These two verses in Greek continue without a break from verse 25. It will help to set forth the form of the Greek text: “… 26 in order to sanctify her by cleansing (her) with the washing of water in word, 27 in order to present to himself the church as glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any of such things, but that she might be holy and faultless.”
So that the demonstrative pronoun this may be perfectly clear in verse 26, it may be important to repeat the last of verse 25, for example, “He gave his life for the church in order to dedicate it to God.” In this context dedicate might be rendered as “give it as a special gift.”
Christ gave his life for the church, says the writer, in order to dedicate it to God; this translates the Greek causative verb “to make holy” (so Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, and others); Revised Standard Version, Translator’s New Testament have “sanctify”; Moffatt, Goodspeed, New English Bible, Barclay “consecrate.” The principle verb “to make holy” is followed immediately by the aorist participle of the verb “to cleanse”; the participle may indicate the way in which the action of “sanctifying” was accomplished, “to sanctify by cleansing” (Moffatt, Bible de Jérusalem); in a general sense, however (see Robinson), the two can be taken as parallel, the action of the aorist participle being antecedent to that of the main verb (“cleanse and sanctify”: so Translator’s New Testament, Barclay, Good News Translation, and others) or coincident with it (so Beare, Abbott; compare 1 Cor 6.11 “you were washed, you were sanctified,” Revised Standard Version). As commentators point out, “cleanse” represents the negative aspect of the action, the removal of sin, and “sanctify” the positive aspect, the consecration to God. The basic idea of “to sanctify” is to make someone or something “holy,” and the biblical concept of holiness is that of consecration (or dedication) to the service of God. So people and things can be thought of as “holy.” Here the meaning may involve more than that, as Abbott says; it may include the ethical dimension of holiness, that is, the complete absence of sin (as verse 27 describes it).
Two phrases follow: (1) the dative phrase “by the washing of water” and (2) “in word.” It should be noticed that the first one explicitly has Christ as the subject, the actor; the second one, “in word,” is not explicit as to who is the actor, but it would appear natural that the actor continues to be the same; that is, it is Christ who speaks “the word.” The first one is clearly a ritual cleansing, in this case Christian baptism (see Titus 3.5, the only other place where the Greek word for “washing” occurs in the New Testament). Its background seems to be, in this context, the bath a Jewish bride would take before the wedding.
The clause after making it clean by washing it in water can be seriously misunderstood, especially in this context. The immediately preceding clause speaks of Christ’s purpose to dedicate the church, and this is a phrase often used in speaking about a building. Accordingly, making it clean by washing it in water might likewise refer to washing an entire church building with water. What, however, seems strange about this phrase in Good News Translation is to speak of washing it in water rather than “washing it with water.” It may therefore be important in some languages to either have a footnote to explain what is involved or to translate the second clause of verse 26 as “after making the believers clean by washing them in water.” It may also be necessary to indicate clearly that this is a figurative expression, since Christ did not himself wash all the believers in water. In some instances it may be necessary to use the word “baptize” or “baptism,” but it seems better to retain the general term for “washing,” if possible.
There are various explanations of the meaning of the prepositional phrase “in word”: (1) the proclamation of the gospel; (2) the words which a Jewish bridegroom addressed to the bride at the wedding; (3) the baptismal formula spoken by the minister at baptism; (4) the confession of faith spoken by the person receiving Christian baptism. There is no way definitely to decide which is the more nearly correct interpretation of the background of this phrase here. Murray and Barth favor (2); Robinson prefers (3) and (4), as does Translator’s New Testament Translational Note; Beare prefers (3); Barclay takes (1), translating “the preaching of the word” (also Ellicott); Westcott prefers (4). Abbott takes it as “a word” used in connection with baptism but finds that it “retains its indefinite meaning.” Salmond takes it to mean either the preached gospel or the divine word of promise (of forgiveness), and offers the following translation: “that he might set apart and consecrate the Church by cleansing it of guilt by baptism in accordance with the divine promise” (or “on the ground of the preached word of the Gospel”).
Finally, it must be determined what is the precise connection between “in word” and the preceding part of the verse. (1) Some take it to apply equally with “the washing of water” to the whole verse: so Translator’s New Testament “that he might cleanse and sanctify her with water and the word”; New English Bible “to consecrate it, cleansing it by water and word” (so Bible en français courant, Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch); Bible de Jérusalem translates “accompanied by a word” (which is explained in footnote as the words of the officiating minister at baptism and the profession of faith by the person being baptized); Moffatt translates “as she utters her confession” (similarly Goodspeed). (2) Good News Translation takes it to go directly with the main verb “to sanctify”; so Barth: “to make her holy by [his] word and clean in the bath of water.” The decision rests upon whether one takes the background of a wedding as being determinative, or whether the ministration of Christian baptism was uppermost in the writer’s mind.
If one closely connects the phrase by his word with the act of dedicating the church to God, it may then be best to translate by his word as “by his proclaiming the Good News.” In some languages the instrumentality implied by the phrase by his word may be expressed as “he did this by proclaiming the Good News.”
Verse 27 continues without a break, in order to; this could be taken as parallel with the “in order to” of verse 26 (and thus expressing the purpose of the action described by the verbs in verse 25), or, as seems more probable, it is subordinate to the action of the verbs in verse 26, as Good News Translation takes it to be.
To present … to himself: the figure of marriage is still uppermost, and here Christ, as the groom, presents to himself the church as a completely beautiful bride, spotless and pure. As commentators point out, here Christ is both the groom and the “best man” who, in a Jewish wedding, brought the bride to the groom (see in 2 Cor 11.2 where Paul plays this part in “presenting” [the same Greek verb] the Corinthian Christians as “a pure virgin” in marriage to Christ).
The language of the first part of verse 27 is strange, for one would normally not present something to oneself. The closest natural equivalent might be “in order to give the church to himself.” But this may appear to be contradictory to the first part of verse 26, in which the church is dedicated to God. It may, however, be best to translate to present the church to himself as “to possess the church for himself” or “to make the church his own.” In some languages the translation reads “he made the church stand in front of him with all its beauty and purity, without any blemish or imperfection of any kind.”
Good News Translation in all its beauty translates the Greek adjective “glorious, radiant, resplendent.” It may be difficult to relate the phrase in all its beauty to the preceding statement about Christ presenting the church to himself. In some languages it may be best to begin a new sentence, especially since one may need to use an adjective such as “beautiful” rather than a noun such as “beauty” to qualify the church, for example, “the church is so beautiful, pure and without any fault….”
“Not having spot or wrinkle or any of such things”: Good News Translation translates without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection. The word translated spot occurs only here and in 2 Peter 2.13 in the New Testament, and the word translated wrinkle occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. New International Version translates “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.” Compare Westcott’s comment: “without one trace of defilement or one mark of age.”
The phrase without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection seems perfectly applicable to a person, but hardly to an institution or a group of persons. However, since the series of figurative expressions in verses 26 and 27 is based upon certain aspects of marriage, one can understand how this final phrase can and should be interpreted. Nevertheless, this is not always obvious to the average reader, and therefore some note may be important in order to point out the basis for these rather odd and unusual figurative expressions. It may be possible, however, to make sense of a translation of the final phrase by saying “the church is like a person who has no spot or wrinkle or anything else wrong.”
Pure and faultless translates two adjectives, “holy” and “blemishless, without defect”; both adjectives appear in 1.4, and see the similar passage in Colossians 1.22. The bride, the church, is beautiful, young, and completely pure.
The adjectives translated pure and faultless are corresponding positive and negative ways of speaking about a kind of perfection. In some languages the only way to talk about pure is to use a negative phrase, for example, “with nothing bad added” or “with nothing to spoil it” or “with nothing to contaminate it.” Faultless may then be described as “without anything wrong with it.”
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1982. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .