The Spotless Bride of Christ: A Radiant, Perfected, Pure Church
- Summary: The Church is called to be the holy, radiant, pure, spotless Bride of Christ. However, will all Christians take this call seriously and make it to the altar?
Romans 5:14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
KJV “who is the figure of him that was to come”
20th Cent. N.T. “And Adam foreshadows that One to come.”
- •• “...pattern ... figure ... foreshadows”
- • Adam is a type or figure of Jesus Christ.
• Eve is a type, a figure, of Christ’s Bride, the Church.
2 Corinthians 11:2-3 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. [3] But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
- •• Again, we see the parallel between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the marriage of Christ and His Church.
•• Adam was pure, sinless, blameless. Eve — a pure, sinless virgin — was presented by God to Adam.
- • There is substantial agreement among bible teachers that, had they not sinned, these two sinless parents would have produced a sinless race having no need of redemption. However, all of that was forfeited by the sin of Adam and Eve. And from then to now God is calling His people back to a pure, chaste, “bridal” holiness.
- •• Look upon the end-time, glorious Revelation 12 woman as Christ’s pure, spotless Bride, the Church — the “radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:27).
Genesis 2:15, 18-25 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.... [18] The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” ... [21] So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. [22] Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. [23] The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
- •• vs. 15 — Before Eve existed, God placed Adam in Eden “to work it and take care of it”.
- • Before there was a Church, God placed Jesus on the earth to do His work of redemption.
- •• vs. 18 — “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man [Adam] to be alone.”
- • Adam was perfect, sinless, and alone, without a bride. So was Jesus without "a bride". Then by His life and ministry on earth and His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus secured for Himself “the church of God, which he bought with his own blood”.
- •• vs. 18 — So God said, “I will make a helper suitable for him”. Eve was that “helper suitable” for Adam; the church is called to be that for Jesus!
- • “suitable for him” — at the time that God brought Adam and Eve together as husband and wife, Adam was sinless, holy, spotless, blameless. So was Eve, thereby being a thoroughly “suitable” bride for him. Likewise, Christ’s Church-Bride, in order to be a “helper suitable” for Him, needs to be holy, spotless, blameless, a radiant Church.
• Some may object: “But nobody can be perfect,” they say. But that comment cannot withstand biblical scrutiny, because God can make perfect people — for example, Adam and Eve were perfectly sinless before the fall. Don’t limit God’s ability to present a Bride to His Son that is a “radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:27). We do God a disservice when we suggest that He cannot bring this and similar Scriptures about a radiant bridal Church to fulfillment.
- •• vs. 21 — “God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep.”
- • For the purpose of creating His Bride (the Church), God placed Jesus into the “sleep” of death.
- •• vs. 21 — Then God “took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh”.
- • Presumably blood was shed in Adam’s rib cage, even as millennia later Jesus shed His blood for His Bridal Church.
• The blood would have come from Adam’s side, even as blood and water issued from Jesus’ side when pierced by the soldier’s spear.
- •• vs. 22 — “Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”
- • The man Adam was the source of the bride’s creation. So too Jesus is the life source of His Bride the Church.
• Adam’s bride Eve was taken from a portion of Adam’s body, not from the whole body. So too the bride of Christ will come from a portion of the body of Christ; it will not be the whole body of Christ. This intriguing and vitally important truth is discussed in much greater detail in my bible study entitled The Bride of Christ Is the Church’s End-time Calling.
• God “brought [Eve] to the man [Adam]”. Likewise, Jesus’ Bride the Church will be presented to Him, as Eve was to Adam, to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Christ and His bridal Church will bear much spiritual fruit.
- •• Eve was presented as a bride to Adam at the close of the 6th day of the creation week.
- • Christ’s Bride the Church will be presented to Him (Exodus 19:4 with Revelation 12:14) at the close of the 6th day of the “week of redemption”.
Ephesians 5:25-32 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [26] to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, [27] and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.... [31] “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” [32] This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.
- •• (25) Jesus deeply loves His Bride the Church, to the point that He “gave himself up for her”. Amazing!
•• His purposes?
- [1] “to make her [the Church] holy, cleansing her ... through the word” and ...
[2] “to present her [the Church] to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”
- •• In His radiant, pure, spotless Bride the Church, Jesus will receive to Himself, as Adam did, a “helper suitable” (meet, commensurate, appropriate) for Him.
- • As He requires of us, in His own marriage Jesus will “not be unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14). He will receive to Himself a holy bride, even as He is holy.
- • We are redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:19, KJV). Our Bridegroom Jesus is spotless and blameless. It is no wonder that He seeks from His Church a spiritual bride that is a "helper suitable for Him" (see Genesis 2:18, NIV). The apostle Peter clearly understood this when he wrote to the followers of the Lord: "Be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless" (2 Peter 3:14, KJV). Our holy, spotless Bridegroom Jesus desires a commensurate, suitable bride, a holy and spotless bride.
And that is a brief description of the radiant, spotlessly pure Bride-Church that Jesus intends to fashion for presentation to Himself in these last days. That is the Bridal Church that:
- •• will fulfill the yet-unfulfilled Feast of Tabernacles...
•• that will rise up to the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13)...
•• that will, in spiritual union with Christ, bring forth the manchild company of Revelation 12...
•• that will participate in the restoration of that which was lost in the Garden of Eden....
•• that will spend the final 3-1/2 years protected by God in “the wilderness, ... [in] a place prepared of God” (see Revelation 12), while the antichrist reigns in terror for those same 42 months (Revelation 13).
•• that will be “alive and remain[ing] unto the coming of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:15).
Pastor Feeney's more in-depth study of this great subject of Christ’s Bride can be viewed at The Bride of Christ Is the Church’s End-time Calling.
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BONUS! For those desiring a very in-depth study of the end times, I highly recommend Bible teacher Elton McMillan's website. I believe it's among the very best end-time Bible studies available today. Elton's many excellent, descriptive charts and artwork are best viewed on your desktop or laptop computer. You'll find this free treasure trove of last-days teaching at The End Times Explained Step by Step | Bride of Christ
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