After Eve had been prepared for Adam by being built out of Adam’s rib, she was presented to Adam, the source from which she came. In like manner, the church as Christ’s counterpart will be presented to Christ, who is her source. This presentation will not be done by God but by Christ Himself. Ephesians 5:27 says, “That He might present the church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such things, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” Here we see that Christ will present the church to Himself. Hence, He will be both the presenter and the receiver.
In the past, Christ gave Himself up for the church. In the present, He is sanctifying the church. Eventually, in the future, He will present the church to Himself as His counterpart for His satisfaction.
The church Christ will present to Himself as His counterpart will be glorious. Glory is God expressed. Hence, to be glorious is to be God’s expression. Eventually the church presented by Christ to Himself will be a God-expressing one; it will be the expression, the manifestation, of God. Because Christ’s sanctifying of the church causes her to be saturated with the essence of God, the church will become the expression of God. The only way for us to become God’s expression is to be continually saturated with the divine essence. The more we are saturated in this way, the more we become the expression of God.
In His New Testament economy, God is working Christ into us. Eventually, Christ will present a glorious church to Himself not by coming merely in an objective way but by expanding within us and then coming out of us. Christ will glorify us not by descending upon us from the heavens but by coming forth from within us. The hope of glory is not the Christ in the heavens but the Christ who is in us (Col. 1:27). Hence, when God glorifies us, He will not need to send the glory from above; rather, He will cause Christ to shine forth from within us. This indicates that glorification is a subjective experience of the indwelling Christ. Even now Christ is in the process of presenting a glorious church to Himself. As this process takes place, He saturates our inner being with Himself.
In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul says, “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” Our need today is to behold and reflect the glory of the Lord. As we behold His glory, we are transformed from glory to glory, that is, from one degree of glory to another degree. The more we behold the Lord’s glory and are transformed by the Lord Spirit from glory to glory, the more the Lord will gain the glorious church He desires.
The glorious church Christ presents to Himself will be a church “not having spot or wrinkle or any such things” (Eph. 5:27). Spots are something out of the natural life, and wrinkles are signs of oldness. Humanly speaking, there is no way for us to remove such things. However, God has a way. The water of life in the Word can metabolically wash away these defects by the transformation of life. The more Christ sanctifies the church and cleanses her through the washing of the water in the Word, the fewer spots and wrinkles there will be. The spots and wrinkles will be removed metabolically. This means that every flaw, defect, and imperfection will be removed by Christ’s transforming life.
The spots and wrinkles must be removed in order for the bride, Christ’s counterpart, to be prepared for Christ. To be sure, the bride presented to Christ will not have any spots or wrinkles. Revelation 19:7 says, “Let us rejoice and exult, and let us give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready.” Certainly by this time the bride will have been purified from all spots and wrinkles.
The spots and wrinkles do not affect the function of the church. However, they very much detract from the beauty of the church. The church as Christ’s bride must be beautiful. For this reason, Paul goes on from the function and daily living of the church as the new man in Ephesians 4 to the presentation of the church as the bride without spot or wrinkle in Ephesians 5. In order to be the bride of Christ, the church must become beautiful and have all spots and wrinkles removed.
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