In order for the church to display the multifarious wisdom of God to the enemy and to the whole universe, Christ Himself became wisdom from God to us as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
We were sinners, lost and even dead in sin, but Christ came and died for us to redeem us and bring us back to God, and now whoever comes to Him and believes into Him receives Christ as his righteousness and even is made the righteousness of God in Him.
After being born again with the divine life, all the believers in Christ are in the process of being sanctified: their old element is being discharged and God’s new element, His holy life and nature, is being added to their being little by little and day by day so that they would be inwardly transformed with God’s life.
Eventually, all the believers in Christ will be transfigured by God through the redemption of their body by Christ, as He fully saturates their being with His divine life.
The result is that God gets a corporate expression and through the church He manifests His multifarious wisdom to the enemy, thus defeating him and putting him to shame.
It is easy to corrupt someone and then destroy him as Satan did, but it is not that easy to take someone who has been usurped and corrupted, and make him one with God and even the same as God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. This is what God is doing now.
In Ephesians 5:25-27 we see how Christ is being made wisdom to us from God as righteousness and sanctification and redemption, and how He manifests Himself as the multifarious wisdom of God through us in His complete salvation.
In these verses we have Christ loving the church and dying for her to redeem her (v. 25) – this is so that He would satisfy the requirements of God’s righteousness and that we might become God’s righteousness in Him.
Now Christ is sanctifying the church, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word (v. 26) – this is God’s organic salvation carried out by Christ as the life-giving Spirit to sanctify all the believers in Christ.
Finally, Christ will present the church to Himself glorious (v. 27) – He will redeem the mortal body of the believers and present the church to Himself with no spot or wrinkle or any such things. Hallelujah!
Let us see more about these three particular aspects of Christ as the multifarious wisdom of God to us.
Christ Loved the Church and Gave Himself up for Her (Righteousness)
Ephesians 5:25 says that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her (and this is how a husband should also love his wife, by loving her and giving himself up for her).
When Christ came to earth as God becoming a man in the flesh, He was our Redeemer who through His death accomplished God’s judicial redemption for us.
God loved us, and His love was manifested in His Son who came and died for us on the cross to fulfill the requirements of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory.
Because we were lost, corrupted, usurped, and dead in sins and offenses, Christ came not only as a Shepherd, Healer, and Teacher but also as a Redeemer accomplishing God’s judicial redemption to satisfy the requirements of God’s righteousness so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (see 2 Cor. 5:21).
In order for us to receive God as life, we first had to be redeemed back to God.
Hallelujah, Christ in the stage of being a man in the flesh loved us and died for us to redeem us back to God, and He fulfilled the requirements of God’s righteousness so that by believing into Him we would become the righteousness of God in Him!
Thank You Lord Jesus for coming as the Redeemer to die for us and bring us back to God. Lord Jesus, You are our righteousness. We take Your all-inclusive accomplished work on the cross and we apply You right now. Thank You for dying to satisfy the requirements of God’s righteousness so that we might become the righteousness of God in You. Praise the Lord!
Christ Sanctifies the Church, Cleansing her by the Washing of the Water in the Word (Sanctification)
Why did Christ die for the church? Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word (Eph. 5:26).
After passing through an all-inclusive and all-terminating death, Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) and is now carrying out God’s organic salvation in all His believers to make them holy by His organic sanctification (Eph. 1:4; Rev. 21:2).
Right now Christ is the life-giving Spirit sanctifying us especially by speaking to us inwardly. The word for “word” in Eph. 5:26 is not “logos” (the written word of God) but “rhema”, the instant living speaking of God.
After being redeemed by Christ and made God’s righteousness in Him, we are in the process of being sanctified in which Christ as the Spirit is metabolically cleansing us by the washing of the water in the word.
As we pray-read the word of God and allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16), the new element of Christ is being deposited in our being to replace the old element in our old nature and our old disposition.
How we need the Lord’s instant and constant speaking to us! By His speaking we get washed and sanctified, and by His speaking, we get beautified to be His bride!
God’s presence consists in His speaking; if we have God’s speaking, we have His presence. Christ’s speaking is the presence of the life-giving Spirit. As the life-giving Spirit in our spirit, the Lord is not silent; He constantly speaks to us, and if we take Him as our life and person, we will discover how much He wants to speak to us.
The Lord’s speaking to us, His present word, is the water that washes us, cleanses us, and metabolically transforms us by replacing our old element with His new element for our transformation.
If we spend time in the word of God daily to pray back to God His word and if we listen to the Lord’s inward speaking, we will be inwardly transformed and there would be no need for outward correction in the church life.
Lord Jesus, sanctify us by washing us in the water of the word. Lord, we treasure Your instant word, Your present speaking within. It is by Your speaking that we get washed and sanctified to be beautified as Your bride. Lord, we allow Your word to dwell richly in us. Speak to us again and again. Remove all the wrinkles of our natural man by the washing of the water in the word. Wash away all the spots of our natural life by Your sanctifying word.
Christ will present the Church to Himself Glorious (Redemption)
The goal of Christ giving Himself up for us and sanctifying us is that He might present the church to Himself glorious as His bride (Eph. 5:27).
In the past, Christ was our Redeemer as a man in the flesh to fulfill God’s righteous requirements and make us the righteousness of God. In the present, Christ is the life-giving Spirit to sanctify us by the washing of the water in the word for our transformation. In the coming age, Christ will be the Bridegroom presenting the church to Himself glorious through the redemption of our body in His life-dispensing glorification (Rom. 8:23).
Today Christ as the life-giving Spirit is working in us and on us to wash us, cleanse us, metabolically change us, and transform us so that we would become the glorious church as His bride.
When He returns, Christ will be the Bridegroom coming for His bride, and the church as the bride of Christ will be holy, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, fully glorified to be the same as He is to match Him for their marriage life.
Today we need to stay under the washing of the water in the word so that all the spots of our natural life and all the wrinkles of our natural man would be washed away.
This is the process of becoming holy and without blemish before Him as His bride, and in this process we are being saturated with Christ and transformed by Christ.
Hallelujah, the church will be the corporate expression of God in His glory, and Christ as the Bridegroom will return to present the church to Himself glorious as His bride!
Lord Jesus, You are the Bridegroom returning for Your glorious bride. We give ourselves to You to love You, treasure You, obey You, spend time with You, be washed and cleansed by You, be sanctified and be beautified by Your word. Lord, prepare the church to be Your glorious bride presented to You at Your return. Infuse us, grow in us, and dispense Your life into us more and more until we are filled with the divine life unto the redemption of our body!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ed Marks’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians (msg. 31, 55), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Vision, Practice, and Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, week 2 / msg 2, God’s Purpose for the Church (2) – To Subdue God’s Enemy by Displaying His Multifarious Wisdom through the Church.
- Picture credit for 1 Cor. 15:45 and more spiritual quotes via, Christian Pictures Blog.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Though born as a sinner, / His blood has redeemed me. / He suffered on Calv’ry, / Then raised up in glory, / To regenerate me. / Now joined in one spirit / I love to enjoy Him, / For I’ve been forgiven! (Song on being redeemed)
# Lord, we’re wholly for Your heart’s desire— / Make Your church sanctified. / Through the washing in the pure word’s water / May You gain Your glorious Bride. [Song on Eph. 5:25-26]
# When our Lord comes in glory and we’re raptured to His side, / When that bright and glorious moment we shall see, / We shall know our dear Bridegroom as He comes to take His Bride, / And He’ll know the Bride He’s loved so tenderly. (Hymns #1317)
Amen. Thank You Lord Jesus, that we have You as our righteousness, in being reconciled, justified and regenerated with Your divine life. Thank You even more for the work of sanctification, through the washing of the water in the Word, transforming us into Your image and conforming us into Your likeness, as the sons of God with Your life and nature. Thank You Lord Jesus, that we can enjoy, experience and express some amount of Your glory in our bodies today, with the hope of glorified bodies, without sin, in the future.
The first man, Adam, became a living soul, but praise the Lord, for the second man, Christ, who became to all who believe into Him, a life-giving Spirit, dwelling within our spirit, making His home in our heart, for the fulfillment of His heart’s desire, to have the church as the home He is longing for, to be His Bride and the warrior, to defeat His enemy, that His kingdom be establish, for Him to rule and reign a thousand years. Amen, Lord Jesus.
The footnotes in the Holy Bible Recovery Version on Eph. 5:25-27 are really helpful and so enlightening regarding the deeper meaning of these verses in relation to God’s economy and His purpose for the church. I hope they help you too as they helped me!
Eph. 5:26 footnote 1 on, “Sanctify”: Christ’s purpose in giving Himself up for the church is to sanctify her, not only separating her to Himself from everything common but also saturating her with His element that she may be His counterpart. He accomplishes this by cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word.
Eph. 5:26 footnote 2 on, “Washing”: Lit., laver. In Greek the definite article is used before this word, causing it to refer to the laver, the laver that was known to all the Jews. In the Old Testament the priests used the laver to wash away their earthly defilement (Exo. 30:18-21). Now the laver, the washing of the water, washes us from defilement.
Eph. 5:26 footnote 3 on, “Water”: According to the divine concept, water here refers to the flowing life of God, which is typified by flowing water (Exo. 17:6; 1 Cor. 10:4; John 7:38-39; Rev. 21:6; 22:1, 17). The washing of the water here is different from the washing of the redeeming blood of Christ. The redeeming blood washes away our sins (1 John 1:7; Rev. 7:14), whereas the water of life washes away the blemishes of the natural life of our old man, such as the “spot or wrinkle or any such things” mentioned in v. 27. In separating and sanctifying the church, the Lord first washes away our sins with His blood (Heb. 13:12) and then washes away our natural blemishes with His life. We are now in such a washing process, that the church may be holy and without blemish (v. 27).
Eph. 5:26 footnote 4 on, “Word”: The Greek word denotes an instant word. The indwelling Christ as the life-giving Spirit is always speaking an instant, present, living word to metabolically cleanse away the old and replace it with the new, causing an inward transformation. The cleansing by the washing of the water of life is in the word of Christ. This indicates that in the word of Christ there is the water of life. This is typified by the laver situated between the altar and the tabernacle (Exo. 38:8; 40:7).
Eph. 5:27 footnote 1 on, “Present”: In the past, Christ as the Redeemer gave Himself up for the church (v. 25) for redemption and the impartation of life (John 19:34); in the present, He as the life-giving Spirit is sanctifying the church through separation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building up; and in the future, He as the Bridegroom will present the church to Himself as His counterpart for His satisfaction. Therefore, Christ’s loving the church is to separate and sanctify her, and His separating and sanctifying the church are to present her to Himself.
Eph. 5:27 footnote 2 on, “the Church”: In this section of exhortation the apostle presented another aspect of the church, that of the bride. This aspect reveals that the church comes out of Christ, as Eve came out of Adam (Gen. 2:21-22), that it has the same life and nature as Christ, and that it becomes one with Him as His counterpart, as Eve became one flesh with Adam (Gen. 2:24). The church as the new man is a matter of grace and reality, whereas the church as the bride of Christ is a matter of love and light. The apostle’s exhortation in ch. 4 is focused on the new man, which has grace and reality as its basic elements, whereas his exhortation in this chapter is focused on the bride of Christ, which has love and light as its basic substances. In grace and reality we should walk as the new man, and in love and light we should live as the bride of Christ.
Eph. 5:27 footnote 3 on, “Glorious”: Glory is God expressed. Hence, to be glorious is to be God-expressing. Eventually, the church presented to Christ will be a God-expressing church.
Eph. 5:27 footnote 4 on, “Spot or Wrinkle”: The spot here signifies something of the natural life, and wrinkles are related to oldness. Only the water of life can metabolically wash away such defects by the transformation of life.
Eph. 5:27 footnote 5 on, “Holy and Without Blemish”: To be holy is to be saturated with Christ and transformed by Christ, and to be without blemish is to be spotless and without wrinkle, having nothing of the natural life of our old man.
See: http://online.recoveryversion.org/bibleverses.asp?fvid=6185&lvid=6187 for more details