My last post argued that “wives to your own husbands as to the Lord” is not the beginning of a new sentence, but the end of a long string of participles explaining how the body is to be filled with the Spirit (5:15-24).
Paul takes a breath before addressing the husbands, starting a new sentence with an address and an imperative:
Hoi andres (Husbands,)
agapate (you must love, imperative)
Then, the text does three or so more things:
1. Jesus’ four verbs (5:25b-27)
First, the text grounds love in a series of four concrete verbal phrases that belong to Jesus (5:25b-27):
kathōs kai ho christos ēgaptēsen tēn ekklēsian (just as Christ loved the church)
That was the first line. Here are the verb phrases:
kai eauton paredōken huper autes (and handed himself over for it)
hina autēn hagiasēi (so that He may consecrate it)
kathatisas tōloutrō tou hudatos en hrēmati (having cleansed it by the washing of the water with the word)
hina parastēsē autos eautō endoxon tēn ekklēsian mē echousan spilon ē rutida ē ti tōn toioutōn all’ hina ē hagia kai amōmos (so that He may present the church as glorious to Himself, not having spot or wrinkle or something of such kind but that it may be holy and without defect)
Notably, they are not given as participles, but as aorists (past) and subjunctives (like hypothetical futures). These concrete verbs are (an example of) Paul’s interpretation of Jesus’ love for the church, but they don’t tell husbands what they are supposed to do.
2. The embodied human’s two verbs (5:28-30)
Second, the text gives a second as that’s like the first (5:28-30). In the first verse, which consists of two clauses, we get ‘love’ and ‘own’ three times each.
Houtōs (Thus)
opseliousin (ought, verb)
oi andres (husbands)
agapan tas eautōn gunaikas (to love [infinitive], their own wives)
hōs ta eautōn sōmata (as their own bodies.)
ho agapōn tēn eautou gunaika (The lover-of-his-own-wife)
eauton agapa (loves himself.)
This leads me to believe that ‘the point’ of the four verbal phrases in 5:25b-27 was not to give husbands four genera of love to practice, but to show what love does when one identifies one’s beloved as their own body.
It also implies, for whatever it may be worth, that in loving the church, Christ loves himself.
The following verses (5:29-30) offer a different set of verbs:
oudeis gar pote tēn eautou sarka emisēsen (since no one ever his own body hated)
alla ektrephei kai thalpei autēn (but nourishes and fosters it—)
kathōs kai ho christos tēn ekklēsian (just as Christ the church—)
hoti melē esmen tou sōmatos autou (because members we are of his body.)
Ektrephō, which I’ve translated ‘nourishes’ connotes the broad sense of ‘feeding’—food, training, instruction—that amounts to ‘raising’. In fact, Paul uses it a second time to charge fathers to ‘bring up’ (ektrephete) their children in the instruction and counsel of the lord (6:4).
Thalpō, which I’ve somewhat arbitrarily translated ‘fosters’, literally means ‘keeps warm’, and figuratively means something like ‘warms someone up.’
But, we’re up to six new concrete verbs, and Paul still hasn’t given husbands instructions for how exactly to respond to his imperative, “Husbands, you must love…”
vv. 25b-27 show how Christ loved the Church;
vv. 28-30 show how humans love their bodies;
vv. 31-33 show…
3. The implied divine verb (5:31-32)
Why men leave their parents:
anti toutou kataleipsei anthrōpos (Because of this, a man will leave [future active])
ton patera kai tēn mētera (his father and his mother)
kai proskollēthēsetai tē gunaiki autou (and will be joined [future passive] to his wife)
kai esontai hoi duo eis sarka mian (and ‘will be’ the two into one flesh).
Paul goes on: “This mystery is great...”
Many translations render proskollēthēsetai as ‘cleave.’ As in, a man will ‘leave’ and ‘cleave.’ This gets the meaning right, but the voice wrong. ‘Leave’ is an active verb, but ‘cleave’ is passive. That’s why I’ve left it “will be joined.” This harmonizes with Jesus’ words in Matthew: “What God has joined together (suzeugnumi)…”
God joins.
A man, and by implication, a woman, will be joined.
The key is that the two ‘will be’ into one flesh, and Paul still hasn’t given husbands an active verb with which to ground their love for their wives. The payoff comes in the final verse.
4. The payoff (5:33)
“However,” Paul says, I think in view of the profundity of the mystery, “as for each of you as individuals,”
ekastos tēn eautou gunaika (each himselve’s wife)
houtōs agapatō hōs eauton (so love [imperative, pl.] as himself)
hē de gunē hina phobētai ton andra (but the wife, that she might fear [subjunctive] the husband)
A few fast observations:
With these two additions, the “self” (eautou) tally is up to seven instances in vv. 25-33. I began this study on a hunt for husband-verbs, and ended it with a bag full of self-self-self vocabulary.
“Fear” (phobētai) is a subjunctive, not an imperative. That, for me, means that v. 33 is still addressing husbands.
“Fear” (phobētai) just comes from v. 21: “subject yourselves to one another in the fear (phobō) of Christ.” The Love and Respect marriage book misses this, characterizing “respect” as a natural masculine need, rather than as an appropriate response to a man’s symbolic and sacramental representation of Christ as a husband.
How should husbands love their wives?
To begin with, husbands are not Christ. And so they are not being told to hand themselves over (v. 25), consecrate them (v. 26), cleanse them (v. 26), or present them (v. 27).
Neither are they being told to nourish or foster them (v. 29)—at 6:4, they will be told to ‘nourish’ their children. Paul just means that we have a better sense of the mystery of individual embodiment (we identify our bodies as ourselves) than we do of marriage (we don’t identify our wives as ourselves).
Husbands, your wives are humans, called like you are to mutual submission in the fear of Christ (v. 21). But two more things are true:
One, the imperative to love them requires an imagination recognition that loving them means loving yourself. This is the mystery that the phrase, “Happy wife, happy life,” crudely oversimplifies to the point of distortion. A husband’s wife is not his life, but she is his self.
For a husband, to love means to leave one’s patrimony in order to allow God to suture you to the other who will become your self.
And there are no participles for that. It’s “love” (v. 25) and then “love” (v. 33).
Two, what popular marriage psychology calls “respect,” we should think about in mystery categories. A man’s leaving of his father and mother sacramentally represents Jesus leaving his Father and mother. God joins a man to his wife in a sacramental representation of God’s having joined Jesus Christ to the Church, and his having joined human souls to human bodies.
What wives owe to husbands (vv. 22-24, 33) is what all Christians owe one to another: submission out of the recognition of the one another’s representation to us of Christ (v. 21).