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wives". He feels under no necessity to say, "Husbands rule your wives". To each is the
word given tempered with much graciousness. Because the husband is head that does not
mean ruthless rule and rough shod methods. The husband in Christ is "submitted" to an
obligation that cannot be computed. He is to love his wife, "even as Christ also loved the
church and gave Himself for it".
Perhaps when wives are loved with that kind of love, all argument as to submission
and obedience will become unnecessary. The love of the husband moreover is to be all in
the direction of blessing, not for selfish ends:--
"That he might sanctify, cleanse, present a church in glory, not having spot, or
wrinkle or any such thing: but that it may be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5: 26, 27).
Take one item, perhaps the lowliest, "not having wrinkle". The word "wrinkle" in the
original means exactly the same as the English word, viz., "a corrugation of the skin",
and is allied with rhusa (old age, the time of wrinkles). Care and anxiety, worry of any
description are the chief causes of wrinkles; how this reveals the character of the
husband's love, that shields the wife from as many anxieties as is possible.
The physical and the spiritual.
Throughout this passage the physical interchanges with the spiritual as type with
antitype.
A1 | Physical. Wives submit.
B1 | Spiritual. As the church.
A2 | Physical. Husbands. So ought men.
B2 | Spiritual. Even as the Lord the church.
A3 | Physical. Wives and husbands. One flesh.
B3 | Spiritual. The mystery. Christ and His church.
The union of husband and wife is looked upon in Scripture as something deeper than a
civil or religious joining together of two persons in marriage. Every true marriage harks
back to Eden:--
"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" (Eph. 5: 31).
The same apostle says in I Cor. 6: 17, "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit",
which shows the antitype to be mentally supplied in Eph. 5: 31, 32. Moreover the
argument concerning a man nourishing and cherishing his own body finds its alternative
in that sin which is against his own body (I Cor. 6: 18). If I Cor. 6: 15-20 be carefully
weighed with Eph. 5: 28-32, a great deal of irrelevant matter need never have been
written.
It is an established truth that the church of Ephesians is "the body" and "the new
man". Now the Scriptures uses figures with discretion. The bridal relationship to Christ