Wives and Husbands (EPH 5:21-33)

[5:21] Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ.

[5:22] Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord.

[5:23] For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church; and Christ is himself the Savior of the church, his body.

[5:24] And so wives must submit themselves completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself to Christ.

[5:25] Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it.

[5:26] He did this to dedicate the church to God by his word, after making it clean by washing it in water,

[5:27] in order to present the church to himself in all its beauty—pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection.

[5:28] Men ought to love their wives just as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself. (

[5:29] None of us ever hate our own bodies. Instead, we feed them, and take care of them, just as Christ does the church;

[5:30] for we are members of his body.)

[5:31] As the scripture says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one.”

[5:32] There is a deep secret truth revealed in this scripture, which I understand as applying to Christ and the church.

[5:33] But it also applies to you: every husband must love his wife as himself, and every wife must respect her husband.