Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a glorious church, without stain or wrinkle or any such blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Indeed, no one ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. For we are members of His body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.
Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever, and justice is the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you above your companions with the oil of joy.
Significance
Paul's portrait of Christ the Husband who "loved the church and gave Himself up for her... to present her to Himself as a glorious church, without stain or wrinkle... but holy and blameless" (Eph 5:25-27) draws on the only royal-wedding psalm in the Psalter, Psalm 45, where the divine King (vv. 6-7) takes a bride led to him "in colorful garments... with joy and gladness" (Ps 45:14-15). The verbal quotation in 5:31 is from Genesis 2:24, but the controlling image — a kingly bridegroom and his beautifully adorned bride — is the scene Psalm 45 stages, and the divine-vocative address of v. 6 supplies the warrant for reading the royal groom as Christ Himself. The connection is a thematic echo within the Marriage and Bride longitudinal theme, not a citation: Psalm 45 stands at the head of the wedding-allegorical trajectory (with Hos 1-3; Isa 54:5; 62:5) that Ephesians 5 brings to its Christ-and-church fulfillment. The escalation is from a Davidic groom's earthly wedding to the cosmic marriage of the divine King who beautifies His bride by His own self-giving death. The telos: the King of Psalm 45, anointed "above your companions with the oil of joy," is the Bridegroom who "rejoices over" His blood-bought bride — so that the love commanded of husbands is grounded not in moral effort but in the gladness of the Christ who delighted to make the church His own and present her glorious to Himself.
