Ephesians 5:21-33

New Testament for Everyone

Wives and husbands

²¹ Be subject to one another out of reverence for the Messiah.

²² Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ The man, you see, is the head of the woman, just as the Messiah, too, is head of the church. He is himself the savior of the body. ²⁴ But, just as the church is subject to the Messiah, in the same way women should be subject in everything to their husbands.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as the Messiah loved the church, and gave himself for it, ²⁶ so that he could make it holy, cleansing it by washing it with water through the word. ²⁷ He did this in order to present the church to himself in brilliant splendor, without a single spot or blemish or anything of the kind—that it might be holy and without blame. ²⁸ That’s how husbands ought to love their own wives, just as they love their own bodies.

Someone who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, nobody ever hates his own flesh: he feeds it and takes care of it, just as the Messiah does with the church, ³⁰ because we are parts of his body. ³¹ “That’s why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.”

³² The hidden meaning in this saying is very deep; but I am reading it as referring to the Messiah and the church. ³³ Anyway, each one of you must love your wife as you love yourself; and the wife must see that she respects her husband.