32 This is a great mystery: but I
speak concerning Christ and the church.
Eve was not Adam, wives are not
their husbands, and the church is not Jesus.
The church is
called Jesus' body, and called Jesus' bride.
Jesus is called
the Lamb of God, and he is called the good
shepherd / chief Shepherd.
It could be
said that one cannot be both a lamb and a shepherd
at the same time.
However, both
are true of Jesus at the same time.
Jesus is fully
man, and he is fully God.
It has been a
stumblingblock to many over the years, that one
could be called both man and God.
Yet, that is exactly true
of Jesus.
So, if he calls his church,
his body, that is not saying that the church is
him, or that he is the church.
At the last supper, Jesus
took bread and said, "This is my body", then they
ate the bread.
Did they actually eat
Jesus? Did he feel each bite while they chewed?
No, that would be a
ludicrous interpretation.
Yet there are many in the
world who believe that the bread was actually
Jesus, after he spoke the words.
The analogies that Jesus
used in these descriptions, help us understand
certain things and certain relationships.
The LORD, through Paul,
also used analogies.
II Corinthians 11:2 For 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.
Here the analogy of the
engaged bride-to-be, is used of the church.
Then John also spoke of the
church in a similar way:
Revelation 19:7 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.
8 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.
9 And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed
are they which are called unto the marriage
supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These
are the true sayings of God.
Here we see the
church described as getting married to the Lamb.
But then a
couple chapters later he says:
Revelation 21:9 ¶ And there came unto me
one of the seven angels which had the seven vials
full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me,
saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the
Lamb’s wife.
10 And he carried me away in the spirit
to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that
great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of
heaven from God,
So, is the
Lamb's wife the church, or is the Lamb's wife a
city?
We have so
often corrected people for pointing to the church
building, when they called it the church.
We told them
that the church is the people, not the building.
But they knew
that already. Revelation 21 is where they get the
idea of pointing to a place, referring to it as
the church.
Anyway line 9
shows that the Lamb's wife is the bride, the same
bride that is espoused to Jesus right now,
awaiting her bridegroom.
For # 3), it is
clear that Jesus doesn't marry himself, even if he
says that his bride is one body.
Even though in
Ephesians 5:30, he says that "we are
members of his body, of his flesh, and of his
bones".
Yet, like Eve
was of one flesh, of one bone with Adam, and like
wives are one flesh with their husbands, so also the church is
with Jesus.
Even as
Ephesian 5:28 says, "So
ought men to love their wives as their own bodies", so does Jesus love
the church as his own body.
For #2), it is
not so much that the bride becomes a separate
entity, but there is a change.
After the
blessed hope, the Christians will have been
resurrected, and no longer subject to the old,
Adamic nature.
So, the
relationship of all the collective members at one
time, with Jesus, will be different than it has
been since Pentecost.
It will be like
a honeymoon, no, far better.
Gino