3.
Marital Union
"Or are ye
ignorant, brethren (for I speak to men who know the law),
how that the law hath dominion over a man for so long
time as he liveth? For the woman that hath a husband is
bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the
husband die, she is discharged from the law of the
husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be
joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress:
but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that
she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another
man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to
the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be
joined to another, even to him who was raised from the
dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God"
(Romans 7:1-4).
"For the
husband is head of the wife, as Christ also is the head
of the church, being himself the saviour of the body...
Husbands, love your wives, even as 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. Even so ought husbands also to love their own
wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife
loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own flesh; but
nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the
church; because 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" (Ephesians 5:23, 25-32).
"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" (Revelation 19:7).
"And there came
one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, who were
laden with the seven last plagues; and he spake with me,
saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife
of the Lamb" (Revelation 21:9).
"Behold, I and
the children whom God hath given me" (Hebrews 2:13).
Legal
and Spiritual Union
I expect you have
noticed that there are two aspects, offices, of this
particular union with Christ, the marital union. There is
that which is mentioned by Paul in the letter to the
Romans, and there is that which is mentioned by him in
the letter to the Ephesians and by John in the
Revelation. One puts the marriage as having already taken
place, and the other puts it in the future; and that
looks difficult. How are you going to explain it?
Well, in exactly the
same way as a number of other things are explained in the
New Testament, a number of other things which seem to be
a contradiction. There is the initial marriage of Romans,
and the final marriage of Ephesians and Revelation, and
the difference is that the initial is the legal and the
final is the spiritual, and, as we were saying in an
earlier study in this series, in various things in the
New Testament we have both an initial and a final aspect.
We were speaking then of sonship. We are sons, and yet we
are to be sons; legally, we are already sons, but we are
presently to become such spiritually, in the sense of
possessing the inheritance. "If sons, then
heirs": we are legally heirs by our new birth, but
we are certainly not in possession of our inheritance,
not enjoying all that is our heritage in Christ. It will
take much more than this life, it will take all the ages
to come, for us really to possess, appropriate and enjoy
our inheritance.
Salvation is spoken of
in this very way. We are saved, but we are yet to be
saved, we shall be saved - it is put in the future. But
it is just as definitely in the present - we are being
saved. A lot of people have made a lot of trouble over
that sort of thing, and have said that, because there is
a future-tense reference to salvation in the New
Testament, you can never know whether you are saved until
you get to heaven. Well, we do not believe that, because
it is not our experience. We know we are saved, but we
also know that we are to be saved, and it does not mean
that there is something that has come in between to make
us unsaved: it simply points to this difference, that we
see in so many connections, between our standing and our
state, between the legal and the spiritual.
Later on, we shall be
speaking about the House of God. Well, we are a spiritual
house now. It is in present-tense terms. But we read -
"whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness
and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end"
(Heb. 3:6). Again it looks as though we are thrown back,
we have to undo something; but it is not like that at
all.
Now here it is perhaps
more distinctly seen, in this matter of the marriage
relationship between the Church and Christ. Paul says in
the Roman letter that we are married to another,
"even to him who was raised from the dead." Yet
the marriage supper of the Lamb lies in the future.
"Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage
supper of the Lamb" (Rev. 19:9). That lies in the
future, and a special blessedness is attached to it.
You
see, there is a provisional factor governing the
intentions of God - a provisional factor as to the
realization of the purposes of all the things that God
has done and given and into which He has brought us.
There is an "if" all the time, and that
"if" does not relate to the legal position at
all. The Corinthians were all right as to the legal
position of being in Christ. The first letter opens with
the statement of that - "sanctified in Christ
Jesus." They are all right as to their legal
position; they can claim in Christ salvation. But it is
not long before the Apostle in writing to them begins to
speak to them about provisional things: this building
upon the foundation, and all that is put on the
foundation, and then it all going up in smoke, and
believers just getting into heaven without anything else.
It was all right legally there. If you like to stand upon
the legal basis, you can get to heaven if you are in
Christ. But there is so much more than that, and the so
much more may just be missed.
Apply it if you like to
this very relationship. There are many people legally
married, and that is all there is to it; it ends there.
They have certain rights and privileges because of the
legal position, but who wants to stay there? Who will be
satisfied with that? There is infinitely more in it than
that, and that is what is here in the difference between
the initial and the final, the legal and the spiritual. A
very big difference indeed exists between those two. Or
that difference may be graduated, as in the natural; the
blessings of the relationship may be more or less. And
that is how it is with Christians: they may be more or
less in the blessings of this marriage relationship with
the Lord.
Fellowship
and Companionship
Let us try to sum this
up in a few simple, and I think quite obvious, matters.
Keeping to the illustration, or the type, the first
marriage relationship of the first Adam; going back to
look at that and look into it, and asking what were the
Divine thoughts in it, we can transfer these thoughts to
Christ and the Church, Christ and ourselves, in this most
blessed of all the relationships - for indeed this is the
most blessed of all the relationships with Christ. What
was God's thought?
First of all, the
Scripture indicates that He was prompted to bring about
this union in the creating of the woman by the idea of
companionship. "It is not good that the man should
be alone" (Gen. 2:18). That is all. But there is a
wealth in that. It almost seems presumption to transfer
that to Christ and the Church, and yet there are so many
more extra factors and features in the relationship of
the Church to Christ, as His wife, that confirm and bear
that out. This is not the only thing. The bride-types of
the Old Testament are so rich and so full of confirmatory
factors that you may transfer the thought to Christ and
the Church. There is a whole wealth of evidence and proof
that they did point on to Christ and the Church. We are
not going to take up that study just now, but there it
is. The proof is abundant, and therefore we may,
presumptuous as it seems, transfer this very point to our
relationship with our Lord: that the Church has been
created by God because of this very prompting of interest
in and desire for companionship for His Son.
If you look at the Lord
Jesus in the days in which He was here, you cannot fail
to see how He longed for fellowship. Perhaps one of the
saddest words that ever came from Him was - "Ye...
shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the
Father is with me" (John 16:32). But while that did
not qualify His utterance or in any way make it a
comparative thing, there was something of sadness about
His word "I am alone." It is quite clear that
He was always seeking companionship. He was a Man and He
had the sense of this need of others, or another. It is a
Divine thing. There is something about Christ which calls
for fellowship - and it is a wonderful thing how the New
Testament takes up that word "fellowship." What
a rich word it is! I wish you would just get down to your
concordance, which will give you this word
"fellowship" in the original. You will find in
that word alone a wealth of study and meditation,
something very precious indeed. "Ye were called into
the fellowship of his Son" (1 Cor. 1:9).
Well, that is, to begin
with, the thought, the idea, of marital union:
companionship or fellowship. Fellowship, in the first
place, before companionship: just fellowship, that is
all. The first note, the predominant note, in this
relationship is simply fellowship.
What is fellowship?
Well, fellowship is identity of life and purpose. Christ
wanted those with Him in identity of life and identity of
purpose, one heart with His heart; and you and I have
been called into such a relationship. It is high, it is
holy, it is precious that you and I should supply the
Lord Jesus with a deep heart desire and longing for those
who shall be in identification with His life and His
purpose. That is all we will say for the moment, but that
is the first step in the meaning of marital union.
Companionship seems to
me to go just a little further even than that, or to add
an extra feature - for companionship, while certainly
including what we have just said about fellowship, is the
mutual complement, where each one makes up what is
lacking in the other, each one makes a contribution to
the other and fulfills the other; and it seems very
wonderful - for that word in Ephesians, "the
fullness of him" (Eph. 1:22), is the
"complement" of Him, the "making
full" of Him, the "making complete" of
Christ - it seems marvelous that the Church could give
something to Christ to make Him complete. It sounds like
heresy to say it, yet there it is. It is clearly stated
that there is a heritage which He has in the Church. What
is "his inheritance in the saints"? It is
something that the Church has to give to Him. I am not
stopping to say what that is. It is a statement of fact
that the Lord sees the Church as able to give Him
something, provide Him with something - an opportunity,
an occasion, a vessel, a means, a way - something which
otherwise He has not got but which He must have. Well, we
are here on this earth to be for Christ what He needs
here. And as for His giving us anything, that goes
without saying.
So, then, companionship
is a making good from one to the other, the filling up,
the complement of each other. That is the marital
relationship. This is the heavenly idea of marriage.
The
Vindication of Christ by the Family
And then we find that,
in the creation of this relationship at the beginning, it
was that they together might be a vessel, one vessel, to
contain the great trust of LIFE. It is not a
mechanical thing and it is not just a doctrinal,
ecclesiastical, formal or legal thing. It is a vital
thing. That is, it is a matter of life. And so this life
was to express itself and with them together, the deposit
of this sacred trust of life. That Satan captured that
trust, and has captured that trust ever since, is
perhaps, the deepest tragedy and catastrophe in the whole
history of the human race. Oh, today, the awful tragedy
of propagation! That is a terrible story. The trust of
life, the trust of transmitting that life, was a sacred
and holy trust to be guarded solemnly for God - and Satan
captured it.
Passing from the type
to the antitype, you see this trust is between Christ and
His Church as the Bridegroom and the bride, as the
Husband and the wife, this wonderful trust of spiritual
propagation, spiritual increase. Where there are no souls
being born something has gone wrong. The whole Divine
idea has broken down, and where there is no concern and
desire about it, something has gone wrong. Need I say anymore? We are brought by our marriage relationship to
Christ into a most solemn and sacred trust of being the
vehicle by which He shall see His seed and be satisfied.
He is vindicated in His family. His life is vindicated.
In Isaiah 53 you notice that His being cut off from the
earth, having His name cut off, having His being cut off,
the whole story of the determination to bring an end to
Him, and of the effort of Satan to cut off His seed, is
written there; but then the statement is, "he shall
see his seed." Good Friday is past and Easter Day is
here - and He shall see His seed. Blessed be God, He can
already see it in the earth in some measure. It will be
"a great multitude which no man can number," no
man CAN number. Men can count pretty high; but
they shall not be able to number His seed. It will be as
the stars of the heaven, as the sand of the seashore. He
is vindicated by His seed; Christ is vindicated by the
salvation of souls. Christ is vindicated by the Church
being the vessel and the instrument of His
self-realization in that way. Did you notice how the
statement in Romans 7 finished? "Joined to
another... that we might bring forth fruit unto
God."
The
Ultimate Spiritual Union
With one very brief
return to the point with which we started, we will close.
Here is the legal, and here is how the legal ought to
work out to the spiritual - to the spiritual union which
is ultimate. The end of this thing is seen in the
marriage supper of the Lamb. This means that the legal
union has been fulfilled to the utmost, that these two
are not only in this legal relationship as husband and
wife, legally married and that is all there is to it.
They are now more and more and ever more being married,
if we may put it that way; they are growing into one
another. The fellowship is dependent, the mutual
contribution is increasing. One is becoming ever more to
the other and the other to the one, and at last there is
this bridal company "following the Lamb
whithersoever He goeth," without a demur, without a
question, without any rebellion, without any
insubordination. The thing is to be eventually a
spiritual fullness of oneness. That, of course, is how
earthly married life ought to be if it is after the
heavenly pattern - just a growing into each other,
becoming incapable of getting on without each other,
until at last there is such a merging that nothing
whatever of difference or distance remains; it is
complete unity.
That is the marriage
supper, I think. "His wife hath made herself
ready": that is, something has happened that has got
rid of the final disparity. There is still a lot of
disparity between us and our Lord, a lot of
unsubmissiveness even now, a lot to be overcome in us
even as His Church, His wife, a lot to be done in us; but
we seek that that shall be accomplished. We yield and we
want to yield, and we want to come to the place where
there is no more question at all: where it is utter,
unquestioning yieldedness to Him Who has not only
captured but captivated us completely; and that is the
marriage supper of the Lamb, as I understand it. It is a
spiritual thing - the consummation of a legal
relationship.