Marriage To The Lamb
The theme of Israel’s desertion of her lover (God) was explicitly treated in Ezekiel 16 and in Hosea. The terms “harlotry” and “whoredom” were used to connote disloyalty to Yahweh and allegiance to other gods. Thus, adultery and idolatry became synonymous. Through his own struggles with a faithless wife, the prophet Hosea experienced God’s agony over his bride Israel and his longing for her to return. Hosea was given a vision of a future day in which God would betroth his people to him forever in steadfast love and faithfulness (Hos 2:19–20).
Prior to the New Testament, depictions of the Messiah as a bridegroom were rare (see Psa 45). John the Baptist applies this metaphor to Jesus as the coming Messiah (John 3:29), and Jesus calls Himself a bridegroom (Matt 9:15; Mark 2:19–20; Luke 5:34–35; see also Matt 22:1–14). Following the birth of the Church on Pentecost, other New Testament writers affirmed Jesus’ role as the bridegroom while identifying the Church as His bride (2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:22–33; Rev 19:7–9).
The image of the Church as the bride of Christ may strengthen the doctrine of Christ’s deity since this covenant relationship parallels the Old Testament concept that the people of God were married to Yahweh. The New Testament people of God are married to Jesus the Messiah in particular, and not generically to “God” or even the Father. Like the Old Testament use of this metaphor, the New Testament relationship between Jesus and the Church carries covenantal overtones where fidelity and exclusivity is expected of the New Testament bride of Christ.
Although the specific phrase “bride of Christ” does not appear in the NT, the concept is found in several NT works as a description of the Church. Paul describes the Corinthian believers as having been betrothed to Christ and presented as a bride to her husband (
The OT occasionally used the image of a bride (Heb. kallâ, kelûlâ), together with other aspects of nuptial imagery, to depict Israel’s relationship to Yahweh (
In the NT, Jesus used the parables of the wedding feast (Mt. 22:2–14; cf. Lk. 12:35–38), and the wise and foolish virgins (Mt. 25:1–13) to depict the coming kingdom of God; in neither parable does He refer to Himself as the bridegroom. Jesus never refers to the redeemed community as bride, but rather as wedding guests, as in Mt. 22:2–10, 11–14; 25:1–13; Mk. 2:19a. Jesus does refer to Himself as the bridegroom in Mk. 2:19 (par Mt. 9:15); Lk. 5:34f. In a closely related passage, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the bridegroom and to himself as the friend of the bridegroom (Jn. 3:29).
The earliest NT reference to the Church as the bride of Christ is 2 Cor. 11:2, where Paul consciously functions as the best man: “I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband.” Since the context refers to the serpent’s deception of Eve as an analogy to the possibility that the Corinthians may stray after a deviant form of the gospel, it is clear that two aspects of the OT background have influenced Paul: (1) the faithfulness/unfaithfulness aspects of nuptial imagery emphasized by Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and (2) the Adam-Eve typology which involves the notion of Jesus as husband (=Adam) and the Church as bride (=Eve); cf. Minear, p. 55. Paul further elaborates the Adam-Eve typology in Eph. 5:22–31, and he interprets the “mystery” of Gen. 2:24 (“the two shall become one flesh”) as a reference to Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:32), thereby implying that the union of the first couple (as well as all subsequent monogamous unions) foreshadows the marriage of Christ and His Church (Chavasse, p. 75). This same typological interpretation is explicated in the early 2nd cent. in 2Clem 14:2. Gnostic Christianity evolved a sacrament of mystical marriage by taking such ideas to their extreme (Grant, pp. 183–194). The central ideas conveyed through Paul’s use of nuptial imagery in Eph. 5:22–31 include the wife’s (=Church’s) role of subjection and obedience, together with the husband’s (=Christ’s) role of self-sacrifice and authority (Minear, p. 55).
Other marginal Pauline uses of the bride image reveal the vitality of the metaphor in his thought. In Rom. 7:1–6 he observes that a married woman is bound by the law to her husband so long as he lives. The nuptial analogy is then applied by Paul to Christians who are now free to belong to another, i.e., to Christ who has been raised from the dead. In another allusion to Gen. 2:24 Paul tells the Corinthian congregation that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her, “but he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:15–17). Throughout the rest of the NT letters, only in 2 Jn. 1, 5 (cf. 1 Pet. 5:13) is feminine imagery applied to the Church, in the expression “elect lady.”
The most frequent reference in the NT to the Church as the bride of Christ occurs in Revelation. John applies the image not to the redeemed community directly, but rather to the heavenly Jerusalem which descends from heaven to a transformed earth. The heavenly Jerusalem is itself a symbol for the Church (Aune, pp. 146–48). The appropriateness of the bridal imagery in the context of the eschatological consummation lies in the fact that Judaism compared the messianic age to a marriage of God and Israel (SB, I, 500ff), as well as to a wedding feast. The fine clothing of the bride symbolizes the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19:8), and the comparison of the heavenly Jerusalem with a bride adorned for her husband (alluding to Isa. 61:10) emphasizes the readiness and anxious anticipation of the Church for Christ (Rev. 21:2; 22:17).