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In exhorting the Ephesians to purity and enthusiasm of life, Paul is naturally led to the family institution and the relations to be found there. In the heathen world the relations between men and women were degrading. As Pressense says, in his most suggestive book, 'La Famille Chretienne,' "One found in the pagan family neither purity nor love. At the moment when Jesus Christ came, it had reached the last degree of degradation, and one can apply to the family itself those words of the Gospel, 'He has come to seek and to save that which was lost.'" In this passage of Ephesians we have an insight into what Christ has done for the family. He has made of marriage the choice symbol of his own relation to the Church, and so family life is lifted into a Divine and spiritual light. The consideration of Christ for his people regulates the consideration husband should show to wife; and the loyalty of Christ's people to their Master indicates the loyalty the wife should show the husband. Husbands and wives thus owe to Christ the purification of their relations and the sanctification of the home!

I. JESUS LEFT HIS HEAVENLY HOME TO BE UNITED TO HIS BRIDE, THE CHURCH. (Ver. 31.) It is evident that the parallel between the son leaving father and mother that he may cleave unto his wife, and Jesus leaving the bosom of the Father to be united to the bride, the Church, is what is in the apostle's mind. He says that he speaks of Christ and the Church (ver. 32). And in no more beautiful way can the self-denial of Jesus in leaving heaven be presented. Heaven had been from all eternity the happy home of the only begotten Son. He had lain in the Father's bosom and enjoyed ineffable bliss. But thoughts of marriage came, and the Father favored the Son's idea. The morning dawned when Jesus must leave the homestead, and go forth to win his bride. Angels may well have wondered at the step and doubted its wisdom. But the step is taken. The home is left, and never again can it be what it once was. It is to be tenanted in due time with a bride, the Lamb's wife, composed of a multitude that no man can number, happy souls, each and all in deepest unity with the Son. We do not sufficiently appreciate the magnificent design of God in the marriage of his only Son, or the condescension of the Son in forming such an alliance as he has done. For no condescension in earthly marriages can more than feebly illustrate the condescension of the Divine Son in taking a human bride. Princes may marry paupers, but the difference between poverty and princely wealth is as nothing compared with the difference between human nature and what is Divine. But besides, the human nature was not pure upon which he set his love; it was sinful, lost, ruined. Imagine a prince, out of pure as distinguished from passionate love, singling out some poor, abandoned woman, and arranging for her education and health and elevation in thought and feeling, until at last he can fairly marry her and give her share of his glories and his home; - this is but a faint image of what Jesus the Son of God has done in selecting as a bride the ruined human race. He determined to win his bride, and so he took sinless human nature on him, and arranged for the union of once sinful, but through grace sanctified, human nature with himself.

II. THE CARE OF JESUS FOR THE CHURCH IS THE IDEAL AT WHICH HUSBANDS SHOULD AIM IN CARING FOR THEIR WIVES. (Vers. 25-33.) This is Paul's idea in this whole passage. Let us notice the order of the thought.

1. Christ loved the Church. This sovereign and yet most unselfish love led to the whole history of Christ's devotion. His great heart recognized the possibilities of love when manifested to lost souls, and determined to realize them.

2. He gave himself for it. Here was heroic love. In the nature of things husbands cannot give themselves to death for their wives and afterwards enjoy their confidence. But Christ was able to give himself for the Church and then to enter into union with it. But it surely shows that a husband who truly loves his wife should be ready to die for her.

3. His self-sacrifice was to secure the Church's sanctification. The Church was naturally polluted, sinful, degraded; but the whole history of Christ's devotion goes to show that he had our sanctification in view. While setting his love on sinful souls, he hated our sin, and provided blood to cleanse our sin away. And the sanctification Christ secures for his bride is to be perfect. She is to be without "spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing;" she is to be "holy and without blemish." In other words, the sanctification is to be thorough. And is this not to show that husbands who are true to their wives should keep their sanctification steady as a star before them? If a husband does all in his power to promote his wife's holiness, she can never be the victim of any unholy lust, but sanctification will characterize every relation.

4. The love thus lavished on the wife is the love of a man's "better self." To encourage this gallant and holy devotion to women, Paul further shows the compensation. The husband and wife are one, just as Christ and the Church are one. In loving his wife a man is really loving himself. It is self-love as distinguished from selfishness. It is the love of a man's "better self." A man is not expected to hate his own flesh, but to nourish and cherish it; self-preservation dictates such a course; in the same way husbands should love their wives, cherishing them as really their "better halves," or rather, "better selves," and feeling assured that a man's real interests all lie in the direction of tender consideration towards his wife. It thus appears that Jesus has furnished the true ideal of devotion. We go not to belted knights or tales of chivalry for our ideas about devotion to our wives, but to the foot of the cross, that we may see in Jesus our perfect Example!

III. THE CHURCH'S REVERENTIAL LOVE TO CHRIST IS THE IDEAL OF WIFELY DEVOTING. (Vers. 22-25.) If Paul would summon husbands up to the heights of consecration by the example of Christ, he would also summon wives up to a corresponding return of reverential devotion. The Church, in her love and obedience to Christ, is the pattern of wifely devotion. Now, this leads us to consider how Christ rules in his Church. It is not an inconsiderate despotism, but an intelligent, considerate rule of love. His wishes are expressed with infinite tenderness. There is no fury in his commandments. The Church feels and finds that they are not grievous. And so believers are loyal to the Lord from the heart. Nothing is so delightful as to obey him. Suppose, then, that such a spirit characterized the wife's relations to her husband; that she saw in his every expressed wish the outcome of love, and obeyed him in the belief that obedience was her privilege as well as duty, - what Edenic homes men and women would possess on earth! And here it may be well to notice a fact brought out in Pressense's volume already referred to, and it is this, that the New Testament has evidently entered into many more details about the family than about the constitution of the Church. The reason is obvious. The battle of the faith is to be won through the family. The family is God's unit. The Church is but a family enlarged; heaven, again, is only a family still more enlarged. God as a Father overshadows all! If Christianity ensures a holy family; if she wins families from worldiness to holiness of life; - then she may indeed lift up her head assured that redemption is drawing nigh. Christian homes on earth, paradise restored, - these are really the creations which we look for; and beyond the shadows a still statelier home arises in "the Father's house with its many mansions" prepared for the reception of the bride. The family on earth is sanctified that the family in heaven may be prepared for; the heavenly home is but the perfection of the earthly, if this is Christian to its core. - R.M.E.

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KJV: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

WEB: Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.