Ephesians 5:25-33 Part II
Last week I began a small three part series on these verses with the first part of Ephesians 5:25-33 focusing on verses 25-27. In this second part of my series on Ephesians 5:25-33, I am focusing on the middle three verses of this particular passage.
Verses 28-30 say:
“28 Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, 30 because we are members of His body.”
As we did last time, we’ll look at each verse a little more in depth and dissect it to apply its practicality to our own relationships and marriages.
In verse 28, we see St. Paul bring in a reference to our bodies; this is an interesting analogy that he offers to his audience. He mentions our bodies, but why? The way that I see it, the great evangelist does this in order to put things into perspective of how we would (usually) love ourselves. In our culture today, we might make facetious remarks like “I hate myself for eating like crap” or “I’m a pig/slob” or what have you. It can be difficult to see what Paul is getting at here because of how we put the lens of our current society and culture onto trying to read this verse. That would be erroneous because he wasn’t writing to a culture who hates the self-image. Surely it would be hard to understand what he means when trying to apply it to how we visualize our image nowadays. We must remove that lens and see the verse through the lens of his intended audience.
In those days, there was no issue of self-hate like we have running amok today, as there wasn’t a distorted concept of what the body/self ought to look like (as there is today). In general, I think it would be safe to say that man didn’t hate himself but rather loved himself for being made in the image of God. With that in mind, this verse can make more sense to us. Of course we love ourselves in this matter, therefore, we are commanded to love our wives in the same regard, for they too are also created imago dei, in the image of God. Their bodies too reflect the invisible reality of the invisible God. Therefore, it makes all the sense to love them just the same as our own body.
Moving on to verse 29, then, we see that the focus is more on the physicality of our bodies. Not only do we love our bodies, says St. Paul, but we nourish and cherish them. He says that no man hates his own flesh, as I slightly touched upon in the prior verse’s explanation. We shouldn’t, as we are made in the image of God, yes? So, because we are made in His image, shouldn’t we do whatever we can to cherish and nourish it? Well, of course! Our physical existence is in itself a gift from God, for God!
St. Paul makes the connection of how we ought to act toward our bodies to how Jesus Christ cherishes and nourishes His Church. But how does Christ do that in a way that would seem easy to relate to what we do for our bodies? Remember, we shan’t be too literal when we see analogies presented. Christ absolutely nourishes and cherishes His Church. We are the Church and surely He nourishes us with His own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the most holy Eucharist. There is no higher form of cherishing and nourishment, period. The gift of self is the most appropriate way to cherish and nourish whatever thing.
Bringing that together, then, we can use that self-gift ideology and apply it to the first part of that verse (which is continuing on from the prior verse): "for no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it." Let us offer the self out of love to our spouses so that we might nourish and cherish ourselves as a total gift.
Coming to an end now with the shortest verse of the three (but no less dense) we see that St. Paul affirms that we are members of His [Jesus'] body. If Christ’s body is His people, than we should will that every part is nourished to its optimum potential. If our wives, like us, are also individual parts of Christ’s Body, than we should indeed do everything in our will to see to it that it is cherished and taken care of to the best of our ability, because it is for Christ. When we intentionally do things for the Lord, it puts a different spin on the situation and there is an increased zeal for it.
Taking the “members of His body” portion of the verse into consideration, we can also continue that thought with the analogy of Christ and His Church being nourished and cherished. If we are the Church, and He nourishes and cherishes the Church, then it would make ample sense to be able to say that He (Jesus) takes care of His Church because they are members of His body. It all ties together.
I would say that we should take these 3 verses into consideration during prayer this week so that we can come to terms with what they all mean and how we might be able to bring them to a higher level within the spiritual realm.
Pax Christi,
Cameron
