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Have you ever wondered why the apostle Paul here, and Scripture everywhere, tells all of us about everyone else’s duties, as well as our own? Why in Ephesians 5 does a wife get to hear how a husband should behave? For that matter, why in Ephesians 6 are children permitted to know that their father is not supposed to provoke them in his approach to parenting? Why does a servant get to hear God threaten masters about threatening their servants?

One obvious answer is that the same Bible was intended for everyone. We are used to a proliferation of Bibles for students, Bibles for singles, and Bibles for mothers with toddlers between the ages of two and four. We are used to a flavor of study Bible for every kind of person. The Bible itself is not written that way. It is a one-text-speaks-to-all kind of book, so we get to overhear instruction for everyone.