Ver. 22. Submit yourselves.—Same word as in previous verse; neither here nor there does it involve any loss of self-respect. The wife’s tribute to her husband’s worth is submission—the grace of childhood to both parents equally is obedience.
Ver. 23. Christ is the head of the Church.—Defending her at His own peril (“If ye seek Me, let these go their way,” John xviii. 8); serving her in utmost forgetfulness of self (“I am amongst you as he that serveth,” Luke xxii. 27); “Giving Himself up for her,” (ver. 25).
Ver. 25. Husbands, love your wives.—This will prevent the submission of the wife from ever becoming degrading—as submission to a tyrant must be.
Ver. 26. That He might sanctify and cleanse.—There is no “and” between “sanctify” and “cleanse” in what St. Paul wrote. “Sanctify it, having cleansed it” (R.V.). “I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified” (John xvii. 19).
Ver. 27. Spot or wrinkle.—“Spot,” a visible blemish, used in the plural, figuratively, in 2 Pet. ii. 13, of men who disfigure Christian assemblies. “Wrinkle”—“a wrinkled bride” is an incongruity, just as the mourning which produces wrinkles is out of place in the bridechamber (Matt. ix. 15).
Ver. 28. As their own bodies.—Not “as they love their own bodies” merely, but “as being their own.” See ver. 31, “one flesh.”
Ver. 31. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife.—We must regard these words, not as a continuation of Adam’s in Gen. ii. 23, but as the words of the narrator, who regards what our first father said as a mystical hint of the origin of marriage.
Ver. 32. This is a great mystery.—The meaning of which is known only to the initiated. Something having a significance beyond what appears on the surface. But I speak.—The “I” is emphatic: “I give my interpretation.” My chief interest in this mystery is as it relates to Christ and to the Church.
Ver. 33. Nevertheless.—“I pursue the matter no further”; and though this mystical turn is given to the words, still in actual life let the husband love (ver. 25) and the wife show reverence (ver. 22). Let all the married among you apply the mystery to their own case, so that the husband may love the wife and the wife fear the husband.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 1, 2.