Max Lucado tells a story from ages past about a stately prince and a peasant girl who fall in love. This really a difficult one to understand. On the one hand is a prince who literally had the world at His disposal. There has never been a more perfect specimen of a man that ever lived. Nothing about Him was common. You wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that He is a perfect catch.
On the other hand there is a peasant girl. She is nothing more than average. At her best she is plain, but at her worst she can be just plain ugly. There are times when she is cranky and moody, and she rarely ever achieves all she could. To look at her from anyone else’s eyes you would never believe she was worth much. But if you could see her through the eyes of the prince, you would believe that she is “to die for.”
Because the prince determined that He couldn’t bear to live without her, he asked her to be His bride. The angels in heaven listened expectantly as she accepted his proposal. The prince promised his bride that He would come back for her soon, and the peasant turned princess pledged to faithfully await his return.
To this point the story could be any of a number of fairy tales, but now the plot takes a bizarre twist. You would expect the bride to be always thinking about the coming wedding, but she rarely ever mentions it. You would think that her every waking moment would be lived out in anticipation and preparation for the coming of her prince. However, by the way she lives you wouldn’t even know she’s the bride of a perfect prince. More frequently than not, you can’t even tell the difference between the bride and any of the other peasant girls in the village. There are even times when she can be seen flirting with the other men of the village in broad daylight, and who knows what she is doing when nobody is around to see!
Can you imagine a peasant girl fortunate enough to be the object of a perfect prince’s eternal love? You would expect her to be captivated by His love and filled with a sense of wonder that she was fortunate enough to be loved by Him. You would think that she would be careful to remain pure in anticipation of the return of her royal groom. Instead, to look at her you might wonder if she even remembers she is engaged at all. How could a peasant forget about her prince? Is it possible for a bride to forget her groom? (Lucado, When Christ Comes, p. 138)
That’s a good question, but only we are able to answer it. You see, the story of the prince and His peasant bride is not a fairy tale, or some medieval fable. It isn’t a story about anyone else at all, but rather a story about us, you and me, the church. We are the ones the Bible calls “The Bride of Christ.” And to be quite honest, far too often observers might ask if we’ve forgotten about the groom we are betrothed to.
This morning we continue to look at the Bible’s images for the church and learn from them who we are and what we are supposed to be. One of the most prominent images, and one that is filled with meaning, is the concept that the church is Christ’s Bride. It is an image that is woven throughout the entire Bible. In Isaiah 62:5 God speaks through the prophet, “…as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” In the book of Hosea, God commands the prophet to marry a woman who is an adulteress. Even though she is unfaithful and leaves her husband, God commands Hosea to purchase her back from the slave market as a parable of God’s love for His people. It is not an act of empty symbolism. In Hosea 2:19-20 God promises His people, “I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. 20 I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you will finally know me as Lord.” (NLT)
In order to understand this image completely, you have to understand what a Jewish wedding was like. There was an initial engagement or what was called a betrothal. Often marriages were arranged by the family of a man and woman. After the betrothal took place, the couple was considered husband and wife, but they still remained apart. Then, at an unknown time the groom would return to claim his bride. At that time there would be a wedding feast and a formal uniting of the couple, and they would live together and begin their life as a family. During the betrothal period both the groom and the bride to be were supposed to remain faithful to their betrothed. As you can imagine, the time leading up to the wedding were filled with anticipation and excitement as the couple prepared for their union.
That understanding is particularly important when you come to the New Testament. There are several places where the imagery of the wedding between Christ and the church pops up. As Paul tries to persuade the church in Corinth not to be unfaithful to God, he writes in 2 Corinthians 11:2, “I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. For I promised you as a pure bride to one husband, Christ.” (NLT)
In the fifth chapter of Ephesians, Paul gives instructions about how a husband and wife are to relate to one another. He challenges Christian couples to live in such a way that the wife respects and submits to her husband, and the husband is to love the wife “as Christ loved the church.” As a matter of fact, several times in Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul relates the relationship between the husband and wife to the relationship between Christ and the church. Listen to what he says.
Read Text: Ephesians 5:21-33
Now that passage has been fought over and grumbled about for years in our culture. The word “submit” as it refers to the attitude that a wife should have to her husband has enflamed much controversy, and we don’t need to get bogged down in that this morning. But notice what Paul is saying. It is not that the relationship of husband and wife is a picture of how Christ and the Church are to relate to one another. Instead, Paul says that the relationship between Christ and His Bride is a model for the Christian couple. Christ served and was willing to die for His Bride. The Church serves and submits out of love and appreciation for the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf. The basis of the relationship grows out of verse 21 where Paul says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” If you want to know how Christian people ought to relate to one another, the model is the way Christ and the Church relate as a groom and His Bride.
There is one more prominent place where God describes the church as the Bride of Christ. In Revelation 19:6-9 John describes a vision that God laid before Him. This particular one portrays what will happen when Christ returns for His second time to earth. It is the picture of the bridegroom coming to claim the one betrothed to Him.
6 Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
“Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
7 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.
8 Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) 9 Then the angel said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” (NIV)
Now honestly, as I have spent this week pondering this image of the church as “the Bride of Christ,” there is a part of me that can’t relate very well. I’ve never been a bride. I never even wanted to be a bride! I just don’t look that great in white lace and that whole garter thing totally freaks me out! There is a gender gap issue here, and I think that the reality is that women can relate to the idea of anticipating a wedding more than men do. I’ve participated in a whole lot of weddings, and it is rare that the groom is as excited as the bride is about all the ruffles and frills. Guys are always more interested in the honeymoon than the wedding.
But once you get past the whole gender thing, you realize that what God is talking about here is the most intimate of relationships. Christ uses this imagery to describe His relationship with the Church because He wants us to recognize how deeply He loves us, and how intimately He wants to relate to us. This is no “one night stand” that God calls us to, but a lifetime of growing closer to Him.
Christ has fallen head over heels in love with us. When Jesus says that our love is “to die for,” He meant it literally. It must have been love that lead Jesus to spread His hands out to allow nails to be driven through His wrists and feet. As the crown of thorns was wedged onto His head and as each breath became shallower as he hung on the cross, the Son of God could have ended the drama of His crucifixion any time He wanted. But if He had, the wedding would have been off. The peasant bride isn’t worthy to wear the white garment of righteousness on her own. Isaiah 64:6 says that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” If it all depended on us, there would be no wedding. But Jesus couldn’t bear to spend eternity without us. He longs to live out eternity with His betrothed. So with His blood he purchased a garment of righteousness worthy of a royal wedding. Isaiah 61:10 says, 10 I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Now I have to tell you, given who we are and the way we sometimes behave, I can’t imagine why the perfect prince would want us as His bride. The church is far from perfect. We are sometimes cranky and cantankerous. We rarely if ever live up to our God given potential. There are times when our faithfulness wears pretty thin, and our eyes wander. Sometimes our hearts get side-tracked and we let things like material possessions and power and prestige become more important in our lives than the bridegroom who loves us more than life itself. I shake my head as I ponder His never-ending love for us.
But when I take the time to ponder His love for me, I mean more than just tossing a thought His way, when I really meditate on the love God has for me, I can’t help but long to be pure for His sake.
One thing I’ve noticed about couples who are engaged to be married. They become obsessed with preparation. They want to make sure that everything is right, the dress and the tux, the weight, the hair, it all needs to be just right. Why? Is it so that their fiance will want to marry them? No. Just the opposite. They want to look their best because their fiancee is marrying them. The same is true for us. We want to look our best for Christ. We want our hearts to be pure and our thoughts to be clean. We want our lives to be marked by grace and love. We want to be prepared for His coming. It’s not so that He will love us. He already has proven His love for us on the cross. We want to be that pure spotless bride because He loves us.
How could we ever be unfaithful to one who loves us so much? Why would we content ourselves with the one night stands that this world offers, when we can know the fulfillment and depth of an eternal relationship with the God of the universe. I had a professor in college who taught us to realize that our lives should be invested in heaven rather than earth. He helped us understand that the more we give ourselves over to Jesus in this life, the greater we will appreciate the privilege of living in heaven. Our reward in heaven will directly correlate to our willingness to live by faith while we are here on earth. So what about it? Are you living every day in preparation for a time when you united with Christ in heaven? Jesus is doing just that. In John 14:2-3 Jesus said,”In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Jesus is spending this time in anticipation of the wedding day when He will come back and claim His bride. He is preparing the place that we will call home for eternity. Now the question that every one of us must answer is, “What am I doing to prepare myself for His return?”
