Western culture separates the wedding ceremony from the wedding celebration, usually by no more than a few hours. Jewish culture in the first century did too, but between the legal contract of marriage [erusin] signed by the husband and the bride’s father and its celebration and consummation [nissuin] lay a considerably longer interval. The marriage supper and its aftermath might take place weeks, months or years after the signing of the contract.
It might even be indefinitely postponed, assuming we are reading the relevant instructions in 1 Corinthians correctly.
Marriage and Marriage Supper
The Greek word for “marriage” is the same as the word for “wedding” or “marriage supper”, which makes sense; the perpetual togetherness of marriage follows the celebration of the union and proceeds from it, both today and in the days of the New Testament. Few NT passages deal with weddings. The verb “marry” is common, especially in the instructive passages. But prior to the book of Revelation, the noun “wedding” or “marriage supper” [gamos] appears only in a single narrative passage (the wedding in Cana of John 2).
We might call all the other references to weddings allegorical or parabolic, and all have to do with the kingdom in one way or another.
Matthew 22: The Wedding Feast
First, there is the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22, in which an unnamed king announces a wedding for his son, only to find his invitations spurned and the servants he tasks with delivering them mistreated and killed. After dealing with these rebellious privileged folks, he sends his servants out into the highways and byways to invite any willing to come, and the wedding hall is filled with guests.
An interesting takeaway from the parable is its closing, in which the king notices a man present who has not bothered to dress appropriately. The king has him cast into the outer darkness, and observes that many are called, but few are chosen.
Matthew 25: The Ten Virgins
Several chapters later the Lord tells another parable about a wedding feast delayed by the late arrival of the bridegroom. Ten invitees, all young women, await the order to come out and meet him. As midnight approaches, five of these realize they lack oil for their lamps. In the process of going to buy oil, they miss the bridegroom’s arrival, the door of the wedding hall is locked to them, and they are rejected from celebrating with him.
The moral: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
Luke 12: The Master Comes Home
Luke’s first parable swaps out the sexes and the location. In the parable the Lord tells here, a rich master is attending a wedding feast elsewhere. The scene is his estate, where his servants are waiting up late to welcome him home. He describes several types of servants: the diligent manager whose faithfulness in waiting will be richly rewarded; the drunken reprobate who takes advantage of the master’s delay to consume his master’s wine and fight with his servants, and whom his master will ultimately destroy; and finally, a variety of lazy, unprepared servants who act in ignorance and are punished in accordance with their level of understanding.
Once again, we have a moral: “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.”
The Great Marriage Supper
Those of us who know and love Jesus Christ in this present age have our own marriage supper to attend in heaven. Despite its singular importance both to us and to the Lord, we have remarkably little detail concerning it. Revelation 19 describes the lead-up to the event as follows:
“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,
‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure’ —
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God.’ ”
That the Lamb is the Lord Jesus and the Bride all those who are “in Christ” is not credibly disputable. The bride-price was paid at the cross, the spiritual equivalent of the erusin or legal contract of marriage effectively signed. Today, we await the nissuin or wedding feast, not merely as privileged guests but, astoundingly, as the focus of the Bridegroom’s love. That much is clear. The fine linen with which the Bride is clothed is interpreted for us as the “righteous deeds of the saints”.
That’s interesting. Not clothed in the righteousness of Christ accomplished through his death and resurrection, but clothed in our own deeds accomplished in his strength and for his glory. We might contrast this with the “polluted garment” or “filthy rags” of Isaiah, works done under the law in hope of establishing righteousness before God. The latter could never measure up. Unlike these, the righteous deeds of the saints are entirely acceptable attire for the Bride. They have been performed not to merit salvation but in grateful consequence of having it gifted to us by God’s grace (“it was granted her”).
Appropriate Attire
An aside: it should be evident that if the righteous deeds of the saints are on display at the marriage supper of the Lamb, then surely the judgment seat of Christ, though not described explicitly in Revelation, has already taken place at this point. Of that day, Paul says, “the fire will test what sort of work each one has done”, whether each has built on the foundation of Christ with “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw”. The Lord Jesus will examine the “things hidden in darkness” and “disclose the purposes of the heart” to determine the true quality of their workmanship. Only those deeds that survive the piercing scrutiny of the Bridegroom are suitable attire for his Bride.
But if the redeemed of Christ in this present era form his Bride, we might well ask who are the “blessed” invited guests at the wedding feast? As the parable in Matthew 22 reminds us, appropriate attire is necessary for not just the Bride, but for each wedding guest. Revelation 6 depicts “souls slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne”. These each receive a white robe and are told to rest a little longer until their number is complete. In chapter 7, we see the entire number of “the ones coming out of the great tribulation” assembled and praising God. They form “a great multitude that no one could number” from every tribe, nation, people and language. These too are clothed in white robes. A fit assembly of wedding guests? You tell me. Redeemed by Christ. Loved by Christ. Rewarded by Christ, and in a unique relationship with him for eternity. But not “in Christ” as we are. That is the special privilege of the Bride.
Parsing the Parables
Let’s go back to the parables of the gospels for a moment and see if they may add anything to our understanding of the marriage supper of the Lamb. The answer to that question is by no means certain, but we can certainly eliminate some common misunderstandings of these parables.
The First Parable: Israel Set Aside
The meaning of the first parable in Matthew 22 is obvious, or at least it was to those who heard it: the Jews, having rejected the kingdom and its King and killed its messengers, were about to be judged, and invitations to the kingdom and the celebration thereof extended to the Gentiles. It is unlikely the wedding feast in the parable is specifically intended to depict the marriage supper of the Lamb or hint at the special role of the church in the affections of the Lord Jesus. That revelation would come later. The primary lesson in view is the setting aside of Israel. (If there is any doubt about that, consider the confusion it creates to insert professing Christians of the church era into the parable as both bride and guests!)
What is important for those who hope to enter into a relationship with God in this present era (or, for that matter, during the great tribulation) is the takeaway that wedding guests need proper attire. Coming as we are will not end well, either in this era or the one that follows it.
The Second Parable: The 144,000 Anticipated
It is important to note that the parable of the ten virgins is set at the time of Christ’s second coming, not at the rapture, about which the Jews who formed the Lord’s audience knew nothing. It begins with the word “Then”, which refers back to the time of the coming of the Son of Man in judgment on the world. It concerns a particularly Jewish set of circumstances centered around the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, the Sabbath and Judea in the end times. In short, the virgins are not professing Christians being encouraged to spiritual preparedness as they wait for the return of Christ for his church, but rather all those who claim to be servants of Christ during the great tribulation awaiting his glorious return. Both the wise and foolish virgins hold to a Messianic hope, but only the former have truly been converted.
Here, I think the symbol of the wedding feast probably does hint at the marriage supper of the Lamb. It is relevant to both Jews and Gentiles willing to suffer and die for Christ during the tribulation, and to those who refuse the mark of the beast. As we have already seen, the marriage supper needs guests, and Revelation depicts the Jews among these potential invitees as … guess what? Virgins.
The Third Parable: Service and Reward
The third parable involved servants waiting at home for their master to return from “the wedding banquet”. The language of Luke is similar to that of the final verses of Matthew 24, but only Luke specifically mentions that the master has been to the wedding, though he does not identify him as the bridegroom. Comparing this version with that of Matthew 24 makes it evident the setting in which these servants are portrayed is just prior to the Second Coming, not the rapture. But the group of servants here is not made up of tribulation martyrs, but rather of the Jewish remnant still living at the end of the great tribulation when the Lord returns, as well as all those who profess loyalty to Christ at that time. I believe he’s speaking to the disciples here not as representatives of the then-future church, but as representatives of the remnant of Israel converted by the testimony of the 144,000 after the rapture. Where the parable of the ten virgins is concerned with spiritual preparedness, this one is primarily concerned with the service, reward and punishment, where necessary, of those who claim to be Christ’s servants at the end of the age.
As with all parabolic references to wedding feasts in the Gospels, the Bride is not in view. There’s no good reason she should be.
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