ANOTHER BRIDEGROOM

There is a sly and sneaky thing that can happen to us in our minds and in our thinking. It is the ability to be led astray from Jesus for another Jesus. The other can be much less, or much more, than the real Jesus. Western thinking invariably makes Him much more, at least in explanation and instruction. Our making Him only God and not man as well makes him much less.

To be led away for another is infidelity, unfaithfulness, and making another choice. This is the way Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 11:1-4, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin” (v.2). What a loving picture. The people are viewed not as they were before, not as dragging sins into their relationship with Christ, but as ‘pure virgins.’ They are promised as a fitting bride for the bridegroom. We are made the same promise. We are given over to the real Jesus as spotless and clean. No past, no regret and no other. We are His and He is ours. The wedding scene, or marriage partners, is one of the apostle Paul’s ways to describe the union we have with Christ.

When we know… we stand, hear and rejoice.

“The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete.” Jesus