Ephesians5:21

Translation

placing yourselves under

one another in fear of CHRIST.

Paraphrase

submitting yourselves to one another motivated by the fear of what THE SPIRIT ANOINTED MESSIAH will do to you if you do not follow His principles.

Footnotes

1

This word means “to arrange under, or to place under.” “Submit or subject” are also good options, but I wanted you to see the word picture that the Greek uses to convey the idea of “submit.”

THE CONTEXT OF THIS VERSE

In verses 15 through 18 of our Bibles (the text did not include verse divisions until well over 1,000 years after Jesus) Paul gives several commands in quick succession: “Be careful, do not be foolish, understand, do not be drunk, be filled with the Spirit.” The command to be filled with the Spirit is the last primary verb to be used until the end of verse 21. Thus, verse 21, shown above, is the last part of a sentence that probably starts in verse 18 because that is the last time we see a primary verb. In the latter part of this sentence, verses 19, 20 and 21, we see 5 participles which describe some of the things involved in being filled with the Holy Spirit. These are not the types of things we usually hear about when a preacher is preaching about being filled with the Holy Spirit. They are: “speaking to one another with songs, singing, making music, giving thanks, submitting.” I consider it unfortunate that some translations make these participles sound like command verbs, which separates them from the sentence they should be a part of. “Submitting” was the final participle of this sentence and was used as a summary statement.