|
What Exactly is the Bridal Paradigm? |
|
|
|
|
Written by Gary Weins
|
|
Thursday, 17 July 2008 |
Over
the past thirty years, the Holy Spirit has begun to stir the hearts of
God’s people with a hunger for deeper relationship and intimacy with
God. Beginning in the late 1970’s with an emphasis on the heart of God
as our Father, the Holy Spirit began to emphasize the powerful and
life-changing impact that people could have by encountering the
affectionate emotions of God.
 This move of the Spirit was
released to fulfill the prophetic promise of Malachi 4:6, that at the
end of the age a prophetic anointing would be released to “turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children
to their fathers, lest (God) come and smite the land with a curse.” For
these past several decades, the Body of Christ has grown deeper in the
knowledge and experience of God as Father, and the benefit to the
Church has been profound.
The purpose of this revelation of
God as Father is to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus.
That was the case at the first coming of Jesus, when the angel Gabriel
prophesied this passage over John the Baptist at his birth (see Luke
1:17), and Jesus Himself said that John was the first fulfillment of
that prophecy (see Matthew 11:7-15). The same will be true at the
second coming of Jesus, as God raises up prophetic voices once again to
declare intimacy with Him as our Father.
The second part of
the message of John the Baptist was the experience of Jesus as the
Bridegroom God. In John 3:29, John declares that as the friend of the
Bridegroom, he stands and listens for the Bridegroom’s voice, so that
his joy might be fulfilled. John is speaking here of a quality of
interaction between the believer and the Holy Spirit that touches the
human heart with the affections of Jesus as the Bridegroom of the
Church. This spiritual interaction is so powerful that it brings
fullness of joy to the heart of the worshipper.
We believe
that in preparation for the second coming of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is
raising up this message of intimacy with Jesus as the Bridegroom. Just
as He did before the first coming, the Spirit of God is provoking an
experiential understanding of God’s love that will draw us to the place
of encounter in prayer, and will sustain us in the face of the many
difficulties that will confront the Church at the end of the age.
The
primary Biblical source of the language of intimacy is the Song of
Solomon. While this book is a wonderful model of human romantic love,
it is ultimately a picture of the relationship between Jesus and His
Church. Many contemporary scholars disagree with this statement, but
Jesus Himself declares that He is the subject of all Old Testament
Scriptures (see John 5:39 and Luke 24:27). Further, in Ephesians 5:21
and following, Paul uses the relationship between Jesus and the Church
as the basis for instruction in human marriage, and ultimately
acknowledges that the focus of his teaching is not human marriage, but
Jesus and the Church. So, if the Song of Solomon is about marriage,
then it ultimately finds its fulfillment in the ultimate marriage, that
of Christ and His Bride.
The intimate language of the Song of
Solomon is not to be taken literally. It is obviously poetic, and can
be understood if time is taken in meditation and study. One phrase that
some consider to be controversial is the phrase “let Him kiss me with
the kisses of His mouth.” Some suggest that we are trying to picture a
physical kiss with Jesus. This is simply not true, and only the most
irresponsible people would make that assertion without further
exploration into our meaning.
This phrase refers to the
experience of intimacy and even ecstasy with the Holy Spirit touches
the human heart with the power and truth of God’s affections. Our faith
was never intended to be merely intellectual. God’s command was never
that we should understand God with our minds, but that we should love
Him with all our hearts. Our faith is to be rooted in the experience of
God’s love, and then our minds engage so that we have language that can
explain the hope that is within us.
Another powerful passage
that speaks of these things is found in Isaiah 62:5, where the prophet
informs the nation that “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so
shall your God rejoice over you.” God’s emotions concerning His people
are profoundly deep and powerful, and can legitimately be expressed in
terms of human romance. The Bible does it, Jesus does it, Paul does it,
and therefore we do it.
The Bridal Paradigm is simply a way of
reading the Scriptures and interacting with God on the basis of His
love for us as the Bridegroom of the Church. Our hope is that as you
approach the Scriptures and your life of prayer from this perspective
that you will experience more deeply the truth of God’s love for you.
It is life-changing and profound, and it is His way.
|
