Bride and Bridegroom

Yesterday we looked at different nuances of words in the world and today I remind ourselves that as well as some cultural, historical and translation issues to consider in the Bible, there are also deeper mysteries. In the Bible, God is referred to as our husband, such as "Your maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name." (Isaiah 54:5). It is relating to an intimate covenant relationship as between a husband and a wife. John the Baptist refers to Jesus as our bridegroom when he is recorded as saying, "The one who has the bride is the bridegroom" (John 3:29) with Jesus Himself implying to His disciples that He, the bridegroom, is with them (see Matthew 9:15). When discussing marriage in Ephesians 5, Apostle Paul says that "Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (verse 25) and then later in verse 32 he says, "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church". The final book in the Bible, Revelation, which describes the culmination of all that is to come, describes, "The marriage of the Lamb has come and His Bride made herself ready" (Revelation 19:7), the Lamb being Christ who was our supreme sacrifice on the Cross, as shadowed previously with the Passover, when death passed over all the Israelites's households with lamb's blood on their door frames. Bride and Bridegroom in all these contexts is not to do with sexual orientation or physical sexual acts but to do with covenant love, belonging, intimacy, faithfulness and receiving Christ's unconditional love. All of us are invited into this relationship. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). Let's not dismiss these mysteries as nonsense or not for us. Surely, as a bridegroom, Jesus wants to share with us?