Ephesians 5:2

2. And Not only as children forgive and forget, but even walk in love. And that no mere animal love. There are meretricious natures who appear strongly capable of blending what they esteem spiritual with sexual love. Such blending, in thought or language, is morbid, and repulsive to a sound Christianity. But Christian love is after the model of Christ, which is absolutely pure and transcendently self sacrificing.

Hath given himself By an act of free, voluntary love. His right to so act he very explicitly declares in John 10:18. He performed this self-surrender by that right which we all have to suffer for others, undeterred even by the guilt of those who inflict the suffering, as well as by that divine right which he possessed over himself.

For us The offering was for us; to furnish blessed results to us, parallel to those which a sacrifice under the law furnished to him in whose behalf the victim bled.

Offering… sacrifice The former includes any presentation to God, bloody or bloodless; but it is also defined by the word sacrifice as bloody.

To God Not given himself… to God, but for us a sacrifice to God, as the Levitical sacrifices all were.

Sweet-smelling savour Literally, a smell of fragrance; the smell referring to the sensation, the fragrance to its agreeableness. So Genesis 8:21, at Noah’s sacrifice, “Jehovah smelled a sweet savour,” and became propitious. So Leviticus 1:9. Christ is here doubly presented: 1. In his manward relation, as an example of unsurpassable self-sacrificing love, forming and glorifying a holy Church by its inspiring power; and, 2. In his Godward relation, as a well-pleasing self-sacrifice to the divine well-pleasing. The former of these views is admitted by all classes of Christian thinkers; the latter is denied by some classes, but in vain.