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The Bride of Christ
A reader recently asked a good question about the Bride of Christ:
I would like to know if we are the bride of Christ in a spiritual since
and Christ is our spiritual husband in worship-- how we are spiritually
united to our spouse and become one with Him. Is worship like
spiritually making love to God in a nonsexual way?
Yes, the "bride" in Revelation 19:7-9 is the Church, and the "wedding
of the lamb" refers to Jesus Christ (the bridegroom) and the Church
(the bride). Ephesians 5:22-24 says, "Wives, submit to your
husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the
wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the
Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives
should submit to their husbands in everything." Christ is the head
of the Church and the Savior of believers. He will be united
with His Church forever in eternity, and we are to submit to Him, both in
this life and in eternity.
Christ died for His Church, and words cannot express the full love that
He has for us believers. The love of this relationship is so
deep that the best way for us to understand it was in using the analogy of
marriage. Marriage is the biblical relationship where two
people can express their true love for each other in the most intimate of
ways. This love is expressed over the course of their
lifetime in many ways, including physically (sexually), mentally, and
spiritually. A man and his wife grow forever closer by
sharing their thoughts, their spiritual experiences, and their bodies (1
Corinthians 7:5). Likewise, Christ lives in us, guiding our
souls, spirits, and bodies (Romans 1-2). Although we are
incapable of grasping this concept to its fullest extent while we are
still in this life, the analogy of marriage was the best way to relate
it to us.
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