14 minute read
Bridegroom
from Penn Epistle: I AM
by Penn Epistle
The Immutability of God
BEN ZEISLOFT
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God—the Creator of the cosmos—is wholly sufficient within Himself.. God needs no creature to satisfy Him or provide Him with anything. However, God willingly places Himself into debt with His creatures— particularly with His covenant people, whom He has promised to save through His mercy and grace.
How can we be assured that God will keep His promise? Because God is immutable. He does not change.
Believers can laud the immutability of our God in many respects. For one, God has an unchanging life (1 Timothy 6:16). For another, God has an unchanging character (James 1:17). These truths are precious and worthy of great consideration. Yet for those who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, the immutability of God is the guarantor of our coming salvation—the unwavering assurance that He who began a good work in us will indeed “bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
Let us first consider the folly of placing hope in a god that changes.
The prophet Isaiah describes a man who takes part of a tree and uses it for a fire, then takes the other part and fashions an idol (Isaiah 44:15). Yet the tree itself needed rainwater for its nourishment (Isaiah 44:14), and the cutting tool used to create the idol likewise needed to be created (Isaiah 44:12). The man then bows before the idol—made of perishable materials and without even a hint of life—and declares, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:17).
Isaiah notes that the idolater is without “knowledge or discernment, ” as well as “deluded” (Isaiah 44:18–20). By his unrighteousness he suppresses the truth (Romans 1:18), and he is given over to destruction for worshiping and serving “the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” (Romans 1:25).
Men and women throughout the ages have believed in mutable gods. The deities of ancient Greek mythology were constantly squabbling with one another; some were consumed by their own fathers, and others attained divinity by their good deeds. In our own day, Mormon cosmology posits that God the Father was once a human who reached exaltation via moral excellence. “As man now is, God once was, ” said Latter Day Saint church leader Lorenzo Snow. “As God now is, man may
be.
Unlike idols of metal and wood, the living God has life in Himself. He has no need of a Creator—He was, He is, and He always will be.
This truth is glorious news for His people, who have been promised adoption to Himself “ according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:5–6). God is not like men, who waver on their commitments in response to inconvenience, weakness, or changes of mind and heart. Rather, God’ s gifts and callings are irrevocable—on the perfectly sufficient basis of His promises. “I the Lord do not change, ” God says. “Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6).
Sinners in need of a Savior are consistently reassured by the immutability of Jesus Christ..
The Lord Jesus Christ—the Son of God and Son of Man, truly divine and truly human—lived a perfect life, died on the Cross, and rose to life three days later. Today, He is seated at the right hand of the Father Almighty. And therein is our life: “hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).
In His resurrection, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and
today and forever ” (Hebrews 13:8). He is therefore
“ able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them ” (Hebrews 7:25). He is “ a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain ” (Hebrews 6:19).
Christians gladly and wholeheartedly affirm that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Sinners can be reconciled to God by grace alone. Jesus Christ is God, and He promises, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).
Despite our weaknesses, temptations, and indwelling sins, the Good Shepherd will bring all of His sheep into the fold. He lacks no power to do so, and He has promised irrevocably to finish the good work He has inaugurated in His people. Our salvation rests not in ourselves—if it did, we would have already been lost.
“I hang by a thread,
” said Puritan minister Samuel Rutherford,
“but it is of Christ’ s spinning.
Repent of your sins and cling to Jesus—He never changes, and He will never fail you.
My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus ' blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame But wholly lean on Jesus ' name
On Christ the solid Rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand All other ground is sinking sand
— Edward Mote
By the time this piece is published in print, I will have been married for several months. My fiancé and I are both in our very early twenties, just about to graduate college—and I am certain that some of my readers may count our decision to marry at this point in our lives as very strange, if not outright crazy. Why settle now, when we both still have so much life to live, so many new people to meet and date, and so little practical experience? Why put my single years to rest so prematurely and lay down my mantle of complete freedom when my adult life has really only just begun?
I think that such anxieties arise only from the notion that marriage is an unpleasant burden to bear for the sake of familial and societal stability; or even that it’ s a restrictive, antiquated creature, which is only still around because we haven 1 ’t yet been able to fully replace the shackles of lifelong monogamy with the sexual liberation of either serial monogamy or sleeping around. Or perhaps, on top of all this baggage, marriage oppresses the women who get roped into it.
Why, if marriage is so confining, would an educated, modern young woman commit to it?
All of time both begins and ends with a marriage. The familiar Genesis narrative in which Adam and Eve are united as one is of course placed in the very beginning of the biblical narrative: soon after his creation, Adam realizes that there are no other creatures like him, and so he seeks the “bone of [his] bones and flesh of [his] flesh” (Genesis 2:23b) [1]. The text depicts the Lord God forming Eve from Adam ’ s own rib, and thus, the first marriage is established, as indicated by the following verse: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
In the very act of Creation, then, the Lord had marriage in mind, a union closer than any other earthly union—husband and wife becoming one flesh—and the only one unarguably depicted as being established before the fall of man into sin in Genesis 3. All the things we know were set in motion by this beautiful union, just as time as we experience it was created in the same fell swoop as God created everything. However, the fallen world as we know it was set into motion by their sin, and because of this sin and the resulting death, the world needed a gracious Savior.
And so Jesus Christ, in complete, utter, self-giving submission to God the Father, died on the Cross and rose from the dead in great triumph over the same death which the first couple caused—and which we every day partake in through our own sin—and so we can be forgiven. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says of His coming crucifixion, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39b; emphasis supplied). This wondrous sacrifice and Christ’ s eventual victory are not the end of the Lord’ s narrative of creation to redemption, however—Jesus promises that He will one day return and establish His Kingdom on earth in renewal of all His creation. The Church’ s relationship to her Savior is one of complete and utter devotion, just as Jesus Himself was devoted to the will of the Father in Gethsemane. It is one of abnegation and love; in fact, it is as a marital relationship. There are many sections of the New Testament in which the writers—some of Jesus ’ earliest followers, guided by the Holy Spirit— refer to the Church’ s relationship with her Lord as a marital one [2]. For instance, when asked why Christ’ s followers did not fast, His response was that it would not be appropriate for them to fast while the Bridegroom—Himself—was with them in the flesh (Mark 2:19, Luke 5:34–35, Matthew 9:15). Jesus also expressed several parables in terms of the marital relationship.
Jesus Christ, Our Merciful Bridegroom… An Eternal Wedding Feast for the Ages
AVERY JOHNSTON
[1] Note that whether or not one believes there to have been an actual historical Adam and Eve, the broader point still stands that the Lord’ s Word marks, at least metaphorically, the beginning of time with a wedding.
[2] It is also significant that there is similar language even in the Old Testament, in which Israel in her sin and disobedience of the Lord is called whoredom (see Ezekiel 16 and much of Hosea, especially chapters 1, 2, and 4, as well as Isaiah 62 for more marital language). His people turned their backs on the Lord God and instead worshiped false idols and other gods, as an adulterous spouse turns their back on their husband or wife and engages in relations with another man or woman with whom they are not in covenantal relationship.
He says,
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come ” (Matthew 22:2-3), and:
The five wise virgins are let into the wedding feast, but the five foolish virgins are not, as they could not arrive in time due to their untrimmed lamps. Such parables urge one to be faithful to our Bridegroom, because if we too are like the five foolish virgins and neglect to love and believe in our Lord, we will not be permitted into His wedding feast as His holy Bride.
When our Lord Jesus returns, therefore, our relationship with Him will be fully consummated; we, His Bride, will be made new, washed oh so mercifully clean of our sins, and therefore put into perfect union with Him, just as a bride is completely united to her earthly husband. Revelation 19 illustrates this wonderfully:
A beautiful, eternal wedding feast… if wedding feasts on this earth are so full of rejoicing, love, and devotion, imagine how breathtaking—how infinitely moving!—the feast of marriage to our eternal Bridegroom will be. How romantic this notion makes all of life… we are humbly awaiting the return of our glorious, kingly Groom, and we can strive to live in a manner which honors Him in His fleshly absence from us, just as married women strive to please and honor their husbands. This is the conclusion of the biblical narrative; it is the telos toward which the rest of time drives. To think that the Son of God loves us as the perfect Husband… oh, how much we should yearn to love Him as well! Please, in Your great mercy, help us to love You more deeply, my God, that we may enjoy Your sweetness forever.
As if this truth of boundless beauty could somehow be made yet more miraculous, we have an earthly representation of this divine union in the one-flesh union of marriage between a man and a woman, established in the very beginning of biblical time. It is not only the one-flesh, self-giving nature of the earthly marital relationship which signifies the relationship between Christ and His Church, but it is also the nature of this interaction. That is: both parties—man and woman—are called to live out the roles of Christ and the Church, respectively, in marriage. This means that a husband is a sort of mirror of Christ in that he loves his wife faithfully and without condition, and a wife is a sort of mirror of the Church in that she obeys and submits to her husband (just as the Church obeys and submits to Jesus out of love for Him).
Upon first hearing this teaching, many misunderstand it to be despotic, or at least anti-woman—and I don
’t deny that it is often a difficult pill to swallow for Christians, non-Christians, and the questioning alike—but I hold that it in fact could not be more beautiful and gentle of a teaching. Ephesians 5:22–24, for instance, commands this: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands, ” but Ephesians 5:25–27 also commands this: “Husbands, love your wives, 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.
This relationship is wonderful because it is a relationship, meaning that it is a two-way street. Moreover, it gives both parties the opportunity to love their spouse more than themselves in the way that is applicable to their respective natures. Wives indeed are called to submit to their husbands as they do to their Savior, and husbands are likewise called to love their wives as their Savior loves them.
All I wanted for a very long while was to be successful on the world’ s terms. I wanted to be as independent as possible, to divorce myself from any authority—especially male authority—and to make a great name for myself. I learned very quickly that this way led to personal misery. Not only was I striving to throw off the identity which the Lord had given me as a woman, and therefore as one called to submit, but I was also striving to please everyone but Him and so always, always failing. I came to love Christ, and began to recognize my proud heart.
Now, out of the kindness of my God, the greatest desire of my heart is to learn to love Him more—and one of the most significant ways I can do so is by loving, and so respecting and submitting to, my earthly husband. This is not because he abuses me or because I think that I as a woman am less than a man in the sight of the Lord, but because I want to live in imitation of my precious, precious Savior, who obeyed God the Father to death on the Cross. Further, we as Christians—especially as Christian women—ought not to desire earthly authority. I want to live this way in the full expectation that Jesus will one day return and become our eternal Husband… how endlessly wonderful is our abiding Beloved.
Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, "Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him. ” — Matthew 25:1-6
"Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. 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. And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb" — Revelation 19:6b-9a
As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. — Isaiah 62:5
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. ” And He said, “Say this to
the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you. ’”
— Exodus 3:14
