Sitting in my room in college, Bible and coffee in hand, I read, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16). I journaled, “I’m so bad at this. I re-commit to these morningly personal devotions in my alone time.”
Later, whilst a seminary student, however, I learned that the Greek word “you” in Colossians 3:16 is plural, not singular. Then, in my family’s near decade living overseas in more communal countries, I learned better what living and growing in a community of faith can be like. “Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you all.”
How exactly should we understand the plural “you” in the NT letters? It’s complicated.
Some Plurals Must Be Performed Individually
Paul mainly wrote to local churches, so a singular “you” would be weird (unless there is a specific rhetorical method being used, such as in Romans 2:1ff or 9:20ff). But notice how Paul’s following uses of the plural “you,” which I will translate “you all,” nevertheless involve actions that must be performed as individuals (in italics):
Colossians 3:5—“You all must put to death [plural], therefore, the parts that are on the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
Colossians 3:9–10—“You all must not lie [plural] to one another, having stripped off [plural] the old person with its practices and having put on [plural] the new one that is being renewed into knowledge according to the image of the one who created it.”
In the Greek, the verbal ideas are written in the plural: put to death, lie, stripping off, putting on. But are passions, evil desires, covetousness, or even lying actions which communities commit? For example, while lying is relational since it is done toward someone, the act itself is not something you perform with a partner (unless there is a conspiracy). The command “put to death” is plural, but coveting is individual—even internal. So, “you all must together put off covetousness” or “lying” are communal commands demanding individual obedience.
This is an important nuance to note in the NT letters. Simply because a plural “you” is used—because a community is being addressed—doesn’t exclude individual action.
That said, an individualistic application of a plural “you” should not lead us to assume every plural “you” is meant for the individual. There is much more going on.
Some Plurals Must Be Performed in Communion
Personal devotions are great, so when I read Colossians 3:16 and vowed to do my devotions more fervently I wasn’t wrong per say. But personal devotions were not primarily in Paul’s view when he penned Colossians 3:16. How can I possibly know that? Well, for one thing, people did not own personal copies of Scripture (or coffee) back then. But more importantly, notice how he unpacks the idea in context:
Colossians 3:16—“Let the word of Christ make a home among you all richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.”
Compare Ephesians 5:18–19—“You all must be filled up with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and Spiritual songs. . .”
The actions are communicated with plural participles: teaching, admonishing, speaking to each other. But even more telling, and unlike the individual actions of lying and coveting above, you simply cannot “teach and admonish each other” or “speak to each other” by yourself! These commands require the participation of at least two individuals. Christ’s Word makes a rich home among or within our churches and the Spirit fills our churches as we sharpen, teach, challenge, and encourage each other.
A Plural “You” Can Be Individual and Communal at the Same Time, but in Different Ways
In Ephesians 5:18, Paul’s plural command that “you all must be filled with the Spirit…” trickles down to verse 21 where the plural action “submitting to one another” registers within the community of believers. The participle “submitting” is also plural, yet “to one another” seems to be between two individuals. Many have stopped here, assuming this text means that two individuals submit to each other back and forth, but this isn’t quite right.
“Submitting,” Males, and Females
Two grammatical facts are important here: the participle “submitting” is (1) plural and (2) masculine (hypotassomenoi). The feminine form would look like this: hypotassomenai, as when Peter instructs wives to submit to their own husbands in 1 Peter 3:1.
What does this grammatical gender detail mean? Not least, this particular “submitting” in Ephesians 5:21 is not exclusively for women. If Paul meant this submission for women only, he would have used a feminine participle as he does when discussing women “praying or prophesying” in church (proseuchomenē ē prophēteuousa) in 1 Corinthians 11:5 next to men “praying and prophesying” in church (proseuchomenos ē prophēteuōn) in 1 Corinthians 11:4. In both of these cases, Paul uses appropriately gendered participles for the appropriately gendered activities. The fact that Paul uses a masculine participle for “submitting” in Ephesians 5:21 leaves us with two options: either this “submitting” is about (1) the activity of only men or (2) the activity of men and women.
How Does the Plural Part of “Submitting” Work in That Culture?
If we have on American hyper-individualist spectacles when reading the “to one another,” we likely picture each person individually submitting to each other person individually. As if I submit to you and you submit to me. If it were so, Paul’s basic aim would be for the Corinthians to exhibit individual reciprocity. But this is not right.
Paul, like other biblical authors, writes from a more communal perspective to a community in the ancient Middle East. He has collective reciprocity in mind, not individual reciprocity. Okay. . . but what does that mean?
The apostle John helps us here with a great example of collective reciprocity in Revelation 6:4:
And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should kill one another, and he was given a great sword.
Paul’s phrasing and John’s are the same regarding a plural verbal idea with seemingly individual recipients:
submitting (plural) to one another
kill (plural) one another
Picture a Roman legion in mortal combat with a company of Egyptian soldiers. The battle is raging. Maximus Licinius Pectoralis kills Akhenaten. Maximus looks up with bloodlust and is himself suddenly killed, not in individual reciprocity by Akhenaten—remember, he’s very dead—but by Thutmose, another Egyptian soldier. Suddenly mighty Thutmose is struck down from behind by Marcus Gluteus Minimus.
Individual action is going on: Maximus thrusting, Thutmose swinging, Marcus striking. But communities are active, too. Within this (sadly realistic) situation, they are “killing [plural] one another.” This does not mean that every single person is being killed by the same individual whom they killed but is rather about collective reciprocity.
Shift back to our passage. The males and females in the Ephesian church were to “submit” (masculine plural) “to one another” (Eph. 5:21) as Paul makes clear:
- wives to your husbands (5:22–24, 33b); husbands, you too have a task: not to submit to your wife (that is not how authority works), but to love and serve her self-sacrificially—which is a different category than submission—just as Christ did for his church (5:25 – 33a);
- male and female children obey your male and female parents (6:1–3); parents, you too have a task: not to obey your kids (that is not how authority works), but to train them in the Lord without inappropriately provoking them to anger (6:4);
- male and female slaves obey your earthly male and female lords (6:5 –8); lords, you too have a task: not to obey your slaves (that is not how authority works), but to treat them in the same way that our Lord treats us all, with reward for good and no threats (6:9).
Do you see why Paul would use the masculine form of “submitting” in Ephesians 5:21? Males and females submit to one another within the appropriate contexts and relationships: wives to husbands; sons and daughters to fathers, daughters and sons to mothers; male and female slaves to male masters, female and male slaves to female masters.
Picture reality and relationships in Paul’s day. Your local church is gathered in Lydia’s large atrium. You look around at the fellow believers gathering. Aristobulus, standing by the statue of the bearded snake, submits to you at home and in the market because he made himself your slave to pay off a family debt. Talking with him is Tryphosa, your mother, to whom you certainly submit. And beside her is your father, Hermes, to whom Tryphosa submits as her husband and the paterfamilias. You glance up and see me leaning against a pillar across the atrium. You think of how your father Hermes now submits to me in church matters because the saints recently appointed me an elder. Chatting with me is Julia. In our daily tasks I submit to her because in this household of Lydia—to whom both Julia and I submit—Julia was given charge over the whole atrium while I am only in charge of keeping the impluvium in the middle of the atrium clean so that the collected rainwater remains pretty for entertaining business company as well as good for baptisms. And yet in church matters, even Lydia submits to me since I was appointed elder.
What does all this mean? Well, in part, it means social life is complicated! But among a Spirit-filled church and in a Spirit-enabled display of collective reciprocity, love, and honor, we are all trying to “submit to one another” in various appropriate social realms and relationships. Not in an individualistic you-to-me-and-me-to-you manner (though sometimes it can work a bit like that, like me submitting to Lydia in her home as my home/work master but her submitting to me in church matters as her overseer), but typically as a plural “you” that involves individual actors within a communal framework.
Conclusion
“Oh, ‘you’ means me.” Not necessarily, though perhaps. “Oh, ‘you’ is plural so it’s not personal but corporate.” Not necessarily, though perhaps. When carefully handling Scripture, we must resist being grammatically simplistic as well as culturally naïve.
Rather, we need—together—to use the following healthy skills when seeking to understand what Scripture means and implies. First, we need to take off our historical and cultural lenses, as much as is possible. Second, we need to put on the author’s historical and cultural lenses, which is more possible than we may think—if we are humble and work hard together. Third, we need to pay attention to the precise words and phrases used in God’s word in light of how it is being said within its broader contexts—literary, historical, and cultural. And fourth, we need to do this together—not least, if at all possible, with people whose (sub-)cultures differ from ours, knit together by Christ’s Spirit in the bond of peace.
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