When the Lord Jesus came, He came as the Bridegroom for the bride; now we as believers in Christ are produced to be the bride of Christ, and at the end of this age there will be a wedding feast culminating in our eternal married life with the Lord.
The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, has the deep thought of a divine romance. When God created man in His image and with His likeness, He intended not only that man would represent Him and express Him, but that God would gain a corporate man to be His bride, His wife.
However, man fell lower and lower…so God came in and called a people, a nation, the people of Israel; these were His chosen ones, and He considered them to be His wife. God chose Israel to be His spouse; throughout the Old Testament there are verses that show how God cared for Israel, covered them, loved them, and brought them to Himself.
And in the book of Song of Songs we see the divine romance portrayed in a very sweet and poetic way; this book is a vivid portrait in poetic form of the bridal love between Christ and His lovers.
Christ is the Bridegroom, and He courts and woos His lovers, having a romantic and loving relationship with them and taking them through a process until they match Him for their marriage.
The bridal love portrayed in Song of Songs is in the mutual enjoyment in the mingling of Christ’s divine attributes with the human virtues of His lovers.
This book, the Song of Songs, shows us that our relationship with the Lord should not be a religious one but a romantic one, for if there’s no romance between us and the Lord Jesus, we’re mere religious Christians and not romantic Christians.
History is filled with religious Christians who, in the name of God and of Christ, did this and did that; but where are the Lord’s loving seekers, His romantic Christians, those who love Him and pursue Him out of love for Him?
We in the church life today need to be the romantic brothers and sisters, daily living in the divine romance, giving ourselves to enjoy the Lord and love Him from the morning to the evening.
The underpinning of our Christian life and church life is our loving relationship with the Lord; if we do not love the Lord but merely worship Him or read His word, we are religious people, and He is not pleased with us.
But if we open to the Lord every morning and tell Him that we love Him, if we pray for Him to rekindle our love for Him, our relationship with Him will be romantic, and we will advance in the divine romance.
We have been Regenerated to be Church as the Bride for Christ as the Bridegroom
When the Lord Jesus came, He came as life (John 14:6), the Shepherd (John 10), the Physician, the Prophet, the Christ, and the Savior, and He also came as the Bridegroom.
John the Baptist saw this and declared of the Lord not on that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) but also that He is the Bridegroom coming for the bride (John 3:29). The Lord Jesus also said of Himself that He is the Bridegroom in Matt. 9:15.
On the one hand the Lord came to save us, regenerate us, and heal us of our problems, sicknesses, and weaknesses, but on the other hand, He came as a Bridegroom to court us, to woo us, and to draw us to Himself.
Wherever He went when He was on earth, people flocked to Him, and many were inexplicably drawn to Him; they didn’t just follow Him because of the miracles, but they were drawn to His person.
When John the Baptist realised that the Lord Jesus is the Bridegroom, he also said that he must decrease, while Christ must increase (John 3:30). The Lord Jesus regenerates us to make us members of His Body, the church, so that the church may be His bride (John 3:3, 5-6, 29-30).
How can Christ marry us, the sinners? We do not match Him, we don’t have His image and likeness, and we don’t have His life. Therefore, Christ has to come to first redeem us, save us, and regenerate us, and through regeneration we receive the divine life which enables us to match Him.
Through regeneration all believers in Christ have received another life – the divine life; it is in this life and by this life that we believers are qualified to become Christ’s counterpart and to match Him.
The increase that John the Baptist was speaking of is the bride; Christ’s increase is His bride, just as Adam’s increase is his wife Eve. The church as the bride of Christ is a living composition of all the regenerated people.
Regeneration not only brings the divine life into us and annuls the satanic nature in our flesh, but it also makes us the corporate bride for Christ’s increase. Now we are in the process of being produced as the church, the bride of Christ, and He is our Bridegroom.
On one hand we need to love the Lord and enjoy Him, and on the other, we need to let the Lord increase in us until He makes us His bride for Him to marry as the Bridegroom.
Apart from being regenerated, we can never become Christ’s counterpart; only after we have been regenerated with the divine life can we become the bride of Christ, and He can be the bridegroom.
Lord Jesus, we love You! Thank You for regenerating us with Your life to be Your bride. Amen, Lord, You are our Bridegroom. We have Your life and Your nature, and You are making us Your loving bride. Thank You Lord Jesus for Your life within us, the life that makes us able to become Your bride, the church! Increase in us, Lord, and cause us to decrease, until the church becomes the bride that the Bridegroom needs. Make us the same as You are in life, nature, and expression, so that we may match You in every possible way!
At the End of this Age Christ will Come as the Bridegroom to Marry His Bride, His Overcomers
In Rev. 19:7 we see that, at the end of this age, Christ will come to marry His redeemed and take her as His wife; He will come as the Bridegroom, and the overcoming saints will be His bride.
There’s a difference, however, between those who participate in the day of His wedding (which lasts 1000 years, for in the Lord’s eyes one day is like one thousand years) and those who participate in being His wife for eternity as the New Jerusalem.
On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry those who have been fighting the battle against God’s enemy for years. Christ will come to marry the bride, composed of the overcomers, those who have already fought and overcome the evil one (Rev. 19:7-9, 11-16).
The bride that the Lord is coming after is composed of the collective overcomers; not all the believers are part of the bride, but only those who have been actually living in the reality of the divine romance, the bridal relationship, having a deep, affectionate love and oneness with the Lord.
These, because they loved the Lord so much, have been by His side, fighting the enemy and defeating him by not loving their soul life, by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony (Rev. 12:11).
On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry His bride composed of His overcomers, those who have overcome the evil one. Then together – Christ and His overcomers as a corporate Christ – will be the God-cut stone that strikes the ten kings with Antichrist (Rev. 19:11-21) signified by the ten toes of the great human image in Dan. 2.
Right after their wedding feast, Christ as the Bridegroom and the overcomers as His bride will crush the great human image from the toes to the head (Dan. 2:35); Christ with His newly married bride will come as a stone cut without hands and smite the human government into pieces, and will bring in the kingdom of God. Wow!
This age is the age of the church, the age of “dating”, the age of courtship and engagement between God and His people; at the end of this dispensation, there will be a glorious wedding day, when Christ will marry His bride.
Therefore, today we as the church are not only the Body of Christ to express Him, the dwelling place of God for His habitation, the family of God for His delight, the kingdom of God for His government, and the new man for the fulfillment of His economy.
Today the church is also a warrior, a soldier, to defeat God’s enemy. This means that we need to love the Lord to the uttermost and care for His interest; it takes a lover to be a fighter, and if we don’t care for the Lord, we cannot fight.
Only those who are passionate lovers of the Lord are fighters, martyrs, witnesses; they have been fighting all their life on earth, and they are qualified to wear the wedding garment.
The wedding garment of the bride is fine linen, which is the righteousnesses of the saints; this fine linen is also the armor worn by the bride into battle.
Our wedding garment is our fighting uniform; the subjective righteousnesses wrought into our being, Christ being lived out of us in many ways, is our wedding garment (see Rev. 19:7, 8, 14).
Then, after the glorious wedding day, for eternity in the new heaven and new earth, the New Jerusalem will be the wife of the Lamb; this is the fulfillment of the divine romance revealed in the Scriptures (see Jer. 2:2; Hosea 2:19-20; Rev. 19:7-9; 22:17).
The New Jerusalem is a couple – not a singular person but a couple, the Spirit and the bride. Praise the Lord!
The universal and divine romance is ultimately fulfilled at the end of the Scriptures in the New Jerusalem, where God in Christ as the Spirit is the universal Bridegroom, and all of God’s chosen, redeemed, transformed, and glorified people are the bride to be the wife of Christ. Hallelujah!
Lord Jesus, we give ourselves to love You to the uttermost. We want to be Your passionate lovers who fight for Your interest on earth. Amen, Lord, grant us to be the overcomers in this age, those who overcome the evil one by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and by not loving our soul life even unto death. Oh Lord, may You be wrought into us day by day, and may You be lived out of us as subjective righteousnesses to be our wedding garment and our fighting uniform. Dear Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to be Your bride to match You and return with You to deal with human government and bring in the kingdom of God!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians, pp. 814-815 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallisation-Study of Numbers (1), week 4, The Lord’s Jealousy over the Church as His Wife.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Oh, the wedding day is coming, / Is coming very soon, / When the Bride shall be prepared / And shall marry her Bridegroom. / Oh, what love and consecration / Should all our hearts attune / For that wedding day that’s coming / Very soon. (Hymns #1316)
# Christ desires to marry us, / By His Word He’s preparing us, / To present the church glorious / To Himself, as His Bride. / Saints, enjoy the Word every day, / Get those blemishes washed away; / Open your Bibles, rejoice always, / Singing to the Lord. / Christ desires to marry us, / By His Word He’s preparing us, / To present the church glorious / To Himself, as His Bride. (Song on, the Church-presenting Christ)
# Make us the overcomers, / Christ’s Bride, and God’s age-turners. / Make us those who consummate the age! (Song on, God Needs the Overcomers)
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