Something is happening amid the escalating tribulations of this fragile world – the political upheavals, the environmental devastations, the threats of war, the terrorist attacks, the rumbles of economic downfall, the subtler encroachments of ideological tyranny.
Something is happening amid the immorality and selfishness of this culture, which calls light ‘darkness’ and darkness ‘light’, good ‘evil’ and evil ‘good’.
Something is happening amid the violent persecution of believers and rising anti-Semitism, and amid the growing levels of deception and apostasy in the Church. It is happening under the radar, often imperceptibly, in ways we may not expect.
God is preparing a people for himself.
As believers we often interpret what God is doing in the world through the lens of our individual faith, or through the lens of our nation, or that of the British ‘Church’, or with particular (and necessary) regard for Israel. We are often less deliberate about viewing things through the lens of the global Body of Christ, also described in Scripture as Jesus’s Bride.
Whatever your view of eschatology (the end times) or where we are on God’s prophetic timeline, this dimension is absolutely crucial to discerning his purposes for the days ahead.
Messiah’s Bride
As is often preached at weddings, marriage was created by God at the very beginning of human history as a glorious picture, in its ideal form, of his covenant relationship with his people: the holiest form of intimacy and oneness hidden at its very heart, encircled by loving devotion, cherishing, service and faithful commitment.
Scripture is replete with references to God’s relationship with ancient Israel as a marriage. Song of Songs gives us precious, intimate insight into the beauty of this intended relationship. But most of the rest of Scripture contrasts God’s faithfulness with Israel’s unfaithfulness; his constancy with their betrayal. Prophets like Hosea and Ezekiel became living examples of the heartbreak caused to God by this spiritual adultery, while Isaiah and Jeremiah received privileged understanding of the Lord’s plans for the eventual restoration of this marriage.
Marriage was created by God at the very beginning of human history as a glorious picture, in its ideal form, of his covenant relationship with his people.
But though we are familiar with this imagery in relation to Israel, we often forget that God’s desire for a relationship of spiritual ‘marriage’ with his people has always extended to all who would enter into covenant with him by faith in the blood of Jesus, whatever their nationality or place in history. Indeed, the passages of Scripture that we so often reserve for weddings (e.g. Eph 5) are principally prophetic verses which speak of a much greater, more wondrous spiritual reality, to be fulfilled when the Lord returns: the preparation of a Bride for the ultimate Bridegroom, Jesus the Messiah.
We are presently in a preparation period, somewhere between betrothal (marked by the first coming of Jesus, who paid the bride-price with his own blood, and sealed his beloved with his Holy Spirit) and the marriage itself (when he returns in glory, having prepared a place for us). But this sense of prophetic preparation and its related responsibilities have largely been forgotten by most believers.
If we can rediscover this vital subject, we will learn volumes about God’s purposes and how they relate not only to our individual lives, but also to the world around us. The remainder of this article lists some attributes of the Bride, asking what they teach us about God’s priorities for these days.
The Bride is Being Prepared by the Lord
In every generation, members of God’s covenant people have been chosen and prepared by him, undergoing his loving discipleship and discipline and being arrayed spiritually in the garments of salvation, likened to wedding clothes (Isa 61:10).
Jesus’ desire for his Bride is “to present her to himself as a radiant [community of believers], without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph 5:27). Indeed, it was to make her holy that Jesus gave himself (Eph 5:25-26).
We know that this process of continued sanctification is not just his will for us (1 Thess 4:3), but his personal priority right up until the day he returns, for “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6).
The Bride Must Also Prepare Herself
While the preparation of the Bride is a process accomplished by God, his people also have a responsibility to prepare themselves, just as any bride makes herself ready with beautiful clothes and fine jewellery:
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) (Rev 19:7-8; also 2 Peter 3:11-14)
The parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25, connected explicitly to the times preceding Jesus’s return, illustrates that this preparedness is about abounding not just in love and good works, but also in watchfulness and holy expectation, in mature understanding and spiritual readiness, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
We are probably all aware that if the Bridegroom returned today, he would not find his Bride ready and prepared. Questions which ought to weigh on our hearts might include ‘What must we do to get ready?’ and ‘What does true preparedness look like?’ ‘How should this affect the way we live – whether or not he returns in our lifetime?’
In every generation, members of God’s covenant people have been chosen and prepared by him, being arrayed spiritually in the garments of salvation, likened to wedding clothes.
The Bride is separating from her counterfeit
Alongside the emergence of a purified, spotless Bride, there has also always existed on earth a satanic counterfeit: a harlot, both immoral and idolatrous. She can be glimpsed in everything that has ever set itself up as an imitation of true, biblical faith in Jesus (e.g. false religions, deceptions and apostasy in the Church), although her uttermost fulfilment has not yet come to pass (Rev 17-18).
A fortnight ago our Editor-in-Chief spoke of a coming time of separation, as those faithful to the Lord seek to witness more distinctively and protect themselves from the contamination of sin. Indeed, we can expect the division between these two women to grow more and more pronounced as history moves towards its culmination, as God’s injunction to the true Bride is: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues…” (Rev 18:4-5; 2 Cor 6:17).
As with the previous points about preparation, this process of separation is both a responsibility of believers (“Come out of her, my people”) and a work of God (e.g. John 6:44, 17:15-17; 1 Thess 5:23).
The Bride is a Body – One Body
While God desires his people to be separated from the sins of the world, he also desires for them to preserve the unity of the Spirit. How often we believers mentally sub-divide the global Body of Messiah into national groupings, denominations, institutions or individual fellowships! If we are not careful, we can deepen divisions (or, conversely, encourage mixture) that God has not intended. Indeed, the Apostle Paul firmly emphasised the oneness of the Body of Messiah (e.g. Eph 4:3-5), according to the standard of the unity between Jesus and the Father (John 17).
As part of her holy preparation for marriage, can we not expect the Bride to be purified of ungodly divisions? Can we not expect, as Jesus’s return gets closer, the Bride to become stronger in unity, functioning as a true body (1 Cor 12)? We may not be able to imagine how the Lord will achieve this, but I believe it is nonetheless his desire and intention.
The Bride is Jew and Gentile Together in Christ
Perhaps the most important way in which the Body is being restored is through the breaking down of the ‘barrier’ between Jew and Gentile, the two united through faith in the Jewish Messiah (Eph 2). There are, wonderfully, more and more examples of this these days – relationally and also theologically, as Gentile believers reconnect with the Hebraic roots of their faith. However, by and large, we have yet to see the two groups really start to grow together as ‘one new man’.
We must be careful not to conceive of biblical prophecy simply in terms of the [Gentile] ‘Church’ on one hand and unbelieving Jews on the other. That would miss a (if not the) central facet of the Kingdom: the bringing of the two together, in Jesus.
We can expect the division between the Bride and her counterfeit to grow more and more pronounced as history moves towards its culmination.
Conclusions
Each of these aspects of the Bride of Messiah ought to shape the way that we see what is going on in the world - the ‘shaking of the nations’ and God’s purposes behind it. What does Brexit look like when viewed through this prism? What about the EU? Or the conflict in the Middle East? Or global warming? Or the ‘Church’?
It might seem incongruous to think of weddings and marriage preparation in the midst of global turmoil. There is a spiritual war on – surely we ought to be focusing on fighting, not feasting! Of course, this is partly true, for the ultimate feast will not take place until the Bridegroom returns. But until then, we have much to learn about the ways in which these two aspects of biblical prophecy are actually intimately connected.
While the Bridegroom is busy preparing a place for us, let us also be busy preparing ourselves for his return, which may be sooner than we think.
Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention: Forget your people and your father’s house. Let the king be enthralled by your beauty; honour him, for he is your lord. (Psalm 45:10-11)
