Answer: It is stated that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it. This He did in perfect love, though nothing was to be seen loveable but hateful and guilty.
Next, it was His for (not redemption only, but) an actual result agreeable to the divine nature; that He might sanctify it, or set it apart to God from all evil, having cleansed (or cleansing) it through the washing of water by (or in) the word. The entire work of sanctification, first and last, in principle and in practice, is here set forth luminously under the well-known figure of the washing of water, but carefully tying it to God’s word, not to a sign or ordinance, whatever its place.
The blessed issue is, that He might present to Himself the church glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. The word employed is not “laver,” (which in fact never occurs in the N. T. but often of course in the Greek Version of the Ο.T.), but “hath water,” and hence “washing.” The absence of the Greek article with the qualifying term ἐν ῥήματι is strictly correct, though English like most other tongues cannot dispense with it, as thereby it makes the word to characterize the washing. Nor could any instrument but God’s word applied by the Spirit effect that purifying process all through.
But it is Christ’s love, which accomplishes now the sanctification of the church, as it was before that His love in which He gave Himself for it on the cross. And His love will complete the work when He presents the church all glorious at His coming, the heavenly bride of the Second man, the Last Adam. It is well to note that in this connection “the Lord” is quite out of place in the Received Text of ver. 29. It should be “Christ” as the best witnesses testify and the truth itself requires.