Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

of Christ is a major theme in biblical revelation. R. C. Ortlund, Jr. speaks to this image of Christ as bridegroom and husband to the people of God, the Church, at the consummation of all things mentioned in the great final text of Revelation. Commenting on the scenes provided in heaven after the destruction of the great whore, Babylon, Ortlund suggest that: After Babylon, the ‘great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication’ (Rev. 19.2), has been judged by God, the victorious saints rejoice that ‘the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready’ (Rev. 19.7). It is granted to her to be clothed with ‘fine linen, bright and pure’, which is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19.8). The Husband of the bride presents the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind (cf. Eph. 5.26–27). The antitypical reality finally appears as the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev. 21.2). There will be no human marriages in heaven (Mark 12.25), for heaven will be the marriage. It is difficult to discuss this without using more lofty prose, as Jonathan Edwards illustrates (*Works [Edinburgh, 1979 reprint], vol. 2, p. 22): Then the church shall be brought to the full enjoyment of her bridegroom, having all tears wiped away from her eyes; and there shall be no more distance or absence. She shall then be brought to the entertainments of an eternal wedding-feast, and to dwell for ever with her bridegroom; yea, to dwell eternally in his embraces. Then Christ will give her his loves; and she shall drink her fill, yea, she shall swim in the ocean of his love. To sum up: the overall pattern of biblical teaching on marriage discloses typological symmetry from Genesis to Revelation, as the ‘one-flesh-ness’ of human marriage, sacred but provisional, points forward and upward to the eternal spiritual union of Christ with his bride, the church. The symbolism inherent in earthly marriage lends the relationship greater dignity; its significance goes beyond the human and temporal to the divine and eternal.

~ R. C. Ortlund, Jr. “Marriage.” The New Dictionary of Biblical Theology . T. D. Alexander, ed. (electronic ed.). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.

Here Ortlund rightly and concisely summarizes the power of the marital imagery to get at the dignity and majesty of the divine marriage, the result of the sacred romance that God has been cultivating with his people since the beginning of time.