Walking Carefully (Ephesians 5:15–6:9)

Paul continues with his explanation of how to live for the Lord and highlights three more requirements. He stresses that the Christian walk is a careful one if we want to reach the right destination. The requirements are wisdom, filled with the Spirit and submission.

Wisdom
The first detail that he mentions is the need for wisdom. Wisdom presupposes knowledge, but we can have knowledge without wisdom. Wisdom is the proper application of our knowledge. 

The knowledge that we have is the will of the Lord. God has a secret will, but that is not the will meant here by Paul. Rather it is God’s revealed will for our behaviour and we are told about it in the Bible by precept and by example. Sometimes the details are expressed positively, telling us to do them; sometimes the details are expressed negatively, telling us not to do them. They are summarised in the Ten Commandments, expanded in the Sermon on the Mount, and mentioned in different ways throughout the Bible.

Wise walkers apply those biblical requirements to every moment of their lives. If they don’t, they will trip up and fall. We can easily imagine a person walking carelessly and putting his foot in a hole or not spotting a wire. He falls quickly in those cases. It should be second nature to a Christian to ask himself if what he is doing is the best use of his time. He discovers what that us by his knowledge of what God requires.

A person who fails to do this is foolish. Paul may have in mind the fool in the Book of Proverbs. If someone persists longterm in ignoring what God requires, he or she is not converted and needs to repent.

Filled with the Spirit
We have all seen a drunk person staggering along the road and singing pointlessly. In one sense, the individual seems happier than a sober person. Yet it is possible to be sober and not spiritual. Obviously, Paul is strongly condemning drunkenness, but he is doing so to highlight the proper way to walk, which is under the control of the Spirit. Wine fills a person and affects his speech; the Spirit fills a person and affects his speech.

The speech that marks a Christian is connected to praise and thanksgiving. A spiritual person honours the Lord by what he says. Paul is referring to general contact here and not just to worship services. Our speech reveals whether the Spirit is in control of us. The words to use are identified by Paul as ‘psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’. It is likely that the word ‘spiritual’ covers psalms and hymns as well as songs, and I think Paul means praise inspired by the Spirit and included in the Bible. 

Why does he mention them? One reason is that they tell us how to speak to God and about God and another reason is that they personalise authentic spiritual experience. Are they not the two areas about which Christians should normally speak? When we do that, there are two consequences. We will praise Jesus and we will thank the Father for everything.

Submitting
The third aspect of a Christian walk is mutual submission. Paul mentions that the reason for having this response is reverence for Christ, which is a reminder that mutual submission is an expression of submission to Christ by all his people. 

Paul focuses on submission in the home – the three areas he mentions are connected to a household. Paul is not dealing with our twenty-first century work situations of employers and employees when he refers to masters and slaves, although there are obvious practical lessons. The husband and wife could be either masters or slaves and the children and parents could belong to either the masters or the slaves. Whatever the relationship, it was a constant reality.

The areas of submission are not indicators of spiritual status or progress. Rather they stress spiritual responsibility. After all, husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, and slaves are all regarded here as children of God and servants of Christ. Husbands, parents and masters show their submission to Christ by caring for wives, children and slaves rather than being cruel to them. Wives, children and slaves show their submission to Christ by submitting to the ones who show wholehearted and constant care for them.

In the period of the New Testament, society was male dominant. So we should not be surprised at the focus on the male, whether in his role as husband, father or master. The wisdom that fitted back then in a Christian home still is what is required today. A Christian husband should always have care for his wife, a Christian father should not be unreasonable with his children, and a Christian master should not be over-demanding with a slave. When that happens, a wife will trust him as doing what is best, a child will learn from him, and a slave will serve him well. 

Mutual submission is a reminder of the importance of humility and of the need for constant dependence on the Lord for his grace by every Christian in each relationship that they have. After all, those relationships are the locations of our sanctification.

Lessons
Those three areas of being wise in our use of time, of being filled with the Spirit in our speech, and of being mutually submissive are the evidences that we are walking correctly in a manner that pleases the Lord. Therefore, they are sources of assurance of conversion – they are evidences that we are living new lives. Moreover, they are expressions of distinctive witness, because others will see them and ask why we live like that. And they will be under constant attack by the powers of darkness, so we need to pray about those areas specifically. 

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