From commentary on Ephesians 5:21-33 from John Brown of Haddington’s The Self-Interpreting Bible.
Numbers next to sections of text represent the verses which correspond to the commentary.
Overview
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
- Directed, invited, and enabled by these influences of the Spirit, study a humble performance of all relative duties incumbent upon you in your natural, civil, public, or private stations of life, as persons who have the fear of God implanted in your hearts, and whose consciences are deeply awed and impressed with his authority in his word, and with his exact observation of your conduct, and his future judgement. This is the general injunction applicable to all ranks and conditions. Order and complete submission to law must characterize the Christian community. Having laid down the general principle, Paul gives three examples of its practical application: (1) In regard to husbands and wives; (2) Parents and children; (3) Masters and servants.
Wives
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
- Particularly do you believing wives pay all becoming reverence, honour, subjection and obedience to your own husbands, who have, by the marriage-bond, devoted themselves to you, as your loving superiors; and always act herein as in the sight and presence of the Lord Christ, from love to his person, obedience to his authority, and with an eye to his glory, and in the manner in which his people are subject to him.
- For by the Law of Nature and marriage, the husband is constituted the head, guide, and guardian of the wife, in a manner somewhat similar to that in which Christ, as Mediator, is constituted the Head, Governor, and Protector of the church—in which relation his is their Saviour and Redeemer from everything sinful and wretched, and to everything truly honourable or happy.
- As therefore the church is cheerfully and faithfully subject to the authority of Christ in all her sprititual concerns, so let wives, with meekness, willingness, and fidelity, be subject to their husbands in all things lawful in the Lord.
Husbands
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
- On the other hand, to procure the kind submission of your wives, see that you husbands never tyrannize over them, or be passionate or bitter against them, but by all gentle carriage, due honour, tender sympathy, and every other form of kind behaviour towards their soul and body, manifest the most endearing and ardent affection, in imitation of Christ, who so loved the church that he freely gave uo himself to the most debased service, suffering, and death in her room, and for her spiritual and eternal benefit.
- That by his blood and Spirit, through his Word, he might deliver all men from the guilt, power, and pollution of sin, and justify, renew, sanctify, and consecrate them to the service of God;
- That having gradually sanctified and adorned them with his Spirit and grace, he might, in due time, place them in his immediate presence in heaven, entirely freed from every remainder of sin and trouble, holy and happy.
- Influenced by and in imitation of this peculiar, superlative, and abiding love of Christ, husbands ought to love their wives sincerely, constantly, tenderly, and ardently as they do their own.
- For no reasonable man, out of enmity to the health, ease, or comfort of his own body, ever neglected or abused it, but, from a principle of natural affection, feeds clothes, warms, and refreshes it; and so every husband ought to deal with his wife, who is one flesh with him—even as Christ, in his most affectionate love, takes care of his church, which he hath espoused to and made one with himself.
- For we who believe in him are members of his mystical body, and, in a spiritual sense, are more closely united to him than ever Eve was to Adam, and derive all our grace and glory from his person, as crucified for and united to us.
- The standing law of marriage mentioned by Adam immediately after the formation and espousals of Eve, requires such closeness of union and tenderness of affection between married persons, as if they were incorporated into one body, and were more to be regarded and loved than even parents themselves.
- That close union between married persons, particularly Adam and Eve, was indeed an emblem of the spiritual union between Christ and his members, whom, as their Head and Husband, he animates, influences, rules, governs, and cares for in the most tender manner.
- But in connection with this, it also implied that every husband ought to love his wife with the same sincere and singular affection as he does himself; and that every wife ought with a conjugal love, to pay all becoming respect, honour, and obedience to her husband.
Reflections
With readiness ought Christians to imitate Jesus Christ and his Father in their kindness and love to men. And the faith and sense of their redeeming love should make us carefully avoid all gross wickedness of every form, as utterly unworthy of our Christian character, privileges, and obligations, and as odious to God and ruinous to ourselves. A visible change of behaviour should be studied by all such as are awakened unto life by the powerful voice of Christ. Diligently should they avoid all fellowship with wicked persons or deeds, be watchful and circumspect in evil days, and use great care to improve time to the best advantage. Great should be our concern to have our heart filled with the Holy Ghost, and to live always under his comforting influences—in everything giving thanks to Christ, and to God through him. Earnestly should we labor to fulfil the duties of every station, from a principle of faith and filial fear of God. And happy are those families of which Christ is the center, and his redeeming kindness the great pattern and motive of mutual behaviour!
John Brown of Haddington
The son of poor parents, who both died in his early youth, John Brown (1722-87) – known as John Brown of Haddington – was born in Abernethy, Perthshire. He had little formal education, and supported himself at various times by working as a shepherd, a pedlar, a soldier (volunteering for the Fife regiment on the government side during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion), and a schoolmaster. Insatiable for knowledge, he taught himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew – and later Arabic, Syriac, Persian and Ethiopic, as well as the major modern European languages. This self-education secured him acceptance, in lieu of a university degree, for theological training under Ebenezer Erskine and James Fisher for the ministry of the Associate Synod church, and he became the minister of the Haddington (East Lothian) congregation of the Secession Church in 1751. Brown served this congregation for thirty-six years until his death, and was also, from 1767, the Synod’s professor, teaching all its ministerial candidates for the eight or nine weeks each year of their four- or five-year course. Brown crammed about 160 hours of instruction into these weeks, across all the disciplines.
John Brown’s renown is chiefly based on his The Self-Interpreting Bible, originally published in 1778, and to a lesser extent on A Dictionary of the Holy Bible (1769). ‘Brown’s Bible’ has often been reprinted, in America as well as in Britain. Its numerous aids for ‘the poorer and labouring parts of mankind’ included a system of marginal cross-references novel in its extensiveness. This ‘library in one volume’ became as common in Presbyterian homes as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in its Fourfold State.
It could be said that Brown founded a ‘dynasty’, and many of his descendants were to become eminent ministers, scholars and public servants. In 1753 he had married Janet Thomson, with whom he had several children, two of whom, John Brown (of Whitburn) and Ebenezer, survived childhood – both of these following their father into the ministry. After Janet died in 1771, aged thirty-eight, Brown married Violet Croumbie in 1773. They had nine children, five of whom survived childhood, including William, who became secretary of the Scottish Missionary Society and author of a major work on the history of Christian missions, as well as being biographer of his father, and compiler of his literary ‘remains’ (The Life of John Brown with select writings, republished by the Trust in 2004).
John Brown died at the Associate Synod manse, Haddington, on 19 June 1787 after a long period of growing debility. He was buried four days later in Haddington churchyard.
In 1964 the Trust republished the biography John Brown of Haddington by Robert Mackenzie, but this is now out of print. There is an excellent summary of Brown’s life by David F. Wright in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
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