How does the devil work and what has God given the church to defend against his evil schemes? Perhaps it would be best to see it through some specific examples.

1. In times of loss, setback, illness, hardship, failure, or tragedy.

When we encounter a challenging moment in our life, there is a spiritual battle - will we deepen our trust and faith in God or will it push us further away? Set aside for a moment, the question of whether the actual incident is inflicted upon us by the devil or not, the harder battle is the struggle in the interior life.  In those moments, the enemy will throw out many lies but we can wrap ourselves with the belt of truth. The truth: God is not out to punish us, God loves us. The shield of faith is available to us as doubts and questions find their way into our thoughts. Sometimes in order to escape the pain of setbacks, it is tempting to find a substitute that will make us feel better temporarily. But we have the breastplate of righteousness from Christ to help us conduct ourselves with integrity and holiness.  The Word of God (sword) often serves as a comfort and strength to us during those difficult times.

I find that this passage has unnecessarily caused a lot of debate. Some will debate on the theory of what Paul instructed the wife but when we see a couple trying to live this out in a real life, we have no problems with this at all.

In their book, The Meaning of Marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller told the story of deciding whether to move to New York or not to plant a church. Tim felt that they should go and Kathy did not. Tim conceded and said to Kathy, “OK, if you don’t want to go, we won’t go.” But then, Kathy replied, ‘Oh no you don’t! You’re not putting this final decision on me. You have to make the decision and bear the responsibility.” Kathy interprets the Ephesians passage (she wrote the chapter in the book on submission), “Submission means that in matters of disagreement, I get a vote; he gets a vote; but I yield to Tim the deciding vote.” Here is how one couple seeks to live out the Ephesian passage of love and submission. The Kellers also made it clear that submission does not mean the wife can’t push back or confront her spouse.

The fact that there is sexual immorality, impurity, and greed in our society is confirmed daily by our news headlines. So Paul’s teaching in this portion of Ephesians is as relevant as it is in his day. Addressing those who have come from a former way of life (4:22), Paul insisted that we live an ethical lifestyle that resembles the goodness, righteousness, and truth (Eph 5:9) of the God whom we worship. This is good wisdom for us.

But it is very conceivable that even followers of Christ may have developed unhealthy habits influenced by today’s social media, entertainment, music industry, or the ‘sex sells’ strategies of the marketing gurus. What if there are some immoral or impure things that we have kept hidden that no other person knows? Secrecy and keeping it hidden will eventually become spiritual cancer. The invitation that I see in this passage is for us to have the courage to bring it to the healing light of Christ. We can do so because of Eph 1-3; we are loved children of God and Christ has died on the cross for us.