The Marriage of Christ and His Church
In biblical times, sharing supper with someone was a sign of fellowship and closeness (Rev. 3:20). That’s why the Pharisees were so upset with Jesus for eating with publicans and sinners (Luke 15:2). But what Jesus did makes the gospel accessible to us all. “Hallelujah—this Man receives sinners!” we cry out. When Jesus invites needy sinners to the marriage supper, He offers us an experience of fellowship that is beyond words.
Have you ever noticed that the Bible does not speak about dying and going to heaven? It speaks about dying and going to be with Christ. Christ is the sum and substance of heaven’s glory. Samuel Rutherford said, “Suppose that our Lord would manifest His art, and make ten thousand heavens of good and glorious things, and of new joys, devised out of the deep of infinite wisdom, He could not make the like of Christ.” 1
There are several reasons why heaven is so focused on our glorious Savior. One reason is that no one can get there without Christ’s saving work. Anyone who enters heaven must confess with Anne Cousin:
I stand upon His merit; I know no other stand,
Not e’en where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land. 2
“Christ is the centerpiece of heaven because in heaven, faith in Christ will become sight of Christ. Peter describes our present situation: We love a Christ whom we have not seen, “in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). Faith in the unseen Christ will be rewarded by the joy of looking upon Him, and seeing Him as He is, forever. “Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty” (Isa. 33:17).
Heaven is Christ-centered because in heaven every believer will be fully conformed to the image of Christ. We who believe “shall be like him” (1 John 3:2), and He shall be “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). What bliss it will be to be without sin, and to reflect Christ so completely that it will be impossible to be un-Christlike!
Heaven is focused on Christ because His glory will always shine there, and His praises will never grow old. “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Rev. 21:23).
But another, all-too-often-forgotten reason that heaven focuses on Christ is that in heaven the living church will be married to Christ and will express the love of a bride toward her husband. Dear believer, your engagement to Jesus Christ in this life will be turned into perfect marital union with Him in heaven. This theme often surfaces in Bible passages.3 But nowhere is the theme of our marriage to Christ so beautifully unfolded as in Scripture’s last chapters.
Revelation 19:7–9 says, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
As The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible says, “Redemption is a love story (Isa. 54:4–8; Hos. 3:1–5), the covenant is a vow of betrothal (Hos. 2:19–20), salvation is a wedding dress (Isa. 61:10), and the kingdom is a wedding feast (Matt. 22:1–14).”4 Let us consider what Revelation 19:7–9 says about the wedding, the Bridegroom, the bride, and the guests.
The Wedding
Presently, the church is betrothed and waiting for her wedding day. There is a difference between what we mean by engagement and what the Bible means by betrothal; betrothal (or espousal) in Bible times was like a very strong form of engagement which could not be broken. From the day they were betrothed to each other, the couple would be regarded as husband and wife, but they would not live together. For example, Mary and Joseph were only “espoused” or betrothed, and he was shocked to discover that she was pregnant, but the angel called her his “wife” (Matt. 1:18, 20).5 With the betrothal, the bridegroom would pay the bride’s father a dowry, or “bride-price.”6 According to Jewish tradition, “the marriage agreement, drawn up at betrothal, was committed into the hands of the best man.”7 Then, when the wedding day came, both bride and groom would dress in fine clothing (Isa. 61:10). He would come to her home to get her and her friends, and take them to her new home, where they would all feast and celebrate for as long as a week (Judg. 14:12; Matt. 25:1–13).8
All Christians are betrothed to Christ. Paul was thus jealously protective of believers who were being troubled by false apostles who preached another gospel. He said in 2 Corinthians 11:2–4, “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.” Paul casts himself in the role of the marriage broker or matchmaker. In his love for Christ, he desires to present Him with a chaste virgin bride; in his concern for the Corinthians, he resents anyone who wants to lead them astray into spiritual adultery.
Paul is not just preaching a set of abstract truths. He is not just presenting people with some philosophy. He is proclaiming the person of Christ, and through his preaching he is presenting that person to the congregation. “I have betrothed you to Christ,” he says. “You are engaged to be His.” Samuel J. Stone so beautifully says about the church:
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.
Christ has paid the bride-price for all believers. Therefore, we are legally and inalienably His. He is coming again for His bride, the church, to lead us home to His Father’s house where He will present us spotless before His Father in heaven. There will be a wedding procession and festivities that will last not for a week or two, but for all eternity. We will be with Christ and behold His glory. The story of salvation is a love story. The covenant of grace is a marriage contract. Before the worlds were made, God the Father chose a bride for His Son and drew up a marriage contract between them. This wedding involves choice, not mutual attraction. God chose us in eternity and gave us to Christ, who bought us at Calvary and took us as His own through the preaching of the gospel; and now He will come back for us. When He comes back to claim us, we will enjoy intimacy and fellowship with Him forever.
The whole Trinity is involved in this marriage. The Father gives us His Son as our Bridegroom and gives us as a bride to the Son. As Ephesians 5:25 says, Christ purchased His bride with His blood and death. Ephesians 1:14 says the Holy Spirit is given to us as an earnest or guarantee. That guarantee, in ancient times, was shown by a down-payment. Today, this is commonly symbolized by an engagement ring. When Christ betroths us to Himself, He gives us the Spirit as a kind of engagement ring that guarantees that we shall arrive at the last day for the actual wedding.
James Hamilton puts it so well when he writes, “We can scarcely imagine the glory of that wedding day,” noting that:
- Never has there been a more worthy bridegroom.
- Never has a man gone to greater lengths, humbled himself more, endured more, or accomplished more in the great task of winning his bride.
- Never has a more wealthy Father planned a bigger feast.
- Never has a more powerful pledge been given than the pledge of the Holy Spirit given to this bride.
- Never has a more glorious residence been prepared as a dwelling place once the bridegroom finally takes his bride.
- Great will be the rejoicing. Great will be the exultation. There will be no limit to the glory given to the Father through the Son on that great day.9
The invitation to this wedding feast is presented in Revelation 19:6–7: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come.”
The Bridegroom
The term marriage of the Lamb is strange because lambs don’t get married. But Jesus Christ is presented here in His capacity as Savior. The Lamb of this marriage shows us His love by living for us and dying for us. He first appears as the Lamb in Revelation 5, where we read, “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (vv. 6, 9). This love is a very one-sided affair, at least to begin with. “We love him,” said John, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
When we think of the ideal marriage, we think of two lovers gazing into each other’s eyes, starry-eyed with love. That is a Western view of marriage. It is different in many other parts of the world. There the parents of a bride often decide when she is to marry. In some cultures, she may have no say in the matter. She may not even know who her husband will be. She does not meet him until the day they are married. She learns to love him as her husband, and he learns to love her as his wife. We see this pattern, for example, in the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (Gen. 24).
In some ways, that is the kind of marriage we have with Christ. We love Christ. But we only love Him because He loved us first. He loved us while we were yet sinners and were utterly unattractive and undeserving. He loved us while our carnal minds were still at enmity with Him. Our hearts were against Him, yet He loved us.
The prophet Hosea provides us with a powerful example of this love. God said to Hosea, “Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord” (Hos. 1:2). That is what happened. As an adulteress, Gomer had a succession of affairs; and when her youth and attractiveness were spent, she ended up in the slave market. But Hosea found Gomer in the slave market and bought her back—not to exact revenge on her for the rest of her life, but out of sheer love (Hos. 3:2). He was a faithful husband to her despite her unfaithfulness to him.
That is how God loves you, dear believer, in Jesus Christ! When we were still sinners—unclean, unfaithful, adulterous, and promiscuous—He loved us. The apostle John said, “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). He loved them to the farthest limits of love.
We can’t measure the length, breadth, height, and depth of the love of God; it surpasses knowledge. Jesus Christ loves us beyond our wildest imagination. He loved us all the way to the cross of Calvary. And there on that cross He paid the dowry to free us from the penalty of sin.
Sometimes when two people marry, one has a substantial bank account, and the other is in debt. But when they marry, they merge their accounts, for one flesh means one bank account. In a sense, that is similar to what Christ has done for us. When we were up to our necks in debt to a holy God because we had broken His law thousands of times, Christ took our liabilities and our debts and paid the price of all our sins. He was made sin for us. Christ became one flesh with His church. Her sins became His sins, and His perfect righteousness becomes hers through faith.
In his book, The Best Match, Edward Pearse seeks to allure sinners to come to Christ as their spiritual Husband. Like a good matchmaker, Pearse extols the virtues of this Bridegroom who calls us to become His, and His alone. Do you want a match who has honor and greatness? He is God and man, the brightness of His Father’s glory, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Do you want riches and treasures? Christ’s riches are the best, for they last forever, are infinitely great, and will satisfy all your desires. Are you looking for a generous heart in a spouse? Jesus Christ is willing to lay out His riches for His spouse so that her joy may be full. Do you want wisdom and knowledge? The infinite wisdom of God shines in Him; He is Wisdom itself, and knows perfectly how to glorify Himself and do good to those who love Him. Are you looking for beauty? He is altogether lovely, more than all the beauty of human beings and angels combined. Are you seeking someone who will truly love you? Christ is love itself, love that is higher than the heavens and deeper than the seas. Do you want a husband who is honored and esteemed? This Husband is adored by the saints and angels. Everyone whose opinion really matters treasures Him; God the Father delights in Him. Do you seek a match who will never die and leave you a widow? Christ is the King immortal and eternal; He is the resurrection and the life.10
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Resurrection and the Life
Written by Reuben M. Bredenhof |
Saturday, August 20, 2022
Not long after John 11, Jesus will come out of his own grave in triumph over Satan and death. It is through the power of Christ’s resurrection that faith lives within us, together with hope, and love. And when we are made alive in Christ, death can no longer keep its hold on us. Believers still die, but now we’re joined to the One who is “the resurrection and the life.”Death happens every day. Every day people die from cancer and drug overdoses and car crashes. Every day there are funerals at the local cemeteries. I read that about 160,000 people die each day, all around the world—that’s a lot of death.
And that’s just physical death. Think of the pandemic of spiritual death in this world, the many millions who are living without God and a knowledge of Christ. They are dead in trespasses and sins—just like we would be, apart from God’s grace.
So how wondrous is the good news in John 11:25, where Jesus announces with another of the seven “I am” declarations,
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.
Not far in the background of Jesus’s saying is the raising of Lazarus back to life. Lazarus, together with his two sisters Mary and Martha, were good friends of the Lord Jesus. But Lazarus had become very sick and was fading fast. It seemed like Jesus had an opportunity to go and heal him, but He delayed his journey. Now, when Jesus is finally near Bethany, Lazarus has been dead for four days.
Martha has gone out to meet Jesus on his way. We suppose that she is broken with grief over losing her brother. But despite her sadness, she speaks of great confidence in the Lord. And Jesus responds: “Your brother will rise again” (v. 23). On this dark day, the gospel is beginning to shine. Death isn’t the end, not for Lazarus, nor for anyone who believes.
Now, Martha knows already that Jesus has power to do incredible wonders. But she can’t imagine how Jesus can do something about her dead brother, here and now. This is what she says: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (v. 24). She’s probably thinking about the Old Testament promises of resurrection, like in Psalm 16, and she is sure that God will raise her loved one on the great day of the Lord.
In response, Jesus doesn’t say, “Nice try, Martha, but think again.” He doesn’t correct her, but He shifts the focus onto himself. He will transform God’s promise of resurrection. For Martha is speaking with the person who is the sure fulfillment of every ancient word. “In me,” He says, “the resurrection has already come!”
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Regeneration Precedes Faith: Six Passages in Paul That Prove Faith is a Gift
In his mercy, God raises sinners to life and gives them the faith they will need to respond to his gospel. Such is the grace of God. God’s grace is not waiting for sinners to change their minds and believe on him.
Continuing the theme of monergism in salvation, we come to the debate regarding faith and regeneration. Does regeneration empower faith? Or does faith produce regeneration? Both are necessary for salvation, but what is their relationship? And how do we know?
Historically, Reformed theologians have understood faith as a divine gift to God’s elect, a gift that was planned in eternity, purchased at the cross, and personally granted in regeneration. By contrast, Arminians, Wesleyans, and other advocates of free will aver that faith is possible for all men and hence is not a special gift of grace to God’s elect, but a gift of grace to all who would freely receive it.
As one who gladly affirms a Reformed view of salvation, I believe this latter position minimizes the work of God in salvation. Instead of putting man’s final destiny squarely in the hands of God, an Arminian view conjoins the work of God and man. Theologically, this undermines grace. Pastorally, this contribution of faith produces (or leaves unchanged) man’s inveterate thirst for self-determination and creates communities that lack a spirit of humility. In God’s grace, other doctrines may ameliorate these realities or produce humility. But, by and large, a church that teaches—explicitly or implicitly—that you are capable of making such a decision for Christ impedes the humility which the gospel is meant to foster (see Rom. 3:27–30).
So, how we understand God’s work of salvation matters immensely for our sanctification, discipleship, and Christian fellowship. Still, it must be a doctrine derived from Scripture and not from tradition alone. To that point, we might ask: Where do we find teaching that says regeneration precedes faith and/or that faith is a gift of God? Good question. And in Paul’s Epistles, we find at least five passages that teach us that faith is a gift. Let’s consider each below.
Faith as a Gift
The locus classicus of the doctrine of faith as a gift of grace is Ephesians 2:8–9.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
This passage not only says that salvation is a gift, received by faith. It also says that faith is a gift. How do we know? Well, this takes a little digging, but in the original language, grace (charis) and faith (pistos) are both feminine nouns. Accordingly, any latter reference to them should also be feminine. But importantly, “gift” in the phrase “it is the gift of God,” which refers back to the earlier part of the verse, is neuter. This means that the gift of God is not pointing back to salvation, or grace, or faith alone, but to all the above. Everything in salvation, including faith is a gift from God.
Ephesians 2:8–9 is arguably the most clear statement that Paul makes about faith as a gift, but it is not the only one. For instance, in Philippians 1:29, we find this statement. “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” Though focusing on the gift of suffering, Paul assumes that suffering for Christ is a gift like faith is a gift.
Similarly, Paul assigns the gift of faith to the Holy Spirit. This is seen in both 1 Corinthians 12:8–11 and Galatians 5:22–23.
For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. (1 Corinthians 12:8–11)
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God Told Me: The Pentecostalization of Evangelical Theology of Revelation
No prophecy of Scripture comes from a human source. Rather, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (v. 21). Peter is saying that we ought to trust the sufficient Word because it is revelation from God’s Spirit that is even more sure than if he spoke to us directly. Trust the sufficient Word. It’s all we need. We do not need supernatural subjective experiences, we do not need the voice of God from Heaven, we do not need a still small voice in our hearts, we do not need visions or dreams or impressions or “nudges from the Holy Spirit”—we have something better than all of that. We have more sure the written Word of God. Scripture is sufficient.
I am convinced that contemporary Evangelicalism has been Pentecostalized in significant ways that even many non-charismatics don’t recognize. One significant way this reveals itself even among those who would claim to be cessationists is in common evangelical expectations regarding how God speaks to us and how he reveals his will to us. It is very common in modern evangelicalism, for example, to hear Christians talk about how God “spoke” to them, revealing his will in mystical ways outside his Word.
This teaching characterizes charismatics to be sure, many of which believe that the Holy Spirit still gives revelation with the same level of authority that he did to prophets like Elijah and Isaiah and apostles like John and Paul.
However, more moderate charismatics like Wayne Grudem and Sam Storms argue that while the authoritative canon of Scripture is closed, we ought to still expect “spontaneous revelation from the Holy Spirit” today. In this more moderate view, prophecy today does not have same sort of inerrancy or authority as biblical prophecy or inspired Scripture, but it is still direct revelation from the Spirit. I am thankful that these men defend the closed canon and the unique authority of Scripture, starkly differentiating their teaching from that of other more dangerous charismatics. Nevertheless, we must still measure their teaching against what the Bible actually teaches.
On the other hand, even many prominent evangelical teachers who claim to believe that prophecy has ceased nevertheless teach that we ought to expect the Holy Spirit to speak directly to us, not with words, and they don’t even call it prophecy, but they teach that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through impressions, through promptings, a still small voice, or an inner peace.
Perhaps no single book has done more to spread this kind of expectation among evangelical Christians than Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God. Blackaby says, “God has not changed. He still speaks to his people. If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience.1 This is someone who claims to be a cessationist. Other teachers like Charles Stanley and Priscilla Shirer have taught that we need to learn to listen for God’s voice outside of Scripture, we ought to expect to receive “personal divine direction,” “detailed guidance,” and “intimate leading.”2
Another way this expectation appears is in common beliefs regarding the doctrine of illumination. Often we hear prayers like, “Lord, please illumine your Word so that we can understand what it says,” or other similar language. Intentional or not, many believers seem to expect that the Spirit is going to help us understand what Scripture means or that he is going to “speak” to us specific ways that the Word applies to our personal situations. However, neither of these are what the biblical doctrine of illumination means.
The fact is that many Christians today think that supernatural experiences were just the normal, expected way God spoke to everyone in biblical times. Here’s Henry Blackaby again:
The testimony of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that God speaks to his people, . . . and you can anticipate that he will be speaking to you also.3
Charles Stanley argues,
[God] loves us just as much as he loved the people of Old and New Testament days. . . . We need his definite and deliberate direction for our lives, as did Joshua, Moses, Jacob, or Noah. As his children, we need his counsel for effective decision making. Since he wants us to make the right choices, he is still responsible for providing accurate data, and that comes through his speaking to us.4
These are not charismatics or continuationists. These are teachers who claim to be cessationists, and yet they insist that we ought to expect to hear from God outside his Word. And yet, this really is no different from how moderate continuationists define prophecy today.
In fact, Tom Schreiner admits as much in his book, Spiritual Gifts. Schreiner says this:
What most call prophecy in churches today, in my judgment, isn’t the New Testament gift of prophecy. . . . It is better to characterize what is happening today as the sharing of impressions rather than prophecy. God may impress something on a person’s heart and mind, and he may use such impressions to help others in their spiritual walk. It is a matter of definition; what some people call prophecies are actually impressions, where someone senses that God is leading them to speak to someone or to make some kind of statement about a situation.5
And Schreiner even admits that this is not much different from the moderate continuationist theology of prophecy:
The difference between cessationists and continuationists is in some ways insignificant at the practical level when it comes to prophecy,for what continuationists call prophecy, cessationists call impressions. As a cessationist, I affirm that God may speak to his people through impressions. And there are occasions where impressions are startlingly accurate.6
I respect Tom Schreiner greatly, but the problem is that teachings about Holy Spirit impressions such as these are not based on any Scripture at all. Rather, they use phrases like, “We have all experienced this kind of thing,” “these impressions are startingly accurate, so they must be from God,” or they quote a few vague statements by Spurgeon, Edwards, or Lloyd Jones that sound like they believed in such impressions.
I would estimate that a vast majority of evangelical Christians today believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through promptings and impressions, especially with regard to his will for our lives. If you want to truly know God’s will, then the Bible is not enough. The Bible does not tell you specifics about God’s “secret will” for your life, so if you want to know it, you need to learn to listen to God’s voice. Not audible words of course, not prophecy—we’re cessationists after all, but we ought to expect to receive nudges or impressions from the Spirit, an inner peace that will give us guidance.
But what does the Bible actually say about how we should expect God to speak to us?
The More Sure Word
In understanding the nature of the Spirit’s work of giving revelation, it is important that we understand the relationship between the revelation that he gave through prophets and the revelation that he inspired in the sixty-six canonical books of Scripture.
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