The Bride, Chapter 2, Her Gender

2. Psalm regarding the wedding of the Lamb of God, the messiah. Who is this Bride, Jerusalem? A city is not one person who is of one gender but is comprised of human beings of both genders, yet the Bride is clearly female. Odd. The Lamb of God is the Son who is clearly male. Languages that assign gender to words lead us to understand that gender is not purely physiological. *

Jesus said in Matthew 22:30, “In the (mass) resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but they will be like the angels in heaven.” The wedding of the Lamb and His Bride will be the marriage to end all marriages. Then what?

The Lamb of God and His Bride wed as male and female. I imagine that the victors who have successfully navigated through the miasma of good and evil on this gorgeous but fallen earth will be rewarded with the new created  environment that far surpasses the beauty of this universe, this earth, with its technologies. Cellphones, iPads and computers will be as antiquated as dial phones and mechanical typewriters. Exciting anticipation.

Truth seekers, let’s look for Her, to come to know Her with open minds.

What was revealed in Revelation was not the Bride of “Jesus” but rather She is called the Bride of the Lamb of God. Calling the Bridegroom the Lamb of God raises Him from His physical humanity to His purpose.

The innocent sacrificial Lamb was a sacred mammal with a mission. The mission was explicitly to remove sin, to cleanse, to forgive and restore the human to the “image and likeness of our Creator.” His “lamb-ness” characterizes Her Bridegroom.

The Bride is purely female, and the Groom is purely male. She is a City, He is the “hyssop who washes away [sin] and makes us whiter than snow.” He restores the relationship of God, the Father, with the crown of His Creation, humankind. Hence the Lamb unites with City, (of people) the new Jerusalem come down out of heaven. Exhilarating.

In this chapter we look closely at the femininity of the Bride, to come to know Her, to befriend Her in hopes that we are invited to Her wedding. She is the beloved city, in which God loves to dwell, filled with the forgiven sinless, and healed of the wounds inflicted by evil.

Psalm Describing The Messiah and the Bride, a love story- This English translation is taken from the Septuagint.

Psalm 44 (45)

[A love letter from the Bride to Her Groom]

My heart has uttered a good reckoning;

I declare my works to the King;

my tongue is the pen of a quick writer.

You are the more beautiful than the sons of men;

grace has been shed forth on Your lips;

therefore God has blessed you forever.

Gird Your sword upon your thigh, O Mighty One, in your comeliness and in your beauty, and bend your bow and prosper and reign because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and your right hand shall guide you wonderfully.

Your weapons are sharpened, Mighty One, (the nations shall fall under You) they are in the heart of the King’s enemies.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;

the  scepter of Your kingdom is a scepter of righteousness.

You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity:

therefore God, your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness beyond Your fellows.

Myrrh, and staete  (aloes), and cassia are exhaled from your garments,  and out of the ivory palaces, with which kings’ daughters have gladdened you for your honor:

[commentary]

the queen [read Bride] stood by on your right hand, clothed in vesture wrought with gold, and arrayed in diverse colors.

[Response from the Bridegroom]

Hear, O daughter, and see and incline your ear; forget also your people, and your father’s house. [Love God above your own family; leave your father and cleave to your husband.]

Because the King has desired your beauty;

for He is your Lord.

And the daughter of Tyre shall adore Him with gifts;

the rich people of the land will supplicate your favor.

All her glory is [like] that of the daughter of the king of Esebon, robed as she is in golden fringed garments, in embroidered clothing: virgins shall be brought to the king after her: Her fellows shall be brought to You. They shall be brought with gladness and exultation: they shall be led into the king’s temple.

Instead of Your fathers’ children (ancestors) sons are born to You; You shall make them princes of all the earth. [Again, a reference to the future ‘family’ in place of ancestors]

They shall make mention mention of Your name from generation to generation: therefore shall the nations give thanks to You forever, even for ever and ever. [Implying the new heavenly world.]

More about the Bride, the new Jerusalem, in Psalm:

Psalm 87 Line 5 City of God

And of Zion it will be said,

This one and that one were born in HER;

And the Most High shall establish HER.

Psalm 132 13-14 The Dwelling Place of God

[Zion] This is My resting place forever;

Here I will dwell, for I have desired it.

Zion is mentioned throughout the old and new testaments of the Bible and often in the psalms. At the same time Zion is understood as a mountain in Jerusalem, the City of David, and Jerusalem itself. The new holy Jerusalem coming down from heaven is the Bride. What does this tell us?

Revelation Chapter  21

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed.

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues said to me, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And then He carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down from out of heaven from God. It shown with the glory of God.

The new earth, the destiny of the final and eternal phase of life, where God will live with the crown of His creation: human beings, the survivors, the faithful, forever free from the tempter, those fallen angels whose jealousy lead to animosity and competition, who tormented humankind and nudged and knocked millions off the narrow path and onto the highway to hell.

The wedding of the Lamb of God who is the Son of God, the second Person of the trinitarian One-God marks the culmination of the old world and the commencement of paradise, the better garden.

Gender melts away with the notion of purely physical humanity. Being made in the image and likeness of God as human beings, never meant to have two arms and two legs, etc. how could it? God’s image and likeness is not physical. The souls of those who faithfully survive life on this war-torn planet with its abundance of demonic influences are filled with the spirit of love, obedience, humility, and truth. Such characteristics and more reflect our image and likeness to God, not blue eyes and wavy long hair, or muscles and solid abs. God, in Jesus, took our physical image upon Himself even as we human beings are imbued with His image and likeness in love, truth, and righteousness. We carry those characteristics within our  mammalian bodies to the wedding feast, if invited. Each of us is given a soul, He was given a body.

And yet, gender still exists, is real and specific. Gender is beyond the physical. She is the bride. He is the bridegroom.

God allows those fallen angels, the demons, to wreak havoc on this earth to suss out His Holy Ones, the wise, the brave, the righteous, the victorious. Gold purified in fire.

Let’s think about the sacrificial lamb of the age gone-by, receiving the sins of a person and then being killed for two purposes. 1. To demonstrate that the wage of sin is death. In other words, to behave in a manner, even with one’s thoughts and intentions, that runs counter to the characteristics of God is to deserve death. God is life, to be unlike God is to be dead. 2. And yet, the death of the innocent lamb is a type of forgiveness, a clean slate, a resurrection, a renaissance, a second chance. No greater love…

This book is about “her” the bride, the new Jerusalem. The beloved and the loving.

Now that we are considering this wedding in spiritual terms, let’s turn back to the characteristic of gender. The bride is clearly female. Zion in the psalm is female.

Without a physical human body, what can being female mean? There was the primary role for men, as for Adam, and for women, Eve who was given to him to be his helper. Adam had dominion. He named the animals. He built his home. Later, the male role was defined in procreation as the initiator and the source. His bride is the welcoming recipient, helper, partner, the nurturer and birth giver. In marriage, the hunter and the nurturer join to become one. Even one flesh as Adam said when he met his mate.

Gender identity is not just physical. God in three persons is the primal Alpha Male. To understand what it means to be male, go no further than to study God.

The Church is female, την εκκλησία, and yet contains and is led by physical men. What matters most, the male body or the female soul?

Both men and women share the same characteristics, compassion, love, strength, tolerance, wisdom etc. and both within their gender roles.

Greek word genders follow. I wonder if these words are the same gender in all gendered languages. So let’s examine words with gender to understand the Brides’ femininity better.

*Female

Soul

The Church

Humility

Door

Window

Forgiveness

Straw

Heart

Pride

*Male

Body

Dog

Shield

Physician

Priest

Heat

Fruit

Garden

Gardener

Policeman

Smoke

The old Jerusalem, like a person, harbored  evil and beauty.  Jerusalem saw and still sees the ugliest of humanity with wars, the injustice of Christ’s trial and the crucifixion. On the other hand in Jerusalem, there was the watershed moment of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac and the faith of Abraham, and the place of millions of subsequent sacrificial lambs from people sincerely seeking purification. There were Christ’s teachings and healings, His resurrection and ascension to the Father.

Revelation Chapter 21:11

It (the new Jerusalem, the Bride) shone with the glory of God.

Rev. 21:22

I did not see a temple in the city (Her), because the Lord God almighty and the Lamb (Him) are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the Glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.The nations walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

21:27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

How beautiful is this Bride.