thank you -- an this is showing that our marriage to Christ involves not only the spirit but the body, right? Paul is using that point to encourage holiness.
speaking of us as already His own bride doesn't definitively make the snatching away of the bride to the place prepared for her, the marriage consummation and feast a thing of the past tho. in Hebrew culture, a betrothed is considered equivalent to an actually married bride. it was not until Gentile culture was mixed with Jewish in the middle ages that there was any thought of the engagement process being 'reversible' or 'tentative' -- rabbinic law treats the betrothal as only being possible to annul through the same divorce proceedings that a married woman would go through.
so it is a very Jewish thing for Paul, a Jew, to speak of the one he 'betrothed' to Christ ((not 'married' - 2 Cor. 11:2)) as already and truly belonging to Him.
but in that these passages from Ephesians speak of us as being bodily joined with Him, how can that consummation, and subsequent feast, have already taken place when we have not yet received the redemption of our bodies ((Rom. 8:22-25)) which is the consummation of our sanctification -- that sanctification being a process the Hebrew bride completes before the consummation of marriage?
speaking of us as already His own bride doesn't definitively make the snatching away of the bride to the place prepared for her, the marriage consummation and feast a thing of the past tho. in Hebrew culture, a betrothed is considered equivalent to an actually married bride. it was not until Gentile culture was mixed with Jewish in the middle ages that there was any thought of the engagement process being 'reversible' or 'tentative' -- rabbinic law treats the betrothal as only being possible to annul through the same divorce proceedings that a married woman would go through.
so it is a very Jewish thing for Paul, a Jew, to speak of the one he 'betrothed' to Christ ((not 'married' - 2 Cor. 11:2)) as already and truly belonging to Him.
but in that these passages from Ephesians speak of us as being bodily joined with Him, how can that consummation, and subsequent feast, have already taken place when we have not yet received the redemption of our bodies ((Rom. 8:22-25)) which is the consummation of our sanctification -- that sanctification being a process the Hebrew bride completes before the consummation of marriage?
Paul is using the man and woman becoming one flesh because the "one flesh" is the baby that results from their union. For Christ and us, the "one flesh" is the birth of our "new man". If our marriage is supposed to come at the end of time, then the new man created in us right now, is born out of fornication.