Tuesday Devo

Ephesians 5
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 

5:26–27 The focus in these verses is on Christ, for husbands do not “sanctify” their wives or “wash” them of their sins, though they are to do all in their power to promote their wives’ holiness. Sanctify here means to consecrate into the Lord’s service through cleansing. washing of water. This might be a reference to baptism, since it is common in the Bible to speak of invisible, spiritual things (in this case, spiritual cleansing) by pointing to an outward physical sign of them (see Rom. 6:3–4). There may also be a link here to Ezek. 16:1–13, where the Lord washes infant Israel, raises her, and eventually elevates her to royalty and marries her, which would correspond to presenting the church to himself in splendor at his marriage supper (see also Ezek. 36:25; Rev. 19:7–9; 21:2, 9–11). without blemish. The church’s utter holiness and moral perfection will be consummated in resurrection glory, but is derived from the consecrating sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
5:28–30 Paul reiterates a husband’s calling to self-sacrificial love for his wife by comparing this love to regard for one’s own body (their own bodies), himself, and his own flesh (vv. 28–29; see also v. 33) and then to Christ’s love for his body. As vv. 29–30 make explicit, the “body” for which Christ sacrificed himself was not his own person but the “body” which is the church.
5:31 one flesh. The command for a husband to love his wife as he loves “his own flesh” (v. 29) originates in the creation reality that God joins husbands and wives together to “become one flesh.” Paul’s quotation is from Gen. 2:24, speaking of marriage before there was any sin in the world; see also Matt. 19:5; Mark 10:8; 1 Cor. 6:16.
5:32 By mystery Paul means the hidden plan of God that has come to fulfillment in Christ Jesus (see 1:9; 3:3–4, 9; and 6:19), thus his quotation about marriage from Genesis 2 (in Eph. 5:31) ties in to the relationship between Christ and his church. Paul’s meaning is profound: he interprets the original creation of the husband-and-wife union as itself modeled on Christ’s forthcoming union with the church as his “body” (see v. 23). Therefore, marriage from the beginning of creation (Genesis 1) was created by God to be a reflection of and patterned after Christ’s relation to the church. Thus Paul’s commands regarding the roles of husbands and wives do not merely reflect the culture of his day but present God’s ideal for all marriages at all times, as exemplified by the relationship between the bride of Christ (the church) and Christ himself, the Son of God.

1. Who is Jesus? I believe Jesus is God because Jesus said He is God and proved it by rising from the dead and appearing to His disciples, His brother James, 500 others at one time and Paul.
(Mark 3:21; John 8:58, 10:30-33, 14:9-11; Acts 9:1-6; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:2-3; James 1:1)