Ephesians 5:18-6:4

GOD’S WORD Translation

¹⁸Don’t get drunk on wine, which leads to wild living. Instead, be filled with the Spirit ^[a] ¹⁹by reciting psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs for your own good. Sing and make music to the Lord with your hearts. ²⁰Always thank God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Advice to Wives and Husbands

²¹Place yourselves under each other’s authority out of respect for Christ.

²²Wives, place yourselves under your husbands’ authority as you have placed yourselves under the Lord’s authority. ²³The husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. It is his body, and he is its Savior. ²⁴As the church is under Christ’s authority, so wives are under their husbands’ authority in everything.

²⁵Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. ²⁶He did this to make the church holy by cleansing it, washing it using water along with spoken words. ²⁷Then he could present it to himself as a glorious church, without any kind of stain or wrinkle—holy and without faults. ²⁸So husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹No one ever hated his own body. Instead, he feeds and takes care of it, as Christ takes care of the church. ³⁰We are parts of his body. ³¹That’s why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will be one. ³²This is a great mystery. (I’m talking about Christ’s relationship to the church.) ³³But every husband must love his wife as he loves himself, and wives should respect their husbands.

Advice to Children and Parents

6 Children, obey your parents because you are Christians.^[b] This is the right thing to do. ²“Honor your father and mother ³that everything may go well for you, and you may have a long life on earth.” This is an important commandment with a promise.^[c]

⁴Fathers, don’t make your children bitter about life. Instead, bring them up in Christian discipline and instruction.

Footnotes

5:18 Or “in ⌞your⌟ spirit.”
6:1 Some manuscripts and translations omit “because you are Christians.”
6:3 The first part of verse 2 (in Greek) has been placed at the end of verse 3 to express the complex Greek sentence structure more clearly in English.