“Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as the Christ also is the head of the Church, being Himself the saviour of the body. But as the Church is subject to the Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything.
“Husbands, love your wives, even as the Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and without blemish.
“Even so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Christ also the Church; because we are members of His body. ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the Church. Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she fear her husband.”—Eph. v. 22–33.
In mutual subjection the Christian spirit has its sharpest trials and attains its finest temper. “Be subject one to another,” was the last word of the apostle’s instructions respecting the “walk” of the Asian Churches. By its order and subjection the gifts of all the members of Christ’s body are made available for the upbuilding of God’s temple. The inward fellowship of the Spirit becomes a constructive and organizing force, reconstituting human life and framing the world into the kingdom of Christ and God. “In fear of Christ” the loyal Christian man submits himself to the community; not from the dread of human displeasure, but knowing that he must give account to the Head of the Church and the Judge of the last day, if his self-will should weaken the Church’s strength and interrupt her holy work. “For the Lord’s sake” His freemen submit to every ordinance of men. This is such a fear as the servant has of a good master (vi. 5), or the true wife for a loving husband (ver. 33),—not that which “perfect love casts out,” but which it deepens and sanctifies.
Of this subjection to Christ the relationship of marriage furnishes an example and a mirror. St Paul passes on to the new topic without any grammatical pause, verse 22 being simply an extension of the participial clause that forms verse 21: “Being in subjection to one another in fear of Christ—ye wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” The relation of the two verses is not that of the particular to the general, so much as that of image and object, of type and antitype. Submission to Christ in the Church suggests by analogy that of the wife to her husband in the house. Both have their origin in Christ, in whom all things were created, the Lord of life in its natural as well as in its spiritual and regenerate sphere (Col. i. 15–17). The bond that links husband and wife, lying at the basis of collective human existence, has in turn its ground in the relation of Christ to humanity.
The race springs not from a unit, but from a united pair. The history of mankind began in wedlock. The family is the first institution of society, and the mother of all the rest. It is the life-basis, the primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic. In the health and purity of household life lies the moral wealth, the vigour and durability of all civil institutions. The mighty upgrowth of nations and the great achievements of history germinated in the nursery of home and at the mother’s breast. Christian marriage is not an expedient—the last of many that have been tried—for the satisfaction of desire and the continuance of the human species. The Institutor of human life laid down its principle in the first frame of things. Its establishment was a great prophetic mystery (ver. 32). Its law stands registered in the eternal statutes. And the Almighty Father watches over its observance with an awful jealousy. Is it not written: “Fornicators and adulterers God will judge”; and again, “The Lord is an avenger concerning all these things”?
St Paul rightly gives to this subject a conspicuous place in this epistle of Christ and the Church. The corner-stone of the new social order which the gospel was to establish in the world lies here. The entire influence of the Church upon society depends upon right views on the relationship of man and woman and on the ethics of marriage.
In wedlock there are blended most completely the two principles of association amongst moral beings,—viz., authority and love, submission and self-surrender.
I. On the one side, submission to authority.