Ephesians 5:22 - Frederick Brotherton Meyer's Commentary

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Love of Husband and Wife

Ephesians 5:22-33

The Apostle has been urging us to be filled with the Spirit, and now proceeds to show how Spirit-filled people should act in their homes. He has been exhorting to praise and joyfulness, and now urges that our lives, as well as our lips, should be attuned to music.

What a lofty ideal of wedded love is here! Chrysostom says: “Wouldest thou that thy wife obey thee as the Church doth Christ? Have care for her, then, as Christ for the Church.” Our earthly relationships are similitudes and emblems of sacred realities, and the more we can import into the time sphere the inspiration and virtue of the eternal, the more transcendental and beautiful will they become. The Lord has taught us the utter renunciation of love. Men of the world reckon how much love they can get; the children of eternity how much they can give; but such giving always means getting back with compound interest. Notice those phrases about nourishing and cherishing. O wounded member of Christ's body, He suffers in thee, nourishes, cherishes, and will heal!

Related Commentaries of Ephesians 5:22

Ephesians 5:22-33

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

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

31 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.

32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.