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Ephesians 5:25-33
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Introduction:
We have seen that the chief word that God speaks to every wife is ‘submit’—but we have also seen that this word is not a synonym for ‘subjection’, ‘subordination’ or ‘subjugation’.
As one author has written, ‘we must disinfect it’ of such connotations.
Here we have the wife’s submission compared to the submission of the Church to Jesus Christ, who is its Head.
We know that it is from Christ as Head that the entire body derives its health and grows into maturity.
This is the pattern for a wife’s submission.
His Headship expresses care and responsibility—as we see in v. 22, He is Savior of the body.
This helps us when we come to God’s word to husbands.
The husband is head of the wife, but we should see that headship is about being savior, provider, protector, and especially lover.
God’s word to husbands is not ‘rule’; it’s love!
What Paul stresses is not the authority the husband has over his wife, but his love for her.
His authority is defined in terms of loving responsibility.
It may be that for most of us the word ‘authority’ suggests power, dominion and even oppression.
Our mental picture of the ‘authoritative’ husband is one who is domineering—he makes all the decisions himself, issues commands and expects obedience.
His tyrannical rule inhibits and suppresses the wife and all others under him, and so prevents their growth into maturity or becoming complete persons.
But this is not at all the kind of ‘headship’ which Paul describes, whose model is Jesus Christ.
It is certain that ‘headship’ implies a degree of leadership and initiative (Jesus is the LORD!), but it also implies sacrifice; self-giving for the sake of those who are loved, as when Christ gave Himself for His bride.
If ‘headship’ implies power, then it is power to care not to crush, power to serve not to dominate.
And in all this the standard of the husband’s love is to be the cross of Christ, on which He surrendered Himself even to death in His selfless love for His bride.
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The Head as Christ
What does Paul tell us here about the headship of Jesus over His church?
He uses *two analogies* to illustrate the tender care which a husband’s love for his wife should involve.
The *first is that the husband* must love his wife as Christ has loved his church, He being the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride.
Let’s consider how His covenant-love for His bride is described~/explained by the Apostle here in vv.
25-27.
Foremost is the atonement.
Jesus died for us; He went to the cross.
Love is here defined as self-giving; it is not so much governed by the desire to have as by the desire to give—‘God so loved the world, that He gave’.
Sacrifice is the characteristic of this love.
Christ ‘gave Himself up for her’ (v.
25).
We find this a dominate theme throughout Scripture.
Consider, for example in this book of Ephesians:
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace* (Eph 1:7) NASB95*
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.*
(Eph 2:13) NASB95*
For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace,* (Eph 2:14-15) NASB95*
and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.*
(Eph 5:2) NASB95*
 
It seems legitimate to ask, as Dr Lloyd-Jones has, “How many of us have realized that we are always to think of the married state in terms of the doctrine of the atonement?
Is that our customary way of thinking of marriage?”
Now who would consider it grievous to submit to one like this—who lays down his life for those he loves?
So it is to be for us as husbands.
Are we willing, and do we give up ourselves for our wives?
Jesus gave Himself up for His bride.
We should notice that Paul uses five verbs to indicate the unfolding stages of Christ’s commitment to His bride, the church.
He /loved/ her, /gave Himself up/ for her, to /sanctify/ her, having /cleansed/ her, that he might /present/ her to Himself.
Here we can trace Christ’s care for His church from a past to a future eternity.
Certainly the words Christ loved the church, preceding as they do His self-sacrifice on her behalf, seem to look back to His eternal pre-existence in which He set His love on His people and determined to come to save them.
So, having loved the church, He gave Himself up for her.
This reference is, of course, primarily to the cross.
But why did Jesus Christ do it?
What was the purpose of His sacrifice?
It was that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her.
The tenses of the verbs suggest that the cleansing of the church precedes her consecration or sanctification.
Indeed, the cleansing seems to refer to the initial purification or cleansing from sin and guilt which we receive when we first repent and believe in Jesus.
It is accomplished by the washing of water with the word, or more simply ‘by water and word’ (NEB).
The ‘washing of water’ is an unambiguous reference to baptism, while the additional reference to ‘the word’ indicates that baptism is no magical or mechanical ceremony, but needs an explanatory word to define its significance, express the promises of cleansing and new life in the Spirit that it symbolizes, and arouse our faith.
Having cleansed His bride by water and word, the heavenly Bridegroom’s plan is to sanctify her and finally to present her to Himself.
The ‘sanctification’ appears to refer to the present process of making her holy in character and conduct by the power of the indwelling Spirit, while the ‘presentation’ is eschatological, and will take place when Christ returns to take her to Himself.
He will present her to Himself in splendor.
The word may hint at the bride’s beautiful wedding dress, since this word can refer to used of clothing (Lk.
7:25).
But it certainly more than this.
It must refer to the shinning forth of God’s glory in and through His bride.
Eventually the church’s true nature will become apparent.
On earth she is often in rags and tatters, stained and ugly, despised and persecuted.
But one day she will be seen for what she is, nothing less than the bride of Christ, ‘free from spots, wrinkles or any other disfigurement’ (JBP), holy and without blemish, beautiful and glorious.
It is to this constructive end that Christ has been working and is continuing to work.
The bride does not make herself presentable; it is the bridegroom who labors to beautify her in order to present her to Himself.
His love and self-sacrifice for her, His cleansing and sanctifying of her, are all designed for her good, when at last He presents her to Himself in her full glory.
This, then, is Paul’s exposition of the implications of Christ’s headship.
The church’s head is the church’s bridegroom.
He does not crush the church.
Rather He sacrificed Himself to serve her, in order that she might become everything He longs for her to be, namely herself in the fullness of her glory.
In like manner a husband should never use his headship to crush or stifle his wife, or frustrate her from being all that she should be.
His love for her will lead him to an exactly opposite path.
He will give himself for her, in order that she may blossom to her full potential under God and so become more completely herself.
After ascending to these heights, we may sense an anti-climax in verse 28: /Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies./
It appears that in his instruction to husbands to love their wives he seems to descend from the lofty standard of Christ’s love to the rather low standard of self-love.
Perhaps Paul returns to the more mundane level of self-love because he is always a realist.
We cannot fully grasp the greatness of Christ’s love; it ‘surpasses knowledge’, as he wrote earlier (3:19).
Nor do husbands find it easy to apply this standard to the realities of family life.
But we all know from everyday experience how we love ourselves.
We find the same practical usefulness of the ‘golden rule’ that Jesus enunciated (e.g., Mat.
7:12)—that we should treat others as we would ourselves like to be treated.
For we all know this instinctively.
It is after all the way we treat ourselves.
For /no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it/ (verse 29a).
He looks after what concern himself.
This exhortation to a husband to ‘/nourish and cherish/’ his wife as he does his own body is more than a useful guide for one’s daily behavior, however.
It also contains an inner appropriateness, since he and his wife have in fact become ‘one flesh’.
It is when husband and wife become thus deeply one with each other that truly he who loves his wife loves himself.
Again Paul returns in his thoughts to Christ as the One who ‘nourishes and cherishes’ the Church.
So far he has used two analogies for a husband’s love of his wife—Christ’s loving sacrifice for His bride the church, and the husband’s loving care of his own body.
Now he brings both of these together.
Christ’s bride and Christ’s body are the same (see v. 23), because we are members of His body (v.
30).
He has incorporated us into Himself, made us part of Himself in a profound, indissoluble union.
This leads Paul to quote Genesis 2:24: /For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh/ (v.
31) and to declare that this mystery is a profound one (v.
32).
I have called this verse from Genesis the ‘Blueprint for Marriage’—leave, cleave, and weave.
The three pictures of the church that Paul develops in Ephesians—the body, the building and the bride—all emphasize the reality of its unity on account of its union with Christ.
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