Ephesians 5:25-28

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,

²⁶ that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word,

²⁷ that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

²⁸ So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.

love (v.25) = agape = self-sacrificial love

The argument that husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the Church, does not state that the Church is the wife or that Christ is the husband, but that as Christ loves His body (the Church) so a husband ought to love his body (his wife). — Williams, page 927

sanctify (v.26) = to set apart for a sacred use

cleanse (v.26) — in Greek, this describes the manner in which the sanctifying happens — “that He might sanctify, cleansing it”

washing of water (v.26) = bath — “of water” describes the bath

by the word (v.26) = in the sphere of the word — so, bathing it in the sphere of the word (spiritual washing, not water baptism)

This inward ethical purification is accomplished by the Word of God having liberty in the heart of the Spirit-filled believer, displacing sin and substituting in its place, righteousness. The blood of Christ cleanses from actual sin, and thus cleanses the believer. The Word cleanses him in the sense above mentioned, water being a type of the Word of God. — Wuest, page 132

Christ will present the Church to Himself (v.27).

not having spot, or wrinkle (v.27) — further explaining the word “glorious”

holy (v.27) = separate from evil

without blemish (v.27) = free from fault, unblamable

as (v.28) = as it were, as being — more than just “in a similar manner”

Christ and husband are each head, as Paul has already put it, and as the Church is the body in relation to the former, so is the wife in relation to the latter. The husband, the head, therefore, is to love the wife as being his body, even as Christ loved the Church as forming His body. The idea of husband and wife as being one flesh is probably also in view. He that loveth his own wive loveth himself. The relation of head and body means that the wife is part of the husband’s self. To love his wife, therefore, in this character as being his body, is to love himself. It is a love consequently, not merely of duty — but of nature. — Wuest, page 133.