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In Ephesians 5:22-32 we see that Christ is the Husband of the church.
Verse 23 tells us that Christ is not only the Head of the church but also the Savior of the Body. His being the Head is a matter of authority, whereas His being the Savior is a matter of love. We must be subject to Him as our Head, and we must love Him as our Savior.
Verse 25 says that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Christ’s loving the church and giving Himself up for her was for redemption and for the impartation of life. According to John 19:34, blood and water came out of the Lord’s pierced side. The blood was for redemption, and the water was for the impartation of life so that the church might come into existence. In Ephesians 5:25 we have the church coming into existence through Christ’s loving her and giving Himself up for her.
Paul says of Christ in verses 26 and 27, “He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word, that He might present the church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such things, but that she would be holy and without blemish.”
After the church has come into existence, the church needs to be sanctified. The process of sanctification includes saturation, transformation, growth, and building up. Although sanctification includes separation, the main aspect of sanctification is saturation. The church needs to be saturated with all that Christ is. Saturation is accompanied by transformation, growth, and building. Through such a process of sanctification with all these aspects, the church becomes complete and perfect.
Without separation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building, the church cannot be perfected and grow into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Only through an all-inclusive process of sanctification can the church become complete and attain to the measure of the stature of Christ’s fullness so that Christ can present a perfect church to Himself.
In verse 26 Paul says that Christ sanctifies the church by cleansing her through the washing of the water in the word. According to the divine concept, water here refers to the flowing life of God, which is typified by flowing water (Exo. 17:6; 1 Cor. 10:4; John 7:38-39; Rev. 21:6; 22:1, 17). The washing of the water is different from the washing of the redeeming blood of Christ. The redeeming blood washes away our sins (1 John 1:7; Rev. 7:14), whereas the water of life washes away the blemishes of the natural life of our old man, such as the “spot or wrinkle or any such things” (Eph. 5:27). In separating and sanctifying the church, the Lord first washes away our sins with His blood (Heb. 13:12) and then washes away our natural blemishes with His life. We are now in such a washing process in order that the church may be holy and without blemish.
With Eve in Genesis 2 there was no need of cleansing because in that chapter she had not fallen. Rather, she was pure and without mixture. Yet because we are fallen, contaminated, and defiled, we need to be cleansed. Many things in us must be purged away: the flesh, the self, the old man, and the natural life. Furthermore, we have many spots and wrinkles from which we need to be cleansed.
The cleansing by the washing of the water of life is in the word. This indicates that in the word there is the water of life, which is typified by the laver between the altar and the tabernacle (Exo. 38:8; 40:7). The Greek word rendered “washing” in Ephesians 5:26 means “laver.” This Greek word is used in the Septuagint as a translation for the Hebrew word for laver. In the Old Testament the priests washed themselves from earthly defilement in the laver (Exo. 30:18-21). Now the laver, the washing of the water, washes us from defilement.
As the priests in the Old Testament came first to the altar and then to the laver, so we come first to the cross to be saved, redeemed, and justified, and then we come to the Word to be cleansed. Day by day, morning and evening, we need to come to the Bible in order to be cleansed by the laver of water in the Word. By coming to the Word in this way, we are cleansed from the defilement we have accumulated in our contact with the world. Whenever we contact the world in the course of our human living, we need to come to the Word to be cleansed.
The washing in Ephesians 5:26 does not deal mainly with sins but with spots and wrinkles. Spots are something out of the natural life, and wrinkles are signs of oldness. Only the water of life can metabolically wash away such defects by the transformation of life. All the spots and wrinkles in the church will be washed away through the inner cleansing of the water in the Word. The more we come to the Word, the more we are nourished. The nourishment we receive brings about an inner cleansing from the defects caused by the natural life and from the wrinkles caused by oldness. We all need such an organic, metabolic washing to take away our defects and the marks of our oldness. As the church is washed organically and metabolically in this way, the church is renewed to be without blemish.
Such a washing takes place entirely by life and by the nourishment of life. Hence, we need to be encouraged to abide in Christ as the source of nourishment and to contact the Word to receive the nourishing element so that we may be washed organically and metabolically from all defects and oldness. By means of such a washing, the church will be perfected and become glorious.
It is such a glorious church that Christ will present to Himself at His coming back. Glory is God expressed. Hence, to be glorious is to be God’s expression. Eventually, the church presented to Christ will be a God-expressing one. Such a church will also be holy and without blemish. To be holy is to be saturated and transformed with Christ, and to be without blemish is to be spotless and without wrinkle, with nothing of the natural life of our old man.
The church that comes out of Christ will go back to Christ, just as Eve came out of Adam and went back to Adam. As Eve became one flesh with Adam, so the church which goes back to Christ will be one spirit with Christ.
The church presented to Christ will be glorious; it will be the expression, the manifestation, of God. For the church to become glorious means that the church becomes God’s expression. Because Christ’s sanctifying will cause the church to be saturated with the essence of God, the church will eventually become the bride to express God. The only way for us to become His expression is to be continually saturated with the divine essence. If we would experience this saturation, we need Christ’s sanctifying.
As previously mentioned, the glorious church, the church that expresses God, will be holy and without blemish. To be holy is to be separated to the Lord from common things and then saturated and permeated with the divine nature, with all that God is. The church that has become holy in this way will also be without blemish. Blemish here is like a defect in a precious stone; this defect comes from mixture within the stone. If we would be without blemish, we must be without mixture; that is, we must not have anything other than God in our being. One day the church will be not only clean and pure but also without blemish, without mixture. The church will be the expression of God Himself mingled with a resurrected, uplifted, and transformed humanity. This is the glorious church, the church that is holy and without blemish. In the future such a glorious church will be presented by Christ to Himself.
The spots and wrinkles do not affect the function of the church. However, they very much detract from the beauty of the church. The church as Christ’s bride must be beautiful. When Christ presents the church to Himself, the church will be a beautiful bride. As the universal man, Christ needs the church to be the bride that matches Him. In order to be the bride of Christ, the church must become beautiful and have all the spots and wrinkles removed.
Surely at the time of her presentation to Christ, the bride will not have any wrinkles or spots. In His bride Christ will behold nothing but beauty. This beauty will be the reflection of what He is. The beauty of the bride comes from the Christ who is wrought into the church and expressed through the church. Our beauty is not our behavior; our only beauty is the reflection of Christ, the shining out of Christ from within us. What Christ appreciates in us is the expression of Himself. Nothing less than this will meet His standard or win His appreciation.
Today we must prepare ourselves to be the bride by taking in the element of Christ’s riches as our nourishment. Christ is the food for the church. Therefore, as she prepares herself to be presented to Christ, the church must eat Christ. There is no other way to be prepared. Eating Jesus is the way. By eating Him we become a beautiful and even glorious bride.
First, Christ must come into us and then be assimilated by us. Then He will be able to shine out of us. This shining is the glory of the bride, the manifestation of divinity through humanity. Real beauty is the expression of the divine attributes through humanity. Nothing in the universe is as beautiful as this expression. Therefore, the beauty of the bride is Christ shining out of us. It is a matter of divinity expressed through humanity. Through our humanity there is an expression of the divine color, the divine appearance, the divine flavor, the divine nature, and the divine character.
The church is being beautified by partaking of Christ, by digesting Christ, and by assimilating Christ. The more we experience the indwelling Christ in this way, the more He will replace our spots and wrinkles with His element, and the more His riches with the divine attributes will become our beauty. Then we will be prepared to be presented to Christ as His lovely bride.
In the past, Christ as the Redeemer gave Himself up for the church (v. 25) for redemption and the impartation of life (John 19:34); in the present, He as the life-giving Spirit is sanctifying the church through separation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building; and in the future, He as the Bridegroom will present the church to Himself as His counterpart for His satisfaction. Therefore, Christ’s loving the church is to separate and sanctify her, and His separating and sanctifying the church are to present her to Himself glorious.
Ephesians 5:29 says, “No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ also the church.” To nourish is to feed us with the living word of the Lord. To cherish is to warm us up. Just as a mother tenderly embraces her baby to warm him and feed him, Christ cherishes us by warming us and nourishes us by feeding us.
To be nourished by Christ is to be supplied with His riches. If we take Christ as our person, we will experience Christ nourishing us. We will continually have the sense of His inward nourishment. We need to experience the nourishment that comes from taking Christ as our person.
Nourishment brings about transformation. We become what we eat. This means that if we eat Christ, we will eventually be constituted with Christ. We will be transformed by the element of Christ that has been dispensed into us. The more we take Christ as our person, the more He nourishes us. Through Christ’s nourishment we are transformed. This means that we become a new person with a new element and substance. We should praise the Lord that He nourishes us with Himself, with the riches of all He is.
Today the need of the Lord’s people is to take Christ as their person for nourishment. We need to come in touch with the living Christ, to open to Him, and to take Him as our life and person. We should pray, “Lord, by Your mercy I want to learn to take You as my person and allow You to make Your home in my heart.”
When we are nourished, something enters into our being to meet our need. Nourishment, therefore, must come from a supply. Without a supply, it is impossible to have nourishment. Christ nourishes the church with all the riches of the Father. Christ is the embodiment of the fullness of the Godhead. Hence, all the riches of God are in Him, and He enjoys these riches. Then He nourishes the church with the very riches of the Godhead that He Himself has enjoyed.
This is proved by John 15, where the Lord Jesus says that He is the vine and that the Father is the husbandman. The Father is the Cultivator, the Planter, the Farmer, of the vine. We, the believers in Christ, are the branches of the vine. The vine nourishes the branches with what the vine absorbs from the soil. God the Father is the soil, the water, and everything to Christ as the vine. The vine absorbs the riches from the soil and the water, digests them, and then transmits them to the branches. This is the nourishing. Christ nourishes the church with the riches of the Father, which He has absorbed and assimilated. By nourishing the church, Christ meets the inward need of the church.
It is correct to say that Christ nourishes the church with His life and with His word. His life and His word are the substance of the nourishment, but neither His life nor His word is the source. The source is the Father. What Christ receives of the Father becomes the life and the life supply which are embodied in the Word. For this reason, the Word is the word of life, even the bread of life or the supply of life. If we would be nourished by Christ today, we need to abide in Him to absorb His content into our being as life and the life supply. In order to experience this in a practical way, we daily need to contact the living Word, for the Word is the embodiment of life and of the life supply. The more we abide in the Lord and contact the Word, the more we experience His nourishing. This is the way Christ nourishes the church.
All the members of the church need to practice abiding in the Lord. There should be no insulation, no separation, between us and the Lord and no detachment from Him. As soon as we are detached from Him, the supply of nourishment is cut off. Along with abiding in the Lord constantly, we must daily come to the Word and take it in as our life and life supply. Then we will receive nourishment. Furthermore, all the meetings of the church should be meetings of nourishment. Morning revival and our fellowship with the saints should also be times of nourishment.
As we are nourished by the life and the life supply, we grow and we are purified. As we abide in the Lord to receive the riches of the Father and as we contact the Word to receive the life and the life supply, we are nourished by Christ. In this way Christ nourishes the church He loves.
Along with the nourishing we have the cherishing. To be cherished is to be softened by being warmed. When we are hard and cold, we need Christ to cherish us, that is, to warm our hearts. After some experiences of His warming, we are softened. Just as a mother cherishes a child by holding the child to her breast, so the Lord cherishes us by holding us close to Him. How tender, sweet, and warm the Lord Jesus is! By resting on Him, we who once were hard and cold become soft and warm. The Lord warms us and softens us as we enjoy His tenderness, sweetness, and lovingness. When the Lord sanctifies, cleanses, and nourishes us, He cherishes us with His tender warmth. His cherishing comforts us, soothes us, and calms us.
According to the New Testament, Christ’s care of the church has two aspects. The inner aspect is the nourishing, and the outer aspect is the cherishing. To be nourished is to have something imparted into us inwardly, whereas to be cherished is to be warmed and comforted outwardly.
Cherishing is related to environment. In our environment or circumstances the Lord Jesus is often real to us as a warm, tender breeze blowing upon us. As this warm breeze comes upon us, we have the sense of being tenderly soothed. Although this takes place in the environment, it is something more than the environment itself. It is even something that surpasses the Lord’s presence. When the Lord’s presence becomes a gentle breeze, we experience His cherishing. This cherishing includes soothing, comfort, and rest. In the environment of the church life, we often experience the Lord’s cherishing, although we may not even be conscious of it. However, if for any length of time we are in an environment where there is no church, we sense that the climate has changed and that the environment is different. Then we begin to sense that we have lost something, that the tender, warm breeze is no longer blowing upon us. We may have everything necessary for our material existence, but we know that something we formerly enjoyed is missing. When we return to the church life, we immediately and spontaneously enter into the environment and atmosphere of the Lord’s cherishing. Once again we are warmed, soothed, and comforted. This is cherishing.
Just as a child is cherished by the presence of his mother, so we are cherished by the Lord’s presence, which produces an atmosphere of tenderness and warmth to cherish our being. We experience such an atmosphere in the church meetings. How pleasant is the spiritual climate in the gathering of the saints! As soon as we enter this atmosphere, we are cherished by the Lord’s presence. It is by the atmosphere produced by the Lord’s brooding presence that the Lord cherishes the church. To be in this climate, this atmosphere, this environment, gives us rest, comfort, healing, cleansing, and encouragement. No atmosphere can compare to the atmosphere of the church meetings.
Nourishing and cherishing go together. Through the nourishing we enjoy the supply of life inwardly, and through the cherishing we experience the soothing, comforting atmosphere outwardly. Whenever we are in an atmosphere of cherishing, we can absorb the word of the ministry. This indicates that under the cherishing we receive nourishing. A church that is nourished and cherished in such a way will be strong and healthy.
The nourishing and the cherishing are the church’s portion, and they should be found in every meeting. If we are proper, normal, and healthy, we will enjoy the cherishing atmosphere of the Lord’s presence in the church, and in this atmosphere receive the nourishing supply of life. We should praise the Lord for the way He cares for the church. In the proper church life we have the privilege of enjoying the Lord in such a fine, tender, intimate, and real way.
Verses 30 through 32 say, “Because we are members of His Body. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak with regard to Christ and the church.” Genesis 2:24 indicates that a man and his wife are one flesh. We should regard a husband and wife not as two separate persons but as one complete person, as two halves of a whole unit. A husband and a wife as a complete unit are a marvelous picture of Christ and the church as one entity. Christ and the church as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), typified by a husband and wife as one flesh, are the great mystery.
The mysterious life union of Christ and His Body, the church, is the great mystery in the universe (Eph. 5:32). This mystery is the processed Triune God being joined and mingled with the regenerated and transformed tripartite man to become a universal couple; this is the ultimate point of the mingling of God and man. God is the principal character, and man is His counterpart. Through regeneration, the two share the same life and nature; they live and walk together. In other words, divinity is living in humanity to become the reality of humanity, and the human virtues are living out the divine glory and beauty to become the expression of divinity. Divinity and humanity are mingled as one. Divinity is the content and the reality within; the humanity is the manifestation and the beauty without.
The first couple in the Bible, Adam and Eve, presents a significant and complete picture of Christ and the church. According to the book of Genesis, God did not create man and woman at the same time and in the same way. First, God formed man’s body from the dust of the ground. Then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul (Gen. 2:7). After God created man, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper as his counterpart.” (v. 18). The animals and the birds were brought to Adam, and Adam named them, but for Adam “there was not found a helper as his counterpart.” (v. 20). Within Adam there was the desire to have a counterpart, to have someone to match him. Among the cattle, the animals, and the birds, there was no counterpart for Adam. In order to produce such a counterpart, “God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man” (v. 21). While Adam slept, the Lord took one of Adam’s ribs and used it for the building of a woman (v. 22). In life, nature, and form the woman was the same as the man. Therefore, when God brought the woman to Adam, Adam exclaimed, “This time this is bone of my bones / And flesh of my flesh” (v. 23). Adam knew that at last he had found his counterpart.
Because there was no counterpart for Christ in the created universe, God caused Christ to die on the cross. As He slept there, His side was opened, and blood and water came forth (John 19:34). The blood takes care of the problem of sin. (In Genesis 2 the problem of sin had not come in. Therefore, that chapter mentions only the rib that was taken out of Adam; it says nothing about blood.) The water signifies the flowing life of Christ, the eternal life, which produces the church. This life is also typified by the rib. According to John 19, not one of the Lord’s bones was broken when He was on the cross. This was a fulfillment of the Scripture, which says, “He keeps all his bones; / Not one of them is broken” (Psa. 34:20). The unbroken bone of Christ signifies Christ’s unbreakable eternal life. Hence, Adam’s rib typifies the unbreakable eternal life of Christ. It is with this eternal life that the church is built up as the bride, the counterpart prepared for Christ. In this building up of the bride, Christ gains the church as a match for Himself. Just as Eve had the same life and nature as Adam, the church has the same life and nature as Christ.
In the church there is no place for our natural life and fallen human nature. The human life and nature are not adequate to match Christ. In order to be His counterpart, we need to be one with Christ in life and in nature. This means that Christ and the church as one unit have the same life and nature. Furthermore, Christ and the church have the same image and stature. We should not merely know this as a doctrine but see it as a heavenly vision. We need to see that we must receive Christ as our life and partake of His divine nature. Moreover, we need to see that we must be transformed into His image from glory to glory and attain to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ because we are to be Christ’s counterpart (Eph. 4:13). If we see this vision, we will not only understand the type of Christ and the church but also enjoy Christ as the Husband of the church.
