It is such a glorious church that Christ will present to Himself at His coming back. Glory is God expressed. Hence, to be glorious is to be God’s expression. Eventually, the church presented to Christ will be a God-expressing one. Such a church will also be holy and without blemish. To be holy is to be saturated and transformed with Christ, and to be without blemish is to be spotless and without wrinkle, with nothing of the natural life of our old man.
The church that comes out of Christ will go back to Christ, just as Eve came out of Adam and went back to Adam. As Eve became one flesh with Adam, so the church which goes back to Christ will be one spirit with Christ.
The church presented to Christ will be glorious; it will be the expression, the manifestation, of God. For the church to become glorious means that the church becomes God’s expression. Because Christ’s sanctifying will cause the church to be saturated with the essence of God, the church will eventually become the bride to express God. The only way for us to become His expression is to be continually saturated with the divine essence. If we would experience this saturation, we need Christ’s sanctifying.
As previously mentioned, the glorious church, the church that expresses God, will be holy and without blemish. To be holy is to be separated to the Lord from common things and then saturated and permeated with the divine nature, with all that God is. The church that has become holy in this way will also be without blemish. Blemish here is like a defect in a precious stone; this defect comes from mixture within the stone. If we would be without blemish, we must be without mixture; that is, we must not have anything other than God in our being. One day the church will be not only clean and pure but also without blemish, without mixture. The church will be the expression of God Himself mingled with a resurrected, uplifted, and transformed humanity. This is the glorious church, the church that is holy and without blemish. In the future such a glorious church will be presented by Christ to Himself.
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. When Christ presents the church to Himself, the church will be a beautiful bride. As the universal man, Christ needs the church to be the bride that matches Him. In order to be the bride of Christ, the church must become beautiful and have all the spots and wrinkles removed.
Surely at the time of her presentation to Christ, the bride will not have any wrinkles or spots. In His bride Christ will behold nothing but beauty. This beauty will be the reflection of what He is. The beauty of the bride comes from the Christ who is wrought into the church and expressed through the church. Our beauty is not our behavior; our only beauty is the reflection of Christ, the shining out of Christ from within us. What Christ appreciates in us is the expression of Himself. Nothing less than this will meet His standard or win His appreciation.
Today we must prepare ourselves to be the bride by taking in the element of Christ’s riches as our nourishment. Christ is the food for the church. Therefore, as she prepares herself to be presented to Christ, the church must eat Christ. There is no other way to be prepared. Eating Jesus is the way. By eating Him we become a beautiful and even glorious bride.
First, Christ must come into us and then be assimilated by us. Then He will be able to shine out of us. This shining is the glory of the bride, the manifestation of divinity through humanity. Real beauty is the expression of the divine attributes through humanity. Nothing in the universe is as beautiful as this expression. Therefore, the beauty of the bride is Christ shining out of us. It is a matter of divinity expressed through humanity. Through our humanity there is an expression of the divine color, the divine appearance, the divine flavor, the divine nature, and the divine character.
The church is being beautified by partaking of Christ, by digesting Christ, and by assimilating Christ. The more we experience the indwelling Christ in this way, the more He will replace our spots and wrinkles with His element, and the more His riches with the divine attributes will become our beauty. Then we will be prepared to be presented to Christ as His lovely bride.
In the past, Christ as the Redeemer gave Himself up for the church (v. 25) for redemption and the impartation of life (John 19:34); in the present, He as the life-giving Spirit is sanctifying the church through separation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building; and in the future, He as the Bridegroom will present the church to Himself as His counterpart for His satisfaction. Therefore, Christ’s loving the church is to separate and sanctify her, and His separating and sanctifying the church are to present her to Himself glorious.