The Bride

Marriage in 1st century Palestine was quite different than we tend to view the process today. The traditions and customs they practiced are alien to our senses of marriage, equality, and love. And so when the Bible makes overt comparisons to the church being a bride and Christ being a groom I think we often get a false mental picture. What’s even more interesting though are the more subtle comparisons made in the Bible that we may not have even picked up on. I think that if we dig into those customs we’ll have a much richer concept of the church’s relationship with Jesus.

First, the father was more concerned about the marriage of his son than his daughter. Back then there was a whole negotiating process that was involved in an arranged marriage. The reason the father was more concerned about the match of a son was because he would have to pay a high price for his son’s bride. Looking then toward God we see that not only did the Father pay a high price (one might say the highest price) for His son’s bride, but the Bible also talks directly about how, in another sense, we were “bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20) and so we no longer belong to ourselves. God has paid a dowry so that we, His church, might become his bride.

In ancient Jewish custom there were two parts to a marriage, the betrothal or erusin, which might be somewhat akin to our engagement process, and the wedding or nissuin. During the betrothal period the bride was legally married, however, at this point the bride remained in her own household rather than moving in with the husband’s household. Meanwhile the husband would prepare a home for his new family (either by carving out a nook of his family’s existing home or perhaps building or buying a new home altogether).

And so at this point we can see Jesus’ words in John 14 in a new light, “In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:2-3)

At some point, which was traditionally to be unknown to the groom, the father would tell his son to go fetch his bride. So, “no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). So we, the bride, must “therefore keep watch, because [we] do not know the day or the hour” (Matthew 25:13). The groom would then go to the home of his bride and they would return to their new home together amongst a procession and the wedding celebration would then commence.

If nothing else, this has some really interesting implications on the passages that talk about Jesus’ second coming (when He comes back for His bride). It might also explain why Jesus tells parables like the one in Matt 22 where He says, “the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”

Along these lines there’s this great passage in Revelation that I’m still working out the implications of, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev 21:2-3). Throughout the Old and New Testaments God does the unexpected (blesses the younger brother instead of the elder, chooses the weak rather than the strong, comes as a humble man rather than a powerful king, etc.). Could it be that after all of our waiting for our bridegroom to come and bring us back to the place He’s been diligently preparing for us, that instead he will bring that place to us? We’ll see. After all, the picture painted here in Revelation is not us going to be with Him but rather Him coming to be with us. It’s an interesting twist with some very intriguing implications.

So what does this mean for us then?

Well, for one thing as Shane Claiborne says in his book Irresistible Revolution (actually he’s recounting the words of a preacher he once heard), “We’ve got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he’s coming back for a bride, not a harem.”

What would happen if we just started there, with radically uniting?

Note: Much of this information came from the following website if you care to learn more: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/lifecycle/Marriage/AboutMarriage/EvolutionAncient.htm