What Does Ephesians 5:21 Mean?

Placing yourselves under one another in the awe of the Anointed One.

Ephesians 5:21 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

THE KEY

The verse’s order runs both ways: each person makes room for the other under awe of God.

THE MEANING

In your relationships, the order is mutual: each person yields place to the other. Awe of God gives that shared yielding its measure.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that godly order only moves from a superior to a subordinate. Here, the relation moves both ways.

THE ROOT

ὑποτασσόμενοι

hypotassomenoi

GROWS FROM

τάσσω

tassō

To arrange, set in order.

“placing yourselves under” in this verse is hypotassomenoi. The root carries the sense of arranging or ordering, and the verse makes that ordering mutual: each person takes a place in relation to the other. Submission here shapes a shared arrangement.

ALSO GROWS

taxis: Order, arrangement.

τάξις

This branch makes visible the ordering within the idea of submission: relationships take shape through how people place themselves with one another.

hypotagē: Submission, subjection.

ὑποταγή

This related word names the state of being placed within an order, echoing the verse’s shared relational structure.

φόβῳ

phobō

GROWS FROM

φόβος

phobos

Fear, dread, reverential awe.

The verse places mutual yielding within awe of God. The word still carries the edge of fear, giving this shared order a weight beyond either person.

ALSO GROWS

phobeomai: To fear, stand in awe.

φοβέομαι

This verb shows how the root can describe a response of awe as well as fear, bringing reverence into the frame of mutual yielding.

phoberos: Fearsome, awe-inspiring.

φοβερός

This branch underscores the weight of what inspires awe, the measure named in the verse for how people relate.

THE PATTERN

A community takes shape through reciprocal humility, with each person making room for the other.

Likewise, you younger ones, place yourselves under the elders. And all of you, tie on lowliness toward one another, for God sets himself against those who lift themselves above, and gives favor to the low ones.

1 Peter 5:5 · SDVThe shared order is explicit: all are subject to one another and clothed with humility.

Let nothing be done through strife or through empty weight; but in a mind brought low, let each hold the other higher than themselves.

Philippians 2:3 · SDVEach person makes room for the other through the way they regard them.

So that there would be no split in the body, but that the limbs would tend one another alike.

1 Corinthians 12:25 · SDVThe members’ shared care gives the community a mutual shape.

THE THREAD

Likewise, you younger ones, place yourselves under the elders. And all of you, tie on lowliness toward one another, for God sets himself against those who lift themselves above, and gives favor to the low ones.

1 Peter 5:5 · SDV

Peter uses the same verb, ⁨ὑποτάσσω⁩ (hypotassō, to place under), and then says, “all of you be subject one to another.” The shared root shows the mutual order in Ephesians taking shape through humility.

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