Ephesians 5:25-27 - Christ's Radiant Bride

Chad Werkhoven
Jun 12
3 min read

You've been beautifully transformed both by and for your Savior.

A bride and groom stand at an altar in a church. Text reads Ephesians 5:25-27 about love. The scene is emotional and black and white. — Photo credit: Unsplash

Ephesians 5:25-27 (NIV)

CONTEXT: Today's passage comes in the midst of some instructions Paul lays down for Christian households - specifically for wives and husbands. Our focus today isn't so much on our domestic relationships as it is on the analogy Paul uses here for Christ's relationship to the Church.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Canons of Dordt

Point 1 - God's Unconditional Election

Point 2 - Limited Atonement

Articles 1-8

Article 9: The Fulfillment of God’s Plan

This plan,
1. arising out of God’s eternal love for the elect,
2. from the beginning of the world to the present time
3. has been powerfully carried out
  1. and will also be carried out in the future,
  2. the gates of hell seeking vainly to prevail against it.
As a result, the elect
1. are gathered into one, all in their own time,
2. and there is always a church of believers founded on Christ’s blood,
  1. a church which steadfastly loves, persistently worships,
  2. and here and in all eternity praises him as her Savior
    1. who laid down his life for her on the cross,
    2. as a bridegroom for his bride.

Summary

The English word 'church' has so many senses - the word could refer to either a religious institution or a building people meet in for worship, wedding ceremonies and other significant events. But the word that the Bible uses to describe the church - ekklēsia - simply means 'a gathering of people called out from their homes.' Church, then, at its deepest sense refers to the people God has called out into salvation.

All throughout the Bible, the Church (God's people) is analogically referred to as a bride, a Paul does here in Ephesians. Mike McKinley helps explain the significance of this:

The fact that God refers to himself as a husband tells us something important about Him and the amazing love that He has for us, but it also shows us something very important about the institution of marriage. If God is a husband, then marriage is not merely a social construct or even primarily a way for people to find companionship and start a family. Instead, marriage is fundamentally a picture of God’s love. It is a way for us to understand and display the depth and intensity of the love God has for his people.

Dig Deeper

There are two primary benefits to officiating a wedding. For one thing, I don't have to wait for my row to be dismissed before I get to walk out when the ceremony is over. But even better is getting to stand up front and observe as everyone stands and turns their attention towards the back to watch the bride and her father as they make their way up the aisle. The best part is watching the look on the groom's face as he sees his radiant bride coming toward him, without stain or wrinkle or other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Most of the time, as is tradition, the first time the groom sees his bride on their wedding day is when she appears in the aisle, and what he sees is the culmination of hours of preparation and primping by bride's maids to make sure everything is just so. Grooms normally don't participate in those preparations, primarily due to our ignorance and incompetence in such practices. Grooms would just get in the way.

All analogies have limitations - even Biblical analogies like this one. Whereas grooms can take no credit for the beauty of their bride, Christ takes all of the credit for the radiancy (literally: glory) of His Bride, the Church. We know how ugly we are and how many warts we have.

Yet Christ prepared and purified us in a way far beyond the capacity of any earthly bridesmaid: He gave Himself up for us to make us holy, cleansing us by the washing with water through the word, to present us to Himself as a radiant Church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

AAA Prayer (About)

ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who created marriage as a picture of His love for us;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will live in a way that doesn't soil the cleansing Christ has accomplished to prepare you to belong to Him;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: