Ephesians 5:24

24. As the Church… so… the wives Sexual nature, on which marriage is based, man shares not only with the wide animal world, but, strange as to the unscientific it sounds, even with the vegetable world. But this animal love, which through all nature is the divinely constituted source of natural life, in man is overlaid by a sentiment of sentimental love, which blushes at and overshadows the mere animal appetite, and appropriates with a higher congeniality, celebrated in poetry and romance, person to person in a heart-union. But overlying this is a moral love, which sanctions the two lower impulses in their purity, and forms the type of Christ’s own divine and eternal love for those united to him by faith in his redeeming blood. Hence, in the Christian conception, the marital love, in its purity, is a type of the love of Christ for his Church. But as the Church rejoices, with the highest joy, over her allegiance to Christ, so a reliant allegiance to her husband, rejoicing at being weak in herself and strong in him, is a woman’s glory.

In every thing And the more without exception, the better for both. But the apostle is picturing the model family, in which the reciprocal duties are presupposed as being duly performed. Where the reverse is the case, then sad and necessary exceptions come in. When the husband neglects his duty, it may reasonably compel the wife to overstep her normal position. Where he enjoins a violation of the law of God, the law of God is supreme. Violence may compel withdrawal, and adultery dissolves the marriage. Yet for the true relation of mutual marriage love, where the subordinate and the superior wills are united in one permanent, harmonious train of volition, the apostle can find no type so complete as the union between Christ and his Church.