answer seems to be a resounding 'No.'"
Daniel B. Wallace (professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary)
This professor, is an egalitarian at heart (reading his articles, he describes such conflict within him). But his knowledge and expertise in the Greek language leads him to conclude as he does.
To say this in a plainer way - if husbands must submit to wives as wives submit to husbands, then parents must submit to children and God/Christ must submit to us. Obviously this does not make sense, neither in English or in biblical Greek. There is only one clear, plain reading of the text. Other interpretations are "exegetical gymnastics".