Over the last few weeks I’ve been giving some thought to how some NT letters contain ‘Household codes’ and what we are to make of them today. Why and why now? The ‘why’ is personal, so I won’t bore you with it, but the ‘now’ is because, while I was trying to have a snooze, I started putting it together in my head. I had to get up to do a brain dump on to the computer in order to clear the mind. The snooze had to wait. I should say that what I am arguing against is what I was brought with and what I once embraced.

Rather than look at the codes in depth I want to share a few broad-brush thoughts so that we can put them in a more secure context in order to interpret them. Down through the centuries they have been used and abused in such a way as to bring dishonour on the name of Christ, not least the way they have been used in the Church to justify inequitable power structures.

The most common code that is used is the one in Ephesians 5:21 – 6:9 probably because it is longer and more detailed than the similar one in Colossians. It addresses wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters, but in order to transfer any meaning to our own context, we need to understand how they spoke into their own time.

Some questions.

What was Paul trying to do when he wrote them?

What form do they take?

How does the culture in which they were written shed light on their form and content?

Let’s take the last question first and the answers to the others will be threaded through.

It’s crucial to understanding the cultural context of the NT to realise that Greco-Roman culture within the Roman Empire was highly stratified and moving from one layer of society to another was near impossible – perhaps the main exception to this was the way in which slaves could experience manumission and become free. Even then, one was still a freed slave. But the main feature of social structure, from our perspective, was (and this is a gross oversimplification, but not one without some force) that there were people who mattered and people who didn’t. Among the people who mattered, there were those who really mattered – the élite, a small group whose power and wealth were beyond the imagining of the rest and who basically governed the Empire. Then there were those further down, who still mattered, but not nearly as much as the élite, such as wealthy businessmen and local power brokers. While there were some influential women among the élite, really, they didn’t hold the power. Men held the power. Men were Emperors. Men were Senators. Men were the heads of families. Men were the decisionmakers. Men really mattered.

Those who didn’t matter within the family, in terms of powerbroking, were women, children and slaves – and slaves really didn’t matter at all. In fact, they were not people, they were chattels to be treated as their masters saw fit. Of course, there were some who became special to their master, like Cicero’s secretary, and some prided themselves on being a slave of the Emperor, rather than that of an ordinary household. But still the master could do as he pleased. It is hard for us, even with experience of African American slavery still in the public consciousness, to understand how endemic slavery was in the Roman world. The economy was built on slavery and it would have been a poor household that did not have slaves.

Within some communities, such as Jewish society, women had more of a place and a role in the family. But in the grand scheme of things, across the societies governed by Rome, women fared badly in decision-making processes of home and city, and children even more so.

So, the first thing to notice is that Paul spoke both to those who didn’t matter in wider society – and he spoke to them first – and to those who did matter. I find it astonishing and enlightening that Paul addressed both groups, given the imbalance of power among them. Why did he do this? Here we have to do a bit of wider reasoning and acknowledge that ‘the text’ we are reading and interpreting is not only the words on the page before us, but it includes the context into which it was written. Only by exploring that as fully as we can is it possible for us to understand the force with which Paul’s words would have been received.

I believe that Paul would not have written such household codes unless he thought the families needed to hear them, and hear them as an expression of what it means to live as a Christian family, whose allegiance is to Christ and not the Emperor or the society he led. In other words, Paul was trying to shape and to change behaviour. Whose behaviour? The easy answer to that would be, ‘Everyone’s behaviour.’ And to some extent that is true. But as interpreters of Scripture, we seek to explore the possible impacts of Paul’s words on his readers. So, when we ask, ‘Whose behaviour was most in need of change?’ then the answer is sharpened, particularly when we add to the mix, Paul’s iconic overturning of the stratification of Roman society to illustrate who may enter and live in the Kingdom of God. This is found in Galatians 3:26-29, ‘ 26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.’ For entry to the Kingdom of God, the social divisions of religious origin, status and gender have been set aside. Everyone who belongs to the body Christ matters equally, even if there are still some differentiations regarding the roles played within that body.

When we reflect on how this might influence what Paul was trying to do, I would argue that he was wanting to, and needing to, speak to men about how they wield power in relationships – specifically husbands, fathers and masters.

The form that the codes take is interesting, because he writes first to those who didn’t matter. He does so invoking ‘the Lord’ but otherwise in fairly traditional cultural ways within Roman society. One can imagine those who did matter listening to this being read at a church gathering and sitting back complacently thinking, ‘Good for you, Paul. That should keep them in their place!’ This I would identify as Paul’s ‘Gotcha’ moment. It is in the second section of every twinning, written to those who do matter, that the real call for change is made. It is remarkable that they were written at all, for, in such a culture, the men had the real power in ordering the lives of the household. And the codes are written in such a way that what precedes the address to the powerbrokers, though not repealed is at least ameliorated to an extent. Or perhaps it would be better to say that those who do matter are being told to behave in such a way that those who don’t matter really matter, because they matter to God. The social and cultural norms are being realigned within families of faith to reflect the social nature of the Kingdom of God.

Of particular interest to the form of the code is the beginning and the ending. The start instructs the church to ‘submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.’ Whatever ‘submit’ means in this instance, there is to be a mutuality about it that is often insufficiently reflected in how the code is to be applied to the present day. Indeed, the word does not occur in the Greek text of Ephesians 5:22, but is read over from v21 in English translations.

The ending states that ‘there is no favouritism with [God].’ This is especially written to masters – one can imagine some outrage that slaves matter to God as much as masters – but is implicitly applicable to each twinning. To God, those who ‘don’t matter’ matter every bit as much as those who ‘do matter’ and the Christian family is to be the place where this reversal of Roman culture should be seen.

So, it seems to me that taking the household codes and transferring them to today’s world cannot be done without paying due attention to several things:

▪ the prevailing culture was one in which men had overwhelming power within family relationships;

▪ the Gospel expresses a society in which everyone matters to God;

▪ Paul’s rhetorical purpose in writing them included changing the attitude and behaviour of men within household relationships.

These, then, were radical codes that, rather than keep people in their place, undermined the social structure of the Roman Empire. The danger is that, by not understanding them in context, we use them to subjugate people today and thereby continue to solidify unjust social structures.