5 So you should be imitators of God, like dear children. 2 Conduct yourselves in love, just as the Messiah loved us, and gave himself for us, as a sweet-smelling offering and sacrifice to God.
Darkness and Light in Matters of Sex
3 As for fornication, uncleanness of any kind, or greed: you shouldn’t even mention them! You are, after all, God’s holy people. 4 Shameful, stupid or coarse conversations are quite out of place. Instead, there should be thanksgiving.
5 You should know this, you see: no fornicator, nobody who practises uncleanness, no greedy person (in other words, an idolator), has any inheritance in the Messiah’s kingdom, or in God’s. 6 Don’t let anyone fool you with empty words. It’s because of these things, you see, that God’s wrath is coming on people who are disobedient.
7 So don’t share in their practices. 8 After all, at one time you were darkness, but now, in the Lord, you are light! So behave as children of light. 9 Light has its fruit, doesn’t it, in everything that’s good, and just, and true. 10 Think through what’s going to be pleasing to the Lord. Work it out.
Light and Darkness
11 So don’t get involved in the works of darkness, which all come to nothing. Instead, expose them! 12 The things they do in secret, you see, are shameful even to talk about. 13 But everything becomes visible when it’s exposed to the light, 14 since everything that is visible is light. That’s why it says:
Wake up, you sleeper!
Rise up from the dead!
The Messiah will shine on you!
15 So take special care how you conduct yourselves. Don’t be unwise, but be wise. 16 Make use of any opportunity you have, because these are wicked times we live in. 17 So don’t be foolish; rather, understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 And don’t get drunk with wine; that way lies dissipation. Rather, be filled with the spirit! 19 Speak to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and chanting in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks for everything to God the father in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.
Wives and Husbands
21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for the Messiah.
22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 The man, you see, is the head of the woman, just as the Messiah, too, is head of the church. He is himself the saviour of the body. 24 But, just as the church is subject to the Messiah, in the same way women should be subject in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as the Messiah loved the church, and gave himself for it, 26 so that he could make it holy, cleansing it by washing it with water through the word. 27 He did this in order to present the church to himself in brilliant splendour, without a single spot or blemish or anything of the kind – that it might be holy and without blame. 28 That’s how husbands ought to love their own wives, just as they love their own bodies.
Someone who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, nobody ever hates his own flesh: he feeds it and takes care of it, just as the Messiah does with the church, 30 because we are parts of his body. 31 ‘That’s why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.’
32 The hidden meaning in this saying is very deep; but I am reading it as referring to the Messiah and the church. 33 Anyway, each one of you must love your wife as you love yourself; and the wife must see that she respects her husband.