Marriage and the End Times

As most of you know, I took this beautiful woman as my bride on the tenth of this month. It's impossible to get married without doing some reflection, unless you're in Vegas. We were not, so I spent some quality time thinking it all through. God used that time to teach me some tremendous truths about Himself, His relationship with us, and the Second Coming of Christ. I know it probably sounds strange that I would learn about the Second Coming by reflecting on marriage, but keep reading and hopefully you'll understand.

The most obvious thing that was apparent to me about God in this whole process was His grace. By giving me Micah, He gave me a gift more precious than I could have ever thought to ask for. It is clear to both of us that He has been preparing us for each other throughout our whole lives up to this point. Even when neither of us knew that the other existed, He was graciously and lovingly working to mold each of us to match the other. He was laboring meticulously to bring us joy while we sat blindly unaware. What a great God He is to give us so much when we deserve nothing more than to die in our sin.

But God has also helped me to understand that this gift of each other has a higher purpose, which is to paint a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Ephesians 5:22-33 has more to say about marriage than I have time to comment on right now, but the key verse is 32: "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church." The "mystery" here is marriage. When Christ came and gave himself up for those whom he would eternally save we found out what marriage had meant all along. Marriage was established by God in the garden of Eden and throughout all humanity to give us a picture of how Christ loves those whom he saves. This fact not only helps me to praise God for what He has done to save us, but also gives me a life-long challenge of making our marriage conform to its antecedent. It is my job to love Micah "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." (Eph. 5:25-27)

It was by thinking through this picture in the weeks leading up to the wedding, reading more Scripture, and considering my personal experience of it all that I gained a much greater understanding of the eschatological nature of marriage, particularly the wedding itself. I had a special advantage over most men in this thought process in that Micah and I have always been a long-distance couple. As the wedding drew close and closer I yearned more and more for her to be with me in a final sense, but she was still hundreds of miles away. The promise of having this woman whom I loved so much finally coming to live with me was so fantastic that a part of me had trouble believing that it could ever come to fruition. But the days kept passing, and before I knew it I was standing at the steps of the sanctuary watching my bride dressed in spotless white walking toward me to become mine for as long as we both shall live. We pledged our love and devotion to each other in a covenant before God, and she came at last to live in my house.

In the same way, the Church is the bride of Christ, yet the groom is not yet here. We are already his, but we have not yet experienced the fullness of his love by dwelling with him in person. We are in a sort of long-distance relationship with our Savior. As we wait for Christ's return we are waiting for the greatest wedding of all time, the wedding about which all other weddings were created. We have been apart from Christ for so long that it seems like it can't be true that he will ever return, but we also know that his promise is true. There will be a day when he will come upon the clouds and greet us face to face. We will all stand before the great white throne, and those whom he has washed whiter than snow with his blood will be separated from those covered in filth. Then he will take us, the Church, as his bride and live with us in person for eternity in the New Jerusalem.

Not only does this wedding image make sense, but there is ample language in the New Testament to show us that it is God's intent. In the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25, the coming of Christ is announced as, "Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him," and is pictured as a wedding feast in which Christ marries the wise virgins. The kingdom of heaven is also pictured as a wedding feast in Matthew 22 and it's synoptic parallels. Perhaps the most clear reference is in Revelation 19:6-9, where the Second Coming is unmistakably referred to at length as a wedding. "Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure--for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints" (7-8). It's not hard to see from all this that God made human weddings as a picture of Christ's future return.

Of course all this is fun an exciting for Christians to think about, but it also taught me a lot about what our attitude toward the Second Coming should be. I have never looked forward to anything as much as I looked forward to marrying Micah, and I probably never will again (although I'm sure the birth of a child in a few years will come close). God gave me a firm conviction that my longing for Christ's return ought to be even greater than my longing was to take Micah as my wife. Surely Christ himself is yearning to win the final victory over death and dwell with us forever; we ought likewise to yearn for the same thing. Our Savior, who is near in Spirit but far in his resurrected body, will soon come to live with us forever. We should follow his lead in praying with fervor daily, "Thy kingdom come!"