For many years I have seen everything God created in the natural as merely a metaphor for the spiritual truth that is just beyond our grasp. He did not just create man for relationship but also to write the story of truth. Within the Trinity there exists a oneness that wanted to find expression and we are the result of that desire. In man, God created a bride for the Son. The Father created Adam and then Eve to give a picture of His desire for the Son. When He created Eve He said that it is not good for man to be alone. That is an expression of a Father's heart for the Son He loves. Marriage was created to reveal eternal spiritual truths.
The last few days I have been feeling like I had missed a big truth about this. Song of Solomon is an early expression of the Gospel. There is a woman, She longs for a man that she sees as perfect and unattainable because she sees herself as lowly and broken. Her family does not value her and her friends often seem to mock her.
One day she catches the eye of the man and He is smitten by her. He pursues her relentlessly. She will let him come close only to run away and hide. She can't see how she possibly has value enough to attract the attention of such a prefect suitor. She even dreams that she has him and then he leaves and hides from her. In her dream she searches everywhere only to come up empty.
The man continually speaks to her of her beauty and worth. He reminds her of his desire for her and all of the things he loves about her. While some of the encouragements seem strange to us today, there is no mistaking that they are words of passion for a bride. The man will not stop until he secures the love of the one he loves. He will do anything to have her.
This is the Gospel in 8 chapters. Jesus came to earth and paid a great price to have a bride for himself. He lifted us from our pit. He spoke a new identity over us and then He sacrificed His own life to redeem His beloved. He promised to never leave or forsake His bride and then He went to prepare a place for her to live and a wedding feast to celebrate love.
We are to quick to build a religious framework and fill it with theological systems to explain a love story. From beginning of time until its conclusion, we are living the story of a man pursuing His love and redeeming her. The Gospel is not just good news that we can be saved from hell. That is too small to be the Gospel. The Gospel is that Jesus came to redeem us from our broken, sinful existence, fill us with the life of God, adopt us into the Father's family, make us co-heirs with Jesus and become an eternal bride for the King. The Gospel is that we have a hope and a future beyond our wildest imagination and it is paid for by the blood of the one that is pursuing us relentlessly.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [Heb 12:1-2 ESV]
Our right response to this pursuit is to lay down all the broken and false identities we have clothed ourselves in and become the one we were created and redeemed to become. The bride is the joy set before Jesus that these verses is talking about. It is not just His reunification with the Father. He never had to leave the throne to have that. It is the restoration of His beloved. Jesus gave Himself to buy us back because we bring Him joy.
It is a mistake to say the Bible is just about Jesus. It is the story of a God in Pursuit of His love. He relentlessly pursues because He knew that we were the joy of His heart. He lowered Himself to us so He could eternally raise us up with Him. Don't think you can belittle the bride or demean her place in the heart of Jesus and think you can call it humility. To try and minimize the role of the bride in the story is to reject the Heart of the Bridegroom. We must learn to love and cherish what He loves even when we do not see her yet in the splendor He created her for.
Song of Solomon is a great lens through which to view the Gospel.
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