Chapter 15. Holy Results of Heavenly Blessing: The Christian Home; Husband and Wife

Chapter 15.
Holy Results of Heavenly Blessing: The Christian Home; Husband and Wife

Ephesians 5:22

"Master Joachim Mörlein has pleased me well today with his sermon, for he spoke of the office and vocation of a wife, and of a maidservant—namely, that a wife should think she lives in a Holy Order, and that a servant also may know that her works are good and holy works."
—Luther

SUBJECTING yourselves to one another." So the last paragraph has closed. Now opens the theme which St Paul seems to have reserved lovingly for the last, in this Epistle as in that to Colossæ: the theme of the Christian Home. That sentence about mutual subjection is the fittest possible introduction to it. For we shall see that the Apostle’s philosophy of the happiness and holiness of Home is centred precisely here—in the mutual loyalty of its members, the recollection by each of the others’ claims and of self’s sacred duties.

Here is a subject as pregnant and far-reaching as it is in itself beautiful—the Christian Home. It is not too much to say that the perfecting of Home is the masterpiece of the Gospel, in its work of social blessing. Nothing on earth is so beautiful as a perfect home; and it takes the Name of Christ and the grace of His Spirit to produce the full phenomenon. And then, where the home is really perfect, it is beautiful with a beauty which must diffuse itself in good around. For home is the school of mutual unselfishness and duty, where love is continually learning its true work, namely, the finding its happiness in the felicity of another. And such a school cannot but send its scholars forth, in one way or another, to practise the blessed art outside the doors; carrying on the campaign of love extended from that happy base. The home where the Lord reigns is "a watered garden," fresh, fragrant, and in order. It is also "a spring of water, whose waters fail not," making glad the region around it,[1] which needs so sorely the gracious stream.

It is with the deepest reason then that the closing paragraphs of an Epistle like this are devoted in so large a measure to domestic life. At the first glance there is a surprise about it, a sort of anticlimax. The Epistle, as we certainly do not need at this stage to prove, is concerned, in an almost unique degree among the Epistles, first with the most transcendent aspects of Redemption, as it is seen to be the eternal purpose of the Infinite Mind, and then with its largest and most comprehensive sphere of realization, in a Church which is "the fulness of Him who filleth all in all." The first three chapters are exclusively devoted to such great aspects of the faith and of the life of Christians. What shall be the climax of such a message? Shall it not be that unfathomable future where "God shall be all in all"? Shall we not be directed towards the light of eternal fulfilments, and in it see everything absorbed, as it were, and blended into the one prospect of the final state, almost losing, in the vision of the glory of the Throne, all distinct sight even of the multitude that loves, worships, and serves around it? Instead of such sublime exaltations of prospect, we have here as a fact just the persons and relations of a little circle within the doors and walls of an Asian dwelling-place. Even the city around it, Ephesus, Smyrna, Hierapolis, is left unmentioned, almost unthought of. The home is for the moment everything; as much as if the whole earth had for its population just one domestic group, and all human duty and all human hope were lodged there, and there alone.

Yet this paradox is the truest issue of the glorious antecedent passages. For this home circle is the genuine and abiding unit of human society. And the Gospel, in all its depth and wonder, as well as in its simplicity and tenderness, brings to man a salvation whose blessings can only be fully realized in social human life. So the glorious rays of the eternal Purpose, and the achieved Redemption, and the Sealing by the Spirit, and the Life of the Head in the Body, are all focussed from above upon this one spot, that we may see them in their fruits just where those fruits shall best be generated and developed, for the delight of God and man. If we see the process in its lovely efficacy there, we have the true pledge that it can yet be efficacious everywhere, in all the true relations of human existence upon earth, in which man is training for his final and endless life in "the Father’s House," which is also "the Holy City." This aspect of the matter will be brought before us in a way as tender as it is sublime, in the paragraph we are about to translate. The immediate subject is the married state, man and wife in their Christian relation, in a human home as unfigurative as possible; in Ephesus, in London. But so is the transcendent truth of the Heavenly Wedlock woven into the whole texture of the passage that the expositor turns to these sentences almost as much for his doctrine of the relation of the Church to Christ as for his account of how husband should think of wife and wife of husband in a mortal home. And why? Not by any accident or arbitrary juxtaposition of subjects, but by a holy law of truth and thought. How are those conjugal partners to think of one another in their home-life, day by day? With all possible practicality of considerateness, with all cordial devotion of human affection, with a recollected attention to one another which will regulate their intercourse of word and conduct far more minutely than the longest code of rules could do. Most true; but that is not the whole of the matter. This attention, affection, watchful consideration, this mutual loyalty and love, is to be perfectly human; but also, if it is as. it should be for Christians, it is to be inspired by what is perfectly divine. The two persons are genuine man and woman, in an entirely human home-life; no pagan pair can be more so. But their entire humanity is entirely joined to the Lord their Head, in that mighty union which His Body, the true Church, has with Him, and which every member of it has with Him, and through Him with all the others. They are each, and both, in Christ. They can never therefore think quite truly or fully of one another apart from that wonderful position and condition. So the illustration—backward and forward—of their married state by the Heavenly Wedlock, and of the Heavenly Wedlock by their married state, is not an accidental thing; it is of the essence of the facts. The life of holy matrimony, and so the life of the home which is its outcome, is raised to its ideal, to its truth, not only by general religious considerations but by the profound and special relation to it of that very mystery of the Eternal Purpose of which the earlier passages of the Epistle were so full, the relation of the glorified Lord to the Company of His Saints.

Pregnant indeed is the passage, thus regarded. And never more than in our time did its sacred lessons touch the very point. Home, that word so dear for long generations to our English race, is still, God be praised, a mighty factor in our modern life. But, like everything else established among men, it is assailed, and from many sides, and not without visible dangers and losses. The stress and also the manifold dissipations of life in our day, when arti-conditions affect more and more what we do, are both alike unfavourable to the full strength and life of the home. Too often parents are too hurried to be parental, and even children are too hurried to be filial. Sometimes it is the labour of actual toil, in handicraft or profession, sometimes the labour of over-wrought school-competition, hardening and hurrying the young existence, to its lasting loss; sometimes it is the toil and service of what is known as pleasure. By one means or another innumerable homes are not what their predecessors were; the world’s loud and open life has thrust the door ajar, and stands inside it, before the time. What is the best antidote, the true succour, for the true preservation or restoration of this inestimable thing, God’s own primeval gift, man’s Home? It is the recollection and use of the glorious Christian principle of its life. It is the old, eternal story of the Lord Jesus Christ’s relation to home. We Christian parents must solemnly remember again before God that our union is the holy counterpart to the Heavenly Wedlock, which is to govern its action and experience every day. Then we shall be the better able, by word and very far more by life, life lived in the keen sight of our sons and daughters, and of our domestic helpers, to hold home in a true unity together, till it is diffused to reproduce itself in other homes, knit together by the same invisible but mighty bond. But now, let us come to the Apostle’s wonderful message. We have talked over it; it waits to speak for itself. St Paul’s last precious sentence has uttered the far-reaching precept of mutual "subjection"; the natural attitude of will to will where both have been taken in hand by the grace which dethrones self-will to install the Lord. So the words go on to the conjugal case at once.[2] The wife is the first addressed, as the party of the two who, in the order of nature, appears as rather follower than leader. But be it observed that the appeal to her, quite as much as to her husband, is based only on the noblest spiritual truths, presented for the open-eyed and free acceptance of her spiritual nature. The very precept lifts her into the altitude of the highest freedom; for it comes to her as one who has to be approached with no less an argument than the transcendent truth of the eternal Matrimony. She is called to an allegiance to her partner which is nothing if not free, with the freedom of regenerate reason. She is asked to recognize spiritual facts and to assent to them as a spiritual being, fully in Christ.

Ephesians 5:22. Ye wives, to your own husbands[3]subject yourselves, with a "subjection" specialized, so to speak, from that which Christian always owes to Christian (ver. 21); as to the Lord, who is, in some special respects,

Ephesians 5:23. represented to you by them.[4]Because the husband is head of the wife, as our (ὁ) Christ too is Head of the Church,[5] with a Headship which is rooted in a living Union, where the two are one, while the One is Leader, with a leadership infinitely remote from all that is harsh, tyrannous, or alien from the noble intercourse of highest sympathies. Such, and only such, is to be "subjection" and "headship" in your conjugal Christian life; its one true norma is to be seen in that glorious Union, which you both share, with Him who is, for all His own in their blessed conjunction, "Head" indeed; Himself being Saviour of the Body,[6] with a Saviourship (of rescue and of safeguard) which has vitally to do with Leadership; to save, He must be trusted, with the obedience of

Ephesians 5:24. our faith.[7]But, leaving that thought for the moment, as the Church subjects herself to her (τῷ) Christ, with an allegiance which is at once and absolutely the act of inmost love and highest reason, so, with full reservation of the aspects in which the Lord’s Leadership infinitely, of course, transcends that of the mortal husband, yet truly "so," within that limit, do you wives subject yourselves to your husbands in everything.[8]

Now the appeal turns to husbands; and to them too it is still, in its essence, this—"subject yourselves," in the sense of an entire and self-sacrificing devotion. Note well that not one syllable is said to them about their rights; no hint is here of "insisting upon the marital position"; assuredly no sanction of any "right divine to govern wrong." The whole thought is directed upon the husband’s sacred and cogent duty, in his high relation, to live "not unto himself." No denunciation of domestic tyranny (the curse of many a home where nominally the Lord is acknowledged) could possibly speak so absolute a condemnation as this appeal does over the morose, selfish, self-indulgent, capricious, arbitrary, "masterful" man, who has presumed to ask for a woman’s love and life, and then sinks to the depth of being, in any sense or measure whatsoever, her oppressor. He is called to be her self-forgetting servant; doing her the service of "saving," preserving, protecting, love, in the noblest of all possible fellowships of life.

Ephesians 5:25. Ye husbands, love your wives, with a love warm always with the first summer of its pure human gladness, but kept high and true meantime by an ideal great as heaven, just as our (ὁ) Christ too did love the Church, and, such was that supreme affection, did give Himself over on her behalf, "over" to His unutterable Passion, that she

Ephesians 5:26. might live; yea, that her, emphatically her, going as it were out of His sacred Self to her great need, He might[9]hallow, dedicate to union with Himself, cleansing her by the bath of the water, in, attended and conditioned by, an utterance, the utterance of that Covenant Name of her salvation which alone gives significance to the "bath" which seals her blessing.[10] And this the celestial Bridegroom did with a love not only self-sacrificing but such as to reach, in its mighty scope and permanence, into the eternal state; that He

Ephesians 5:27. might Himself[11]to Himself present the Church arrayed in glory, at the Marriage Feast of heaven; He both bringing her and welcoming her there, bringing her as her one blessed Rescuer and Preserver, saved wholly by Him from guilt and from sin for ever, and welcoming her as her eternally faithful Spouse, "rejoicing over her" ( Isaiah 62:5), as[12]not having spot of wrong, or wrinkle of decay, or aught of things like these, in that pure eternity, but that she might he holy and unblemished, completely hallowed to His will, finally like Him in His spiritual beauty—glorious issue of the supreme Conjugal Fidelity of the Husband of His redeemed.

Now from the heavens to the earth, but with no moment’s break of continuity, for the whole thought moves "in Christ."

Ephesians 5:28. So, with a love akin to this, and inspired by nothing less, the husbands are hound to love their own wives, just as their own bodies, (which indeed, in a mysterious sense, they are;) "so," for thus Christ has loved the Church, as at once His Body and His Bride. So devoted, with such sacrifice of self for the beloved Object, with such an intimacy of sacred union, with such an indissoluble fidelity—this is the type and kind of the Christian husband’s love. He who loves his own wife loves his own self, in the fair ideal of their union, which in Christ can be the real. So are they "sanctified and joined together," spirit, soul, and body, that the affection resulting is to be of the order of sinless, natural, self-love; not the self-love which sins against others by vanity, or pride, or greed, but the self-love which, by a profound law of being, recognizes the personality as the living centre from which it looks on all things, and shrinks with a true and necessary horror from its pollution or

Ephesians 5:29. destruction. For no one ever, under normal and natural conditions, hated his own flesh[13]; no (ἀλλά), he nourishes it, developes its good condition, and comforts it, studies its well-being, its healthful comfort; just as our (ὁ) Christ[14] nourishes and comforts the Church.

Ephesians 5:30. For remember that He has joined us to Himself in a union which makes it—may we dare to speak the word?—His sacred instinct to deal thus tenderly and faithfully with "the blessed Company"; limbs are we, nothing less or more distant than limbs, of His Body, as it were developed out of His flesh, and out of His bones[15]; produced, in our new life, out of the fact of His Incarnation. Remember the words of the primeval Scripture ( Genesis 2:24) in which is shadowed forth, under the holy principle of human wedlock, that yet greater thing, the Lord’s coming forth from the eternal Home

Ephesians 5:31. to seek His mystical Bride: On this account, in order to realize the high idea of conjugal union, man shall forsake father and mother, and shall cleave to his (τῇ)

Ephesians 5:32. wife,[16]and the two shall come to be one flesh. This mystery, this holy secret, revealed only by God’s Word,[17]is great; its terms lead us soon beyond our full comprehension; but do not wonder; for I, emphatically I, as distinguished from any reader who may mistake me,[18]am speaking with reference to Christ, and to the Church. The immediate theme is the holy marriage of man with woman; but this stands related to an Archetype which "hath not entered into man’s heart to conceive," the Bridal of the Lord and His People; at once sublimely transcending and unspeakably hallowing the thing of which it is the Archetype. And now, to return again earthward, while still "in Christ":

Ephesians 5:33. Only, leaving the sacred premisses in order to act upon them in the practical logic of a true married life, do you too, in humble imitation of your Lord, all and several (οἱκαθ’ἕνα), each love his own wife just as his own self; while the wife—let her see that she reverences[19]the husband.

^[1]SeeJeremiah 31:12.

^[2]And so directly that it is at least likely that we should omit, in the Greek, the verbὑποτάσσεσθεinEphesians 5:22. It has to be supplied mentally,from theὑποτασσόμενοιof ver. 21.The R.V. accordingly prints "be in subjection" (Ephesians 5:22)in italics.

^[3]The assumption evidently is that the Christian law is,onehusband,onewife:τοῖςἰδίοιςcarries this on its face.

^[4]"She sees [in the attitude of wifely submission] a special reflection, as it were, of her relations to the Lord Himself. Her attitude has a special sanction thus from Him." (Note in theCambridge Bible.) ^[5]Seeof courseEphesians 1:22above.

^[6]Read,αὐτὸς σωτήρ, notκαὶαὐτόςἐστι σωτήρ.

^[7]I incline to think that there is a sidelong intimation here that the husband is likewise to be the wife’s (temporal) "saviour," to the best of his power, from life’s ills, and so similarly must, in some sense, in order to this, have her loyal and free allegiance. My note in theCambridge Bibletakes another line. The question is so far from easy that I speak still with uncertainty.

^[8]Here again, as in ver. 22, the verb has to be mentally supplied in the clauseαἱγυναῖκες, κ.τ.λ.. It may be supplied (from theὑποτάσσεταιjust before) either in the second or third person. I prefer, on the analogy of ver. 22, to assume it to beὑποτάσσεσθεrather thanὑποτασσέσθωσαν.—"In everything—":"This great rule will always, of course, beover-ruled by supreme allegiance to Christ; but its spirit will never be violated in the Christian home." (Note in theCambridge Bible.) ^[9]Lit. "that He may." The Greek idiompresentiatesthe past, in the thought which is recorded.

^[10]Some points in this important verse call for remark in detail. (a)ἵνα αὐτὴνἁγιάσῃκαθαρίσας: verb and participle are both aorist, and Greek usage favours our attaching them both to one time or crisis. The "hallowing" and the "cleansing" are in thought contemporaneous; we may express it by saying that the "cleansing" of the divine pardon and acceptance isipso factothe "hallowing," the dedication to God, of the accepted ones, and here of the accepted Church, their ideal Unity, (b)τὸλουτρὸν τοῦ ὕδατος: "the bath, (or bathing,) of the water." Baptism is assuredly referred to. The great question remains, what is the relation of the rite to the blessing in question, which is, here, the spiritual "cleansing" of the Church—a cleansing, primarily, from the guilt of sin, remission (1 John 1:7;Hebrews 9:14); the avenue to all covenant blessings. In the broad light of scriptural teaching in general, we venture to affirm with confidence that the relation is rather that of seal to promise than that of pipe or conduit to fluid. It is a natural turn of language to speak, under such a view, of the rite as if it actually effected the reception of the blessing, while in fact it (divinely) seals (cp.Romans 4:11on circumcision) the certainty of its reception by faith direct from the Heavenly Giver. See further, the note here in theCambridge Bible, (c)ἐνῥήματι: "in an utterance," a word meaning something more isolated, so to speak, thanλόγος: a declaration or proclamationad illam rem. The bath is"in"this, i.e., by a familiar Hebraism (see e.g.ἐν σάλπιγγι,1 Thessalonians 4:16), it is attended, conditioned, by it. Are we not right in referring here to the great baptismal Commission,Matthew 28:19, where the rite is to be done "into the Name of" the Triune God of Salvation? The confession of that "Name," in its glorious saving significance, the proclamation of its treasures of grace to the believing, is that which makes the "bath" what it is, not a mere action but a divine embodied warrant of blessing to faith.

^[11]Readαὐτός, notαὐτήν.

^[12]Μὴ ἔχουσαν: notοὐκ. The negativeμήgives not only the fact, but the fact as a condition.

^[13]It seems almost needless to point out that such a statement allows for (a) abnormal states of mind, insanity or frenzy; (b) abnormal circumstances in which (as in the case of martyrs) a man may be called to "hate" his life (Luke 14:26), in the obvious sense of actingas if he wasits enemy, giving it up to pain and death. The Apostle states a great law of nature in its broadest aspect.

^[14]ReadΧριστός, notΚύριος.

^[15]"Three important MSS. (A, B,ℵ), supported by other but not considerable authority, omit these words, [’out of His flesh, etc.’]. It has been suggested that they were inserted by transcribers fromGenesis 2:23, as the next verse certainly is quoted fromGenesis 2:24. But the phrase here is not verbally close enough to that inGenesis 2:23to make this likely.A transcriberwould probably have given word for word; while the Apostle would as probably quote with a difference.... And the difference is significant. ’We’ are not said here to be ’bone of His bone,’ which might... imply that our physical frame is derived from that of the Incarnate Lord, but, more generally, ’limbs of His body,out of His flesh,etc’ Our true spiritual life and being is the derivative of... the Second Adam in a sense so strong and real as to be figured by the spiritual derivation of Eve from Adam.... ’ We,’ the believing Church, as such, are, as in the case of Eve and Adam, at once the product of our Incarnate Lord’s existence as Second Adam, and His Bride." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[16]Read,καταλ. ἄνθρωποςπατέρακαὶμητέρα,καὶπροσκ.τῇγυναικί

^[17]This is, in brief, whatμυστήριονalways means in N.T. The Vulgate here hassacramentum(as inEphesians 1:9,Ephesians 3:9). See note in theCambridge Bible.—Cp. further here Grimm’sN.T. Lexicon(Thayer) under the wordμυστήριον.

^[18]Or perhaps, as distinguished from Moses, in the primary reference ofGenesis 2:24.

^[19]Φοβῆταιlit. "fears." But the A.V. "reverence" seems best to express the thoughtin this context.