This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:32)

This might be one of the more unpopular passages in Scripture. No doubt it was unpopular on the day it was written, though for very different reasons. Our generation thinks it treats women as subservient. Paul’s generation might have objected that it treated women as if they mattered. In our day, the notion that a woman should submit to her husband is repulsive. In Paul’s day, the thought that a husband should love his wife was revolting.

The Greeks set up temples where brothels formed the central part of worship. Paul taught that women were to be loved and cherished and that husbands were to be devoted and faithful. No doubt, the Greek mind found such instruction abominable. Paul insults our generation by teaching that women are to submit to their husbands and respect them. In fact, the 33^rd verse uses the word “reverence.” But in Paul’s generation and ours, the world and the culture line up on the wrong side of the issue.

Besides its unpopularity, Ephesians 5 might be one of the most disregarded passages in Scripture, a fact that is on display in the all-too-common train wreck of the modern family. Speaking of which, Americans binge-watched the very popular TV show with that name for a little over a decade. The kind of “families” that provided the backdrop for this mockumentary depicted many families of our day, the full spectrum of committed, blended, non-traditional, perverse, broken, and dysfunctional.