The Greatest Wedding Is On Its Way

In six days, it will have been two months since I had the privilege of standing beside my dearest and longest friend (who also happens to be my cousin) on her wedding day.

It was a beautiful day, filled with tears, laughter, and smiles so wide I thought my face would split wide open.

Yet the most striking thing about that day was not the radiance of the beautiful bride, nor the sweet and fresh decorative florals, nor the glow of love splashed across the newlywed’s faces.

Not even the great demonstration of love that marriage is, when a man leaves his father and mother to cleave unto his wife and both vow before God to cherish each other until death part them, was the most beautiful thing that day.

The most beautiful thing that day was Christ and the picture that marriage is of His love for His church, poor and dim a reflection as it is.

The Greatest Love Story

The best and most beautiful love story is that of the love of Jesus Christ for His church.

Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. His purpose in doing this was to “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle,”(Ephesians 5:27)  to purchase for Himself a perfect bride–a bride not perfect in and of herself, but because she has been granted His righteousness. She is perfect because He makes her so.

Like Gomer, the prophet Hosea’s unfaithful wife, we too are unfaithful, impure, defiled, lost and estranged from our Creator.

Despite Gomer’s unfaithfulness, Hosea redeems his wife and brings her back to himself in a great act of love, and yet Hosea’s great act of love is only a type and shadow of what Christ has accomplished by His atoning death on the cross (Hosea 3:1-2).

Hosea bought back Gomer with fifteen shekels and nine bushels of barley. Christ bought His Bride with His blood (Acts 20:28).

I have found that, too often, I forget that in the story of Hosea, I am Gomer.

This is both a sobering and comforting thought, for I realize how unfaithful I am, how unworthy I am of Christ’s love.

Indeed, how wretched we are! How much shame have we brought upon ourselves by our sins!

Yet if He loved us, His church, so much that He died for us and redeemed us with His blood, and His sacrifice was indeed sufficient to cleanse us, what shame is there left to have?

Our shame has been traded for His righteousness.

The Greatest Wedding

I love weddings. I love attending weddings, especially weddings of believers that shift the focus heavenward, to the heavenly marriage of Christ and the church, the perfect Bridegroom and the Bride that He washed with His blood.

I am reminded that however beautiful a wedding may be, however strong the love between the couple being wedded to one another, it does not compare to the love of Christ for His church.

No husband has ever humbled himself to marry his wife the way Christ humbled Himself for the church.

Girolamo Zanchi, in his excellent (and relatively brief!) work The Spiritual Marriage between Christ and the Church and Every One of His Faithful, points out that marriages must be made between those “of the same nature,” and in light of this, “the Son of God was made man so that he could be the church’s true Bridegroom.”¹

Never has any man even come close to the degree of humility demonstrated by the Second Person of the Trinity in His Incarnation. That alone is enough to make the marriage between Christ and the church beyond comprehension.

However, the Son of God did not only humble Himself by taking upon Himself a human nature, He also gave His life up, He became a curse for us in His crucifixion–for cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree–all this for wretched, blaspheming sinners like you and me (Galatians 3:13).

At the consummation of all things, the marriage supper of the Lamb will arrive, the greatest wedding that has ever been and ever will be, where the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world will wed His purified Bride (Revelation 19:6-8).

The utterly astounding thing is that we are invited to this great Supper, not only as guests, but as members of His Church–as the very Bride.

Indeed, “blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation 19:9)

Conclusion

It is, of course, not lost on me that this article is being published on Valentine’s Day.

Though I have not myself been blessed with the joys of earthly matrimony, it is something I do desire, but in that desire I must remember that marriage is only a reflection of the love between Christ and the church.

I confess that I do hope for a wedding day, one that is not promised to me, one of earthly marriage, but more than that, I long for the marriage supper of the Lamb, for the eternal union of Christ and His church, the greatest demonstration of love.

The marriage supper of the Lamb is promised to us, and we never need doubt the promises of God.

We will never understand love until we begin to understand the one who is Love Itself, that is, Christ, which means that we will never fully comprehend Love until the glorious day that the Father presents His Son with a spotless Bride, bought by her Bridegroom’s blood, made sinless because He became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), made pure because He was regarded as cursed, made righteous and holy because she has been credited with His “satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness.”²

In the meantime, may we always remember that “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The God-man has laid His life down for us, once His enemies, so we might be made His friends (John 15:13).

No better love has ever been demonstrated, and no one is more privileged to be the object of love than the church is to be the object of Christ’s perfect, unconditional, redeeming love.

Footnotes

1. Girolamo Zanchi, The Spiritual Marriage between Christ and the Church and Every One of His Faithful, Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, Ch. 3 ↩︎
2. Heidelberg Catechism Q. 60 ↩︎