In a world that still struggles to achieve gender equality, some of us might cringe at the exhortation for wives to submit to their husbands. But that is what we read in Ephesians 5:22-24.

Ephesians 5 and 6 contain what are known as household codes (also found in Colossians 3 and 1 Peter 3). These codes — or Haustafeln in German, a term first used in 1529 by Martin Luther — describe expectations for domestic relationships, particularly between husbands and wives, children and parents, masters and slaves.

Some of us carry painful memories of how these texts have been used to exert power over others. The language of “master” and “slave” is especially problematic for contemporary readers.

As we engage with this ancient text, a quote from the 1953 novel The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley might be a helpful framework: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”

This reminds us that the household codes were given for specific reasons at a specific time. Rather than taking them as direct commands to us, we can probe them for insights on what the church in Ephesus might have been dealing with and discern what they mean for us today.

To be above suspicion and avoid persecution, Paul advised the churches in Ephesus to live in accordance with the Roman Empire’s patriarchal system. The codes do not ­overtly challenge the power imbalance be­tween husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves. Rather, they seem to accept that these unequal relationships were the norm.

Yet the codes do challenge the abuse that was common in those relationships. Paul’s encouragement to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” — for husbands to love their wives, parents not to provoke their children, and masters to treat those in servitude with kindness — was a radical call to live differently than what the culture expected.

How might we live differently than what the culture expects in our interpersonal relationships? In what situations would it be wise to yield to the empire’s system? When is it appropriate to challenge the culture and its expectations or narratives?

Part of our struggle with the household codes is seeing how they have been weaponized by those in power to subjugate others. Rather than reading the text as a mirror of the culture in which it was written, some Christians read it as an eternal, inflexible command that supports personal or communal drives for dominance.

What were meant to be guidelines to help people navigate the world of a particular place and time have been misapplied in a contemporary context. But if our sacred texts are meant to be alive and dynamic, then we always need fresh interpretations to respond to current realities.

Reading the household codes alongside Genesis 3 yields additional insight. After the man and woman eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God declares punishments. For the man, the ground is cursed, and he will have to work harder to produce food. The woman will suffer while bearing children, and her husband will rule over her.

The Genesis account seems to align with the wife’s submission in the household codes. But in that origin story, the husband’s rule over the woman is part of a curse. I don’t know about you, but I would rather not become resigned to living under a curse. If women’s subordination was not part of the original relationship in Eden, then let’s continue to find ways to break the curse.

Matt Carlson is associate pastor of Akron Mennonite Church in Pennsylvania.