They make their covenant. The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey. This is a life-changing commitment, bringing with it a way of life that will affect them each and every day of their lives. Paul, addressing the Ephesians, was setting forth for them a new way of looking at marriage and a clearer understanding of their relationship as the Church with Jesus Christ, their savior. Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Subjection is the primary principle of the household codes.
Paul uses the marriage relationship as a parable of the relation between Christ and his Church, and in this way also transforms the marriage relationship from one in which the wife is simply subjected to the husband without qualification into one in which the husband is called to devote himself unreservedly to the love of his wife. This is not a matter of Paul developing his doctrine of the Church from below, looking at the reality of marriage in the first century a time when women were considered property and marriage was in peril. Rather, his understanding of marriage is built from above from a higher understanding of the mystical union between Christ and his Church. The more one comprehends this union, the better understanding one has of God s intent for marriage. Paul is calling his hearers to make a choice.