If I were to ask you the question today, “Who is the Bride of Christ?”, no doubt you would say it is the Church.
Ask your child who it is, your mother, your Pastor, your Sunday
School teacher and you will get pretty much the same answer: it is the
church. It is interesting to me that we repeat facts back and forth and
never, ever question those facts.
We start entire movements based around “bridal intimacy” and just
“intimacy”. When someone gets uncomfortable with the idea of passing
under a wedding arch and “marrying Jesus”, we just tell them, “Well,
you are the Bride, right?”. I have actually heard songs sung to Jesus
in church where they declare that they want to “Lean back against your chest, feel your breath against my neck”.
And no matter how homoerotic the message is, we are told that it is okay because we are the Bride.
And with satan’s objective of the emasculation of the Church in
full-court press, how is that that we haven’t simply checked the Word
of God?
Had you simply done that, you would see that the church is to the bridal paradigm as the 3 wise men are to Christmas.
So Christ does have a Bride, correct? I mean, we know that much. So who is it if it isn’t the church?
Rev 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the
first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no
more sea.
Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from
God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Not enough proof for you yet? How about this one:
Rev 21:9 And there came unto me one of the seven angels
which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked
with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s
wife.
Rev 21:10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high
mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending
out of heaven from God.
So out of the four references to the Bride of Christ in the NT, all
refer to the new Jerusalem as the Bride and the righteousness of the
saints is her wedding dress.
But…but….but…what about Paul’s references to the church being like the
wife. Certainly then we can draw the conclusion that we are His wife
from that, right?
Let me ask you question.
If you are engaged to be married but not married yet, do you have
the right to do business in your partners name? No, that right is only
bestowed after the marriage, right? So if we were His wife, and the
wedding feast had not yet taken place, we could not legally use His
name. Paul never mentions any such thing. In fact, Paul even puts the
husband and wife talk into perspective for you in Ephesians: Eph 5:28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
We aren’t the Bride of Christ, we are the Body of Christ. And
someday, we will be a part of the Marriage of the Lamb when the New
Jerusalem is placed here on Earth and God’s dream to move in is finally
accomplished, a dream that He has had since the garden of Eden.
So, maybe before you accept another paradigm given in the name of
revelation, perhaps it would be best if you checked the Word first.
Perhaps all of us should.
Be blessed.
J.