+I. Christ's love to the Church+ (vers. 25-27). We must value and
joyfully assert our individual part in the redeeming love of the Son
of God; but we must equally admit the sovereign rights of the Church
in the Redeemer's passion. There is in some an absorption in the work
of grace within their own hearts, an individualistic
salvation-seeking that like all selfishness defeats its end, for it
narrows and impoverishes the inner life thus sedulously cherished.
The Church does not exist simply for the benefit of individual souls;
it is an eternal institution, with an affiance to Christ, a calling
and destiny of its own; within that universal sphere our personal
destiny holds its particular place. The Christ is worthy and she must
be made worthy. From eternity He set His love upon her; on the cross
He won her back from her infidelity at the price of His blood.
Through the ages He has been wooing her to Himself, and schooling her
in wise and manifold ways that she may be fit for her heavenly
calling. Through what cleansing fires, through what baptisms, even of
blood, she has still to pass ere the consummation is reached, He only
knows who loved her and gave Himself for her. He will spare to His
Church nothing, either of bounty or of trial, that her perfection
needs.
+II. Christ's authority over the Church+ (vers. 23, 24).--The Church
is no democracy, any more than she is an aristocracy or a sacerdotal
absolutism: she is a _Christocracy._ The people are not rulers in the
house of God; they are the ruled, laity and ministers alike. We
acknowledge this in theory; but our language and spirit would
oftentimes be other than they are, if we were penetrated with the
sense of the continual presence and majesty of the Lord Jesus in our
assemblies. The Church's protection from human tyranny, from schemes
of ambition, from the intrusion of political methods and designs,
lies in her sense of the splendour and reality of Christ's dominion
and of her own eternal life in Him.
+III. The mystery of the Church's origin in Christ+ (vers.
30-32).--God chose us in Christ before the world's foundation. We are
created in the Son of God's love antecedently to our redemption by
Him. Christ recovers through the cross that which pertains inherently
to Him, which belonged to Him by nature, and is as a part of Himself.
The derivation of Eve from the body of Adam, as that is affirmed in
the mysterious words of Genesis, is analogous to the derivation of
the Church from Christ. The latter relationship existed in the ideal,
and as conceived in the purpose of God, prior to the appearance of
the human race. In St. Paul's theory, the origin of the woman in man,
which forms the basis of marriage in Scripture, looked farther back
to the origin of humanity in Christ Himself. In some mystical but
real sense marriage is a _reunion,_ the reincorporation of what had
been sundered. Seeking his other self, the complement of his nature,
the man breaks the ties of birth and founds a new home. So the
inspired author of the passage in Genesis (Gen. ii. 21-24) explains
the origin of marriage, and the instinct which draws the bridegroom
to his bride. But our apostle sees within this declaration a deeper
truth, kept secret from the foundation of the world. When he speaks
of this great mystery, he means thereby not marriage itself, but _the
saying of Adam about it._ This text was a standing problem to the
Jewish interpreters. "But for my part," says the apostle, "I refer it
to Christ and to the Church." St. Paul, who has so often before drawn
the parallel between Adam and Christ, by the light of this analogy
perceives a new and rich meaning in the old dark sentence. It helps
him to see how believers in Christ, forming collectively His body,
are not only grafted into Him, but were derived from Him and formed
in the very mould of His nature. In our union through grace and faith
with Christ crucified we realise again the original design of our
being. Christ has purchased by His blood no new or foreign bride, but
her who was His from eternity--the child who had wandered from the
Father's house, the betrothed who had left her Lord and
spouse.--_Findlay._