Sermons on Ephesians 5:31
The various sermons below coalesce around a few central interpretive moves: Genesis 2:24 is read as the creational warrant for male–female, one‑flesh union, and Paul’s citation in Ephesians functions to ground marital ethics in an ontological, bodily reality rather than merely a social contract. They uniformly treat “one flesh” as more than poetry—either as a covenantal sign pointing to Christ’s union with the church or as the concrete matrix that obliges spouses to mutual care, nourishment, and sanctifying love. Shared nuances emerge in how preachers deploy the language: some give close linguistic weight to the Hebrew and to Paul’s rhetorical “therefore” and bodily metaphors (linking verse 29 to 31), others emphasize pastoral household ordering (priority, mutual defense, and practical alliance), and several recast contested terms like “fear” as reverent, Christ‑shaped trust rather than servile terror. Across the board the one‑flesh motif is pressed into doctrinal work—Christology, covenantal representation, sanctification—and pastoral work—nurture, exclusivity, and everyday allegiance.
Where they diverge most sharply is in theological direction and pastoral emphasis. One strand treats Genesis as the primary archetype that marriage concretely enacts, reading marital union as a created sign that points forward to Christ and the new creation; another reverses that priority, arguing the Christ–church union is ontologically primary and marriage is its created echo, which pushes husbands’ sacrificial love into typological centrality. Some sermons stress bodily differentiation and male–female distinction as foundational for Christian anthropology and sexual ethics, while others foreground relational representation and mutual sanctification as the theological key. Practically, readings split between those pressing marriage as a strategic spiritual bulwark that must be prioritized over career or even children, and those who frame marital duties principally as nurturing, cherishing, and presenting one another to growth. There are also distinct rhetorical moves—legal/rights language and exclusivity on one side, sacramental/ontological language on the other—and different uses of the Hebrew and Pauline connectives to support those moves—
Ephesians 5:31 Interpretation:
God's Redemption: Marriage, Singleness, and Ethical Living(Fresh Streams) interprets Ephesians 5:31 by reading Genesis 2:24 as the creational basis for male–female marriage which then becomes the canonical anchor for Paul's later marriage metaphor in Ephesians; the sermon treats "a man shall leave...and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh" not merely as a social prescription but as a theological sign pointing to covenantal union—marriage as a created, bodily, male–female union that images God's covenant with his people and that therefore resists redefinition apart from the creation order, and the speaker develops this by tracing how Jesus and Paul appeal back to Genesis (Jesus in Matthew/Mark, Paul in Ephesians) to root sexual and marital ethics in who humans are as male and female, using linguistic attention (the Hebrew term in Genesis 2 described as an unusual word meaning something like “equal but opposite”) and connecting the one-flesh language to procreative and relational goods rather than merely contractual or civil arrangements.
Reflecting Christ's Love in Marriage: A Divine Mystery(Desiring God) interprets Ephesians 5:31 within Paul’s pastoral admonition by emphasizing the existential and relational orientation implied by "one flesh": Paul uses the one-flesh identity to argue that wives and husbands are to treat one another as integrally connected (the wife as “me” for the husband), and the sermon places the verse into the flow of Paul's shift from cosmic mystery to concrete household instruction, reading the one-flesh saying as the concrete ground for the command that husbands love as they love their own bodies and that wives orient their fear (reverent trust) toward their husbands as the church orients to Christ.
Christ's Love: A Model for Marital Sacrifice(Desiring God) interprets Ephesians 5:31 by emphasizing the rhetorical force of Paul's "therefore" and the typological direction Paul intends: rather than marriage merely being an analogy for Christ and the church, Paul treats the Christ–church union as the primary reality that Genesis anticipates, so "a man shall leave...and become one flesh" is explained as a created enactment of the deeper mystery of union with Christ (Paul links verse 29's body-language—Christ nourishing his body—to verse 31), and the sermon stresses Paul’s logic that one-flesh marital unity dramatizes and points back to the ontological unity believers already share with Christ.
Fighting for Family: Embracing God’s Design and Roles(Hernando Church of the Nazarene) reads Ephesians 5:31 as a practical ordering device for married life — the verse marks that husband and wife are to be a primary, inseparable unit ("one flesh") whose priority should displace career, hobbies, or even over-attention to children; the preacher ties the one-flesh language into a pastoral application that marriage is designed to keep spouses mutually focused (and thus to strengthen family witness), warns that husbands and wives commonly drift away from that priority, and stresses that the verse implies spouses are allies against the real enemy (Satan) rather than competitors with one another.
Christ-Centered Love: Husbands and Wives United(Desiring God) treats Ephesians 5:31 as Paul’s citation of Genesis 2:24 that grounds an ontological union: Paul’s “one flesh” is the basis for his paradoxical claim that husbands are to love their wives as they love their own bodies because a wife is, by the one‑flesh reality, literally part of the husband’s self; the sermon’s distinctive interpretive move is to read the parallel structure (“as…as”) so that Christ’s self‑giving, sanctifying love for the church both models and explains how a husband’s love should aim at nourishing, cherishing, and ultimately sanctifying the wife, making the one‑flesh claim the theological foundation for sacrificial, nurturing marital love.
Embracing the Sacred Mystery of Marriage(Christ Church at Grove Farm) emphasizes the verb behind Ephesians 5:31 (the idea of being “united” or “completely joined as one”) and uses the sermon’s cited Hebrew root (rendered in the transcript as “e hot”) to argue that the passage announces a new ontological and practical reality — marriage produces a lasting “we” with mutual rights, exclusivity, and shared identity — and he reads the verse as a hinge: it’s not merely poetic but declarative of a legal/spiritual union that carries intimacy, mutual dedication, and concrete mutual rights within the marriage relationship.
Ephesians 5:31 Theological Themes:
God's Redemption: Marriage, Singleness, and Ethical Living(Fresh Streams) argues a distinct canonical-theological theme: marriage is both a creation good and a covenantal sign that points to Christ’s redemptive union with the church, so any reconfiguration of marriage affects not only pastoral practice but the church’s theological language about covenant, incarnation, and the new-creation fulfilled in Revelation; the sermon further develops the theme that male–female bodily differentiation is a foundational theological datum for Christian anthropology and sexual ethics rather than merely a social convention.
Reflecting Christ's Love in Marriage: A Divine Mystery(Desiring God) emphasizes a distinctive pastoral-theological nuance about "fear" in Ephesians 5:31–33: the sermon reframes "fear" not as terror but as a Christ-shaped reverent orientation (the wife’s fear of husband is rooted in the wife’s fear of the Lord and the husband’s representation of Christ), so the theological theme is relational representation—husband-as-Christ-representative—such that the wife's posture of reverent submission coheres with the church’s fear-of-Christ posture rather than implying servile timidity.
Christ's Love: A Model for Marital Sacrifice(Desiring God) brings out a theological priority that is less often emphasized: Paul portrays the Christ–church union as the original archetype and Genesis marriage as a created echo of that archetype, so marriage’s deepest theological meaning is sacramental/typological—marriage both represents and participates in the church’s union with Christ; the sermon insists that husbands’ sacrificial love (Christ’s self-giving for his body) is the normative telos of marital life because Christ’s love is the existential ground of the one-flesh reality.
Fighting for Family: Embracing God’s Design and Roles(Hernando Church of the Nazarene) develops the distinctive theological theme that the one‑flesh union functions as a strategic bulwark: marriage’s theological purpose is not only mutual companionship or procreation but a prioritized spiritual alliance for resisting the Devil’s attacks on the family, and Ephesians 5:31 therefore demands practical priority‑setting (spouse before career or children) as a spiritual discipline in warfare against the real enemy.
Christ-Centered Love: Husbands and Wives United(Desiring God) advances the theological theme that union language produces reciprocal ontology: because the wife is “one flesh” with the husband (and the church likewise is Christ’s body), loving the other is love of one’s own self, which reframes marital duty from external command to a normally self‑directed stewardship of the beloved’s flourishing — the sermon emphasizes sanctifying aim (presenting the beloved "in splendor") as intrinsic to genuine marital love.
Embracing the Sacred Mystery of Marriage(Christ Church at Grove Farm) articulates a threefold theological emphasis tied to the one‑flesh reality that is distinctive in his exposition: intimacy as trust (marriage creates a space in which mutual trust is cultivated), dedication as sanctifying work (spouses are to “present” each other to growth and beauty), and rights as theological/social goods (marriage confers mutual rights and exclusivity that are part of God’s design); the sermon’s fresh angle is treating rights as theological categories derived from the ontological union.
Ephesians 5:31 Historical and Contextual Insights:
God's Redemption: Marriage, Singleness, and Ethical Living(Fresh Streams) provides extended historical and contextual material: it surveys Second Temple and early Christian contexts (noting the relative silence of Jesus on homosexual practice but the likelihood that Jewish "porneia" would have included same-sex acts), analyzes Leviticus 18–20 in their cultic and decalogue context (noting probable concerns with cultic male prostitution and how Leviticus frames same-sex acts against the created male–female order), traces Paul’s inventive Greek term arsenokoitai as echoing Levitical language, treats Romans 1 as a culturally broad argument about idolatry and social ordering rather than a simple biography, and situates Genesis 1–2’s creation language and Hebrew wordplay (e.g., Adam/ish and woman/isha, and the unusual Hebrew term rendered “helper equal/opposite”) as culturally and theologically decisive for ancient Israel’s marriage ideal.
Christ's Love: A Model for Marital Sacrifice(Desiring God) offers focused linguistic-historical observation about Genesis 2 and Paul’s use of it: the sermon points out the Hebrew wordplay (ish/isha) and that the Septuagint preserves the logical "therefore" (kathos/oun) linking the woman’s origin to the marriage formula, and it argues historically and textually that Paul intentionally appeals to that creation account as he frames marriage’s ontological “one flesh” meaning—showing Paul’s reliance on ancient creation language as the historical-theological foundation for his household instruction.
Christ-Centered Love: Husbands and Wives United(Desiring God) situates Ephesians 5:31 in the Old Testament background by showing Paul is quoting Genesis 2:24 — the sermon argues that Paul invokes a pre‑Fall description of marriage (Genesis 2) to ground the one‑flesh reality as prior to sin and therefore normative for Christian marriage, so that Paul’s ethics flow from an original creational paradigm rather than a merely post‑Fall corrective.
Embracing the Sacred Mystery of Marriage(Christ Church at Grove Farm) explicitly foregrounds the textual and linguistic background: he notes Ephesians 5:31 is a direct citation of Genesis 2:24 and appeals to the Hebrew root (rendered in the transcript as “e hot”) behind the verb translated “united,” explaining that the Hebrew conveys being “united or completely joined together as one,” and uses that lexical point to ground his reading of the verse as asserting an ontological, irreversible joining that shapes rights and identity in marriage.
Ephesians 5:31 Cross-References in the Bible:
God's Redemption: Marriage, Singleness, and Ethical Living(Fresh Streams) ties Ephesians 5:31 to a wide set of biblical texts: it connects Genesis 1–2 (creation of male and female; Genesis 2:24 one-flesh) as the foundational witness, shows how Jesus in Matthew 19/Mark 10 appeals to Genesis 1–2 when teaching about marriage and divorce (Jesus’ "at the beginning" appeal), brings in Leviticus 18–20 to locate Israel’s prohibitions and their cultic context, uses Judges 19 and Genesis 19 (Sodom narrative) to argue about context and misuse of texts concerning sexual violence versus consensual unions, engages Paul’s treatments in Romans 1 (idolatry and cultural disorder producing same-sex acts), 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 (Pauline lists including arsenokoitai) to show the New Testament’s negative assessments, cites prophetic marriage imagery (Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel) to link human marriage to God’s covenant, and points forward to Revelation’s marriage-supper imagery as the eschatological consummation that grounds the typological reading of marriage in Ephesians; each passage is used to show that Genesis’ one‑flesh notion anchors both ethical judgments and the marriage–Christ typology that Paul exploits.
Reflecting Christ's Love in Marriage: A Divine Mystery(Desiring God) groups cross-references around Paul’s household code and Petrine instruction: it places Ephesians 5:31 within Ephesians 5:21–33 and reminds listeners of verse 21’s framing "submit to one another in the fear of Christ," then draws on 1 Peter 3 (wives subject to their own husbands; holy conduct adornment; Sarah’s example) to explicate what "fear" toward a husband means—showing that both Paul and Peter root a wife’s orientation in fear-of-God and Christ‑representation rather than advocating terror or coercion, and the sermon reads Genesis 2:24 as the genesis-passage Paul relies on to ground mutual duties.
Christ's Love: A Model for Marital Sacrifice(Desiring God) links verse 31 directly to Genesis 2:22–24 and to verse 29 immediately before it and verse 32 immediately after: the sermon explains how verse 29’s image of Christ nourishing and cherishing his body provides the theological basis for understanding Genesis’ "one flesh" formula (verse 31) as typological of Christ–church union, and it treats Ephesians 5:32 (Paul’s explicit statement "this mystery is profound...it refers to Christ and the church") as Paul’s interpretive key showing that Genesis’ marriage language is intended to disclose the nature of the Christ–church mystery Paul has been unfolding.
Fighting for Family: Embracing God’s Design and Roles(Hernando Church of the Nazarene) connects Ephesians 5:31 with multiple passages: he appeals to Genesis 2 (the first wedding) to affirm marriage’s creational origin and to Genesis 3 to insist that the very next biblical scene is the enemy’s attack on marriage, uses Genesis 1:27–28 to underscore male/female distinction and shared image‑bearing (supporting complementary roles that still share equal dignity), cites Nehemiah 4 to frame the family as needing defense against external enemies, and invokes Proverbs 12:4 (“a worthy wife is a crown…”) to contrast how a wife can either crown or corrode a husband — all of these are marshaled to show Ephesians 5:31’s “one flesh” claim must result in prioritized, defended, mutually edifying marriages rather than rivalrous familial relations.
Christ-Centered Love: Husbands and Wives United(Desiring God) treats Ephesians 5:31 in close relation to its immediate Pauline context (Ephesians 5:23–30): Paul’s depiction of Christ as head who sanctifies and presents the church (vv.25–27) is read together with the one‑flesh citation from Genesis 2:24 so that the OT citation supplies the ontological basis (one flesh) while the NT context supplies the moral aim (self‑giving sanctification); the sermon explains that the Genesis text already pictured a unity in which loving the beloved is loving oneself, and Paul uses that to show why husbands’ love should be both nourishing/cherishing and sacrificial.
Embracing the Sacred Mystery of Marriage(Christ Church at Grove Farm) groups Ephesians 5:31 with Genesis 2:24 (the source quotation), Ephesians 5:25–32 (the fuller Christ‑church–marriage typology), and broader New Testament imagery (the church as Christ’s bride), and also appeals to Romans 8’s promise that sharing in Christ’s sufferings leads to sharing in his glory to illustrate the “rights” Christians gain through union with Christ — together these cross‑references are used to argue Ephesians 5:31 is both creational declaration and typological signpost pointing to the ultimate union of Christ and his church.
Ephesians 5:31 Christian References outside the Bible:
God's Redemption: Marriage, Singleness, and Ethical Living(Fresh Streams) explicitly invokes a range of contemporary and historical Christian scholars and theologians to shape the interpretation of Ephesians 5:31 and its Genesis foundation: the sermon cites Tom Wright, Sam Wells, and Kevin Vanhoozer for the five-act/canonical drama approach to Scripture; quotes New Testament scholars John Nolland and Richard Burridge on Jesus’ teaching and pastoral practice; refers to Professor Oliver Donovan and the Saint Andrews Day statement (1995) arguing that the deepest ontological categories are male and female and that terms like “homosexual” are modern constructs; invokes Robert (transcribed as "Gangnam") [likely Robert Gagnon] on Levitical contexts and cultic practice; cites William Lloyd Loader (transcribed "Lloyd loader") on Paul’s neologism arsenokoitai and the rendering "male-betters" as evidence that Paul echoes Levitical language; and quotes modern Anglican scholars Steve Holmes and Ewart(s) Hill about why the canonical, theological vision—not merely isolated proof-texts—grounds a "traditional" view; the sermon uses these authors both to support the canonical-cum-creational reading of Genesis 2:24 and to show how scholarly lexical and canonical work informs the application of Ephesians 5:31.
Ephesians 5:31 Illustrations from Secular Sources:
Embracing the Sacred Mystery of Marriage(Christ Church at Grove Farm) uses several concrete, secular or personal‑life anecdotes immediately around his treatment of Ephesians 5:31: he recounts overhearing a wedding‑reception exchange where a friend dismissively tells the groom “it’s just a piece of paper, a piece of metal,” using that throwaway cultural line to contrast worldly minimization of marriage with the Bible’s “one flesh” claim; he then walks listeners through the ritual symbols that follow (the minister pronouncing “Mr. and Mrs. …,” the bride taking a new name) to show how social customs memorialize an ontological change, and he narrates vivid wedding‑day and premarital counseling stories (e.g., the bride Taylor’s traumatic backstory and her transformation into a “radiant bride”) to illustrate how the biblical one‑flesh union produces visible effects (trust, restoration, public identity) that go beyond the cultural slogan that marriage is merely paperwork.