The “great mistery” – a bride or a wife?

Now I would like to show a very vivid parable that illustrates the process of rebirth. This is a mystery hidden from many people, even though it is written clearly before our eyes if we read our Bible carefully.

Earlier I showed that Jesus’ disciples were already children of God at the time of the Sermon on the Mount, since Jesus taught them to address God as their Father in prayer. Yet the disciples had not yet been born again at that time. This shows that becoming a child of God and being born again are not the same thing. At least in the case of the disciples, these two events were clearly separate.

Let’s see what John the Baptizer (or John the Baptist) said about Jesus and His disciples:

“He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:29–30)

Who is who in this passage? What was John talking about? Jesus is the bridegroom, and John says about himself that he is the friend of the bridegroom. But this bridegroom also has a bride, and that bride is none other than the disciples. What does this mean? It means that the betrothal had already taken place — the disciples were already the brides of Jesus!

At the beginning of our life of faith, when we become disciples of Jesus, we become children of God. But something else also happens at that time: the engagement, the covenant with Jesus. That is when we become His bride.

Now let us jump far ahead and look at how Paul describes the relationship between Christ and His church (which is not an institution, but a group of believers) in his letter to the Ephesians. Notice that he no longer speaks of a bridegroom–bride relationship, but of a husband–wife relationship:

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own 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. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:22–32)

Many people mistakenly think of the relationship between Christ and His own as if there were only one body — Christ being the head and we the members of that body. Indeed, Paul uses that image elsewhere, but that is not what he is describing here. In this passage, Paul says that Christ is the head of the church in the same way that a husband is the head of his wife.

But before marriage, the husband and wife each have their own separate body. It is God who joins these two bodies into one when they marry. The same is true of Christ and His church. There are two bodies — one is the body of Christ, and the other is the body of the bride. Christ becomes the head of the church in the same way that a husband is the head of his wife: through marriage.

Notice how Paul refers back to creation and the first marriage:

“Then the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:21–24)

Paul quoted this passage almost word for word in his letter to the Ephesians, and then added, “This is a great mystery, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.” In other words, there is a marital relationship between Christ and the church.

So, where did we begin? When the disciples began to follow Jesus, the Lord made a covenant with them — He betrothed them to Himself. That was the first covenant. But after that there remains a second covenant, the marriage itself.

Will this take place after our death? Not at all. Just as we are to enter the kingdom of God not after death but already here in our earthly life, so it is also with the marriage to the Lord.

Jesus will say to many believers at the judgment:

“Depart from Me, you evildoers; I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:23)

At first this seems absurd — how could Jesus say that He never knew someone? But in the Bible, the expression “to know” often refers to the intimate relationship between husband and wife (see Genesis 4:1; Matthew 1:25).

“Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.” (1 Corinthians 6:16–17)

What Paul mentions here is something permitted only within marriage.

How does the bride become a wife? It is the task of God’s servants to teach us how to move from being a bride to becoming a wife — to reach the maturity required for this union with the Lord. But there is still a long road ahead. We have run a bit ahead of ourselves, but that is all right, because we need to see the goal before us. After the engagement, the next step is the marriage.

Finally, let me show you something. In Jesus’ parable of the royal wedding banquet, the king sends out this message:

“Everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet!” (Matthew 22:4)

And we see that the king sends out his servants from the wedding to call in those who are still outside…

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