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THE PURITY AND PERFECTION OF THE BRIDE OF CHRIST [Part 2]

In Part 1 we learned that the Lord’s perfect Bride must be comprised of perfect people and that this “perfection” is defined as being fully spiritually mature.

THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS [MATTHEW 25]

This is a story about hopeful brides-to-be. There is a bridegroom which means there will be a wedding. There will also be a wedding feast. The Lord mentions ten hopeful young ladies who are already very well prepared because each are chaste virgins. This illustrates their purity.

Each of these young ladies has an oil lamp. In Scripture, oil represents spiritual anointing. Also, the oil lamps allow for light which represents the Light of the Lord which every believer must possess in order to access and remain on the spiritual path and travel it properly. Yet the lamps are no good without oil. In the Book of Acts, the early believers were filled with the Holy Spirit. After one’s glorious initial infilling there had to be additional refreshings of the Spirit of God at ongoing intervals to remain strong and effective in and for the Lord.

Now, though each of the ten virgins had the required oil lamp, only five of them were prudent enough to consider possible future implications and made the wise decision to bring additional oil in flasks. For the sake of the story, the additional oil they brought would not only be necessary but sufficient. This indicates that the Lord’s people must be ever prudent and always allow for additional oil as required throughout their lives. Sure enough, as it happened, the bridegroom was delayed. Instead of arriving at the expected customary hour he would not arrive until later on in the middle of the night. While waiting the ten young ladies grew drowsy and then fell asleep.

We know what happens next. There was suddenly a shout: “Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” Upon waking up amid all the hurried excitement the foolish virgins saw that their lamps were running very low on oil and were about to fail! “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” “No, there will not be enough for us and you too.” “Sorry!” They had no choice but to rush off to the oil dealer.

Though well-prepared in spiritual purity they were ill-prepared in spiritual maturity.

While the foolish virgins were gone the prudent virgins finished trimming their lamps and began using the additional oil in their flasks. The long delay outside the wedding venue was finally over. The five wise virgins were overjoyed! The bridegroom! He is here! And those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast. It was the beginning of great celebration and joy.

And then the door was shut. There would be no further admittance.

The saddest part of this entire parable was what the bridegroom said when the foolish virgins returned and saw the closed door. They began fearfully calling out to the bridegroom to let them in. “Lord, lord, open up for us.” Remember, they had spent their entire young lives making the disciplined choices to remain pure and ready in preparation for this day. They had originally brought full oil lamps. They had done so many things right. Yet in the end it was all for naught.

“Truly I say to you, I do not know you.”

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Tags: Bride of Christ, Bridegroom, Church, Community of the Called-Out Ones, Discipleship, Jesus is the Light, Keep Your Lamp Filled With Oil, Light of God, Lord Jesus, Parable of the Ten Virgins, Real Christianity The Nature of the Church, Spiritual Maturity, The Great Awakening, Unreal Christianity

THE PURITY AND PERFECTION OF THE BRIDE OF CHRIST [Part 1]

Sep 23

Posted by RJ Dawson

The Bride of the Lord Jesus is comprised of every real Christian believer. Each member must therefore possess the same purity and perfection as the Bride.

THIS MYSTERY IS GREAT

In several of the Apostle Paul’s epistles he refers to what he calls a great mystery regarding the Body of Christ: He says that it is made up of every believer. Imagine that. This means that every real Christian, the only ones who qualify, are each a part of the Lord’s Body, which is also referred to as the Church. Of course, the Church is not a building. The Lord and the writers of the New Testament never refer to it in that way. Such an error arose a few centuries later as so many other errors have. No, the Church is the Community of the Lord. It is from the Greek word ekklesia which is defined by Strong’s as: A gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place; an assembly. Regarding its application to Christianity, the word refers to “The Community of the Called-Out Ones.” That is, each member has been called out from being a former sinful member of this fallen world to be a member of the Lord’s overall Community—His Church.

These words are therefore synonymous—Ekklesia (the Hebrew word is Qahal), Church, Called-Out Community, and Body of Christ. These are all terms which refer to the total collection of every real believer though there is yet another term—the Bride of Christ. Regarding the Lord’s Bride, Scripture states very clearly that His Bride will be perfect, pure, and holy:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. [Ephesians 5:25-27]

She will be spiritually beautiful. She will be as Eve, the last of God’s Creation, the wife of Adam and the first woman, as she was in her perfect state before her fall into sin. She was, of course, originally beautiful and perfect in every way. And as the Lord Jesus is referred to in the New Testament as the Last Adam—an absolutely perfect and sinless Man and one who replaced the First Adam who fell into sin, so will the Bride of Christ be the perfect and pure Woman who replaces fallen Eve.

Since this is true (again, a great mystery), we must therefore consider how it is possible for the Bride of Christ to be pure and perfect since she is composed of seemingly imperfect human believers. Nevertheless, it must follow that each member thereof must also be pure and perfect:

“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matthew 5:48] [1]

And there you have it. The Lord commands His followers to be perfect. He raises the standard to the nth degree. He says each one of His real followers (believers, disciples, members of His Community) must be as perfect as God the Father. Now, how in the world is this possible, you may ask? No one can be like God! This word, however, does not mean perfection in our sense of the word but has a different connotation. It is from the Greek word τέλειος téleios (tel’-i-os) and is defined as “Complete (in various applications of labor, growth, mental and moral character, etc.); completeness:—of full age, man, perfect.” It is further defined as “brought to its end, finished; lacking nothing necessary to completeness; perfect.” The word essentially means to be fully spiritually mature.

Now, in light of all that Christianity in general has become over the last twenty centuries in that the vast majority of what is known as Christianity is nothing at all like the first-century AD original—the only correct and perfect version and the prototype—one must understand that all the corrupted impure versions put together in total worldwide comprises overall Unreal Christianity. This massive amalgam, of course, is also comprised of people who can only also be described as unreal Christians. And if you may be wondering how the New Testament defines a real Christian in the most simple of terms, it is one who has submitted completely to the absolute Lordship of King Jesus and does his or her best to honor and obey Him, to incorporate His full curriculum, to love Him with all one’s heart, mind, and strength and love one’s neighbor as oneself.

The real Christian is also a lifelong disciple seeking to become fully mature and complete, or “perfect” as the Lord commanded. This means any Christian who does not fulfill these basic precepts cannot be for real. I say this because any Christian who gives it his or her all will get there with the Lord’s help. The Lord will see to it. This means we are talking about a heart condition in which one’s heart must be circumcised to the Lord. One must be born again. One must become a new creation. No one can achieve these things without the Lord’s direct ongoing assistance, of course, and without all the work He did and fulfilled during His earthly ministry to make it possible.

Remember, the Lord was so committed to our salvation and welfare that He submitted to the brutality and suffering of the cross, without which we would all go to hell and have no chance. He was certainly perfect and had certainly been fully spiritually mature and because of this He had the greatest beneficial effect on this sinful world—the only One who ever did or ever will—which means every single person who ever lived is pretty much absolutely nothing by comparison no matter how great one may think one is, and each needs Him as Savior or else.

The relative few who do join up with Him actually achieve the greatness He created them for, become the persons He created them to be, and live lives of spiritual abundance and achievement per the Lord’s definition though not without successful spiritual warfare.

Each also finds his or her place within the Bride of Christ.

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