Ephesians 5:21-33
1599 Geneva Bible
21 [a]Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
22 ¶(A)[b]Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, [c]as unto the Lord.
23 (B)[d]For the husband is the wife’s head, even as Christ is the head of the Church, [e]and the same is the Savior of his body.
24 [f]Therefore as the Church is in subjection to Christ, even so let the wives be to their husbands in everything.
25 ¶ (C)[g]Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it,
26 [h]That he might [i]sanctify it, and cleanse it by the washing of water through the [j]word,
27 That he might make it unto himself a glorious Church, [k]not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing: but that it should be holy and without blame.
28 [l]So ought men to love their wives, as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife, loveth himself.
29 For no man ever yet hated his [m]own flesh, but nourished and cherisheth it, even as the Lord doth the Church.
30 For we are members of his body, [n]of his flesh, and of his bones.
31 (D)For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall [o]cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.
32 [p]This is a great secret, but I speak concerning Christ, and concerning the Church.
33 [q]Therefore everyone of you, do ye so: let everyone love his wife, even as himself, and let the wife see that she fear her husband.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Ephesians 5:21 A short repetition of the end whereunto all things ought to be referred, to serve one another for God’s sake.
- Ephesians 5:22 Now he descendeth to a family, dividing orderly all the parts of a family. And he saith that the duty of wives consisteth herein, to be obedient to their husbands.
- Ephesians 5:22 The first argument, for they cannot be disobedient to their husbands, but they must resist God also, who is the author of this subjection.
- Ephesians 5:23 A declaration of the former saying: Because God hath made the man head of the woman in matrimony, as Christ is the head of the Church.
- Ephesians 5:23 Another argument: Because the good estate of the wife dependeth of the man, so that this submission is not only just, but also very profitable: as also the salvation of the Church is of Christ, although far otherwise.
- Ephesians 5:24 The conclusion of the wives’ duty towards their husbands.
- Ephesians 5:25 The husbands’ duty towards their wives, is to love them as themselves, of which love, the love of Christ toward his Church is a lively pattern.
- Ephesians 5:26 Because many men pretend the infirmities of their wives to excuse their own hardness and cruelty, the Apostle willeth us to mark what manner of Church Christ gat, when he joined it to himself, and how he doth not only not loathe all her filth and uncleanness, but ceaseth not to wipe the same away with his cleanness, until he have wholly purged it.
- Ephesians 5:26 Make it holy.
- Ephesians 5:26 Through the promise of free justification and sanctification in Christ, received by faith.
- Ephesians 5:27 The Church, as it is considered in itself, shall not be without wrinkle, before it come to the mark it shooteth at: for while it is in this life, it runneth in a race: but if it be considered in Christ, it is clean and without wrinkle.
- Ephesians 5:28 Another argument: Every man loveth himself, even of nature: therefore he striveth against nature that loveth not his wife: he proveth the consequent, first by the mystical knitting of Christ and the Church together, and then by the ordinance of God, who saith, that man and wife are as one, that is, not to be divided.
- Ephesians 5:29 His own body.
- Ephesians 5:30 He alludeth to the making of the woman, which signifieth our coupling together with Christ, which is wrought by faith, but is sealed by the Sacrament of the Supper.
- Ephesians 5:31 See Matt. 19:5
- Ephesians 5:32 That no man might dream of natural conjunction or knitting of Christ and his Church together (such as the husbands and the wives is) he showeth that it is secret, to wit, spiritual and such as far differeth from the common capacity of man: as which consisteth by the virtue of the Spirit, and not of the flesh by faith, and by no natural band.
- Ephesians 5:33 The conclusion both of the husband’s duty toward his wife, and of the wife’s toward her husband.
Geneva Bible, 1599 Edition. Published by Tolle Lege Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in articles, reviews, and broadcasts.
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