We are NOT espoused to Christ
Paul: 'I have espoused you to one husband'.
The question is how we will be presented to Christ on that wedding day. Will it it be AS a chaste virgin, or will we have been corrupted, as Eve was by the serpent?
'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.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.'
The question to all of us is this: Will he find us a chaste bride or an unchaste one?
Ephesians 5
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
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.
24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so
let the wives
be to their own husbands in every thing.
25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27 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.
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.
It is very clear from Paul's teaching that our relationship to Christ is pictured in the wedding bond, a union of Christ and the believer as one body, one flesh, joined by bonds of eternal love. A precious truth no believer should be robbed of.
How does a collection of buildings perform righteous acts? The Church is identified with the heavenly Jerusalem. Hebrews 10:
'
22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven'.
The guests and friends of the groom are those saints of the Old Testament and Tribulation dispensations that are not a part of the Church Age. John the Baptist, a saint of the OT, identified himself as a friend of the groom. John 3:
'28 Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.
29 He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.'