Charles Ellicott Commentary Ephesians 5:25

"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it;" — Ephesians 5:25 (ASV)

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church.—The love of Christ for His Church is such that He counts Himself incomplete without her (Ephesians 1:23) and raises her to be one with Himself; He bears with her weakness and frailty, draws her on by the cords of love, and gives Himself up for her. Only insofar as the husband shows similar love—in perfect sympathy, chivalrous forbearance, abhorrence of tyranny, and willingness to self-sacrifice—does he have any right to claim lordship.

And gave himself for it.—Here, as before, the antitype transcends the type. In the character of our Lord’s sacrifice, as an atonement offered for the Church, and in the regenerating and cleansing effect of that sacrifice (see next verse), none can approach Him. A husband may be said to give himself for his wife, but this cannot be in any higher sense than taking the chief share of the burden of life for her and, if possible, its pain. He may follow Christ in love, and in that alone. Compare St. Paul’s words: I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the Church (Colossians 1:24, where see Note).

On verses 25-27:

In these verses, under the nuptial metaphor, we trace a clear description of the three great stages in salvation: justification in His giving Himself for us, sanctification in the cleansing by water in the Word, and glorification in the final presentation to Christ in glory.

This metaphor is certainly preserved in the latter two stages, which correspond to the bridal bath of purification and her festal presentation (usually by the friend of the bridegroom, John 3:29) in all her beauty and adornment to her husband at his own home. Perhaps the metaphor extends to the first stage as well, for a husband customarily gave a dowry—regarded in the unrefined simplicity of ancient times as purchasing his wife—and here, what Christ gives is the unspeakable price of Himself.

Throughout, in accordance with the whole tenor of the Epistle, it is the Church as a whole, not the individual soul, that is the Spouse of Christ.