Conclusion: Everyone Can Have a Wedding Day!62
We must end by looking to the future. In the present we are mired in a messed-up world full of pain and disorder. But what of the future? The wonderful truth of the Christian gospel is that every human being can be married in the end if they want to be. That applies to those who have never married and may never marry in this life. It applies to those divorced, whether or not it was mainly or even entirely their fault. It is true for widows. Whatever sexual desires and longings you have, whatever your history of experience or inexperience, delights or frustrations, right behavior or misbehavior, you can know all your longings fulfilled in the end, if you want that. Every human being is invited to be married in the end, and not only to be married, but to be blissfully married in the marriage to beat all marriages. The only question is whether or not we will accept this invitation.
The Bible tells many stories of human marriages, both good and bad, from Adam and Eve through Abraham and Sarah, David and Bathsheba, and countless others. All of them, one way or another, are stories of dysfunctional people in spoiled relationships.
But above these stories the Bible tells a bigger story. It is the story of a marriage that includes within itself the whole history and future of the human race. It is the story of God the Lover, the Bridegroom, the Husband, and his people his Beloved, his Bride, and in the end his Wife. It is the story that John the Baptist had in mind when he spoke of Jesus as the “Bridegroom” (John 3:25–30), and the story that Jesus himself accepted when he spoke of himself as the “Bridegroom” (e.g., Matthew 9:14–15). It is the story Paul referred to when he spoke of the church in Corinth being “engaged” to Jesus Christ like a pure virgin (2 Corinthians 11:2).
It is the story that John speaks of in the visionary imagery of Revelation 19 and 21. The metaphors are mixed, and the language is vivid and suggestive; we cannot read it literally, and it would not be possible to make a film of this imagery. At the climax of human history, John hears the announcement: “the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7). The Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, is to be married at last. His Bride is his people, every believer of all time, corporately to be joined to him forever in a union of unmixed delight and intimacy. This is a time of joy and amazement. Then in Revelation 21, John sees the heavenly Jerusalem, that is the whole new heavens and new earth, the restored and redeemed created order, coming down out of heaven as a city, but not only a city, also a bride: “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” For this renewed and restored creation is “the bride, the wife of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:2, 9). All of the people of God in the new heavens and new earth are the bride of Jesus Christ. That is to say, he loves them passionately, and they love him with an answering love.
In that new age their love will be consummated with an intimacy and enduring delight that the best human marriage can only begin to echo faintly. To put it bluntly, the most climactic and rapturous delight ever experienced in sexual intimacy by a married couple in the history of the human race cannot hold a candle to the delight of that union.
This is an amazing and beautiful prospect, a time when all the deepest yearnings and longings of the human heart will be fulfilled. And it is open to all who will come in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ in this age. The invitation is open.
Every time an unmarried person feels frustrated or depressed by their circumstances and unfulfilled desires, this is a pointer to the age to come. Jesus Christ says to them, “Set your sights on your wedding day, which is also my wedding day. You think you are ‘on the shelf’? Not at all, for I love you passionately.”
Every time a married person struggles with conflict or pain in marriage, it is a signpost to the age to come. Jesus Christ says to them, “Lift your eyes above the frustrations and pain, and look up to that wedding day when I will take all my people in my arms forever.”
Every time a man or woman feels the pain of the scars of past mistakes and hurts, Jesus says to them, “Look up to that wedding day because in that wedding you will wear spotless pure clothes and the only scars in that wedding will be the scars I bore for you, the scars on my feet, in my hands, and my side. Because I bore those scars, there will be none on you.”
On that day all the sex within marriage that has been used in the service of God in this age will be taken up into an eternity of sexual fulfilment that will fill the age to come with delight, security, and wonder to beat all marriages. May God help us to be there to enjoy it.