Through the sanctifying, cleansing, nourishing, and cherishing Christ will gain a glorious church as His Bride. Just as Eve came out of Adam and went back to Adam to be one flesh with him, so the church comes out of Christ and will go back to Christ to be one spirit with Him. God’s desire is that the church which comes out of Christ and returns to Christ will be a glorious church, a church that expresses God and manifests Him. By the sanctifying, cleansing, nourishing, and cherishing the church is being saturated with the essence of God. In this way the church is becoming the Bride to express Christ. Every local church today must be such an expression of God.
The glorious church, the church that expresses God, must also be holy and without blemish. As such a holy church, she must be first separated from everything common and then permeated and saturated with the element of God.
In order to be without blemish, the church must be without mixture. To be unclean is one thing, and to have some mixture within us is another. We need to be both pure and without mixture. To be without mixture means that in our being we have nothing other than God. For example, we are like precious stone that has no foreign element or substance within it. One day the church will not only be clean and pure, but also without blemish, without mixture. She will be altogether the mingling of the Triune God with a resurrected, uplifted, and transformed humanity. In order that Christ may gain such a church, we are presently undergoing His sanctifying, cleansing, nourishing, and cherishing.
The first four chapters of Ephesians cover the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose. For the fulfillment of His purpose, God needs the universal new man, the church as the full-grown man in chapter four. In this respect, the new man is the highest aspect of the church. From the church as the assembly we proceed to the church as the household of God, then to the church as the Body, and finally to the church as the full-grown man.
Along with the need for God’s purpose to be fulfilled, there is also the need for Christ to be satisfied. Within Christ there is the longing, the deep desire, for satisfaction. Only the church as the Bride can satisfy the longing in Christ’s heart.
Even in the relationship between husband and wife, the wife should care for her husband’s satisfaction and not merely do certain things for her husband. Before the creation of Eve, the Bible says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Therefore, the woman was created to fulfill the man’s need for satisfaction. According to the Bible, the satisfaction of a man depends upon the woman. In Ephesians 5 Paul presents the church as the Bride for Christ’s satisfaction. As we have seen, what is required for the church to be the Bride is not just truth and grace, but light and love.
The church, who is the new man for the fulfillment of God’s purpose and the Bride for the satisfaction of the longing in Christ’s heart, is also the warrior for the defeat of God’s enemy. Through the spiritual warfare of the church as the warrior, God’s problem with the enemy is solved. If the church is to be the warrior to defeat the enemy, she must have both might and the whole armor of God. Therefore, the church is the new man for the fulfillment of God’s purpose, the Bride for Christ’s satisfaction, and the warrior for the defeat of God’s enemy.
Between the section on the church as the Bride (5:22-33) and the church as the warrior (6:10-20), we have 6:1-9, which deals with the relationship between children and fathers and between slaves and masters. If we neglect this portion of the Word, we can not be a proper Bride or a proper warrior.