Passage

Ephesians 5.18

Book: Ephesians · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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Setting

• Speaker: Paul the Apostle.
• Audience: Believers at Ephesus. Several of the earliest witnesses, including P46 and the original hands of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, lack the words "in Ephesus" at 1:1, which has long suggested the letter circulated among the churches of the Roman province of Asia rather than addressing one congregation alone.
• Location: Written from imprisonment. Paul calls himself "the prisoner of Christ Jesus" (Eph 3:1, 4:1) and "an ambassador in chains" (Eph 6:20); the traditional identification is the Roman custody of Acts 28.
• Time period: c. AD 60-62 on the traditional Roman-imprisonment dating.

Theological reading

Kai mē methyskesthe oinō, en hō estin asōtia, alla plērousthe en pneumati.

The four grammatical features that carry the verse. Plērousthe is present tense, passive voice, imperative mood, second person plural, and each is doing work.

• Present: continuous or repeated, not a single completed event. The filling is to go on being received.
• Passive: the believer is filled rather than filling themselves. It is not a technique.
• Imperative: it is commanded, so it is not optional and not reserved for a class of Christians.
• Plural: addressed to the congregation, not to the individual in isolation, which the four participles that follow confirm, since speaking to one another, singing, making melody and giving thanks are corporate activities.

The comparison with drunkenness. The contrast is not moralistic decoration. Both states involve being under an influence that visibly governs conduct, and both produce speech and song. The difference is what one is filled with and what follows from it. Asōtia means dissoluteness or wastefulness, literally unsavedness in its root, the condition of the prodigal in Luke 15:13 who lived asōtōs.

What the filling looks like. Verses 19 to 21 give five participles dependent on the imperative: speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, making melody in the heart, giving thanks always for all things, and submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. Paul defines Spirit-filling by its corporate and ethical effects rather than by an interior experience, which is worth noting in any discussion of what evidences the Spirit's work.

En pneumati. The preposition can mark content (filled with the Spirit), means (filled by the Spirit), or sphere (filled in the Spirit). The parallel with oinō, a dative of content, favours content, and the parallel passage at Colossians 3:16, where the same list of effects follows "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly," suggests the Spirit's filling and the indwelling word are not two different programmes.

A note on the debate. The verse is central to discussions of whether the Spirit's fullness is a second definite experience or an ongoing state. The present-tense imperative is the strongest textual consideration, and it points toward the ongoing reading without settling every question raised in that debate.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

• G4151 - pneuma, pneuma, Strong's G4151

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

• Argument from the Universal Music Convergence, via Ephesians 5.18-19

Concepts:

• Authority to Cast Out Demons
• Paraclete, Identity and Recipients
• Pentecost
• Pneumatology

Guides:

• Ris3n Arguments, via Ephesians 5.18-19

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

• ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
• WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
• KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
• YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.