What Does Ephesians 5:25 Mean?
Husbands, love your wives, as the Anointed One also loved the assembly and handed himself over for her.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;THE KEY
The verse makes love visible in the act of handing oneself over for another.
THE MEANING
This verse places a husband’s love beside Christ’s love for the assembly and makes that love visible in Christ’s self-giving. Love here takes shape as handing oneself over for another.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the idea that love is only inward affection or words: the verse gives it an outward form in Christ’s self-giving.
THE ROOT
παρέδωκεν
paredōken
GROWS FROM
παραδίδωμι
paradidōmi
To hand over or deliver up; here, to give oneself over for another.
“handed himself over” in this verse is paredōken. The verb carries the sense of handing over, so Christ’s gift is a self placed into another’s hands for their sake. English “gave” holds that surrender less visibly; the Greek verb brings it forward.
ALSO GROWS
paradidōmi: To hand over or deliver up.
παραδίδωμι
This is the verb’s dictionary form, showing the action behind the verse’s “gave.”
paradosis: A handing down; a tradition or transmission.
παράδοσις
The same word family links handing oneself over with something handed on or transmitted.
ἠγάπησεν
ēgapēsen
GROWS FROM
ἀγαπάω
agapaō
To love or hold dear.
“loved” in this verse is ēgapēsen. The verb belongs to the same family as the noun for love and the word for beloved. Here its meaning becomes concrete in the next action: Christ loves the assembly and hands himself over for it.
ALSO GROWS
agapē: Love.
ἀγάπη
The noun shares the verb’s word family, naming the love that the verse shows through self-giving.
agapētos: Beloved; dearly loved.
ἀγαπητός
This related word describes one who is the object of the love named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Love becomes visible as life poured out or laid down for others.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the plunder with the strong, because he poured out his living soul to death, and was counted with the rebels. He carried the falling short of many, and for the rebels he stepped in.No one has greater love than this, that someone lay down his living soul for his friends.And walk in love, as the Anointed One also loved us and handed himself over for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, a fragrance that settles sweetly.THE THREAD
I have been crucified with the Anointed One, and I live, yet no longer I; the Anointed One lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live in the trust of the Son of God, who loved me and handed himself over for me.“Gave himself” uses the same Greek verb, παραδίδωμι, as this verse. Galatians makes the same self-giving personal: Christ gives himself not only for the assembly, but “for me.”
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