For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as also the Christ the assembly
The verse rests on something no one has to be taught: we feed and protect our own bodies. Paul makes that instinct the standard for how a husband loves his wife, and then says it is the way Christ treats the church.
The verse does not appeal to duty first. It appeals to something already at work in every person, and God puts His approval on it.
The Spirit of God here assumes a necessary way of nature, and assumes it with approval. That regard for one's self which each of us is ready enough to give has God's own approval. And then, on this very principle of nature, the apostle goes on to set out the Lord's nourishing care of the Church... So if I can understand my love for myself, I may understand Christ's love to me. My Lord owns the duty I owe myself as a duty He owes to me. He can only nourish and cherish me, as I would nourish and cherish myself.
Applied to marriage, this reshapes how a man sees his wife — and how he sees any injury done to her.
He is now taking up the common instinct that men naturally avoid pain and take care of themselves. He is speaking only of the fact. He says: look upon your wife as a part of yourself. Anything that would wrong her is that much wrong done to your own body.
The two words are not repetition. Each means something different, and each reaches us in its own way.
And what are nourishing and cherishing? Nourishing is food, and cherishing is warmth of affection. You have the truth ministered by the gifts the Lord gives — that is the nourishment, and saints need nourishment... not just the ministry of all that He is to our souls to form us like Himself; He also leaves out no detail of tender care for His own.
Christ's aim is heaven. But this verse is about now — what His love is doing for the church here, and what draws it out.
Not only has Christ a heavenly aim, but His love performs the work which, so to speak, is natural to it. He cares tenderly for the church here below; He nourishes it, He cherishes it. The church's needs, weaknesses, difficulties and anxieties are only openings for Christ to show His love... If the end is heaven, He does not leave the church abandoned here. She learns His love where her heart needs it.
That has a steadying effect on anyone discouraged by the state of Christians around them.
It is a great comfort to know this is true of the Church as it is now, when we think of the ruin all around. Does Christ ever cease to nourish what belongs to Him? Impossible. In spite of all the ruin, He has the same care for His people.
Some older translations end the verse with "even as the Lord the church." One commentator shows why the better reading, "Christ," matters.
Scripture never speaks of Him as Lord in relation to the Church. That clause in Ephesians 5:29, when read rightly, stands: "even as the Christ the Church." To the Church, whether seen as His body or His bride, He is head, not Lord. Lord of course He is; God made Him such... Headship and Lordship both belong to Him, but they are not interchangeable terms. As Lord, He stands apart from all others; as head, He is in close association with what He is joined to.
Care that flows from union rather than rank changes the character of the love itself:
Christ's care of the church does not flow from prerogative only, but His care and tenderness are exercised over it... The love we have to learn is not supremacy in love, but caring, as it were, for Himself.
A husband is not asked to copy everything Christ does. The call is narrower, and more searching.
Christ's love in cleansing the Church is set here before the Christian husband. That is not so that he should set to work and do the same with his wife. It is so that he may, in a general way, learn from our loving Head in glory to show his love to his wife in tender concern for everything that touches her welfare... There are not a few who show great willingness (I do not say skill) for washing their wives' feet, but let them starve at the same time. If you do not know how to nourish and cherish your wife, as your own body, you are not fit to wash her feet.
Measured against Christ, the standard is one a husband never finishes meeting.
What heights and depths this comparison holds! It shows that the debt of love is never paid, but always owed. And yet that love delights to own the debt, and to keep paying it, lavishing care and tenderness on her who has become one with him in God's view.
- Instinct — No one needs convincing to care for himself. God approves that love and makes it the measure for all that follows.
- Measure — Take that instinct as your gauge of Christ's love for you: what you owe yourself, He owns as owed by Him to you.
- Method — Nourishing is food; cherishing is warmth of affection. Christ gives both: truth ministered to us, and tender care that never fails.
- Moment — This is His love now, not only at the cross or at the end. The church's weaknesses and worries are openings for it.
- Mirror — A husband is not asked to cleanse his wife but to feed and warm her; the debt is never paid off, and love is glad it isn't.
for we are members of his body; [we are of his flesh, and of his bones.]
The words come as a reason, not a new subject: Christ nourishes and cherishes the church because of what she is to Him. Everything turns on that little "because." What comes next points back to Adam.
(Older translations add "of His flesh, and of His bones" at the end of the verse. The commentators below work from that longer reading.)
The verse gives a reason for that care. The church's needs only give His love something to do.
No one, he says, ever hated his own flesh; he nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. This is the precious side of Christ's love for the present time, which the apostle presents here. His love does the work which, so to speak, is natural to it. He cares tenderly for the church here below. Her wants, weaknesses, difficulties and anxieties are only opportunities for Christ to exercise His love.
Christ's love has two sides. One prepares the church for glory; the other cares for her on the way.
Sanctifying and cleansing look on to the presentation in glory. Nourishing and cherishing belong to our journey on earth. His love not only looks on to the glory. It also watches over us on the way there, as we pass through this dark world from which He is absent. He knows the circumstances we are in and the trials we have to meet. He knows our weaknesses and infirmities. In them all He cares for us and meets our needs.
The verse uses a measure everyone already knows: how you treat your own body.
God Himself approves the regard for oneself that each of us is ready enough to give. The apostle says Christ acts towards us on this instinctive verdict of nature: a man is to love his own body. So if I can understand my love for myself, I may understand Christ's love to me. My Lord acknowledges the duty I owe myself as owed by Him to me.
Christ counts what touches the church as touching Himself.
We are, as it were, a part of Himself. We have our existence and our being from Him, as Eve had hers from Adam. He can say, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."
Does that make us Christ's flesh and bone in a physical sense?
We must not take this literally here. But could language set out the mystical union of Christ and His Church more clearly or more forcibly? These words come from Adam's cry of wonder when he woke from his deep sleep. That sleep pictures the death of Christ for His redeemed, so that He might have a Bride for His affections. When Adam looked at his bride he said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." That was literally true of Adam and Eve. It is used as a symbol of Christ and His Church.
Some read the verse as though it described Christ taking human nature. Kelly reads it the other way round.
The verse is sometimes applied to Christ's becoming man; but it is the reverse of that. It does not mean Christ taking our flesh and bone, but our being made members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. It is our relationship to Christ risen from the dead, not Christ's relationship to us as a man on earth. We are really a part of Himself, united to Him as He now is in the presence of God.
If the union is with a risen and ascended Man, it has a date and a means.
So it is clearly the raised and ascended man who is made head of the body, and set over all things. There was no such man until the ascension. So where people set up the church before Pentecost in their imagination, union loses all its reality and the church loses all true existence. "He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him." We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. All of this assumes the man Christ, and Christ ascended, when union is spoken of — and that is union by the power of the Holy Spirit.
- Because — the verse is a reason, not a description. Christ feeds and cherishes the church because she is part of Himself.
- Now — cleansing looks ahead to the glory. Nourishing and cherishing are for the journey through this world in the meantime.
- Measure — the care you give your own body is the measure Christ owns as owed by Him to you.
- Eve — the words are Adam's on waking; the deep sleep pictures Christ's death, out of which the church came to be His.
- Risen — the union is not with Christ born into flesh but with Christ raised and ascended. The Holy Spirit makes it real in us.
Because of this a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be united to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.
Paul's teaching to husbands reaches back to the oldest words in the Bible about marriage. He quotes them, then says he is speaking about Christ and the church — so how can one ordinary human bond carry so much weight?
Paul draws on the making of Eve in Genesis. One writer reads that scene as a picture drawn long before the thing it pictures.
Adam falls into a deep sleep. God takes a rib out of his side and builds a woman from it. Then God Himself marries our first parents. Is not this a beautiful picture of Christ and the church? He falls into the deep sleep of death, and through His death He forms His Bride. Thousands of years later the believers at Ephesus read in Paul's letter how a husband should behave towards his wife. Yet that was not the main thought. Paul used their earthly relationship as a picture of Christ and His church... But if we throw doubt on Genesis, we throw doubt on Ephesians too.
The verse starts with leaving. One writer takes that as the founding of a new household, not the cancelling of an old duty.
Marriage begins a new estate. Father and mother are to be loved and honoured still, but relied on no longer as protectors. The man departs from his state of dependence as a son to become himself the head of a new house.
That shift changes where a man's daily attention goes.
Before a man marries, his chief relationship is that of a son. His responsibility is towards his parents. But when he marries he leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife. From then on she becomes his chief care, for he and she are no longer two but one flesh.
The verse asks a husband to "hold fast" to his wife. Older translations render that word "cleave" or "cling", and the wife owes her husband the same devotion.
God established marriage as the first of human relationships. He makes it clear for all later generations that a man should leave his father and mother and cling to his wife. It is just as clear that the woman should leave her parents to become fully devoted to her husband. The word "cling" is beautiful here. It involves the reality of love, of devotedness and of faithfulness.
The verse also settles how open a husband should be with his wife.
I hardly need to say that this verse rules out everything opposed to complete confidence in such a relationship. The husband, if he acts in the spirit of it, has no secret from the one who is part of himself.
Paul explains the verse himself. The "leaving" becomes something Christ did.
The man who loves his wife loves himself, and he is to leave other relationships to be joined to his wife. The Apostle quotes from Genesis. But he states clearly that this is a great mystery about Christ and the church. Christ, as Man, left all relations with Israel according to the flesh to secure His church.
Some take "one flesh" to mean Christ becoming a man. William Kelly rules that out.
This is sometimes applied to Christ's becoming man, but it is the opposite of that. It does not mean Christ taking our flesh and bone; it means our being made members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. It is our relationship to Christ risen from the dead, not Christ's relationship to us as a man on earth... It is our union with Him, not His incarnation.
- Quoted — Paul lifts the sentence from the account of Adam and Eve. The garden pictured the union of Christ and the church long before Paul explained it.
- Leave — marriage starts a new household. Parents are still honoured, but no longer leaned on. The wife becomes the husband's first care.
- Cling — the word means love, devotedness and faithfulness. Husband and wife each owe it to the other.
- One flesh — if she is part of himself, then secrecy and reserve have no place in the marriage.
- Mystery — Christ Himself left His relations with Israel to gain the church. The union in view is with the risen Christ, not His becoming man.
This mystery is great, but *I* speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly.
Paul has just been writing about husband and wife. Now he tells us his real subject was Christ and the church all along, and the word "mystery" is the hinge of the whole passage.
In the Bible this word is not something too deep to grasp. It is something God kept back and has now made known.
The mystery is no longer "hidden in God"; it is disclosed. You must always keep this in mind when you read about the mystery — it is now revealed and nothing is left in the dark. God sets the secret out in His own light, and He expects the simplest Christian to receive it. Could any words do more to destroy the common idea that a mystery means something we cannot understand, and that a godly person dare not look into?
This letter speaks of more than one mystery. This one has its own content.
Here we have a special part only: the union of the Church with Christ, as of His body, His bones and His flesh. This union sets the Church in its own special and wonderful place, when all was headed up in Christ in heaven and earth. It is a special mystery to itself.
Paul calls only one other mystery great. That comparison shows the weight of this one.
The emphasis of the Apostle's language is very remarkable. All the mysteries of God are the subject of His stewardship. Even so, the only other place where he speaks of a great mystery is where he describes the coming of the Living One in flesh, and its effects, under the title of the "mystery of godliness." Only one wonder is greater: the Son of God taking our flesh. Next to it stands this mystery, which declares the Church to be the acceptable spouse of Christ.
It is easy to read this backwards, as though Paul reached for a handy comparison. The order runs the other way.
The relationship of husband and wife is not simply a convenient illustration. Ephesians 5 makes it clear that God modelled marriage on what He had in His mind: the relationship of Christ and the church. That relationship of Christ and His church was in the Divine mind in eternity, and in time God set up the relationship of husband and wife.
Look at how God made the first man and woman. Every detail carries weight.
The particular way God made Eve out of Adam gives marriage a special holiness. The husband is to cherish his wife as part of his own being. It also supplies a beautiful picture of Christ's relationship with the Church. As Adam was not complete without Eve, so Christ, though Head over all, is not complete without the Church... As Adam fell into a deep sleep, so Christ went into death. As Eve was formed out of Adam, so the Church is given life with Christ, and has His own life.
A well-known teaching about marriage rests on the Latin translation of this verse. One writer tests it for consistency.
The word "sacrament" comes from the Latin sacramentum, the oath of loyalty taken by Roman soldiers. So it is a church term, not a Scriptural one. The Latin translation uses it for the Greek word mysterion, mystery. It does so in Eph. 5:32, where the Apostle speaks of marriage. From this, the Roman Catholic church makes marriage a sacrament. The absurdity of this is clear. If the Greek word mysterion always meant a sacrament, the usual church sense of the word would be gone. Think of "the mystery of the gospel," "the mystery of godliness," "the mystery of iniquity." And if it does not always mean that, then on what authority in Eph. 5:32?
This heavenly truth does not stay in the air. It comes home to daily married life.
The full union is still only a hope. Yet the Christian husband or wife believes that such a relationship exists, and that belief is to govern their feelings about the merely natural tie. Loving from principle, in the power of faith, is something different from obeying a natural instinct... Here we are taught that among Christians, Christ is to be the one rule that governs every relationship a member of His body may be called to fill.
- Mystery — told. Not a puzzle to avoid. It is a secret God once hid and has now made plain to the simplest believer.
- Mystery — named. Its content is the union of the church with Christ, a secret standing in a class of its own.
- Mystery — great. Paul calls only one other mystery great: the mystery of godliness. The church as Christ's spouse ranks next to God manifest in flesh.
- Mystery — pictured. Adam's deep sleep and Eve made from him came first in history but second in purpose. God modelled marriage on Christ and the church, not the other way round.
- Mystery — lived. The great thing is Christ and the church. So marriage is not a sacrament but a reflection: love and reverence at home, governed by Him.