the-bible/CSB/49_Ephesians/Chapter_05.md

Chapter 5

1. Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children,
2. and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.
3. But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints.
4. Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks.
5. For know and recognize this: Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, who is an idolater, does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Light versus Darkness

6. Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God's wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things.
7. Therefore, do not become their partners.
8. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light--
9. for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth--
10. testing what is pleasing to the Lord.
11. Don't participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them.
12. For it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret.
13. Everything exposed by the light is made visible,
14. for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Consistency in the Christian Life

15. Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk--not as unwise people but as wise--
16. making the most of the time, because the days are evil.
17. So don't be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.
18. And don't get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit:
19. speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music with your heart to the Lord,
20. giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
21. submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.

Wives and Husbands

22. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord,
23. because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body.
24. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.
25. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her
26. to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.
27. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless.
28. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church,
30. since we are members of his body.
31. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,* and the two will become one flesh.*
32. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.