The Revolutionary Treatment of Women in Early Christian Communities

"Husbands have the obligation of loving and caring for their wives the same way they love and care for their own bodies, for to love your wife is to love your own self." 

In the West of the 21st century, those words have lost much of the punch the original audience must have felt. This sentence does not feel very revolutionary to me and probably not to you either. But not so for the AD 60 readers of this letter from Paul (Ephesians 5:28) to the growing church in Ephesus in present day Turkey. Paul's words would have offended many of the men.....and felt like the dawning of a new day for many of the women. 

In those days, in that part of the world, the value of women was low, as just two examples illustrate: One rabbinical prayer went this way, “Blessed are you, O God…that I’m not a brute creature, nor a Gentile, nor a woman.” And in Jewish society of the day, men could divorce their wives....but not the other way around. 

Paul's words were revolutionary, and helped bring about the more equitable treatment women enjoy today in the West. And the Gospel will do the same for women as it permeates cultures that still today hold women behind the veil and in low esteem. 

Today, his words are good medicine for me and all who are husbands. He is giving us a yardstick to measure how we treat and love our wives: as well as we treat our own selves.