THE Spirit now turns to the various relationships of life and exhorts to a becoming and heavenly walk in them. So complete is the word of God as the believer's directory that nothing is left untouched that is needed for life and godliness. The home and the business find a place as truly as the assembly of God.
The order of the exhortations here should be noted: wives are addressed before husbands, children before fathers, and servants before masters; each word arising out of ver. 21, “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” This important principle the apostle now proceeds to develop in its application to the different circumstances in which we find ourselves on earth. A very beautiful style is to be observed in the exhortations to wives and husbands: each are set to study Christ and the church as their patterns respectively of obedience and affection. How different the principle of legal obedience! Here the Spirit fills our hearts with heavenly realities, and then sets us to reproduce them, as it were, in our walk below. This way reminds of God's dealing with Moses with regard to the tabernacle; “see that thou make all things according to the pattern showed thee in the mount.” Thus, as Paul speaks, the tabernacle and its vessels were “patterns of things in the heavens.” On a similar principle should our walk as saints be regulated.
It is blessed to notice how the heart of the apostle, even in giving commonplace exhortations to the saints, turns naturally to that which was his peculiar stewardship—the relationship of grace existing between Christ and the church according to the eternal counsels of God. Wives are therefore told to submit themselves unto their own husbands, as unto the Lord, the husband being the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the church. “Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” The apostle speaks of the place in which the church has been set, that of subjection to her Head; not of her actual practice. Alas, for that! How much self-will and losing sight of the Headship of Christ has marred her practice! But the truth abides, “the church is subject unto Christ”—He is her glorified Head: the Christian wife is to learn the great principle, and act upon it.
Husbands are not exhorted to rule, that not being a point where they are so likely to fail, but to love. The wives are not addressed in this way: love with them is not so likely to be weak as submission. And what is set before the husband'? “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it.” This, when understood, lifts us above merely natural ground: divine love is our heavenly pattern. It is profitable to notice the different ways in which divine love is spoken of in the scriptures. In John's Gospel (chap. 3.) we get God's love to the world, in John's epistle (chap. 3.) the Father's love to the family. Here it is neither, but Christ's love to the church. It was that on which He set His heart when in the depths as the costly pearl: He would have her for His own, to share His throne and glory, to be the object of His affection forever. To acquire her, He must give Himself (for the question of sin was there): could even divine love do more? He held not back even from the cross, for the joy that was set before Him; a part, at least, of which was to have the church as His own—His body and His bride.
In verse 25 we get the past—what He has done: in verse 26 we get the present, what He is doing, sanctifying and cleansing it with the washing of water by the word. He will have her to be according to His mind, and therefore uses His word upon her that she may be kept apart by it from all that is contrary to Himself, and cleansed whenever she contracts defilement in the world. What individual saint does not know the power and blessedness of this? He died for the saints, for the church: He lives for us and serves us, as the girded One in the glory.
And even that is not all, for there is a future as truly as a past and present; “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.” What a contrast between present conditions and future glory! Spots are too plainly to be seen now, for the church has not kept herself from the world (James 1:2727Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (James 1:27)): wrinkles, signs of decay, were to be seen even before the apostle of the church went to his rest. But all such marks of failure and sin will be removed by the holy loving hand of her faithful Lord, and she shall be what His heart would have her; “neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such thing,” as the Spirit emphatically declares, shall be seen in that day.
Meanwhile He loves the church as Himself, with a love that never wearies nor grows cold; and the husband is to learn the precious lesson: Christ nourishes and cherishes the church, “for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” As a typo, Eve's case is then brought forward; the fruit, as it were, of the deep sleep of Adam, his helpmeet, and the sharer of his dominion and blessing. Such is the church's place in relationship with Christ; one with Him now by the Spirit, presently to share all which His grace will bestow. Our hearts do well to cultivate a deeper entrance into His mind concerning the church, seeking His glory in it, and the edification and perfection of all His own. For this, Paul counted it a privilege to labor, pray, and suffer (Col. 1:24-2824Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church: 25Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; 26Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: 27To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: 28Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: (Colossians 1:24‑28)). In closing the subject, the apostle draws the conclusion. that the husband is to love his wife even as himself, and the wife is to see that she reverence her husband.