The Bride of Christ

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal…

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever (Revelation 21 & 22, select verses).

Many brides in North America walk down the aisle to the familiar strains of a tune composed by Richard Wagner for his opera Lohengrin. We all know it as "Here Comes the Bride." Actually, the bridal music in Wagner’s story is less about the sacred than about the tragic; in the opera, the happy couple is soon split up because of the husband’s obligation to duty; they did not get to live ‘happily forever after’.

On the other hand, in this week's reading for All Saints’ Day, St. John is shown a bride who will live ‘happily forever after’--the wife of the Lamb of God. The Bride of Christ represents all of God’s holy people, whom He identifies collectively as His saints. St. John sees this bride coming down out of heaven, made beautiful and holy for her wedding day by her Lord. So for this year's All Saints’ Day we, together with St. John, turn our attention the bride of Christ as she walks down the aisle, looking carefully to see what our Lord has done to make His bride worthy of His love.

The first thing we note about the Bride is that she is chaste. ‘Chaste’ is an old-fashioned word; it refers to someone who waits until marriage to engage in sexual activity. Scripture uses the word to speak of living your life in such a way that it does not become polluted by sin; to be chaste is to remain pure. St. John tells us that nothing impure will ever enter [God’s home], nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful; the saints who are the Bride of Christ are to be pure.

Why does God expect us to be pure? It’s because God’s Spirit lives within us. 1st Corinthians chapter six says, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God. It is not right that our holy Lord should have to accept a dirty, corrupted heart for His home; this is why God repeatedly tells us: Be holy, because I the LORD your God am holy (Leviticus 19:2).

Of course, the saints of God cannot achieve such pureness on their own; such a thing is humanly impossible. Our chasteness is a gift from Christ the bridegroom; Ephesians chapter 5 tells us, you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God's word. Through God’s Word and Sacraments, the Holy Spirit reaches into our hearts and scours away everything evil and reprehensible, making our hearts a fit place for Him to live. This must be a daily scouring; just as a clean house quickly becomes dirty, so our hearts are constantly growing mildewed by the sins that infest our lives. No house can remain clean without constant attention; neither can our hearts remain chaste unless God’s Spirit is constantly doing His purifying work in our lives. This is why time spent in God’s house and devoted to His Word is so very important.

Because of the Spirit’s work in our hearts, we are pure in God’s sight. We can legitimately wear white to the heavenly wedding! Christ Himself dresses us, clothing us in His garment of righteousness. Isaiah 61:10 says, I am overwhelmed with joy in the LORD my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit or a bride with her jewels. Revelation chapter seven tells us how that righteousness was made possible: Then one of the elders asked me, "These in white robes--who are they, and where did they come from?" I answered, "Sir, you know." And he said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The reason that we can be made chaste is the blood of Christ, blood poured out from the cross in order to wash away our impureness. John writes, the blood of Jesus…purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

Another characteristic of the Bride is that she is luminous. ‘Luminous’ is another old-fashioned word; it means that the Bride is glowing with light. The happiness on her face lights up the room. And why shouldn’t she glow? She has been made pure; her sins have been washed away; she has been dressed with the beauty of Christ’s own righteousness.

But in this sin-darkened life, the saints of God don’t look very radiant. Our faces are often wincing in pain as we endure the hardships of living in a fallen world. It is hard to be luminous when each day is one long string of temptations lined up one after another. It is hard to glow when sickness afflicts a loved one. It is hard to be radiant when the people around us take pleasure in acting selfishly and perversely.

Yet Christ shined the brightest when His life was at its lowest ebb. It was while dying on the cross, ridiculed by men and abandoned by God, that Jesus performed His greatest miracle, the miracle that brought life and immortality to light; it was through His suffering that Jesus made your purity possible. He did it by exchanging His purity for your impurity, and then suffering the Father’s wrath to end the curse which impurity brings.

We shine because Jesus shines. We reflect His glory. In 2nd Corinthians St. Paul writes, God, who said, "Let there be light in the darkness," has made us understand that this light is the brightness of the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us that we have been given this light so that our lives might reflect God’s glory: let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). You know that light can never be overcome by darkness; indeed, darkness only shows how wonderful the light is by comparison.

Another thing we notice about the Bride is that she has God’s name on her forehead. It is customary for a bride to have her name changed when she gets married; she takes on the name of her husband’s family. So it is with the saints of Christ. When we were born, we entered life as children of the devil; we bore the mark of the beast. But in baptism the Lord enabled us to renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways. In baptism we were given a new family name; we became children of God. St. John saw that the only people allowed into God’s home were those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Through our relationship with our Lord, our names have been recorded in His Book of Life. The Lord says, Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine (Isaiah 43:1).

It is traditional for the groom to lift the bride’s veil. During this life, we live with a veil over our faces. The veil is sin and the limited ability of our earthly minds to understand spiritual things. St. Paul tells us, Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see face to face. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now (1 Corinthians 13:12). We won’t see God clearly or truly understand His ways until He lifts the veil from our faces on the Day of Consummation, when He brings everything to completion. This is God’s promise to everyone who has been made pure by the blood of Christ; in the Sermon on the Mount our Lord said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Matthew 5:8).

And what follows the heavenly marriage of the Christ to His Bride, the Church of saints? A honeymoon, of course! Regrettably, life in this fallen world has made it impossible for us to conceive what true eternal happiness will be like; our experiences have taught us that nothing is perfect, and ‘all good things must come to an end.’ But life with the Lamb of God cannot be accurately grasped by our sin-distorted imaginations. We imagine that an eternity of doing the same thing would become dull and boring; we imagine that serving God would eventually become tiresome. But dullness and boredom and toil are characteristics of this world, not the home of God. In God’s home, everything is perfect. We will be constantly warmed by the warmth of God’s love as we live in His joyous presence. We will have the kind of fellowship with our loved ones that we never had on earth, because there will be no sin to poison our relationships. We will have work to do on the new earth that God will create, and that work will give us joy because there will be no problems or frustrations; we will be doing what we were meant to do, and that will fulfill us in ways we can’t even imagine.

Why do we care about what the Bride of Christ looks like? Because this is what our loved ones who are now in heaven dedicated their lives towards becoming. This is what we aspire to with our lives. This is what they and we will be like when we are finally united with our Lord and reunited with each other. This is what Christ died to make of us. This is what God wants we, His saints, to be.