Charles Ellicott Commentary Ephesians 5:29

"for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church;" — Ephesians 5:29 (ASV)

His own flesh—i.e., as above (Ephesians 5:28), his own body. There are two parts of the natural care for our own bodies; first, “to nourish” (properly, to rear them up from childhood, as in Ephesians 6:4), and then “to cherish” (literally, to keep them warm), to provide all they need for health, comfort, and life. In all that corresponds to both, the husband is to show love to the wife, not only as a self, but as a weaker self, for whom he is bound to think and to act.

It may be noted in passing that this very comparison accords with the Christian idea of the body as a part of the true self, redeemed to be a temple of God. This comparison is also utterly incongruous with the Gnostic conceptions (already beginning at Colossae, and probably not unknown in other Asiatic churches) of all matter as the source of evil, and of the body as that for which the spirit should not deign to care.