THE CROWNED
CHRIST
CHAPTER XIII
The Bridegroom
The Church as the Body of Christ speaks, then, as we have
seen, of service in subjection and fellowship with the Head. In the Bride we
find it in a new aspect, in which, while association with Christ is just as
prominent, there is rather the thought of rest than of activity; or it is the
heart that is awake and in activity, Christ is seen as the Beloved of the
heart, and in known and enjoyed relationship, its entire satisfaction and
delight.
The "Body" is not the equivalent of the "Bride" and we miss
much if we accept the one as substitute for the other. The incompatibility of
the Church filling both these places has been, however, lately pressed, and
that the members of Christs Body are not the Bride, but part of the
Bridegroom Himself. But surely, if these are both figures, there is no
incompatibility here, and it is only by joining different aspects of truth in
an incongruous manner"part of the Bridegroom"that they are made to
appear so. Scripture does not so connect them, and to put things in this way is
only an unconscious self-entanglement of thought.
It has been also
represented that the Church was a "mystery hid in God" during Old Testament
times, and that this is inconsistent with there being any types of it in the
Old Testament, such as Rebekah, for instance, has been taken to be: for types
teach, and were meant to teach doctrines, and the mystery is not said to be
hidden in Scripture, but in God. But this is to overlook the plain statement of
the apostle, where after a direct quotation of Gen. ii. 24, ("the two shall be
one flesh") following an application of the preceding history of Adam and his
wife, he says: "This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the
Church" (Eph. v. 32). Now here the mystery of the Church as the Bride of Christ
is found at the very beginning of the Old Testament.
Types by
themselves teach nothing: they need the removing of the veil that is over them
before they can be anything more than just history ordinance or what is upon
the face of them. If Scripture were full of them, they would still be hid in
God until it pleased Him to give the key to unlock their meaning. The
distinction sought to be made is therefore quite unfounded.
It is
true, that, as to the Body of Christ, the Old Testament, as far as we are
aware, has no hint of it; while with regard to the Bride there are types from
the very beginning. But not only so, the figure of marriage is used again and
again with reference to the relation between Jehovah and Israel, as a people
brought into intimate and unique attachment to Himself; and this both in the
history of the past, and in the prophecy of the future. This was, therefore, no
mystery hid in God - no secret to be brought out at an after-time - and cannot
refer to the Church which is Christs Body. Thus in Jeremiah (xxxi.
3134) God speaks of the covenant made with their fathers, when He took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, as of a marriage
contract: "which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband to them,
saith the Lord." And in Hosea (chap. ii.) God judges them for their wanderings
from Him as adultery, while He prophesies the return of the nation to her
"first husband" as the result of His dealings with her in the time to come: "I
will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and
decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and
forgat Me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her
into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her
vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope; and she shall
sing there as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out
of the land of Egypt."
Then comes the renewal, but in a more intimate
way of the old relationship. "And it shall be at that day that thou shalt call
Me Ishi, and shalt no more call Baali: for I will take away the names of Baalim
out of her mouth, and they shall be no more remembered by their name.
The change of title here is significant. "Ishi" and "Baali" both are used
for "husband"; but the latter is strictly "lord, master," and implies simply
the wifes subjection; whereas "Ishi," "my man," as with similar words in
other languages, goes back to creation and the fundamental fitting of man and
woman to each other, so that there should be real fellowship or kinship in the
relation. The connection with the substitution of the one title for the other
as to the true God and the dropping of the very names of the "Baals," the false
gods, out of Israels mouth, is therefore easy to be understood. They had
only known God hitherto in the far off place of "master," not in the reality of
His glorious nature, not in the affectionate intimacy which He sought. Thus
there was nothing to hinder their being drawn away to "other lords" which had
usurped His place. But now, in the future which He here contemplates, all would
be changed, so as to make stable the relationship: "And I will betroth thee
unto Me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness and in
judgment, and in loving-kindness and in mercies; I will even betroth thee unto
Me in faithfulness"- or "steadfastness"- and thou shalt know the Lord."
Here, then, is the end of all wanderings: and now "Thou shalt no more be
termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land be termed Desolate; but thou shalt be
called Hephzibah""My delight is in her""and thy land Beulah"
(married): "for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married"
(Isa. lxii. 4).
Here it is plain that to Israel, Gods earthly
people, it is that these promises belong. It should be as plain, surely, that
the "Bride of the Lamb" united to Him in heaven before He comes forth to the
judgment of the earth (Rev. xix.), is not Israel, and that the "new" the
"heavenly Jerusalem" "Jerusalem which is above" (Rev. xxi.; Gal. iv. 26) cannot
be the Old Testament city, even in the fullest glory of her glorious time to
come. Thus there are certainly two "Brides" contemplated in Scripture, heavenly
and an earthly one; and the objections made against this are really of no force
whatever. For instance, where it is said: "The Bride in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Hosea is Israel, or at any rate the elect of Israel; those who were partakers
of the heavenly calling in Israel." Surely nothing could well be more contrary
to Scripture than this. Was it with partakers of the heavenly calling that God
made a covenant when He took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of
Egypt? Was it the elect in Israel who broke that covenant, though Jehovah was a
husband to them? Was it these to whom He gave a writing of divorcement, and put
them away? Is it a heavenly land, that is no more to be called Desolate, but
Beulah (married)? Is it to an elect heavenly people that it is said, "Turn, 0
backsliding children: for I am married unto you; and I will take you, one of a
city, and two of a family, and will bring you to Zion"? If these questions
cannot be answered in the affirmative, then assuredly, whatever the New
Testament Bride may be, the Old Testament one is not the same.
The
writer allows even that "all the promises to Israel as a nation were earthly,"
and such are the promises here: they are national; although it is true that
only those can enjoy them who undergo that spiritual change which our Lord
emphasizes as needed by any who enter the Kingdom of God. As Isaiah says (iv.
3, 4): "And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion, and he that
remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written
among the living in Jerusalem; when the Lord shall have washed away the filth
of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the
midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning."
In the forty-fifth psalm the divine-human King, Messiah, is seen as the
Bridegroom of Israel, and as to its being an earthly scene that is set before
us in it there can be surely no question made. It was to such a Bridegroom that
the Baptist testified (John iii. 29); and the parable of the virgins doubtless
speaks of the same. In the whole prophecy (Matt. xxiv., xxv.) Israel is
prominent, the Church coming in only in that part of it which assumes that
parabolic form in which the "mysteries of the Kingdom" "things kept secret from
the foundation of the world," had been before declared. And the virgins going
forth to meet the Bridegroom, have been inconsistently taken by many to be the
same as the Bride. To set this right in no wise affects the doctrine, if it
does not rather make it clearer. At least the conformity with the Old Testament
is plain, and with the position that Matthew holds as the connecting link
between the Old Testament and the New.
In the passage in Ephesians
before referred to there is much more than an illustrated appeal to wives and
husbands in view of Christs relationship to the Church. That relationship
is stated in a very definite way in antitypical parallelism to that of the
first Adam and the woman divinely given to him. Adam, we are distinctly told in
Romans (chap. v. 14) "is the figure of Him that was to come". Christ is called
in Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 45) "the last Adam". But notice the contrast also,
which here as always, in one way or other, obtains between type and antitype:
"the first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening
Spirit." The same parallel, yet contrast, is seen here in Ephesians: "Christ
loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it
with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it
should be holy and without blemish." It was God who presented Eve to Adam: it
is Christ who as the fruit of His own self-sacrifice presents the Church to
Himself.
It is certain that here Christ is looked at as in a higher -
and so in some sense a contrastedway, repeating the story of the second
of Genesis. But that is not all: the apostle goes on to say: "So ought men to
love their wives as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife loveth himself;
for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even
as the Lord the Church. For we are members of His body; [we are]* of His flesh
and of His bones." Here two things are brought together which, in different
ways show the ground of the Lords care. We are members of His body:
nearer to Him than that can nothing be. But this is by the baptism of the
Spirit, and implies a prior, anticipative, originative work that shall prepare
for it. The baptism of the Spirit effects union; but with whom then can He
unite Himself? Now comes the answer: "we are of His flesh and of His bones."
* The repetition of the "we are" or some equivalent of it, is necessitated
by the insertion here of the preposition "out of" which separates the first
statement from the latter one.
But this carries us back at once to the
Old Testament type again, and we hear Adam, after the whole of nature besides
has failed to furnish a helpmeet for him, and when God to provide one has
brought forth the woman out of his side - we hear Adam saying, "This is now
bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." Her origin is from him, though not in
the way of nature, but of divine power. And now again has been produced by a
mightier act of divine power, a people who have received their spiritual origin
from the last Adam, out of His death - sleep, who is not only a living Spirit,
but a "Spirit giving life." The earthly history has found its complete fullness
of meaning.
And thereupon follows the saying, whether it was
Adams or not, which the apostle quotes and applies in the end of his
exhortation: "for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and
shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." The argument and
justification for those apparently foreign unions, is founded upon that
original fitting of the woman to the man which was made by God Himself the
basis of origin of the whole family relationship. Thus it retains its place as
prior to and beyond all other.
But the apostles application is
that with which we have here to do. He says of it: "This is a great mystery;
but I speak concerning Christ and the Church."
The mystery here then is
spiritual, while God has manifested His interest in it by writing it out in
natural hieroglyphics, impossible to be interpreted until He be pleased to give
the key. "All these things happened unto them for types, and are written for
our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
It is not of
the Bride that we are now desiring to speak, but of the Bridegroom; but the one
so implies the other that we are compelled to the course we have been pursuing.
The recurrence of the type so frequently in the Old Testament, even from the
beginning of the history, is full proof of how dear to Him is the thought of
the relationship. Assuredly we shall not give these up from any preconceived
idea that they ought not to be there. They are there, and speak so plainly for
themselves, pictures though they may be only, that no unprejudiced mind can
avoid seeing them.
Take Rebekah: and if Isaac be a type of Christ,
and, in the twenty-second of Genesis, received back "in figure" from the dead
(Heb. xi. 19), how is it that we find next Sarah, the mother (Rom. ix. 5)
passes away, and then Rebekah takes her place in Sarahs tent as bride of
the risen heir. Of the kindred already, she is called by a special messenger
(as the Church by the Holy Spirit) to cross the desert in his company to meet
her yet unseen Lord.
Take Asenath; and Joseph too is betrayed by his
brethren, brought down to the prison-house and brought up out of it to be the
Saviour of Egypt (the world); and then he must have a Gentile bride, while his
brethren are strangers to him.
Take Zipporah (the "bird" - the
heavenly bride); and again Moses is away from and rejected by his brethren when
he finds her by the well - a Gentile too - and marries her.
Are such
things, so fit in themselves, so fitting to their place in the history, mere
casual happenings, which we may use, if we will, for illustration, but must not
seriously press as having any design from God? Surely if design may be
recognized anywhere without a label, we may recognize it here.
Now it
is not contradictory to all this, and cannot be, to find that Old Testament
saints looked for a city which has foundations; or even to believe, as I have
long done, that this city and the New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb in
Revelation, are the same thing. Once let us realize that the "city" however
identified in some sense with its inhabitants, is yet in fact the habitation
and not the inhabitants, and the difficulty begins to clear. The Bride-City may
contain more than the Bride, as even the writer whose views I am referring to
allows. The throne of God and of the Lamb are in it; and the twelfth of Hebrews
distinctly shows us "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" apart
from both "the church of the first-born ones" and "the spirits of just men made
perfect." *
* In the tract to which I have been referring the names of the
twelve tribes on the gates of the city and those of the twelve apostles on the
foundations are taken alike to show the Israelitish character of the city
itself, and the "portion" of the twelve as judging the twelve tribes of Israel
(Matt. xix. 28) shows these to be "separated off from the Church," the body of
Christ. He even declares that "the Lamb is the special title of the Lord Jesus
in relation to Israel, and the elect of Israel"! No wonder that it should be
also discovered that "the Gospels are the conclusion of the Old Testament
history, and not the commencement of Church teaching: except, of course"- and
how important the exception! -"so far as Christ crucified is the foundation of
all blessing."
"God has prepared for them a city" does not in this
case imply necessarily what it is quoted for; and we may adapt the
writers own words otherwise than he would allow. "This holy Jerusalem may
contain" - the saints of the Old Testament; "but it is not necessary on this
account that we should identify them." Turning from all this now, how blessed
to think of this Bridegroom character of the Lord Jesus! It should be plain
that it expresses His personal joy of love, in a way that the "Head of the
Body" cannot, because it expresses a very different thing. A whole book of the
Old Testament has been given to the expression of this relation of the Lord
Jesus - no doubt, in the first place to Israel; but capable of application all
through to the higher and heavenly. Perhaps we have not a New Testament book of
this character, for the same reason that we have not a New Testament
psalm-book. It would rather belittle than truly represent it; if it were not,
at least, to be a book too large for human handling. Christian psalmody finds
in all else that has been written its material of praise. Its "song of songs"
must also transcend utterance. And perhaps must be learned otherwise than any
book of this kind could avail for. Thus it is, after all, that one can say so
little of what the Lords Bridegroom character means. We see that all the
nearest, sweetest human relationships are taken up to image forth these more
wondrous spiritual ones. And Bridegroom and Bride, always remaining in the
first freshness of the sabbatic morning of their beginning, speak of a mutual
abiding for one another, which is the revelation of a sufficing love, such as
we are surely learning by the way as we go to meet Him, but which in the first
moment of His presence will manifest itself as it had not been before.
In
the moment of her presentation to Isaac, Rebekah took a veil and covered
herself. We can but do so in the anticipation of that time.
Go To Chapter Fourteen
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