Christian Living

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We talk a lot about how the church--and by extension, everyone in it--is the Bride of Christ, and that because of our status as bride, our relationship with Christ is supposed to be the most intimate, most satisfying, most adventurous, most fulfilling thing in our lives. Well, to be bluntly honest, that picture of God has screwed me up more than anything else in my life. It's not that I don't believe that it's a true picture (actually, I believe it now more than I ever have before); my problem was that I was forgetting what stage of that relationship I/we live in.

For a long time, God basically hasn't been coming through for me the way I thought he should. I was lonely and frustrated, I felt unappreciated and diminished, and it felt like I was fighting all of my battles on my own. A marriage partner is supposed to be there to help with things like that, right? Isn't that the whole point of getting married? Isn't that what we deserve?

In a good marriage, yes, of course those things are supposed to happen. But if God is supposed to be perfect (and therefore the perfect companion), then why isn't it working like that? What have I done--or am I doing--do disqualify myself from that kind of love?

You can run around in that circle for a long time. I know I have. But the bottom-line truth, the fact that I had completely lost sight of in my desire to be satisfied right now, is that from a very literal standpoint I am not married to Christ yet. All the plans have been made, the date's been reserved, the guests invited, but the ceremony has not happened yet. And so, neither has the consummation and union that comes after it.

In biblical Jewish culture, the standard order of events leading up to a marriage was that once the match had been arranged (through the parents) and the bride price agreed upon, the groom would leave the bride where she was and go away to prepare their house (i.e. the place they would live together after the ceremony) and get everything there ready for her. Only once everything was exactly the way he wanted it to be would he come back for his bride and the wedding celebration would begin.

That waiting and preparing period is what we're living in now. In John 14, when Jesus says that he's going away to prepare the rooms in his Father's house, he's talking about getting them ready for life after the impending marriage ceremony, the time after time when we'll live with him in heaven.

And until that time of consummation comes, there is a very real sense in which God is absent from me and from us. He said he would be. He promised it, in fact.

While the groom was away building the marriage house, it was the bride's responsibility to prepare herself for marriage. She would learn to cook, clean, etc. (to become what a wife is supposed to be), and then wait for her groom to come back. For me (I'm sure it's different for everyone), this has so far including being systematically stripped of all the substitutes I've tried, being made to realize that God is all I really have, and all I need, that him alone is infinitely more than I deserve.

Before the groom left his bride, he gave her a seal, something to remind her of the covenant they had made:

Ephesians 1:13-14: "And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory."

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