Obviously, believers individually and the church more generally are not holy on their own. As 5:26 explains, Christ accomplishes a cleansing of the church “by the washing of water in the word.” There are two particular ways of understanding this image of washing. Within the Christian tradition the most obvious is as a reference to baptism. Most ancient commentators and the bulk of modern commentators all see this as a reference to baptism. One should note, however, that the nt says very little about Christian baptism. Titus 3:5 mentions washing in a larger discussion of redemption without explicitly linking washing to baptism. And 1 Pet 3:21 says that Christian baptism is not the sort of washing that removes physical dirt from the body, but the epistle does not go on to make the explicit case that it is precisely a spiritual cleansing that renders one holy. Thus the text is not as clear in its reference to baptism as one might like. Nevertheless, sacramental accounts of baptism as a washing that brings about the cleansing of sin certainly are compatible with Eph 5:26. Moreover, the argument that baptism is something that individuals undertake and not the church as a whole misses that point that both Rom 6:1–11 and Col 2:10–13 speak of baptism as the act that brings one into the church and thus could be seen as being constitutive of the church. This is also supported by Eph 4:3–7, where “one baptism” helps to comprise the unity of the body of Christ.
Can one assert with absolute certainty that the first readers of Ephesians would have understood this washing as a reference to baptism? Probably not. Yet it is the most likely option. Moreover, it is the most theologically rich way to read this text. If one reads the notion of being washed in water as a reference to baptism, then the additional phrase “in the word” might be taken to modify the washing in water. In that case it can be either a reference to the candidate’s confession of faith or more likely to a baptismal formula pronounced at the baptism (e.g., Schnackenburg 250; Lincoln, Ephesians 376; Best, Ephesians 544). If one takes “in the word” to be an additional modification of “having cleansed,” then “in the word” is probably a more general reference to the proclamation of the gospel (e.g., Heil, Ephesians 246; Hoehner 755) or postbaptismal teaching or edification (Muddiman 265). (Fowl, S. E. (2012). Ephesians: A Commentary. (C. C. Black, M. E. Boring, & J. T. Carroll, Eds.) (First Edition, p. 189). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.)
