THE BRIDE
[p. 451] THE BRIDE
The subject I desire to speak on is the bride, the relationship in which the church is to Christ. The marriage is the display of the relationship. I have read the passage where we get the word ‘bride’. The body is of Christ, properly “the Christ”. I desire to show you the nature of our relationship, and how it is known, before the marriage takes place. Before the marriage it is said, “his wife hath made herself ready”, Revelation 19: 7. The epistle to the Ephesians could not be effectual if we did not know union. “But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body as it hath pleased him”. The epistle to the Ephesians is that you might know that you are united to Him; it is conscious knowledge. Every believer is united to Christ in heaven, but the apostle prays that they may know it. You cannot understand the relationship of the bride until you know union. You cannot be in that peculiar concert with Christ which the name of bride expresses. If you say the bride is only future, you ignore the words, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come”, which is present, though it is after the marriage in Revelation 19 that she takes her place publicly with Him.
There are three stages to be passed through (I use the word ‘stages’ for want of a better) before you are conscious of union with Christ. It is a matter of the deepest moment, for if known it would have a wonderful effect on us here. When I know that I am united to Christ I am so identified with His interests that they are paramount with me. Few know it. Every distinct truth has its own characteristic. Christians in general are characterised by the knowledge of Christ as their Saviour; they praise God for the blessings [p. 452] of salvation, but the leading characteristic of union is, that your individuality is merged in Christ; you belong entirely to another. The bride is merged in the Bridegroom.
As to the three stages, turn to 1 Peter 3: 18 for the first: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”. I need hardly say much about this stage, but the point is, that the man under judgment has been removed in judgment, and you are brought to God. All that stood against you has been cleared away to God’s infinite satisfaction, and you are brought to God, and like the prodigal son, you are at home in the Father’s house. The Son of God has accomplished this great work. You must know this first. Here you must begin. There is a grievous leaven in Christendom, a great defect in preaching the gospel. Christ’s death is presented to the soul after the manner of the sacrifices under the law, where the pious Jew found relief for his immediate sins, but he still retained the flesh which is enmity against God. The illustration of a man pressed for the army, and finding a substitute to stand in his stead is not the gospel. The gospel is that you were under the judgment of death, and that Christ, the Son of God, has borne that judgment, not that you should keep the man who was under judgment, but that you should be completely severed from him in Christ’s death. The being who sinned must go in judgment. It is not renouncing your bad works; every Christian would be ready for that. Are you ready to see all that is nice and amiable in you under the judgment of God?
It is an immense moment to your soul when you learn that you are crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that Goliath is not driven away, but dead, judicially ended, and therefore cannot be righteously revived; there is no reviving of it on God’s side, “There is no more offering for sin”.
[p. 453] You ask, Do I not sin? Yes, but there is no more offering for sin. If you do not judge Yourself for reviving what He has judged and condemned, He will judge you; the thing that did the sin will suffer for the sin; hence in Corinthians we find a man delivered “unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh”. As God has got rid of that man in the cross, He will not tolerate him in you. “Our God is a consuming fire”. The man who was under the judgment of God has been judicially terminated in the cross, and the Man Christ Jesus so glorified God in the most distant spot, that He was “raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father”. He is glorified, and now God is free to go out to the most distant spot, to a Saul of Tarsus, and receive him to Himself.
The next thing is, Is the man who was under the judgment of God, and who is gone from God’s eye in the cross, gone from your side? Read Romans 5: 12 to the end. It is not only that you believe that God has raised Christ from the dead, and that you are on the field of battle as clear as Christ is. “As he is, so are we in this world”. Jonathan was in the victory of David on the battlefield, so are you in the acceptance of Christ who fought the battle. Now it is no longer a question of your sins, but of sin in you. How are you free, “free from sin”? Romans 6: 22. You have died with Christ. You have changed your man; you have passed from Adam to Christ. You have died with Him who died and you are in Him who is risen. Hence in chapter 6 we are told, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus”. Most beautiful! There you touch life, the abounding grace for the first time; you touch it for relief; that is liberty; hence in chapter 8: 2 we read, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. You have the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the second Man. You are free. “Stand [p. 454] fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”.
Now we read, “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”, Romans 8: 13. For years I was distressed; I had not this liberty, although I knew I was fully clear in God’s eye. At length I found that I was trying to improve the flesh, instead of walking in the Spirit. If you are walking in the Spirit you are outside the flesh; it is “mortify the deeds of the body”; take no notice of the flesh, walk outside of it. I do not say mortify the body, as a monk would do, but mortify the deeds of the body. You are under another rule; like Jonah in the whale’s belly; he was alive, but under the will of another. The Christian is under Christ’s rule, and glad to be so. In the Spirit you are experimentally and practically clear of the flesh. I do not say you will not have conflict, but “walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”. If you do not walk in the Spirit you will walk in the flesh. If you are under the government of Christ you will be directed by Him. If you are walking in the Spirit, you fulfil all your duties to your fellows in divine power. In Romans nothing is said of your family, but in Ephesians, where you are viewed as united to Christ in heaven, you come out in your family, in every relationship, in the grace of Christ. The nearer you are to God the better you maintain the ordinances of God.
So far is the first stage. Now I turn to the second stage. “For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren”, Hebrews 2: 11. If you have changed your man, if you are severed by death from the first man, you are in the life of the Man by whom you have been severed, and it ought to be easy to accept that you are of one stock, if I may so say, with Christ, “all of one”. This is not union. In Hebrews we have nothing about union, but there [p. 455] is companionship; and for it, as well as for union, there must be the same kindred, one stock. There was only one thing Abraham’s servant was sworn to, in seeking a wife for Isaac, that she must be of the same lineage. It is not only that the first man is ended, but nothing that is not of Christ could be in company with Christ. We come from Him; we do not add anything to him, we derive from Him; He could not be complete without His body; the body derives from Himself, the complement of Himself, the display of Him. Every beauty of Christ will come out in the church; you are a bit, and I am a bit. Nothing that is not of Christ could be united to Him.
It is an immense thing to lay hold of the truth, that we derive from Christ, it is necessary even for companionship. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”, or many grains; John 12: 24. The grains are of His own order. Thus you understand what Christ Himself is. The divisions among us all spring from not understanding the mystery, and the nature of Christ; they are intimately connected. If you do not understand the nature of Christ, you do not understand the nature of His body. Some lose sight of the Lord as Man; each member of His body is of His order. The first error in Plymouth at the first division was the idea that the church was to go through the judgments; and the result of this was that Christ was said to go through all the experiences of the remnant in the Psalms, and this disclosed heresy as to Christ’s nature. His body is identified with Him. When Christ moves His body moves; when He moves from the throne, the church moves; she is then removed from this scene. The moment He moves off the throne, Christian blessings will cease. I do not say there will be no more conversions, but the church period as a parenthesis will end;
[p. 456] church ministry ceases, and all not of Christ in Christendom is spued out of His mouth.
The next division was caused by the denial virtually that Christ bore the judgment of God. It was asserted that when He died He did not give up the life to which sin could be attached (i.e., as a sin-offering), and this was culpable ignorance of His nature. Years after, it was maintained that an offence done to the church was not an offence done to the Head. The plea for this perversion was that if you say so you make the church equal to Christ. The truth is that you must not separate them; we have no idea of the evil working of this leaven.
The last division was caused by those who insisted that eternal life was given to the man here on believing, which is really on the same principle as under the law: “This do and thou shalt live”. They did not see that, as the man under judgment has gone in judgment, you must be severed from the man under death by Christ’s death, in order to be brought into life in Him. In a word that the life did not come to the man under judgment, but that the man who was under judgment being delivered from it in Christ’s death, has life, not in himself but in Christ; Christ is his life.
In Romans you are dead to sin, and to the old man; you touch life for your own relief. But in Colossians you have died with Christ to the world, you are outside of everything here, outside of the place where the man is, and you come to where there is nothing but Christ: “neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all” — Christ only. Then you know the Head; there is no human voice. What a moment for the soul!
“Where only Christ is heard to speak,
Where Jesus reigns alone”.
[p. 457] Now for the third stage turn to Ephesians 1: 19. The first fourteen verses show how you are made fit to be united to Christ, as Rebecca was by lineage and grace made fit for Isaac, and then was conducted by the steward to the presence of Isaac. It is the Holy Spirit who conducts you to the presence of Christ: verses 18, 19, “that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power”; that is conscious knowledge. In the purpose of God we are all raised up with Christ. As the feathers in a bird all go up together. The beauty of Christ should be exhibited by the church on earth. The apostle says, “to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ”. We have seen in Romans that you are clear of the man under judgment, and are of the second Man, Christ; but that is not union. In Hebrews you are of His lineage, and companions with Him. He comes to you in the lowest spot and bears you up to the brightest spot, the holiest of all, in company with Himself; but that is not union. You do not get to heaven in Hebrews, and you cannot be united till you are brought to the place where He is, raised up together with Him. I see it with delight of heart, it is delightful to get a glimpse of it. Would that I were more in it, and that I could convey it better!
In Genesis 2, God took a rib out of Adam, and out of it He builded a woman. Then He brought her unto the man. If you make the bride only future, you know nothing of the great results of union now. You are united to Christ by the Spirit and you are brought into conscious knowledge of that union by the Spirit. I cannot conceive anything more explicit than the type; He “brought her unto the man. And [p. 458] Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man”. I say to every soul here, Have you been brought to Christ where Christ is? The servant conducted Rebecca to the place where Isaac was. If you do not know union with Christ in heaven, you cannot come out in the power of the heavenly Man to act for Him on earth, to be descriptive of Him. You cannot be heavenly by effort. Many seek to be heavenly by prayer, reading the word, devotedness, but the only pathway to it is to be brought by the Spirit to realise union with Christ. You are heavenly by union. In Colossians you are outside earth, but not in heaven. In Ephesians you are in heaven where He is. What was Eve’s thought when her eye first rested on Adam? To be brought to Christ in glorified bodies is future, but we are brought to Him now by the Spirit. The prayer in Ephesians 3 is to bring you into the realisation of it; “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man”.
“And see the Spirit’s power,
Hath ope’d the heavenly door,
And brought me to that favoured hour
When toil shall all be o’er”. (74:5)
Then follows the effect of union. The first is, “That Christ may dwell in your heart by faith”. You have the Christ the Guest of your heart. It is “by faith”, not by sight. Your individuality is merged. Does it not fill you with rapture and delight? Next, you are brought to scan the range of His glory, to “comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height”. And lastly, to crown all, to “know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge”. I lament that I know so little of it, but I have an exquisite sense of the depth of that eternal love which has brought me into any knowledge of it.
You are called to act for Christ now in three [p. 459] spheres. The first sphere is the assembly; Christ is your Head; you endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace;. you seek the edifying of the body. The second sphere is your own house, the domestic circle, all comes under the heavenly rule. And thirdly you confront the whole force of Satan, you are called to stand against the wiles of the devil. You could not stand unless you were in Christ’s power. All the power of Satan is against the heavenly man; you must put on the whole armour of God to stand. The armour of God is for the heavenly man. Some speak and write of the armour who have not put it on. You have not put on the armour of God unless you confront the foe in the place from which Satan will be expelled, the heavenlies.
May the Lord enlighten us to understand something of the unspeakable blessedness of the relationship of bride! It is only in the sense of that relationship that you can say to the Lord, “Come”. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come”.