“And I saw the holy city, new
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready
as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).
“Let us rejoice and be
exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto him: for
the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made
herself ready. And it was given unto her that she should
array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the
fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he
saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to
the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:7-9).
“The Spirit and the bride
say, Come” (Rev. 22:17).
“Christ also
is the head of the church, being himself the saviour of
the body... the church is subject to Christ... Christ
also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that
he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing
of water with the word, that he might present the church
to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle
or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without
blemish... we are members of his body. For this cause
shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This
mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of
the church” (Eph. 5:23, 25-27, 30-32).
It would be good for us, as we
approach this subject, to do a little forgetting: to
forget, for the time being, any theories that we may have
heard or accepted under the designation of the bride of
Christ. There are crystallized theories on this matter.
There are those who believe the bride is Israel. There
are others who believe that the church is not the bride
and the bride is not the church — they are two
distinct and different entities, and so on. Will you
kindly order them out for the time being — not in
order to accept a new theory, but in order to be open for
anything that the Lord may have to say at this time.
Please give the Lord the benefit of an open heart and
mind.
It would also be good for us to try
to get away from the symbolism of this book of the
Revelation, a very difficult thing to do, because it is a
book that is just full of symbols and symbolisms. But let
us try to forget the symbols — even the symbol of
the bride, in that actual word — and let us seek
earnestly to get to the meaning. It is easy to be so
occupied with the symbol that we miss the meaning.
Three Main
Ministries in the New Testament
To begin with, let me remind you
that in the New Testament there are three main phases, or
ministries.
There is the phase of what we may
call INITIATION; that is, the gathering of the
material for the House of God. That is a very prominent
phase in the book of the Acts — the reaching out to,
and laying hold of, those who are to compose and
constitute the church.
Then there is the second phase or
ministry of the BUILDING of that material: the
building up, to use Paul’s phrase, of the Body of
Christ; and that is wrapped up with Paul’s letters
— the teaching ministry which follows the gathering.
The building up proceeds after the material has been
secured and as it is being brought in.
But then there is a third phase, a
third ministry. It is that which comes in with the last
parts of the New Testament, and mainly through the
ministry of John — though not altogether, for Jude
was engaged in this, and James to some extent; but mainly
in John’s letters, and pre-eminently in the book of
the Revelation — the ministry of MEASURING UP,
measuring up to all that has been given; a RECALL
ministry, where there has been loss, falling away,
departure, declension; and a ministry of JUDGMENT
— judgment not in the sense of passing judgment
only, but judgment in the sense of making clear where
things have gone wrong, and warning concerning the
delinquent state.
These, then, are the three phases of
the ministry of the New Testament, and there is the
sovereignty of the Lord marking each one of them.
The
Sovereignty of the Lord in Relation to the Ministries
We saw previously the sovereign
activities of the Spirit of Jesus in laying hold of,
apprehending, the material for the House of God. We saw a
wonderful combination of heavenly, angelic forces, and
the Holy Spirit, in sovereign activities to secure the
material of which the church is made. There is no
mistaking the sovereignty at work in that phase of the
New Testament.
There is likewise a sovereignty
observable and very patent in connection with the second
part — that is, the securing, raising up, equipping,
endowing of those who are to fulfil the ministry of
building up the Body of Christ — personal gifts of
the ascended Lord in sovereign action, qualification by
the Holy Spirit unto the many-sided ministry by which the
church should be brought to full growth.
But the sovereignty is very much in
evidence, too, in the third phase. It is evident in the
statements at the beginning of the book of the
Revelation. “I John,... was in the isle that is
called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of
Jesus” (1:9). And what happened? He says that things
that were given to Jesus by the Father, “the
revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him”, were
sent, were brought by an angel, by a special messenger,
and “signified... unto his servant John” (1:1).
If that is not sovereign action, what is? That is Heaven
moving, and it is related to this ministry of measuring
up, recall, judgment.
Note, moreover, that it was
measuring up to the full revelation that God had given.
These messages were addressed in the first place to the
seven churches in Asia, and it was to the churches in
Asia that the fullest revelation through the apostle Paul
was given. Ephesus, Laodicea, and the rest, were the
churches which were brought into being through this very
apostle, who was so sovereignly raised up and equipped
for the fullest unveiling of eternal counsels that we
have in the Bible. It was concerning that fullness of
unveiled divine thought that the book of the Revelation
was brought in, sovereignly to recall to that, to judge
concerning that; to deal with the Lord’s people in
the light, not of some partial truth, but of the whole
revelation of God’s mind.
My point is that it was sovereignly
done; and God, who is sovereign, does determine the
ministry that is to be fulfilled and by whom it is to be
fulfilled, and there is a place in the sovereign purposes
and activities of God for a ministry that is a recall
ministry. This is a ministry of measuring up, and that
particularly characterizes the end times, as is clearly
seen here.
The Bride
Expresses the Fullest Thought of God Concerning His Son
Now, as we said in our previous
meditation, there are seen, in the book of the
Revelation, distinctive and particular companies who
represent something very much more of the Lord than the
rest, and of those various companies, or those various
titles which we mentioned — overcomers, the hundred
and forty-four thousand, first-fruits, man child, and so
on — of all these titles, it seems to me that the
one that gets nearest to the heart of God is that which
is called “the bride”. The bride undoubtedly,
from every description and presentation and implication,
embodies and expresses the fullest thought of the Father
concerning the Son. We could gather a very great deal
into that — Old Testament type and figure — as
to the Father’s concern for His Son’s bride.
You will recall, for instance, the story of Abraham,
Isaac and Rebekah. But we cannot stay for details. We
just make the statement, which you can verify, that, out
of all the titles mentioned, it is the bride who embodies
and expresses the fullest thought of the Father for the
Son.
That which is signified by the bride
is, indeed, the first and the governing idea of the
entire Trinity — the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
The Father, for the Son, is governed
by this thought supremely — to provide His Son with
a bride. What was true in the first creation, humanly,
literally, is transcendently true in the new creation,
the Heavenly Man. God says that it is not good for Him to
be alone. To provide Him with a bride is the
Father’s greatest interest in the Son.
The concern of the Son for His
bride, the church, is self-evident; we shall see more
concerning that presently.
As to the Holy Spirit, that is His
very work in this dispensation. We were speaking earlier
of this being the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. He has
come to secure that bride for the Son, and is pursuing
that purpose, and in this sevenfold reiteration,
“what the Spirit saith to the churches”, you
have implicit His concern to get the church on bridal
terms with the Son. The active operations in the book of
the Revelation begin with that sevenfold word: “He
that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to
the churches.” It is reiterated seven times —
“what the Spirit saith”. And the last thing in
the book is: “The Spirit and the bride say,
Come.” Everything between, so far as the people of
God are concerned, is the Spirit’s mighty working to
secure this bride for the Son. In that last word, which
we shall consider later, is found the great joy of the
Spirit at the end. “All is ready for you! The work
is done; the object is secured. Come!”
Christ’s
Love, and Giving of Himself, For the Church
This object is found in a specific
way in the cross of the Lord Jesus. The cross of the Lord
Jesus is a very comprehensive thing and has many sides in
its value and function. It has to do with sin, sin’s
judgment, sin’s remission. It has to do with death
and death’s annihilation for the church. It has to
do with Satan, the prince of the world, and his casting
out. It has to do with redemption, atonement,
justification, and all sides of salvation. They are all
in the cross. Then the apostle put his finger upon a
specific meaning of the cross when he said: “Christ
loved the church and gave himself for it.” When
Christ went to the cross, while all these other things
were being effected and were included, this central thing
was being secured. He gave Himself for the church.
This throws us back to some of His
own parables. We recall the parable of the treasure in
the field, when the whole field was purchased to secure
that treasure. Or we think of the parable of the pearl of
great price, and the merchant who makes everything that
he has subservient to securing that pearl. I once went
through the narrow streets of Basrah, on the Persian
Gulf, looking into the shops of the pearl merchants, and
I saw there, behind glass and bars, some wonderful,
marvellous pearls. I was fascinated with them. And from
those narrow streets you could look away to the sea, and
see the pearl fishers at work in their frail vessels
— perilous work, costly work. Then a pearl merchant
from Basrah came and travelled with me the rest of the
journey to India. He was a solemn man, and you should
have seen how he watched over and guarded his box
containing the pearls. It was a reinforced box, with two
heavy padlocks, and it was never out of his sight —
never even out of his hands. He arrived at the other end,
and the customs wanted to have a look — but oh, the
concern of this man, all the time watching, alert, to see
if anybody else was looking. A pearl represented his very
life, his subsistence. All his being was concentrated
into the pearl — it was everything to him.
And as I saw it and noted it, how I
was taken back to this parable. That is what the Lord
knew. We shall come back to that presently. A “pearl
of great price”: this is a figure of His church,
this is a figure of His bride — the church in the
terms of a bride. “Great price”: He gave
Himself; the cross and all that that cross meant was
centred in the pearl, was centred in the bride.
“Christ... loved the church, and gave himself up for
it.”
Again, we said that this is the
primary interest of the Holy Spirit; that, in this
dispensation, this is the one thing that the Holy Spirit
is after. By every method, by every means, along every
line, through every ministry, the end that He has in view
is the securing of this bride. Would that all the
Lord’s servants would keep that always before them
— that the end is not just to get individuals saved,
important as that is; the end is not just to have so many
Christians in the world, important as that is. The end is
a corporate vessel called “the bride”. The Holy
Spirit is dominated by that, He is governed by that in
all His activities.
We said, too, that the bride is the
consummate, the ultimate, full embodiment of the eternal
counsels and purposes of God concerning His Son. This
reaches right back to the past eternity into those
counsels of the Godhead. God determined everything
concerning His Son, in His Son, for His Son: everything
was for the Son; and at the heart of everything is the
bride, the church, His chosen bride, the elect.
The
Lord’s Quest for Bridal Characteristics
We come now to this second phase.
All the judgments and dealings of the Lord with His
people are governed by this object. This is the object of
the Lord’s dealings with us — with the church,
with the churches, with individuals — and we must
view these messages to the churches in the book of the
Revelation in the light of the bride. What is it that
this Lord, the Bridegroom, this Son of man, is seeking?
What is it that He has in His mind in these messages to
the churches? He is after bridal characteristics. So He
sits and summarises. There are many things which He
commends. These are features of the bride. “I know
thy works” — all right, quite good; “thy
labours” — all right; “thy patience”,
yes, very good; “thy conscientiousness” —
“thou didst try them that call themselves apostles,
and they are not” — “you have a sense of
right and wrong, conscientiousness” — yes, very
good, the bride must certainly be like that; “you
are honest, you will not tolerate false apostles and
false teachers” — yes, very good, the bride
will certainly be like that; “thou holdest fast my
name” — that is all right, that is good; thou
“didst not deny my faith” — yes, it must
be like that, people who comprise this company must
certainly be like that. Thy charity, thy service, thy
faith, and still more works, more than at the beginning
— all right, all good.
Yes, these are features of the
bride, but there is a longer list of things that the
bride must not express — features which are not
bridal features and which must go. Lost first love —
that will not do; the bride must be characterized at the
end by that which was at the beginning, by an utterness
and freshness of devotion to the Lord Himself. “Thou
hast there the doctrine of Balaam, and those that teach
the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.” We may not
understand what that was altogether. I do not pretend to
be able to tell you, but I think I can tell you exactly
what it MEANS. In both these cases, the doctrine
of Balaam and of the Nicolaitans, it was a teaching which
had come in, purporting to be something superior to the
Scriptures, to what God had said. What had God said to
Israel, and what had God made Balaam say about Israel?
But then, for the gain of unrighteousness, Balaam went
right back on his words and brought in a teaching to
Israel which in effect said, “Look here, you can do
this, you are allowed to do that: God will not take any
notice of it, God will not bring you into judgment for
that.” And the other teaching had the same effect
— a life and a practice which had the Word of God
against it, being excused on some theory introduced.
This is not strange to our own day.
There are many people who are superior to the Scripture.
There is the Scripture plain and clear on certain things,
and yet they are above the Scripture. They even claim
that the Lord has shown them that a certain course is
right, when the Scripture is as glaringly against it as
anything could be. If it were necessary, I could begin to
take a whole handful of scriptures and show how they are
violated and a theory is gathered around them which
excuses from the precision of God’s mind as revealed
in His own Word. Satan used Scripture to try to seduce
the Lord Jesus into complicity with himself —
spiritual fornication. “It is written, He shall his
angels charge concerning thee...” (Matt. 4:6). But
the Lord Jesus saw through his suggestion, saw what it
would lead to, what it implied, saw that the result of
following Satan’s course would be something contrary
to the revealed mind of God. It is easy to use Scripture
to support us in a way that we would like to go.
Now the Word of God gets down to
motives, and here were two teachings which resulted in a
practice and a life which was contrary to, and claimed to
be superior to, the Word of God — fornication,
things sacrificed to idols, and so on. Yet there is
another teaching that undercuts even that, and results in
another sin, well-known in those early times, that it
does not matter how you behave: you are saved and you
will never be lost; rest upon the eternal security of the
believer and behave as you like — an iniquitous
thing. It was that kind of thing the Lord was up against.
It may be in very gross forms and it may be in very
simple forms, but the point is — this will not do
for the bride. The bride must be transparent, pure in
motive, doing nothing to gratify personal ends, having no
arguments to support personal interests.
“Thou hast a name that thou
livest, and thou art dead.” Profession without
reality. That will not do for the bride, by any means.
“Thou art neither cold nor hot”.
Indefiniteness, an absence of real character; not clearly
defined and unmistakable as to your life and position, so
that everybody knows exactly where you are and what you
are, and there is no mistaking it. The bride must be like
that.
Perhaps enough has been said to
indicate that what is in view here, in these messages to
the churches and to us, is the quest for bridal
conditions, summed up in those words: “Christ...
loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he
might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of
water with the word, that he might present the church to
himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing.” That is the heart of chapters 2 and
3 of the book of the Revelation; that is the bride. The
Son’s satisfaction, the Father’s satisfaction,
and the answer to all the Holy Spirit’s activities,
is found in a people after this kind.
The Calling
of the Whole Church
We must dismiss another thing: the
idea that the bride is a select company, chosen and
appointed to be like this. We must make no such
distinction and discrimination between the church given
as a whole and the bride. The whole church is called to
this — that is the revelation of the New Testament;
not only some, but the whole church. Whether the whole
church will arrive, or arrive at the same time, is an
open question, but we are all called to it, every one.
This is incumbent upon us all, not merely upon some
called “overcomers”, a “bride”,
“firstfruits”, and so on. This is the church in
view. There may be those who move ahead of others, who go
on more rapidly than others, who satisfy the Lord more
quickly than others; the others may lag behind and come
on afterwards; but whether all attain unto the same glory
or not, this is what we are all called to. None of us is
excused by any provision made by the Lord. The Lord has
not got pigeon-holes already fixed, saying, “We put
first-class Christians in there and second-class
Christians in there, and provide for them
accordingly.” He has only one pigeon-hole in view.
If you do not come into it He has not provided a place
for you anywhere else, and He has told you that you will
lose very much. It is a very serious thing not to answer
to Him in the primary way.
The Bride,
the Wife of the Lamb
“The bride, the Lamb’s
wife.” Do not ask the mechanical question, Who will
be in the bridal party? Who will comprise the bride?
There again you are mentally dividing things up. I can
tell you at once who will be the bride. Not a certain
number of people who are called to be the bride, as
different from others, but those who come to the bridal
position spiritually. They will be the bride, and that is
open to everyone. The bride is not a technical term
belonging to a certain class, order and section of
Christians. It is a spiritual term belonging to a
condition, a spiritual state.
“The bride, the Lamb’s
wife”, is the term here. “The Lamb’s
wife” — what does that mean? The Lamb was one
who suffered in meekness. “As a lamb that is led to
the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is
dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7). The
Lamb went that way: the bride will know the fellowship of
His sufferings, and must be of the same spirit of
meekness. No standing for her own rights, upon her own
dignity, asserting her own interests, but letting go to
the Lord, in self-emptying and meekness. That is the
Lamb, and that is the bride, the Lamb’s wife, taking
her character from Him.
The Lamb in
the Midst of the Throne
Ah, but there is the other side.
There is a Lamb in the midst of the throne. There is the
wrath of the Lamb — the Lamb shall make war. The
mighty “beast” rears himself — what a
terrific force is represented by the “beast”
here. He is let loose in all his ferocity and malignity
and evil and mighty power. And then the Lamb makes war
and smashes the beast, destroys him. The LAMB does
it. There is a mighty power bound up in this weakness.
Oh, we have not yet learned the strength of weakness, the
strength of emptiness, which means that there is nothing
in ourselves but everything in the Lord. When the Lord
gets people there, the enemy is afraid; something is
going to happen. We can never overcome the enemy while we
are standing up for our own rights, while we are in any
way defending our own interests, looking after our own
name, being something or trying to be something or hold
on to something. The enemy laughs at us, breaks us. When
we know that meekness of the Lamb, the meekness of Jesus
Christ, then the enemy’s power is going to be
weakened and destroyed. These are principles in the book.
The wife of the Lamb is going to be
with Him in His throne. Let us dismiss the symbolism and
grasp the principle and the spiritual meaning. It is
absolute ascendency in Heaven over all the forces of the
earth and hell, vested in the Lamb, and conferred upon
His bride, the Lamb’s wife. It is the mighty power
of a yielded life, the mighty power of weakness of the
right kind — that is, of dependence, conscious
dependence upon the Lord.
The Pearl of
Great Price
In conclusion, I want to come back
for a few moments to the matter of the pearl. It is a
remarkable thing, the place that the pearl has in the New
Testament. If you look in the Old Testament, you will not
find it anywhere. When precious stones are mentioned in
the Old Testament, the pearl is never included. It was
something upon which the Jews set no special value. They
had great ideas of the sapphire and the beryl and the
onyx and all the other precious stones, but the pearl
they despised. It was therefore almost a shock to them
when the Lord Jesus began to speak about the merchant man
and a precious pearl. It was an entirely new idea,
investing the pearl with a value and preciousness which
was strange to them, new to them. In the New Testament
the pearl has a significant place. Right at the end, we
find that the very gates of the city are pearls. We know
the pearl is formed through suffering — therein lies
its preciousness — and the suffering leads to beauty
and glory.
The bride is to know “the
fellowship of His sufferings”. “If we suffer,
we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12, AV).
There is an “if” there, a governing
“if”. It does not say, “If we are saved,
we shall reign”, “If we become believers in the
Lord Jesus, we shall reign.” It does not say that in
the Scriptures. It says: “If” (and only
“if”) “we suffer, we shall reign with
him.” It is a very constituent of the bride that she
shares His sufferings, pours out her very life-blood
— it may be in a spiritual way, it may sometimes be
in a literal way — for her Lord. Her life goes for
Him as His life went for her. There is such a moving
together that one life is given for the other, and vice
versa. That is the bride.
Now are you, apart from all the
words and ideas, seeing God’s point? Why do we
gather for “conferences”? If you were to come
here between conferences, you would find that the
threefold ministry of the New Testament was going on: the
seeking of the material, the bringing of souls to be
material for the House of God; the building-up ministry;
and this ministry of bringing into view the full thought
of God, God’s requirements as to the utter
revelation of His mind. It is this last that is the
object of these conferences. These are not
“material-gathering” meetings, evangelistic
meetings, much as we are concerned for the unsaved, very
truly so; and these are not just “building-up”
meetings, for teaching and instruction — though they
are that. But they are not JUST that. The crown of
the ministry is to keep before the Lord’s people the
fullness of His intention in the church; to measure up,
to call back, to make adjustment, to judge things; and to
satisfy our Lord’s heart in the ultimate, consummate
sense of His desire, as expressed in the bride.
It will involve in sufferings, in
the wrath of the enemy. It will mean that we are not let
off with our flaws and failures. The Lord comes again and
says, “There are many good things, but I am not
accepting anything less than My standard.” He must
do that — we are involved in that. But oh, it is a
great destiny, the destiny of the bride — no less
than His throne, nothing short of His throne: to be with
Him in the administering of His great universal kingdom
through the ages of the ages. May the Lord bring His call
and challenge to our hearts.