In his exhortation in Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul presents the church as the counterpart of Christ. This reveals that the church comes out of Christ and is unto Christ, just as Eve came out of Adam and was unto Adam (Gen. 2:21-23). The first couple in the Bible, Adam and Eve, is a picture of Christ and the church. In His creation, God did not create a man and a woman at the same time. He first created a man, and then He created a counterpart to help him (Gen. 2:18). When the fowl, the beasts, and the cattle were brought before Adam, Adam named them one by one. But for Adam “there was not found a help meet for him” (Gen. 2:20). Adam desired to have a counterpart, to have someone to match him. However, among the fowl, the beasts, and the cattle, he could not find his counterpart. In order to produce such a counterpart, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam (Gen. 2:21), and He took a rib out of Adam and built a woman with the rib (Gen. 2:22). The name of the woman was Eve. Eve was the same as Adam in life, nature, and form; therefore, she could be his counterpart. When God brought Eve to Adam, Adam exclaimed, “This time it is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23, Heb.). At last Adam had found one who could be his counterpart, his help meet.
Genesis 2:24 indicates that a man and his wife are one flesh. The husband and the wife are two halves of a whole person. This is a marvelous picture of Christ and the church. Eve had the same life and nature that Adam had. This signifies that the church has the same life and nature that Christ has. Furthermore, Eve had virtually the same image and nearly the same stature as Adam. This indicates that the church bears the same image and has the same stature as Christ.
Ephesians 2:15 says, “Having abolished in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might create the two in Himself into one new man.” The ordinances of the law are a cause of separation among men. On the cross, Christ not only took away our sin, caused our old man to be crucified, and destroyed the Devil, but He also abolished all the ordinances of the law that cause separations among men. When Christ abolished these ordinances of the law on the cross, He created the two—the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers—in Himself into one universal new man. This is God’s new creation in the universe. In the old creation, God did not work His nature into any of His creatures, not even into man. In the creation of the new man, however, God’s nature has been wrought into man (Col. 3:10) to make the divine nature one entity with the human nature. This new man is the Body spoken of in Ephesians 2:16. Hence, the new man is the Body of Christ, which is the church as God’s new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).
The emphasis of the church being the Body of Christ is on life; the stress of the church being the universal new man is on the person. The body without life is not a body but a corpse. However, when the body makes a move, it is not decided by life but by the person. Hence, in the new man we need to take Christ as our person. Thus, we can glorify God with one accord and with one mouth (Rom. 15:6), and we can all speak the same thing (1 Cor. 1:10). In the church as the new man we are members one of another; but if we desire to glorify God with one accord and with one mouth, we must deny our own person and let Christ be our person. Thus, we can live out the living of the new man.
First Timothy 3:15 says that the church is the house of God. In the Old Testament both the tabernacle and the holy temple were called the house of God (Judg. 18:31; 1 Kings 6:1), which was a type of the church. The word house both in the original language and in the English language has two meanings: on one hand it refers to the household, and on the other hand it refers to the dwelling place. Hence, the church as the house of God indicates that the church, on the one hand, is the household, the family, of God, and, on the other hand, it is the dwelling place of God.
The church is the composition of the believers; the believers are the children of God, who are born of God, having God’s life and nature. Hence, they become members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19), the family of God. The members of God’s family added together become the house of God, which is the dwelling place of God (Eph. 2:22).