Chapter 5

¹So follow God’s example, like his dear children, ²and lead loving lives, just as Christ loved you and gave himself for you, as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

³But immorality or any form of vice or greed must not be so much as mentioned among you; that would not be becoming in God’s people. ⁴There must be no indecency or foolish or scurrilous talk—all that is unbecoming. There should be thanksgiving instead. ⁵For you may be sure that no one who is immoral, or greedy for gain (for that is idolatry) can have any share in the Kingdom of Christ and God.

⁶Whatever anyone may say in the way of worthless arguments to deceive you, these are the things that are bringing God’s anger down upon the disobedient. ⁷Therefore have nothing to do with them. ⁸For once you were sheer darkness, but now, as Christians, you are light itself. You must live like children of light, ⁹for light leads to perfect goodness, uprightness, and truth; ¹⁰you must make sure what pleases the Lord. ¹¹Have nothing to do with the profitless doings of the darkness; expose them instead. ¹²For while it is degrading even to mention their secret practices, ¹³yet when anything is exposed by the light, it is made visible, and anything that is made visible is light. ¹⁴So it says,

“Wake up, sleeper!

Rise from the dead,

And Christ will dawn upon you!”

¹⁵Be very careful, then, about the way you live. Do not act thoughtlessly, but like sensible men, ¹⁶and make the most of your opportunity, for these are evil times. ¹⁷So do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. ¹⁸Do not get drunk on wine, for that is profligacy, but be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹and speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and sacred songs. Sing praise to God with all your hearts; ²⁰always give thanks for everything to God our Father, as followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹and subordinate yourselves to one another out of reverence to Christ.

²²You married women must subordinate yourselves to your husbands, as you do to the Lord, ²³for a husband is the head of his wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, which is his body, and is saved by him. ²⁴Just as the church is in subjection to Christ, so married women must be, in everything, to their husbands. ²⁵You who are husbands must love your wives, just as Christ loves the church and gave himself for her, ²⁶to consecrate her, after cleansing her with the bath in water through her confession of him, ²⁷in order to bring the church to himself in all her beauty, without a flaw or a wrinkle or anything of the kind, but to be consecrated and faultless. ²⁸That is the way husbands ought to love their wives—as if they were their own bodies; a man who loves his wife is really loving himself, ²⁹for no one ever hates his own person, but he feeds it and takes care of it, just as Christ does with the church, ³⁰for we are parts of his body. ³¹Therefore a man must leave his father and mother and attach himself to his wife, and they must become one. ³²This is a great secret, but I understand it of Christ and the church. ³³But each one of you must love his wife just as he loves himself, and the wife, too, must respect her husband.