Shelva,

I wanted write back about three things that you had written:

1)

"We cannot be both the Body of Christ and The Bride." and also "As God explained that The Bride could not be the Body of Christ"

2)

"The Bride becomes a separate Entity."

3)

"He simply said, "Jesus cannot marry Himself!" "

For # 1) I wondered, why cannot the church cannot be both the body of Christ and the bride of Christ?

Eve was not Adam, yet the scriptures say:

Genesis 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Jesus refers to the same thing in Matthew 19:

Matthew 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

 5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Also, Paul likened the church being members of Jesus' body in Ephesian 5:30,

.      right in the same passage that he is also likening the relationship of Jesus and the church, to that of a man and his wife.

First, both relationships are in line 23:

Ephesians 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

The entire passage in Ephesians 5:28-32 also shows both, simultaneously:

Ephesians 5:28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

 30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

 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