Submit to one another

Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Every word about wives submitting in Ephesians 5 is grammatically dependent on a verse that says all Christians submit to each other first.

Ephesians 5:21 closes a long call to be filled with the Spirit (vv. 18–21) and introduces the household code that follows (vv. 22–33). The participle hypotassomenoi ("submitting") in verse 21 is the same form that governs verse 22, where in most Greek manuscripts the verb is entirely absent and has to be supplied from verse 21. Grammatically, "wives to your husbands" only makes sense as a specific case of "submitting to one another." Many English translations obscure this by starting a new paragraph at verse 22. The Greek does not permit it. Whatever Paul later asks of wives, he asks of everyone first.