Scripture Daily

Context No. 1443 of 4322 · Ephesians

Context · Reflection

Ephesians 5:22-33: in context

22Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the assembly, being himself the savior of the body. 24But as the assembly is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their own husbands in everything. 25Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the assembly and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27that he might present the assembly to himself gloriously, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without defect. 28Even so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. 29For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord also does the assembly, 30because we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. 31“For this cause a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife. Then the two will become one flesh.” 32This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the assembly. 33Nevertheless each of you must also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Paul writes to husbands and wives, and lifts marriage up into something larger than itself. Wives are to be subject to their husbands as to the Lord; husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy. A husband should love his wife as his own body, for the two have become one flesh; no one hates his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church. And Paul says the deeper thing: this mystery is great, and he is speaking of Christ and the church. Marriage, in his vision, is an image of that.

What is striking is where Paul places the weight. He spends a few words on the wife and many on the husband, and what he asks of the husband is enormous: love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Christ's love for the church was a love that laid down its life, that gave everything for her good, that sought not its own comfort but her holiness and flourishing. That is the pattern set before the husband, a self-giving, self-sacrificing love that spends itself for the other, as Christ spent himself on the cross. This is very far from any notion of headship as privilege or domination; the head, in Paul's picture, is the one who gives himself up, who nourishes and cherishes, who dies for the beloved. And the whole of it points beyond the marriage to the mystery it images: Christ and the church. Human marriage, in this vision, is not merely a social arrangement but a living picture of the covenant love between Christ and his people, the self-giving of the bridegroom for the bride. That lifts marriage to a high calling and a high dignity, and it holds out to every husband a standard drawn not from custom but from the cross. To love as Christ loved is to love sacrificially, seeking the other's good above one's own, and that is the love marriage is meant to embody and to point toward.

Whatever my situation, do I understand love, in marriage and beyond, as the self-giving that Christ showed the church, seeking the other's good above my own comfort, and do I see how the love between people is meant to point beyond itself to the great mystery of Christ and his church?

Sources