Marriage in Christ

Reflecting on the Haustafeln in Ephesians 4-5, John Paul observes ( Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body , 474-5) that Paul’s instructions overlap with customary family advice in the Greco-Roman world. More important than detailed differences is the fact that Paul places marriage and family within the sphere of Christ’s redemptive work:

Paul “began his letter with a magnificent vision of the eternal plan of God for humanity [and] does not limit himself to highlighting the traditional aspects of morality or the ethical aspects of marriage, but goes beyond the limits of such teaching and, in writing on the reciprocal relation of the spouses, uncovers in it the dimension of the same mystery of Christ, whose herald and apostle he is . . . . In this way, the teaching that belongs to this parenetic part of the letter is in some sense inserted into the very reality of the mystery hidden from eternity in God and revealed to humanity in Jesus Christ. In the letter to the Ephesians, we are witnesses, I would say, of a particular encounter of this mystery with the very essence of the vocation of marriage.”