Further to this whole connection between the images of the body and the bride, consider the way Ephesians 5:26-33 frames the issue:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

Here the image is, thoroughly relational, centered on the union between two spouses. It is precisely in that context that the image of the church as Christ’s body is referenced. The church here is seen as Christ’s body in the sense that Christ loves it as he loves himself, with the very love that God is. Thus the church is the body (at least here), not in the sense that it is mystically the same person as Christ, but that in Christ’s love it is brought into the deepest possible intimacy in relation to him.

Christ regards the church as his body precisely as the bride. Both images speak, seamlessly, of the infinite love that Christ has for the church, that he lavishly bestows on her, loving her so as to give himself way for her sake.

Thus the image of the “one flesh” — which describes the intimacy, both conjugal and social — of a husband and wife serve to illuminate the image the church as Christ’s body. The church is the “body” of Christ precisely in the sense that spouses’ bodies belong to each other. The church is Christ’s body because he has utterly and radically given himself to her in love, to which the church responds in gratitude, love, and service.

When the image of the church as the body of Christ is conceived as indicating a monopersonal, ontological identification between Christ and the church, it is usually found to be something of a contrast with the image of the church as the bride of Christ, which is clearly an interpersonal rather than a monopersonal image. Thus, in most ecclesiologies that take this tack, the two contrasting images serve to dialectically “balance” one another.

However, the very notion that the two images are contrastive in this way, is I think, open to question once we abandon the notion of the body of Christ should be interpreted as indicating a mystical co-personhood. Rather, the image of the body points at once to the interdependence of the members of the church (1 Cor 12:14-26) and the singular and sovereign lordship of Christ over the church (Col 1:18; Eph 1:22-23). Thus, the image of the body, like that of the bride directs our attention to the interpersonal dimension of Christ’s relationship to the church. Christ relates to the church as it’s Head, its Lord and Source (which is a very probable translation of kephale, a fact that often goes unnoticed).

The way the bride image qualifies the image of the body, then, is not that it supplies an image of distinction whereas the body supplies an image of union. Rather, both together indicate the nature of the distinctly interpersonal union between Christ and the church. In the image of Christ as Head/Source he is seen as the Lord of the church to whom the church owes its existence entirely. In the image of Christ as Bridegroom, he is seen as the one who utterly and fully loves the church, to the point of giving up his own life for her. Both images speak to the nature of the utterly intimate, unbreakable communion between Christ and the people of God: Christ is at once their sovereign Lord ans Source, and their self-giving Servant who pours out his life for them in love.