Pauls's Epistle to the Ephesians
Chapter XX.
THE CONJUGAL RELATION - DUTIES OF WIVES AND HUSBANDS.
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. . . . Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." * - EPH. v. 22 and 25.

THE sort of submission enjoined in the twenty-first verse is described in those that follow; as well as also the peculiar mode of its enforcement. The submission is in the first instance of a conjugal sort; proceeding upon and implying conjugal endearments. The expression "in the fear of Christ" may be thus, partly at least, explained. The mutual duties, claims, and responsibilities of the family relationships are to form the theme or topic of the apostle's teaching. These relationships all culminate and centre, as they all originate, in the primary one, out of which they all spring and flow. The principle which rules and regulates it, rules and regulates all the rest. That principle is submission one to another in the fear of Christ. As applied to the family relationships generally, it resolves itself always into two; that of rightful authority on the one hand, and dutiful subordination on the other. It does so in particular in that which is the original of them all; the union of husband and wife; as it does in what is the type or model of that union; the union of Christ and his church. Thus we are led up, through the primitive relation of authority and subordination, in the marriage-tie formed in paradise - of which all other earthly relatisns are the fruit - to that of which even the nuptial union in Eden was but the reflex, and, as it were, the analogical reproduction; the relation of the Eedeemer, from the beginning, to his redeemed; as "the head of the church, the saviour of the body."
*Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church ; and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it ; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, [as being] of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband." - Eph. v. 22-33.

The first step in this great analogy is very simple. It requires submission of wife to husband. But it requires that in a way which involves the germ or spring of all that follows. The affectionate and emphatic "your own" - "wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands" - suggests at the outset the idea of mutual ownership or proprietorship. And the motive, or reason annexed, "as unto the Lord" - at once makes the wife's submission to the husband a religious act - an act really done to the Lord; - and brings in the consideration of the submission being such as is due to the Lord himself. "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord."

Hence, secondly, the formal statement of the analogy - "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the saviour of the body." It turns upon the relation of headship. What Christ is to the church as her head, the husband is to the wife as her head. There is a qualification indeed, bringing out a difference - "he being the saviour of the body." He is the head of the church which is his body, as being its saviour. In that respect, his headship is peculiar. The husband cannot be the head of the wife, in that sense, or on that ground; although he must ever feel that his headship as being analogous to that of Christ whose own headship is connected with his being the saviour of the body - must be of a like nature; saving, delivering, preserving. Nevertheless, in spite of that distinction; - (not "therefore" rather "but") - "as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." Although the wife's submission to the husband cannot be placed altogether on the same footing with the church's submission to Christ, as the body of which he is the saviour - still it is submission of the same sort. For one thing, it is so especially in respect of its unreservedness and universality. It may not be such in degree as his being the saviour of the body entitles him to claim from the church; unlimited, unconditional, unquestioning. But in extent it is the same. It is not a partial or fitful or occasional submission. It is a submission that is the normal condition of the whole marriage life.

For, thirdly, it must be so, if it is to meet the analogy on the other side: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church." That which on the husband's part corresponds to submission or subjection on the part of the wife is love. It is not simply that he owes reciprocal submission or subjection; the precept may include and cover that. But it goes far beyond that. It involves a deeper affection. It proceeds upon a feeling of the heart prior to the submission or subjection claimed; a feeling which is indeed the procuring cause of the submission or subjection claimed. It is love and love going far beyond the subjection or submission which it claims; love self-sacrificing even to the death. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it."

Here, accordingly, in the fourth place, the apostle's unfolding of the great analogy begins. Let us approach it with deepest and holiest awe.

Christ's love of the church is now the subject of the apostle's discourse, his marital or conjugal love, if I may so speak ; not his loye considered generally; but his love viewed as partaking of the character of the "love of espousals." The general idea of his love to the church being contemplated in that aspect could not be strange or new to any of Paul's readers, who were, doubtless, familiar with such Old Testament Scriptures as the Song of Songs; the forty-fifth Psalm; the Prophecy of Hosea; the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, and others. But the apostle's treatment of it here is new. It is more definite and doctrinal; being accommodated to New Testament discoveries.

(1.) He gave himself for the church. " Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." Such was his love ; the love of his espousals. That he might espouse her unto himself, - in espousing her unto himself, - he gave himself for her.

Jacob, or Israel, in Syria, "served for a wife and for a wife he kept sheep." He got his spouse by service; his own voluntary service; buying her with that price. It was a high and hard price; but he grudged it not, for the love he bore to Rachel. It was not, however, himself that he gave for her. Years of servitude, under a cruel and cunning father-in-law, made up the price he paid; long years of irksome servitude a very sore price. But he never gave himself for his wife, as Christ gave himself for the church.

For Christ gave himself, not to a weak, passionate, capricious master, but to his Father, to God the judge of alL And he gave himself unreservedly into his hands; not to win a bride out of his loving family; but to purchase the release of a captive and criminal; lying under the Father's righteous and inevitable sentence of penal death, of everlasting condemnation. For the church, thus viewed, he gave himself. He gave himself to redeem her by taking the sentence due to her upon himself, and so, by dying in her stead, to buy her with a price to be his spouse.

(2.) He gave himself for the church in this way for a twofold purpose or object; the one intermediate, the other ultimate - the one being the means to the other as the end; - the one being a process: "that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word" the other being its result: "that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish."

The process is, "sanctifying and cleansing the church with the washing of water by the word." That is the first purpose or object of Christ's giving himself for the church. As she is, when he gives himself for her, she does in truth sorely require to be sanctified and cleansed; or to be sanctified by cleansing. She needs to be separated from the mass of guilt and corruption in the midst of which she lies; to be hewn out of the rock, and dug out of the hole of the pit. She needs to be severed from the world, and consecrated to the Lord. And this can only be through her being washed, purified, cleansed. Of what sort the washing or cleansing is, may best appear from a consideration of the instrumentality said to be employed. It is "the washing of water by the word" If, as interpreters generally hold, there is any reference here at all to the sacrament of baptism, it must, I think, be a reference of the very slightest sort. Or rather, it must be a reference to the thing signified rather than to the sign. For here, as always, it is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. Neither the water of baptism, nor the word with which it is associated, can of itself avail anything. They need the quickening power of the Holy Spirit. Inwardly and outwardly, therefore, the Spirit works in this process of sanctifying and cleansing; inwardly by cleansing the inner man; outwardly, by bringing home, with new light and fresh power, the truth as it is in Jesus, of whom the Scriptures testify - the word of reconciliation - "the washing of water" implying the subjective or inward operation of the Spirit in and upon the person; and "the word" with which it is connected being the means of the outward or objective operation of the Spirit in the way of appeal to the person. Thus the process of sanctifying and cleansing is exhausted.

Such being the process, the result is the Lord's finding for himself, and betrothing to himself, a suitable bride -"That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish." She is glorious; inwardly glorious and her glory is twofold. Negatively, she has now nothing about her of what can in any way cause a stain in her pure skin or a ruffle in its fair outline. Positively, she is holy and pure. For the word, "without blemish," means more than a mere negation. It indicates purity or beauty. She is consecrated to be the Lord's; and to be faultlessly perfect as his, and his only. She is to be blamelessly holy; dedicated and devoted, without drawback or reserve, as " holiness unto the Lord."
Thus Christ prepares the church, and presents her to himself. He needs to do so, for in her natural condition she is not fit to be his spouse.

Those whom the Father giveth him to be his espoused church are in themselves not only unworthy of so close a union, but unqualified for it; unable even to imagine it. They are unclean and untaught; steeped in the mire of guilt and corruption; ignorant of God; uninstructed in his ways. For them, in that state and with that character, to be forced into a marriage relationship to the Holy One of God - if that were conceivable - would be an outrage upon him not for a moment to be tolerated. The bare idea of such an outrage is blasphemy. But he takes great delight in receiving, as his Father's gift, the very worst and vilest of the children of men. He takes great delight in forming and fashioning them - each one of them individually, and all of them collectively as one - by the agency of the Spirit, and the instrumentality of washing and of the word, into a bright and beauteous image of himself. Then the church is fit for being his bride ; being inwardly holy as he is holy, and shining outwardly in holy beauty. It is spotless, smoothed, unruffled, and unwrinkled ; such as he may, with a love not of pity only, but of most intense congeniality, complacency, and sympathy, clasp to his embrace; and take into the closest personal union with his own very self.

(3) For that is the ultimate end in view; the end contemplated in the institution of marriage; and in its divine ideal or exemplar. It is the effecting of an incorporating union or oneness; such as shall make it as natural and necessary to love one's spouse as it is to love oneself; and as impossible to hate one's spouse as it is to hate oneself -"So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones."

I take the higher ideal or exemplar first. It is first in the line of argument, and suggestive of the other; "The Lord nourisheth and cherisheth the church : for we (the church) are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." It must be, strictly and literally, an incorporating union of a really personal sort, that is thus so strongly described. For such a union, the preparation and presentation already spoken of is the obviously needful preliminary. And such a union, nothing short of it, is an appropriate sequel or consequence, an adequate issue or consummation, of the purifying process and the dedication of the espousals. "We are members of his body, as being of his flesh and of his bones." For these are two distinct thoughts.

The allusion in the last is to what Adam says of Eve; "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." He there points to her origin; "She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." She is emphatically bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; being woman taken out of man. And therefore "shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." "This is a great mystery" says the apostle. It has a great mystical meaning; it has a great mystical reference to Christ and the church "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery : but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

I am not now quoting - so Paul may be understood as saying - I am not now quoting the words of Adam as applicable to himself and his marriage with Eve; or to any marriage among his descendants. I see in them, even as originally spoken, a deep and hidden spiritual meaning, wonderfully great, realised only now, and revealed, in Christ and the church. The description in that old divine word or oracle, of the community of nature between man and woman, the manner of its origin, and the relation that rests or is founded upon it; far transcends anything within the compass of human life, or human institutions. It is not exhausted, it is not adequately expressed or fulfilled, even in that blessed social ordinance which it sanctions and sanctifies. It points to a far higher and holier sphere. In its full meaning, it is true only of Christ and the church. Here, there is real and thorough community of nature ; not of a bodily sort only, as might seem to be indicated by the phrase, "This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh," but including the entire man; soul, body, and spirit. We, our whole selves, being of his flesh and of his bones, are members of his body. We, as we now are; the church; the church sanctified and cleansed with the washing of water by the word; we derive our nature, our life, from him, in a sense far deeper, truer, worthier than that in which woman could be said, as to the germ of her body and her bodily existence, to be taken out of man. And therefore the nuptial union also in our case must be deeper, truer, worthier, than even the marriage divinely formed and blessed in Paradise. When the man who leaves his birth-home to cleave unto his wife is none other than the Man Christ Jesus; the Eternal Son; coming forth from the bosom of the Eternal Eather; his dwelling-place from of old, from everlasting; to clasp to his own bosom, in the warm embrace of a love that passeth knowledge, the church, his bride; given to him by the Father before all worlds; bought by himself at the cost of his most precious blood; prepared for him now by the baptism of the Holy Ghost and the power of the quickening word; the church, his bride, taking out of his pierced side his own nature, his own life; the church thus made one, intensely one, with him; part and parcel of his very being; is that not a great mystery, a glorious mystical fact or truth, that is spoken of Christ and the church? And may we not now fall back, with new insight and new sympathy, on the amazing model and measure of a husband's conjugal affection, to which the apostle has been pointing in the previous verses 1; "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church."

As the Lord nourisheth and cherisheth the church! What manner of nourishing and cherishing is that? What must it be, if, in so intimate an identification, and on such wondrous grounds, she is part and parcel of himself? Will he hate his own flesh? Would that be natural? Would that be possible? No thanks to a man if he loves his wife. It is but loving his own body; loving himself. But was it as loving himself that Christ loved the church, and gave himself for her ? Was that loving himself ? What! loving himself! when he laid down his life for her sake? Yes. In a manner it was. For it was to win her to himself, and have her all his own, to nourish and cherish evermore, as one flesh with himself!

To nourish and cherish. Ah! how tender are the words! To nourish; to feed and foster; to fan the feeble spark of life; gently to draw out the growing powers, and cheer encouragingly the upward aspirations heavenward. To cherish; to fondle; to be ever lavishing on the beloved all love-tokens ; not for a brief moon, but onward through all time, into a dateless eternity. So the Lord nourisheth and cherisheth the church; and all its members, as being members of himself. Certainly this husband does not hate his own flesh. No thought of alienation or estrangement ever comes in between him and the church which is his own flesh ; or between him and any one in the church ; myself, for instance, if I am really his. For every individual in the church is to him what the church collective is; his own flesh, which he does not and cannot hate. I give him much provocation; much offence. I am unsteadfast, if not perfidious and unfaithful. But I am a member of his body; being partaker of his nature, of his flesh and of his bones. And this Man, at any rate, hateth not his own flesh. He cannot disown me; he will not desert me. As a member of his body, I may be in many respects but too uncomely, unseemly, and unmannerly; troublesome also, and unruly; apt to relapse into old and odious disease or to yield to new infirmities. But I am of his flesh and of his bones ; and therefore a member of his body. He does not, he cannot, ever at any time hate me. He is not one to hate his own flesh. He does not cast me off. He does not deal with me cruelly. He does not give up his kind and kindly treatment of me. He continues to the last, in all loving faithfulness, to nourish and cherish me as his own flesh.

Now, that being the divine ideal, according to the apostle, of the husband's connection with the wife and relation to the wife in the earthly married state, is he demanding too much on either side when he gives the concluding precept, "Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband"? If the husband is thus, after the example and in the spirit of Christ's dealing with the church, to love his wife even as himself, is it unreasonable to ask that the wife shall reverence her husband; that, in terms of the original injunction of the apostle, she shall "submit herself unto him as unto the Lord"? Should she not own him as her head? Her husband is not indeed altogether her head, as Christ is the head of his church. He is not her saviour, as Christ is the saviour of the body. But the analogy still holds. Her husband is to her what Christ is to the church. And she may well consent to be subject to her own husband in everything, as in everything the church is subject unto Christ.

Thus far as to the duty of wife to husband. The whole of the subsequent appeal to husbands, viewed especially in the light of the high mystery, or mystical analogy, of Christ and the church, is fitted and designed to reconcile wives to the sort of submission or subjection or reverence required of them. It cannot be a submission, a subjection, a reverence, either irksome or humiliating, if it is such as the church owes to her Lord and Head. It cannot be a submission, or subjection, or reverence, inconsistent, or in any way interfering, with the most thorough reciprocity, and even equality, of mutual love.

The Lord would fain have the church, in her every member, to love him as he loves her, knowing that he loves her as his own flesh; And therefore, if the wife's relation to her husband is like the church's relation to Christ, the submission, subjection, reverence, enjoined on her cannot be incompatible with the fullest, frankest, most confidential communion; the free and equal interchange of all thoughts and feelings and desires and hopes. What liberty may the church not take, what liberty may I nof take, as being the church to all intents and purposes, in my closet, on my knees, in conversing with him who, as the church's husband and mine, loveth her and loveth me as his own flesh? To what confidence of familiar fellowship is not the church - am not I - unreservedly admitted ?

Ah yes! Do I hear some sad wife softly murmuring, "If I had such a husband, or even one trying to be such a husband to me, as Christ is to the church, most willingly, most cheerfully, would I submit and be subject! It would be a pleasure and delight to me; my truest liberty and joy". And may not some husband rejoin, "If only I had a wife who could understand, apprehend, and appreciate, the great mystery spoken concerning Christ and the church; if only she were one who could give me credit for loving her as Christ loveth the church; loving her as the dearest part of me; as my own very self! If only she would consent to such community of nature as that implies ; how completely would we be one in all things ; one in mind and heart; in soul, body, spirit!"
Nay but vain and idle recrimination aside and apart, we must be content with an approximation to the high ideal or exemplar here set before us, though falling far short of its full realisation. Even as regards the exemplar or ideal itself; the nuptial relation, with its nuptial endearments, between Christ and the church; we can form but a very imperfect conception of it in our understanding, even when spiritually enlightened, and can only still more imperfectly realise it in our spiritual experience. It need not therefore be matter of wonder or surprise if the corresponding or analogous relation, as it subsists, not in the calm region of spiritual and heavenly faith, but amid the rude jars and jostlings of earth's endless strife, should come much below the divine standard; so that the wife may well complain that she finds little in her husband that is akin to Christ's love to the church; and the husband may with too good cause retort upon the wife the charge that she is not quite to him all that the church is to Christ. Nevertheless it is a most blessed thing for Christian husbands and Christian wives, - and only such are here addressed, - to keep continually before their eyes the divine model of the marriage state.

Oh, to be to my wife what Christ is to the church, and to have her to me what the church is to Christ! To feel that I ought to be to her what Christ is to the church, and to have her feeling that she ought to be to me what the church is to Christ; and to be striving constantly that it may be so; that we may be on such terms with one another as Christ and the church - Christ and every believer - are with one another; terms as true and tender, as loving and confiding, as close and intimate; open to one another in our inmost hearts; open in our joint view of God, and heaven, and all things! Surely then our home fellowship would be blessed. Nor would the difference between my relation to her and hers to me affect our equal participation in the blessedness. True, there is headship on the one side, and subjection or reverence on the other. But the headship is like that of him whose headship is the salvation of the body. And the reverence or subjection is the response of a trustful love to a love that makes its object one with itself.

At all events, we have here the reciprocal claims and obligations of husband and wife placed upon the only sure footing. It was dimly shadowed forth in the original creation; in woman being taken out of man, and then man and woman becoming, in holy wedlock, one flesh. It is fully and clearly set before us now, in Christ's love to the church as his own body, and his preparing her and presenting her to himself at last, holy and without blame.

I do not think it needful practically to apply this great apostolic lesson in detail, or to enlarge in the view of it upon the particular duties in detail which husband and wife have to discharge to one another. Nor do I enter on any difficult questions that may be raised in special cases as when a believer finds himself or herself, through no fault it may be, unequally yoked together with an unbeliever. Even on such a case the great analogy may throw light. The unbelieving party may be won. And the Lord's manner of dealing in forming the marriage-tie with his spouse may suggest the most likely and hopeful method of winning.

I rather.choose, in closing, to make a brief appeal to you, 0 my brother, to you, 0 my sister, who may be at this moment putting away from you the marriage overtures of the Lord. Have you considered what a suitor you are rejecting? What a husband he would be to you, how he would love you, nourish you, cherish you? How he has loved you, giving himself for you? Have you no misgiving while you keep him waiting? For is he not waiting for you? Wooing you, ah, how tenderly; knocking at your door - beseeching you to be his? Say, will you not consent? Nor be deterred by any sense of your own vileness, filthiness, uncleanness, and foul guiltiness. He who woos you and would win you will have you just as you are. He will himself make you what he would have you to be. He has ready for you the blood of atonement which he sheds when he gives his life for you ; the washing of regeneration, even the renewing of the Holy Ghost - the word of pardon, "Thy sins be forgiven thee"- the word of purification, "A new heart will I give thee". Hear him, 0 my friend! Hear him now. And hearing, believe. 0 taste and see how good he is!
Go To Chapter Twenty-one

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