Ephesians 5

Ephesians 5:22-6

Division 5. (Ephesians 5:22-33; Ephesians 6:1-9.)Natural responsibilities. We have now the earthly relationships of the heavenly people. It is striking that such responsibilities as these should come in just in this place. We find them also in Colossians, where the body of Christ is before us in some sense as we have it here, but it is suited, surely, that in the place which God has given us in Christ before Him, a place in which there is neither male nor female, in which, therefore, all these relationships might seem not to be found, that we should, nevertheless, have them pressed upon us. We belong to the new creation. We could not say that the relationships of which he is speaking here belong to this, and yet what is taught us clearly is that, while we are here, we are to own all that is of God, as we have seen with regard to other things. Creation was of Him.

The world is fallen, but that which He meant for man in these relationships is none the less good in itself, and in this way to be respected. Christianity, as we know, in no wise sets aside whatever is of Him in any sphere, and it is suited that just here, therefore, where at least we might imagine such things could never come in, we have explicitly the responsibilities attaching to earthly relationships. In these, moreover, there is shining through, the light of those higher ones in which God Himself has taken up the ties of nature to make them the patterns of things which His own love has brought in for us. Thus it is here that we have the Church’s relationship to Christ as the Eve of the “Last Adam,” and it is striking that here we go to the very beginning of the world, before, in an evil sense, there was any world at all, before sin had spoiled things, to find at the very outset imaged for us that special relationship which Christ has made His own. How near it must be to His heart when it is the first thing that we find typically presented to us in the history of man! Thus, the Lord means to have us for Himself, and the tie of nature, we may be well assured, is, after all, only a feeble figure of the reality of which it is the figure.

1. The apostle begins with this here, with wives and husbands. The wives are to submit themselves to their own husbands as to the Lord. The authority of the Lord is concerned in it, and the way in which He has taken these things up is to be reverently observed also. The husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the Head of the assembly. The very shadows of such things must be dear to us.

If it were but a picture only, how could we abuse such a picture of His love to us? We are reminded here at once, “He is the Saviour of the body,” His is not a place of authority merely. The authority itself is that which we yield to with delight, as realizing the title that He has to it. So, says the apostle, follow the pattern, “Even as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” That, of course, could not possibly be meant to limit the higher authority of Christ Himself or of the Father. If there comes to be a question there, if these two are in manifest contradiction to one another, we must obey God and not man. Upon wives, submission to their husbands is enjoined.

The husbands are never pressed to keep their wives in subjection. The duty pressed upon them is to love their wives, but here, again, the same measure is put before us; it is to be “as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify it and cleanse it with 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.” That, it is plain, carries us back to the beginning, only it was God that presented Eve to Adam and not Adam that presented her to himself. Christ transcends all types, and therefore it is fit and right that this should be manifest to us here. He is going to present the Church to Himself. He is diligently perfecting it according to His own mind, that He may be able to do The water washing has nothing ritualistic in it. The apostle explains it here as “by the Word.” The power of the Word it is by which the Spirit works. Water could only act as water. God never uses a thing out of its place. He, the Creator, honors His own institution. He does not accomplish spiritual results by material means, nor can He possibly slight that Word, which is the work of the Spirit and by which the Spirit works.

It is striking that in the Lord’s words to Nicodemus, the living water gives us the Word and the Spirit in relation to one another. The life in the water is the Spirit in the Word. Without the Spirit, the Word itself could accomplish nothing; but, on the other hand, the Spirit of God acts by the Word. If the angel comes to Cornelius, it is only to send him to one who already has in his possession the revelation of God for his soul. How blessed. to know that this work, which seems, as we think of it often, to be so little according to the full result which God is bringing us to, that it is, nevertheless, in bands that cannot leave unfinished that which He has begun. It would be as impossible for the Spirit to fail in the accomplishment of that which He has undertaken as it would have been for Christ to fail in that which He came to do.

Thus Christ will present the Church to Himself “glorious,” not merely having “no spot,” but no “wrinkle” also; no sign of old age about it, no defect; nothing will suit Him then but the bloom and eternity of an eternal youth, the freshness of affections which will never tire, which can know no decay. The Church will be holy and blameless then. After all that we have known of her history, it would be strange to read that, if we did not know how gloriously God maintains His triumph over sin and evil. Here, then, the Antitype shines fully through the type, but men ought also to “love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife, loveth himself,” and here, again, Christ is before us, for no one ever “hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it as the Lord the Church.” Think of the apostle being able to put it in such a way. “We are members of His body;” we are “of His flesh and of His bones.” These are different things which we must not confound. Eve was out of Adam. God formed the woman out of the man. She was thus akin to him in the closest way, but it is not this kinship in the spiritual sense that ever makes us members of His body. That is, as we know, by the Spirit.

Both things are accomplished as to us. We have the nature which makes us to be of His kindred, nay, to be of Himself; but then we are brought into relationship, also, in which we are to be surely for all eternity; those who are the instruments of His purposes, the expression of His mind. The two things necessarily go together. The Lord must make us, first of all, such as He can work by before He can work by us. The wife here is but another aspect of the Body. The apostle, in fact, seems to identify them. The man who loves his wife loves himself, his own flesh, his body, and so the apostle quotes from Genesis here, that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.” This he expressly states to refer to Christ and the Church, but the apostle applies it to the natural relationship: “But let every one of you so love his wife even as himself, and let the wife also reverence her husband.” 2. The admonition to children and parents follows. Children are to obey their parents “in the Lord.” This preserves, of necessity, His rights. “In the Lord” means in subjection to the authority of Christ, and therefore, of necessity, preserves that authority in everything. The apostle quotes the commandment with the sanction given to it in the Old Testament, -not at all as what is absolutely true for the present time, but to show the importance attached to it by God, -the first commandment having a promise connected with it: “That it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth” or “in the land,” as the connection would rather make it. No doubt there is a government of God that goes on through all the present time, in which these things have a measure of fulfilment. The law was, or is still, the rule of God’s government, which, however, the peculiar position of Christians upon the earth necessarily modifies as to them.

As Christians, they may be cut off from the earth, when, as obedient children simply, they would be preserved upon it; but the Christian loss is gain, as we know, so that the apostle Peter elsewhere refuses, as we may say, to consider it as loss. “Who is he that shall harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?” But, he immediately adds: “But if ye should suffer for righteousness, sake, happy are ye.” The suffering for righteousness, sake might seem to be a setting aside of what he had just urged, the question being the most positive form of statement, in fact. No one could harm them in following that which was good, but then, “suffering for righteousness’ sake” is not finding harm. A Christian cut off from the earth simply goes to heaven and to Christ. The Jew cut off from his land was, at least as to Jewish blessing which was in the land, in a different case. Now comes the address to fathers: in the first place not to use authority so as to make it a burden to those under it, not to provoke the children to anger, but to bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. They are to be subject to the authority to which the parents also themselves are subject. This common subjection makes everything right. Divine authority is that which establishes every other authority and in which parents and children become alike brethren and servants. 3. We have lastly the address to servants and masters. To servants, who, in fact, were bondmen, slaves, the word is to obey their “masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling,” not on account of anything in their relationship to these, but as serving Christ in it, in singleness of heart as to Christ. How everything is raised in character here! The hardship of bond-service is relieved at once by the ability to make it service to Him, where all service is perfect freedom; yet this, of necessity, makes it pains-taking service too. It will be of the best kind, “not with eye service as men-pleasers.” If the desire were only to please these, it might be effected by what, after all, is superficial enough; but if we are, as all are, the bond-servants of Christ in spirit, “doing the will of God from the heart,” we shall serve with good will “as to the Lord and not to men,” and the compensation in due time may be looked for also. “Whatever good shall be done, ye shall receive of the Lord, whether a man be bond or free.” Masters, on the other hand, have to remember that they have a Master in heaven.

Scripture lowers the hills and raises the valleys. These also serve in their very position as masters of others. They must not, therefore, use their authority with harshness, remembering that their Master is in heaven, and that with Him there is “no acceptance of persons.”