Eph 5:22-32 | PNT | STEP | Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands . Mutual duties are named. The husband should "love his wife as Christ loved the church" ( ), and the wife should submit to this loving husband "as unto the Lord".

Ephesians 5:22-32

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands. Mutual duties are named. The husband should "love his wife as Christ loved the church" (Eph 5:23), and the wife should submit to this loving husband "as unto the Lord". The husband is the head of the wife. Every organization must have a head. The husband is the "head" of the family, but must be willing to give himself for it. The head of the family can only rule the wife in the most devoted love (Eph 5:25,33). As the church is subject unto Christ. The relation of the wife to the husband is like that of the church in Christ, a close, tender relations, in which there is no bondage, but freedom, because the service is that of the heart. Husbands, love your wives. We have here not only the duty, but the measure of the duty.

Even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. Loved so well as to be willing to give all things, even life, for her welfare. The union of husband and wife were here described is ideally perfect. The tenderest love on one side, and loving obedience on the other. That he might sanctify . . . it. The great love of Christ for the church, his bride, is shown as an example to Christian husbands. Christ gave himself for the church. His object was to "sanctify it", make it holy. In order to do this it was needful to cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. All commentators of repute in all bodies refer this to baptism. All in the church pass through the waters of baptism. But the washing of the water would be of no avail without the word. The power is in the word of the Lord which offers the gospel and commands baptism. That he might present it to himself a glorious church. A church cleansed from sin; a bride without a blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. The church is the Bride of the Lamb (Re 21:9), but it is also Christ's body (1Co 10:16 12:27 Eph 4:12).

He that loveth his wife loveth himself. As he loved his body, so every husband ought to love her who by the mystery of the marriage tie has become "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh" (Ge 2:23). No man ever yet hated his own flesh. Or his own body. Yet, wife and husband are "one flesh" (Eph 5:31). We are members of his body. We are all members of Christ's body, the church. But the church is his Bride.

Of his flesh, and of his bones. The language of Ge 2:23, where Adam declares that his wife "is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh", applies to our relation to Christ. For this cause, etc. This verse is quoted from Ge 2:24. It speaks not only a fact of the marriage state, but also implies that Christ left the Father for the sake of his mystical Bride. This is a great mystery. The wonders of this marriage tie, but especially that the marriage of the first Adam should prefigure the relation between the second Adam and the church.