"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church... cleansing her by the bath of water with the word"; Ephesians 5:25-26 - What is the meaning of that bath of cleansing?

One of the more controversial chapters in the Bible for pastors to preach on is Ephesians 5, because of Paul's statement about wives submitting to their husbands. Deacon Alex Jones addresses another challenging portion of the same chapter- when Paul says a husband should lay down his life for his wife, "cleansing her by the bath of water with the word." In his Pentecostal days, Deacon Alex saw salvation through receiving the word of God as primary, and the washing of water through Baptism as merely a later affirmation of what had happened when the word was received. He and Marcus discuss the historical teaching of the Church in regard to this passage from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians.