²¹ and submit to each other out of respect for Christ. ²² For example, wives should submit to their husbands as if to the Lord. ²³ A husband is the head of his wife like Christ is head of the church, that is, the savior of the body. ²⁴ So wives submit to their husbands in everything like the church submits to Christ. ²⁵ As for husbands, love your wives just like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. ²⁶ He did this to make her holy by washing her in a bath of water with the word. ²⁷ He did this to present himself with a splendid church, one without any sort of stain or wrinkle on her clothes, but rather one that is holy and blameless. ²⁸ That’s how husbands ought to love their wives—in the same way as they do their own bodies. Anyone who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ No one ever hates his own body, but feeds it and takes care of it just like Christ does for the church ³⁰ because we are parts of his body. ³¹ This is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two of them will be one body.^{[a] 32} Marriage is a significant allegory,^[b] and I’m applying it to Christ and the church. ³³ In any case, as for you individually, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and wives should respect^[c] their husbands.

Psalm 128

A pilgrimage song.

Growth of God’s kingdom

¹⁸ Jesus asked, “What is God’s kingdom like? To what can I compare it? ¹⁹ It’s like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in a garden. It grew and developed into a tree and the birds in the sky nested in its branches.”

²⁰ Again he said, “To what can I compare God’s kingdom? ²¹ It’s like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through the whole.”