03.11. THIS MOTIF CONTINUED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
THIS MOTIF CONTINUED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
It is for adulterous people that God gave up His Son to death. That was no small thing for the Father to do. He rejected His only Son so that He could accept back His beloved who had turned her back on Him. It was with a view to Christ’s atoning work that God ‘did not abandon’ His covenant partner forever. Rather, He preserved a repentant remnant from which their Saviour could be born. Christ’s death made it possible for God’s love to hold out and forgive His bride’s adulterous inclinations and sins when only wrath and banishment were deserved.
Jesus, the Saviour, revealed Himself to sinners as both Lamb and Bridegroom. In the New Testament we read how Christ took up the same motif of marriage to portray the relationship between Himself and His church. He was the sacrificial Lamb, by whose blood the sins of the bride were atoned for. His blood was the high price He, the Bridegroom, paid so that He might receive from the Father the church, His spotless bride. The following Scripture texts are examples of the marriage motif being used in the New Testament to explain the relationship between God and His people:
“Then the disciples of John came to (Jesus), saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.’“
Here Jesus describes Himself as the bridegroom. Of necessity, then, there must be a bride.
“For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” In his appeal to the church at Corinth to be faithful and blameless in service to Christ, Paul presents Christ as the husband and the church as the “chaste virgin”. Here is the imagery of marriage in the relation between Christ and His church.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the Washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”
Christ presents His love for His church as the model for the love that a husband ought to have for his wife. Underlying this instruction is again the imagery of marriage in the relation between Christ and His church.
“And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thundering, saying, ‘Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.’ And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!”
Christ, the Lamb, is the bridegroom and the Church is His bride. Christ’s return on the clouds of heaven will be celebrated with no less than a marriage banquet.
Revelation 21:2, Revelation 21:9
“Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband….Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.’”
It is this marriage motif describing the relation between Christ and His church that lies behind the loaded term James uses. He sees sin amongst “the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1) and so calls his readers “adulterers and adulteresses” (James 4:3). They can be “adulterers and adulteresses” only because of their marriage bond with their Lord and Saviour.
Since the theme of marriage endures in the New Testament in describing the relation between Christ and His church, the example of Christ’s faithfulness to His bride remains the paradigm for the Christian couple. The principle of Genesis 2:1-25 remains valid today also; God did not incorporate within the marriage institution an escape hatch through which one or the other partner may free himself absolutely of the other.