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The Bible is rich in symbolism, dreams, parables, illustrations, poetry, metaphors, prophecy, rituals, ceremonies—the object lessons from the real historical events and the lives of people recorded therein.
These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come (1 Corinthians 10:11 NIV84).
One of the object lessons in Scripture is that a pure woman represents the church (the bride of Christ) while an impure woman represents the lost. The question is, why do women represent these two groups and not men?
In my understanding, it has to do with the reality-based (design-law determined) truths that the object lesson is trying to teach. And there are multiple historical and design-law realities that are revealed in Christ taking the object lesson role of the man (groom) and humanity taking the object lesson role of the woman (bride).
- Adam was created first; Eve came second, an extension of Adam.
- Jesus existed first; humans are a creation of Jesus.
- Women are weaker than men.
- Humans are weaker than Christ.
- Women, historically, have depended on their husbands to provide and protect.
- Humans must depend on Christ to provide and protect.
- Women are fertile and receive the implanted seed that brings forth new life—the fruit of the womb.
- Human minds and hearts are fertile to receive either the seeds of truth or lies and bring forth the fruit of what is implanted there.
- God designed marriage as a union in which two individuals become one in love, trust, intimate knowing, understanding, friendship, devotion, loyalty, with never-ending growth as time unfolds.
- God wants this type of union with us, our love, trust, intimate knowing, understanding, friendship, devotion, loyalty, and never-ending eternal growth as time unfolds. This type of union, connection, oneness, cannot be achieved through law or law enforcement, only through truth, love, and trust in an atmosphere of freedom.
Jesus described this intimate union when He prayed,
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:20–23 NIV84, emphasis mine).
This union, symbolized by the joining of husband and wife in love, is designed by God to bring about new life (Genesis 1:28)—children who bear the image of their parents. So, too, when people join in intimate love and trust with Jesus, they receive the Holy Spirit, who implants in them the seeds of a new life that are to be nurtured to bring about the fruits of that new life in the formation of a character like Jesus, so that we bear the image of our heavenly Father.
He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God (1 John 3:8, 9 NIV84, emphasis mine).
Because Adam broke trust with God and implanted into his hearts the seeds of fear and selfishness, all of his descendants, us, are born into this world in sin, conceived in iniquity, born with the seeds of Satan, of fear and selfishness growing in our hearts (Psalm 51:5). If these motivational seeds are not rooted out and replaced with the seeds of love and trust, the animating life, power, presence, spirit of Jesus, we become like Satan in character and bear his image.
Jesus became incarnate and partook of the damaged life we all inherit from Adam, and in His substitutionary sacrifice, destroyed the infecting elements of fear and selfishness and restored into humanity the pure life of sinless love and trust. When we are converted, we receive that new life, the new animating energy from Jesus, so that it is no longer our old selves that live but Christ living in us (Galatians 2:20). And we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), part of the family of God:
Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Romans 8:14 NIV84).
And this is also described in the New Covenant when God writes His law on our hearts and minds:
“No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34 NIV84, emphasis mine).
The living law of love written upon their hearts and minds by the animating living Holy Spirit is God’s seed, which brings a new life that begins to grow within the believer. And this is described in another way,
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16 NIV84).
God’s Spirit is the seed or life of God that is implanted in us and brings us a new life, the life of Christ, and we become children of God who bear His image. But this is also described as being a temple where God lives. How is the temple connected to the marriage object lesson?
Well, what happens at a wedding? The two become one, and that is what the temple object lesson teaches: Jesus cleansing His people to bring them back into unity or oneness with Him. The day of at-one-ment is the time in history when Jesus is married to His bride, which means it is the time in history when the people of God collectively are matured, are healed, are settled by the Spirt of truth and love into eternal loyalty and trustworthiness to Jesus. They are settled both intellectually and spiritually so that nothing can move them from their loyalty. This is the time in which we are living today!
If you would like a comprehensive review of all of this with biblical references, please read our magazine The Wedding of Christ to His Bride.
Spiritual Prostitution
So, if being married to Jesus means accepting into our hearts the truth and love of Jesus through His Spirit, such that we are reborn and mature to become a loyal, faithful, and pure bride possessing the fruits of a Christlike character, bearing His image, then what would constitute adultery? And what is spiritual prostitution?
Revelation 17 states,
Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries (vv. 1, 2 NIV84, emphasis mine).
Adultery is betrayal, taking into oneself someone other than one’s spouse. And in this case, it is taking into one’s heart the seeds—the principles, laws, methods, and practices—of someone other than Christ, such that one gives birth to the fruits of a beastly character that bears the image of Satan instead of the image of Christ.
And what is prostitution? Selling oneself for money. Thus, the adulterous woman described in Revelation is not merely betraying her declared spouse; she is doing it for profit. This is not referring to the godless who deny a belief in God, but to those who claim Jesus as their Savior, those who claim Jesus as their husband but who instead implant into their hearts the methods, practices, principles, and laws of Satan and do so for profit, whether personal profit or institutional profit, whether the profit of money, or power, or position, or domination and control over others.
And when that happens, people, rather than being living stones built together into a house for the Lord, a temple where Jesus dwells by His Spirit, instead become a synagogue to Satan (Revelation 2:9), living beings who reproduce the image of the great rebel instead of the image of God.
Thus, women are a very apt representation of people who are capable of receiving either truth or lies into their hearts and producing a harvest of either a righteous Christlike character or a demonic one. So I encourage you to go to Jesus right now and ask Him to finish His cleansing work in you, for,
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25–27 NIV84).
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