betrothed

We who have come to trust in Jesus for our salvation are living out a wedding engagement with our Savior.  Yesterday I was reflecting on the incompleteness of our experience with the Lord.  Yes, we have realized His great love and yes, we have acknowledged our sin and separation from the Lord and our need to be cleansed by His presence.  Truly we have been born again, spiritually, and have full assurance of being with the Lord forever.  But yesterday I considered the unique intimacy and the fulfillment of our relationship with the Lord.  We know that the Bible tells us:  "The Bridegroom is coming."  We have been taught that the church, or collection of believers across time, is the bride of Christ.  I thought about the archaic term: "betrothed".  It has the word "troth" inside which is very similar to "truth".  Apparently to "betroth" is to promise to marry...a promise that can be trusted.  We have been told that, in Jesus' day, Jewish men and women were betrothed for a period of time before actually completing the marriage with a feast  and physical consummation.  The betrothal period was something like our modern wedding engagements, with two key differences.  Jewish men and women were considered absolutely reserved for one another once they were betrothed, while enaged couples today are still going through a preliminary relationship.  Secondly, most engaged couples set a date for the wedding and make plans for the celebration.  The husband in a Jewish betrothal would come for his wife at an unannounced time and the couple would then be carred to the feast to celebrate the completion of the union.  Right now we believers are betrothed to Christ.  We have received His promise of marriage and are assured that He will complete what He has promised.  In a sense we have felt His kiss and experienced His touch but long for a completed relationship.  We have not known the full experience of marriage and, just as the engaged couple wonders what marriage will be like, we also wonder what home will be like with our Savior.  We are living out the betrothal and our Lord is coming for us at a definite, but unknown, time to take us to the wedding feast.

 

Isaiah 62:⁵ For as a young man marries a virgin,
      So shall your sons marry you;
      And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
      So shall your God rejoice over you.

 

blessings,

Rob Smith