The Bride of Christ: Her Beauty Perfected and Manifested on Her Wedding Day
The first one is found in the prophecy of Ezekiel. Ezekiel, the sixteenth chapter, and I shall read in your hearing verses 1-15. Ezekiel 16:1, “Again, the Word of the Lord came to me, ‘Son of Man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations and say,’ ‘Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites, your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. No eye pitied you to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you. But you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field; and you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment; your breasts were formed and your hair had grown. Yet you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love; and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you,’ declares the Lord God, ‘and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk; and I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring in your nose and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus, you were adorned with gold and silver; and your clothing was of fine linen, and silk, and embroidered cloth; you ate fine flour, and honey, and oil; and grew exceedingly beautiful, and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty; for it was perfect, through the splendor that I had bestowed upon you,’ declares the Lord God. ‘But you trusted in your beauty, and played the whore because of your renown, and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his.’”
Now the second passage in great contrast in the book of Ephesians, chapter 5. Ephesians, chapter 5, and I read verses 25-27.
Ephesians 5, at verse 25: “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”—literally, so that He himself—“might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing; that she might be holy and without blemish.”
Now two brief passages from the book of the Revelation. Revelation, chapter 19, and begin reading at verse 6, and completing at verse 8.
Revelation 19:6. John writes, or the angel writes, “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give him glory: for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the 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.’”
Then in chapter 21, verses 9-11. Revelation 21:9, “Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me saying, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: its radiance like a most rare jewel like a jasper clear as crystal.”
Thus far our reading of God’s holy Word.
Now let us again pray and ask God, by the Spirit, to draw near in the preaching of that Word.
Holy Father, what can we say when we have been privileged to frame in verse these marvelous Christian hymns that capture and codify so much of your truth? We thank you for the enrichment that comes as we sing to you and to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in our hearts unto you. We thank you above all for your written Word and pray that as we come to consider its truth your Spirit may fall upon preacher and hearer alike; that together we may be conscious that there is Another in this room ministering powerfully to every heart, even your blessed Holy Spirit. Hear our cry and meet with us we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now for those of you who are not aware of it, the theme of the Pastors’ Conference this year has been announced to the men who have come to the conference as being this: The Bride of Christ—Enhancing and Preserving Her Beauty. In supporting and amplifying that theme, I purpose to deliver a message this evening entitled: The Bride of Christ–Her Beauty Perfected and Manifested on Her Wedding Day.
In seeking to set the table to take up this subject, it’s important for us both to know and to remember that, in the Scriptures, when God chose to enter in to a special covenantal relationship with a people He did so under the image of the metaphor of becoming husband to those thus favored by His grace when He constituted them as His people. This was true when God entered in to that special covenant with the nation of Israel. God Himself likened that relationship to His becoming the husband of Israel. This reality is captured in many passages of the Old Testament—among them we find these words in Isaiah 54:5: “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer.”
Further, through the prophet Jeremiah God says to His people Israel, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride; how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” (Jeremiah 2:2.)
Then, of course, there are those extended passages such as the one from which I read—Ezekiel, chapter 16—where God once again mentions entering into a marriage covenant with the nation of Israel. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God speaks to His spiritually adulterous wife, reminding her of this fact that He is her husband—in verse 8—where God says, “I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became mine.”
This theme is again picked up and concretely worked out in the book of Hosea where Jehovah, the Husband of Israel, has His unfaithful wife, Israel, who becomes a whorish wife. A spiritual reality mirrored in the very marital experience of the prophet—who married a woman who became nothing less than a shameless, whoring slut. I labored whether I should use that terminology, and I said, “That’s exactly how God indicts her.” He enters in—the prophet does—to a covenantal relationship with this woman who becomes a shameless, whoring slut; and yet He loves and woos her still in spite of her wickedness.
Well then, when we come to the New Testament in Mark, chapter 2, verses 19-20, we find our Lord Jesus no fewer than three times in those two verses referring to Himself as the Bridegroom of His people.
In John 3:29 He identifies the ministry of John the Baptist as that of the friend of the Bridegroom. The forerunner of Jesus views His role as the friend of the One who is the groom who has come to take His bride to Himself.
Further, in Matthew 22:1-10, our Lord speaks of the kingdom of heaven as likened unto a wedding feast which a king made on behalf of His son.
Then again, in the New Testament, there are those several dominant high mountain peak passages which focus our attention upon the reality of Jesus as the Bridegroom of His people. I’m thinking of course of Ephesians 5:25-33 and the two passages from Revelation 19 and 21 read in your hearing.
Now, when we turn to the Scriptures we find many metaphors and analogies by which God gives to us various insights concerning the nature, the privileges, and responsibilities of His New Covenant community—the church.
For example, we find God’s people described as a body in union with Christ, our living Head; God’s people are described as branches in the vine of which Christ is the life, sustaining the life of all the branches and enabling each branch to bring forth fruit. Furthermore, we find in the New Testament the analogy, the metaphor that the church is like a living temple made up of living stones indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is a holy nation, a royal priesthood; and there are other metaphors and analogies set before us.
However, among all those analogies, all of those metaphors declaring wonderful realities of privilege and responsibility—among all of them—perhaps none is more precious, more intimate, more endearing than that of Christ as the Husband of His people, His precious bride; and if, indeed, this analogy of the church being the bride of Christ is the most endearing of all the analogies and metaphors, then it’s equally clear that a dominant aspect of the church as the bride of Christ is this matter of the beauty in which she will appear on her wedding day—the wedding day being the return of our Lord Jesus in glory and in power when He will, first of all, take care of His dead saints.
“The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” (1 Thessalonians 1:16.)
People often say, “Well, I want to be around when the Lord returns. I wish I were living when He returns.” If so, the Lord’s going to set you to one side and say, “You got to wait a bit. I got some business to do with my dead saints first.” The dead in Christ shall rise first, and the returning Lord will rejoin their spirits—“the spirits of just men made perfect”—and reconstitute all of His redeemed ones, His precious bride, with fully redeemed spirits, fully redeemed and renewed bodies. It will be then the wedding day when the heavenly Bridegroom takes us to Himself; and as that passage from which I just quoted closes, “and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
In the light of the subject before us, The Bride of Christ—Her Beauty Perfected and Manifested on Her Wedding Day, I want to set before you some of the materials that I trust are true to the Scriptures as I’ve wrestled and prayed and thought and wrestled and prayed and excised and included and stretched and shrank, and so I cast myself on the Lord; and on the assumption that you’ve made the effort to get out here on a Monday night because you want to give serious thought to the Word of God.
With that assumption, I trust, being a reality, I want you to consider with me, first of all, the pathetic and the pitiable condition of the bride by nature.
1) The pathetic and the pitiable condition of the bride by nature.
We’re moving toward a climax where hopefully we will get a new sight of the bride in her full beauty; but we must begin not with what she shall be, but what she was when the Lord set His heart upon her. Since all of those who eventually constitute the bride of Christ are men and women, boys and girls who come into the world as the sons and daughters of Adam, what they are by nature would in no way be attractive to the eyes of the Holy Son of God. They would not be attractive to Him nor fit for Him as a bride. He who knows them through and through, in spite of what they are, not because of what they are, has set His heart upon them determined to make them fit to be His bride.
And I want you to consider with me two categories of what I am calling the pathetic and pitiable condition which characterize all the members of the bride by nature.
We’ll consider that condition as comprised—first of all—of this bride, by nature, being charged with condemning liabilities and marred by manifold deformities. By nature, you and I, who constitute now in a state of faith and union with Christ part of His bride, by nature we were charged with condemning liabilities and we were marred by manifold deformities.
Even though last evening Pastor Hughes was helped by the Spirit of God to set forth some of the major teaching of Scripture concerning our state in sin, let me just amplify several aspects from several other passages of Scripture.
In Romans 5:12 we are told, “As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men”—why?—“for that all sinned.” When did all sin? All sinned when the one man appointed to stand for us all sinned. Paul could say, “As in Adam we all die”; and this is the native condition of the stuff from which the living, glorified Christ will gather to Himself His bride.
It is true that “all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to his own way.” It is true “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The very purpose for which we were made as image-bearers to reflect His glory, His beauty, His worth. We fall short of the very purpose for which He made us.
When did all this problem begin? Well, in terms of representation, it began when Adam stood for all of us and we were—as it were—hung upon the belt of Adam; so in his fall, we fell; but in terms of our own existence—personally—and our own lives, David gives us the answer when all this began when he said, “I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.” The night and sperm penetrated an egg in the reproductive organs of your mother. What was conceived was a straying sheep; what was conceived was someone with a carnal mind that is at enmity against God. “It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be.” So that, the Apostle Paul in laying out from passage after passage in the Old Testament the universal condition of sin, he concludes by saying, “Now we know that whatsoever things the law says, it says to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God.”
Here is the bride—her original and native condition is one in which those who are to constitute the bride are justly charged with sin, condemnation, and death; but the ones who would become the bride not only have condemning liabilities that exclude them from heaven on a legal basis, they are also marred with manifold deformities.
When God describes the condition of sinful Judah and Jerusalem through the prophet Isaiah, He declared in chapter 1 of his prophecy that “from the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it; but bruises and sores and raw wounds. They are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.”
In the Ezekiel 16 passage, God described the native condition of the one who was eventually to become His beautiful bride; but He reminds her, when He found her she was “a newborn child, unwashed, unsalted, unwrapped, with her umbilical cord uncut and untucked”—described by the prophet as being—“cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred in the day you were born.” Her native condition is further described in verse 22 with these words: “and in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and wallowing in your blood.”
You say, “Pastor Martin, that language is gross.” Yeah, it is. It’s because you’re gross, and I’m gross; and the deformities that mark us as sons and daughters of Adam are gross deformities. If we are ever rightly to think of the bride, we must begin by regarding her in her native condition—that we might appreciate what the Heavenly Bridegroom has done both to resolve the legal dimensions of her liabilities and to correct and rectify all her deformities that she might righteously and justly be taken unto Him as His eternal bride.
We need only look in this Ephesians letter—the same letter that sets forth something of the love and the work of the Heavenly Bridegroom—to see what the Bridegroom was like in terms of her manifold deformities. I’m referring, of course, to Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 1: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins, in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among the sons of disobedience; among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Here is the bride in her native condition. She is charged with this liability of death, condemnation—eventually hell itself; and she is marred by her manifold deformities. That’s why I use the words ‘they are pathetic and pitiable liabilities and deformities.’ It’s vital, as I said earlier, that we come to grips with this, because the Heavenly Bridegroom made plain that the only kind of people He takes to Himself and incorporates into His bride are those who are ready to face their liabilities and their deformities. For in the days of His earthly ministry He said, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. They that are healthy have no need of a doctor; but they that are sick.”
So, our Lord Jesus Himself who is the Great and Glorious Heavenly Bridegroom of His people says, “I’m going to make a people to be my bride who, first of all, own what they were by nature.” It’s here that the older theologians made a distinction so crucial.
In the Sunday School hour our brother Jeremy Walker, in giving the life and ministry of Andrew Fuller, underscored that Fuller was used of God to return many back to the biblical perspective that there is but one warrant for faith. The warrant for faith is the proclamation and free invitation of God to sinners in the gospel; not to sinners under 10 pounds of a weight of conviction, 15 pounds, or just 2.5 ounces—the warrant of faith is the promise and invitation in the gospel; but the way to faith is the way of personally, individually, existentially knowing and feeling the reality of our sinnerhood. We do not come to God and say, “Oh God, oh Lord Jesus, receive me because I feel, I know—and my feeling and my knowing somehow warrant my coming”; but in coming we come with the felt awareness of the reality of our sin, of the reality of our native rebellion, our native uncleanness, our native attachment to the way dictated by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that actively, energetically works in the sons of disobedience.
By way of application, I say to any sitting here tonight, if you have never come to a personal, felt awareness—those verses about “in Adam all die”; “all we like sheep have gone astray, we’ve turned to our own way”; “the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be.” Sitting here tonight, if your heart does not resonate and say, “Oh God, the preacher is not telling a tenth of reality. Thank you for showing me that I was such a creature, strapped with the liabilities of my guilt, my guilt in Adam, my guilt in terms of my own personal, conscious violations of the law.” As last night, so simply and clearly, Pastor Hughes took us down through the Ten Commandments. Everywhere God says, ‘Thou shalt,’ our disposition was ‘I will not.’ Where God said, ‘You shall not,’ our disposition was ‘I will’—turning to our own way.
2) The bride’s beautification by grace.
So we considered then, just briefly, this reality of the bride’s pitiable and pathetic condition by nature. Now, secondly, I want us to take up together this heading: The bride’s beautification by grace.
Having considered her pitiable, pathetic condition by nature, I trust our hearts will swell with gratitude as we now consider the bride’s beautification by grace.
When I use the word ‘grace,’ I am speaking of the unmerited favor and kindness of God to the ill-deserving—that is all the men and women who are by nature charged with this condemning liability and marred by manifold deformity. It is this disposition of grace in God that marks every step in the path of taking the sons and daughters of Adam and beautifying them to be constituted the beautiful bride of Christ. Consider with me two major aspects of this beautification of the bride. First of all, the prerequisites of the bride’s beautification; and then secondly, the process of the bride’s beautification.
1. The prerequisites of the bride’s beautification.
First of all then, the prerequisites—what has to go before the beautification of the bride. What is it? I answer: it is Christ dealing with her condemning liabilities by the sacrifice of Himself as the Heavenly Bridegroom. Let me repeat that: the prerequisite of the bride’s beautification is Christ dealing with her condemning liabilities by the sacrifice of Himself. No matter how much in the counsels of eternity He may have set His heart in love upon His people, no expression of the love of Christ will be found in God’s universe at the expense of the integrity of any of His other attributes. God is love. God manifested in Christ is love; but God is just, God is righteous, God is holy; and God cannot and will not compromise any of His attributes in the pursuit of the desires of His love. Every expression of the love of Christ will cut a path of the strictest justice and uprightness in the dealings of God with men. That’s why we could sing in our hymn tonight that—what join in the salvation of Christ? Grace and justice join and point to mercy’s store. That’s the truth that I am seeking to underscore. So before the Heavenly Bridegroom can begin to make the guilty, hell-deserving, ugly, and deformed sinner part of His beautiful bride, the whole matter of the sinner’s guilt and liability to eternal punishment must be rectified. Before Christ can begin to work in sinners to make them fit to become part of the bride, He must deal with the fact that such sinners deserve the judgment of God and punishment for their sins.
Isn’t that exactly where Paul begins? Even though the subject matter and its central emphasis is a directive to husbands, we have this rich Christology and this rich Theology Proper, and this rich teaching on the significance of the death of Christ.
Turn with me now to Ephesians 5. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church.” What channel did that love cut in coming to us?—“and gave himself up for her.”
He loved her; but before that love could accomplish its ultimate design of making the bride beautiful and presenting the bride to Himself without spot or wrinkle, He had to give Himself up for her. Give Himself up in what way? Well, go back to the first two verses of this chapter. “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us.” Now here’s the answer to our question. Why? To what end? “A fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Something had to be adjusted in the Godward dimension before the Heavenly Bridegroom could begin to make these pitiable sinners into worthy objects of the Heavenly Bridegroom’s affection and union forever.
What did He do? He offered Himself up as a sacrifice to God. In other words, the Bridegroom is ready to lay down His life; to enter into a relationship to the moral government of God where the judgement due to these potential members of His bride—that judgment will fall upon Him in its full, unmitigated fury. That judgment will consume Him. That judgement will overwhelm and oppress Him until—from the depths of His being—He summons strength in His dying hour and cries, “My God, my God, why have You abandoned Me?” No answer came from heaven; but if there is an answer forged from Scripture it is, “My Son, my beloved Son, never have I loved You more as now your obedience has come to its highest expression—laying down your life for your bride. My Son, if ever your bride was to be presented to You, their liabilities of guilt and hell-deservingness must be met; and in the counsels of eternity, You with the Spirit and I, as the first person of the Godhead, conspired this way. It is to this that You committed Yourself; it is for this You took to Yourself a true human soul and body in Mary’s womb. It is for this that in the fullness of time having come You were made of a woman, made under the law—that You might redeem them that were under the law.”
Since, therefore, the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He likewise partook of the same things that through death He might destroy the one who had the power of death—that is, the devil; and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. The prerequisite of the bride’s beautification was Christ dealing with her condemning liabilities by the sacrifice of Himself. The hymn writer has accurately and beautifully captured this biblical truth when he wrote and we sang tonight, “From heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride; with His own blood He bought her and for her life He died.” The dowry price was nothing less than the precious blood of incarnate deity poured out to purchase a bride for Himself.
These biblical truths I’ve set before you demonstrate that the basis for every facet of the beautification of the bride of Christ is to be found rooted in the virtue of the perfectly sinless life and sacrificial death and ongoing intercession of the incarnate Son of God. These things wrought by Jesus as the Heavenly Bridegroom, these things that were purchased by His blood are the possession of every single penitent, believing sinner who becomes part of the bride of Christ.
So much then for that heading, the prerequisite for the beautification.Now, let us take up the process of the bride’s beautification.
2. The process of the bride’s beautification.
What is it? Simply stated it is this: it is Christ Himself dealing with her defilement and her deformities by cleansing and renewal. Here the bridegroom sees the reality of the ugliness and the deformity—the Ezekiel 16 picture, the picture of Ephesians 2:1-4, Romans 3:10-18, etc. He wants to beautify His bride. He has met the demands of the law—removed the liability of hell and damnation from her, Now His heart is set upon a beautification process.
Again, look at our passage in Ephesians 5. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself up for her.” Then you will notice there are three purpose statements: that, so that, and that. Look carefully at what they say. Why did He give Himself up for her? Give Himself up as a fragrant sacrifice and offering to God? Notice the answer in the text: “…in order that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that”—here’s our second purpose—“so that He Himself might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing;”—and now here’s our third purpose clause—“in order that she might be holy and without blemish.”
So, when we think of the bride of Christ—whatever else we think about—we must think in terms of what the Heavenly Bridegroom Himself has done and continues to do and shall yet do on her behalf.
“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church (His bride), gave Himself up for her”—first of all—“that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word.” This beautification process has a beginning, it has a middle—and a continuum—and it has a climax, or it has an end.
We’re going to look briefly at that division of the work of our Heavenly Bridegroom to make us fit to be with Him in His presence in the new heavens and in the new earth, and that forever. The process of the bride’s beautification.
1- The beautification begun.
First: the beautification begun. How is it begun? I answer: by the radical cleansing and sanctification of the new birth, or regeneration, and conversion. That’s how the beautification process begins. When you enter the divine beauty parlor for this glorious makeover, here’s how Christ begins: “…that He might sanctify her.” Now, often when we see the word sanctify, sanctification, we think of that process by which we are putting away more and more sin, mortifying sin, becoming more and more like Christ; but in this context, and in most contexts, the use of the verb sanctify is not pointing to a process, but it’s pointing to this beginning of the beautification process.
As a kind of helpful footnote to you preachers, let me mention that Peter O’Brien’s commentary on Ephesians has been very helpful in my study and preparation for this message. If you’re preaching any passage in Ephesians—if you’re preaching through the book of Ephesians—I would be bold to say Peter O’Brien is a must companion to make your labors effectual and helpful to the people of God. I’ve come to embrace his judgment with regard to the meaning of these words: “that he might sanctify her.” To sanctify something is to set it apart from common, ordinary usage; set it apart unto God for His special purpose or purposes.
When something was just an ordinary pot or pan in the old covenant, and it was set apart for God’s worship in the temple or tabernacle, it was a sanctified bowl, it was a sanctified pitcher, it was a sanctified altar. So, Paul is using that word in that sense. Christ loved the church, gave Himself up for that church, that He might set it apart unto Himself and His purposes. How was that done? Without going into technicalities and nuances of Greek grammar, you have an aorist in “to sanctify” and then you have an aorist participle—“having cleansed her”—which speaks most likely of concurrent action. This is how He sets us apart from common use, from sinful use unto Himself in a radical cleavage with the dominion and power and service of sin unto a life no longer lived unto ourselves but unto Him who for our sakes died and rose again.
This is accomplished when, as our text says, that He “has cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word.” There may be a secondary allusion to the ordinance of baptism, but I rather believe, with Mr. O’Brien, that the background to this terminology—“that He might cleanse her by the washing of water with the Word”—is referring to the thing you find in Titus, chapter 3; that you find in John 15, and verse 3. He is speaking of that cleansing that occurs when God regenerates us as Paul says in Titus. I urge you to look at this passage with me: Titus, chapter 3.
Paul writes in Titus 3:5, “He saved us not, because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration”—or new birth—“and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly, through Jesus Christ our Savior; so that, being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
In this passage, along with the John passage—“You are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you”—the emphasis is falling upon that work that occurs in, what Professor Murray called and has since become identified as ‘definitive sanctification.’
For example, when Paul begins his letter to the Corinthians—First Corinthians, chapter 1—this was certainly not an especially godly, mature, spiritually-minded bunch of Christians. You know that from your knowledge of the book of First and Second Corinthians; and yet, this is how Paul addresses them: “Paul, by the will of God, to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those in every place that call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “To the church of God in Corinth sanctified in Christ Jesus.”
To the extent that they were not hypocrites, they were not willfully, deliberately playing games—we know that in the best of churches there will be unregenerate people by default, not de jure; not by the practice of a shoddy view of membership and entrance to the visible church. Paul identifies these Corinthians to whom the Word of God had come not in the wisdom of men but in the power of Spirit of God; and multitudes were brought into faith, unto faith in Christ. He identifies them as sanctified, set apart unto God and His service; and that very reality becomes the basis upon which He makes many of his ethical and practical appeals to these needy Corinthians.
Later on in that first letter, he lists all these sins and he says, “If these are a way of life to you, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.” Then he says, “But such were you: but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified.” He didn’t say, “You are being sanctified. He says, “You are sanctified.” This definitive, this initial setting apart unto God and His service occurs at conversion.
When new birth leads to repentance and faith and a turning from the powers of darkness unto the living God through Jesus Christ, then this initial work of beautification begins. God implants a new heart upon which He writes His law, giving an internal disposition to render obedience to external codified precepts. It is not a matter of following my heart. It’s a matter of following the law of God with a heart that loves to follow, and wants to follow, and mourns when it does not follow. That’s a sanctified heart, set apart from sin’s dominion and rule unto God and to His service.
Many other passages could be brought to bear—1 Peter 1:22-23, Ezekiel 36:25-27; but I bypass them and move on to the next dimension of this beautification process. Beautification begun—how? By regeneration and through conversion.
2- The beautification continued.
Now, this beautification—if it’s really begun—it will be continued. Christ is not done with preparing His bride when He begins the work. Christ is committed to carry it on and to consummate it. The problem with preaching these couple of verses in the middle of Ephesians 5 is Paul leaps from beautification begun—“sanctify you, having cleansed you with the washing of water with the Word”—he moves immediately to the beautification consummated.
Notice what the text does—back in Ephesians, chapter 5. Christ loved the church, gave Himself up for her—beautification begun. “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, wrinkle.” That’s the beautification process consummated and completed; but he doesn’t describe the beautification continued.
Drop down a few verses and we’ll see that he does do it.
Verse 29: “No one ever hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church; because we are members of His body.”
He says there is an ongoing work of Christ. His bride who has been sanctified has been cleansed in definitive sanctification. There is an ongoing nourishing and cherishing of Christ. An ongoing nourishing, seeking to bring His bride into greater maturity; doing it in a context of tender love and patience and compassion.
When we turn to the rest of Scripture, even this epistle, we find this motif again and again—put off, put on, walk in the Spirit, walk in love. All of these things in their very essential content of the words and the tenses of the verbs point to this ongoing process of beautification.
In other words, whether you believe it or not, you’ve visited a beauty parlor today if you’re a real Christian. You’ve been in a beauty parlor today; because the Christ who loved you, gave Himself for you, who sanctified, having cleansed you with the washing of water in conjunction with the Word—He is nourishing and cherishing you. He is, by His own life, communicated in the person of the Holy Spirit, sent down from the right hand of the Father, and by His ever persistent intercession making you more and more beautiful.
What does that beauty consist of? Two things basically—in the old Puritans and the confessional statements, the more I become acquainted with them I realize it was a dominant motif of the mortification or putting to death of sin and vivification, or the putting-on of increasing conformity to the moral likeness of Christ. That’s how the process of our beautification is continued.
If it is not being continued in us, it never began, because the Scripture says, “I’m confident of this,” Paul said, “that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ,” when it will be consummated.
So, for us who are sitting here tonight, if we would have a well-grounded, biblical assurance that we are part of that bride that will one day be resplendent in beauty in every way, then we must be able to demonstrate as Gurnall says, “Let no man claim he’s been born of the Spirit and has royal blood in his veins unless he can show his pedigree by daring to be holy.”
I would leave you with just two verses under this head. Romans 8:13—“If ye by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh, you shall live”—the mortification of sin, the cutting off of right hands, the gouging out of right eyes, the laying aside of every weight and the sin that so easily besets us. These dimensions of the struggle against our remaining corruption—for though sin no longer reigns, it remains; and though it no longer dominates, it dogs us day by day, week by week, month by month; and we must engage in the enabling grace of the Spirit; but the Spirit doesn’t put to death the deeds of the flesh, we do. “If you, if you, by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh, you shall live.”
The positive side is increasing conformity to Christ. Here are the key texts: 2 Corinthians 3:18, where Paul has been contrasting the blessings and operations of God under His two great covenantal administrations—the Old Covenant, the New Covenant. Here’s one of the great blessings of the New Covenant: “But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord,”—now this is not an exhortation, not an admonition. It’s a statement; it’s an indicative; it’s a fact. This is what’s going on. “…are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
You see, there is no uncertainty. If Christ died to have a perfect bride and He has laid out a framework of making her that in which He begins the work in regeneration and true conversion, and has ordained to carry it out by a process of mortification and increasing confirmation, we have no grounds to say we are a part of that bride if that work is not being done in us. “We all”—Paul is not just talking about apostles and Christian workers. “But we all…are being transformed from one degree of glory to another.” Being Christlike does not mean that we all develop a rather laidback, unruffled, sedate personality. It has nothing to do with our personality type. It has to do with a life that more and more looks like 1 Corinthians 13—exercising the love that does not behave itself unseemly, is not puffed up, seeks not its own, believes all things, hopes all things; more and more that work in us. For in a very real sense, 1 Corinthians 13 is a delineation of the moral character of our Lord Jesus Christ.
More and more we can read Galatians 5:22-23,“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law.” There’s nothing in the Bible that ever condemns those blessed fruits; and if Christ is doing His work of beautification, more and more of that fruit will be manifested in us; and we, by God’s grace, will be growing in likeness to Christ.
3- The beautification consummated.
Here I have to just give you the heads. We come to the beautification consummated: beautification consummated and manifested on her wedding day. Here’s the heads. Her beauty consummated—it’s called being glorified.
Romans 8:30, “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called: whom he called, he justified: whom he justified, he glorified.”
What are the two components of her consummate beauty? A completely glorified spirit in every single one who comprises part of the bride. If we’ve been justified and all of our legal liabilities have been resolved in Christ—“for there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus”—the work of glorification has begun in us; it is being continued; and, for most of us, that part of glorification in which our spirits are utterly, fully, totally, consummately scrubbed from every last atom of the slightest inclination to sin or commission of sin, the moment we breathe our last our company now is the spirits of just men made perfect. So that the consummation of the bride’s beauty, for most of us, will come in two stages.
Stage number one: when our spirits are completely purged of every last vestige of sin; but sanctification is not just negative, it’s positive. The moment we enter the presence of our Lord, our spirits will be suffused with a fullness of the Holy Spirit that will endow us with all the capacity we can have as a sinless spirit of all the graces of Christ’s likeness—all of the patience and longsuffering and gentleness; all of the things we yearned after and prayed for and wept because we didn’t have in this life, we shall have when we join the spirits of just men made perfect.
So, the two components of her consummate beauty are, first of all, a completely glorified spirit. Most of us will get that at death. Some who are alive at His return will get that along with the second component: a completely glorified body in every single one who comprises part of the bride. Paul speaks of Christ, our great and exalted Savior who is going to do a marvelous thing at His return.
Here he describes it more explicitly in condensed form than we find in 1 Corinthians 15. Philippians 3:20-21,“Our citizenship is in heaven; and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things unto Himself.”
Here is the second component of our beauty consummated: a body fashioned like unto the body of His glory.
I want to suggest that I don’t think it is responsible to conceive of what our resurrected bodies will be like by limiting what we know of our Lord’s resurrected body as it functioned on earth. We do not know what added dimensions were given to that body that He carried back as the resurrected body that had amazing faculties and abilities while here on earth. He could appear in a room with the doors being locked. He could be in one place enjoying a meal with a couple of disciples, and the next thing He’s back in Jerusalem. I understand all that; but this passage says that our body is going to be conformed to be like His glorious body—the body that He possesses in the place of glory and exaltation; a glory which He had with the Father before the world began. That completely beautified, glorified spirit, with all of its capacity now for perfect holiness, with all of its yearning for perfect obedience, with all of its capacity to think capacious, large thoughts of God—that spirit will now be housed in a body that can respond with one hundred percent compliance with all the urgings of a perfected soul.
Surely, dear brethren, our cry should be, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.”
What is the summary description of that consummate beauty? We’ve looked at the two components. Let’s go back to Ephesians 5 for just a few moments. What is the consummate description with its details?
Ephesians 5: “Christ loved the church, gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word.”Then, because there’s an extra pronoun, the best way to render verse 27 is this—“so that He Himself might present the church to Himself in splendor.” In splendor—a word which, its root comes from the word we normally find translated “glory.” So one of the commentators suggested we should render it, “He will present his bride brilliant in purity.” As I meditated long upon that passage, I said, “Lord, I can’t compute this. How does He Himself present the bride to Himself in splendor?”
In our weddings, the papa/an uncle/a friend presents the bride to the bridegroom. Here the Bridegroom is presenting the bride to Himself; but He’s doing it in splendor. In endoxa—the full outshining of the glory of God that will be seen not only in the Bridegroom; but at that moment He will look at His bride and in a way that makes Adam ecstasy look like dullness, He will say of us, “This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Here is my counterpart. She perfectly reflects my moral likeness. She perfectly reflects my physical, glorified body.” He will embrace us as He presents us to Himself.
I can’t figure it out. I’ve laid on my bed at night, torturing my brain, trying to figure—how is he going to do it? But we know He will, because He died that this might come to pass! As certainly as He hung upon a cross that He might purchase His bride, that He might remove all of her legal liabilities and secure all the blessings needed to make her what she needs to be. The summary description of her consummate beauty is she will be presented in glory.
But Paul’s not satisfied with just a summary description. Look at the detailed description of her consummate beauty: “He Himself will present the church to Himself”—notice now—“without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Those are the negatives—the without things: no spots, no wrinkles; “and if I can add any other word,” Paul says, “put them in there”—“any such thing.” Not a spot upon her spirit, not a spot upon her body—totally, completely; every blemish removed. All the wrinkles which speak of age or speak of illness—all smoothed out and forever and eternally gone. No spot, no wrinkle—then the positive: “that she might be holy and without blame or blemish.” The very phrase used in Ephesians 1:4—“We were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish.”
The very end for which the triune God committed Himself to our salvation in the deepest bowels of eternity will now be realized when the Bridegroom presents His bride to Himself holy and without blemish!
Will you indulge me a little fantasy thinking? As I’ve been meditating upon this it occurred to me, suppose—just suppose—in that moment as we are about to presented by Christ to Christ the Lord should say, “Father, I want to have one last check over my bride.” “Gabriel, come here.” He summons the angel Gabriel, hands him a powerful magnifying glass—and then like my dermatologist does once a year when I go for a checkup—he takes the magnifying glass, and he goes over every square inch of my body. Is there a little abnormally shaped mole beginning to come? Is there anything suspicious there? He goes from head to toe; and thankfully, if it’s something innocuous he may give it a shot of some—I forgot what it’s called. It’s just cold and it kills it; but he’s looking for any spots. The angel Gabriel goes over the bride from the top of her head to the sole of her feet, and he returns to the Lord Jesus and says, “Sovereign Lord, not a spot, not a wrinkle, not an abnormality. She is utterly, unqualifiedly, totally perfect”; and He then embraces His bride and holds her forever.
Dear people, what a wonderful theme to contemplate: the bride, her beauty consummated; and according to 1 John, chapter 3, it will also be fully manifested to all intelligent beings in that day. “Beloved, it does not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be manifested with Him in glory”—manifested, made known, openly shown. What wonder there will be amongst angels, and amongst seraphim and cherubim when they now see all that has gone into the purposes and plan, and now the execution of the redemptive purposes of the triune God. John tries to capture those things in some of those marvelous hymns and choirs of praise in the book of the Revelation.
What do I say to close the message, cutting off parts that I was probably, again, unwise to think I could cover?
I must say, by way of application: dear preacher-friend, keep this truth before your eyes as you labor. Those people that now are far from spotless, far from wrinkleless—many spots, many wrinkles, many scars, many abnormalities. You are committed to be an instrument of Christ that Christ may have what He died to have. He died that those people will one day be redolent, manifested with Him in glory. Press on, continue to pray, continue to preach, continue to trust God. Don’t look for some new wrinkle. Don’t look for some new path of blessing. Christ is committed to accomplish His purpose to have a perfect bride His way. Follow in His steps. Trust in His grace.
When you’re discouraged, say, “Lord, it’s hard to believe; but starting with me.” When you’re weary, struggling with your own sin, you think you’ve made progress in this area and you go for a few months and say, “I have made progress;” and lo and behold, in a moment of weakness and vulnerability, you fall and you say, “Lord God, how can it be? I’ve spattered myself with a whole inkwell; and it’s permanent ink.” He says, “No, it isn’t. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Keep this day before you for encouragement, for the strength to believe your labors are not in vain. Remember that exhortation comes at the end of the marvelous teaching of the glorious resurrection body that awaits us. Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. For as much as you know, your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
When you preach Christ, trusting Christ, wanting only to glorify Christ—you are Christ’s mouthpiece to call out of that mass, of those laden down with their liabilities and covered with their deformities; you are Christ’s mouth to call them out one by one. “Other sheep I have, they are not of this fold: them also I must bring.” “Lord, how are you going to bring them?” “By that humble preacher’s mouth being faithful to the simple, biblical gospel, I’ll call them.” If He calls them and sanctifies them by the washing of water with the Word, He’s put them in the framework where He’s going to continue to beautify them. As you preach the Word and as you pray for God’s blessing and you see growth in your people, you’re seeing Christ in His beauty parlor doing His work; and it will eventually consummate when that work is completed; and bring together those two wonderful little words—“forever with the Lord” and “we shall be like Him.” With Him, like Him. With Him, like Him. What more could a redeemed soul desire?
Let’s pray:
Holy Father, what can we say when we poor, stumbling, ofttimes spotted, wrinkled, children of yours catch a glimpse of what awaits us? We pray for those who may sit here utter strangers to these realities. May they have heard things that your Spirit will drive home and make them thirsty to be able to think of death and the world to come with joy and with expectation and holy anxiety, to be able to look upon the face of a crucified and risen Savior. Father, help your dear servants. Strengthen them for their labors, and be glorified in us all, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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