Jesus and His Bride

Many years ago my wife and I visited Niagara Falls in the state of New York. While viewing the lower part of the falls, the tour guide told our group a heartbreaking story. Some years previous, before there were safety rails, a newly married couple was viewing that great rush of water. The young bride ventured too close to the edge and fell in. Immediately, without a second’s hesitation, her young lover dove in after her. As he held her in his arms, they went over the falls together, plunging to their death.

The spiritual application is obvious. The bridegroom died for his bride, not for himself. He needed no saving; she did. And it was his love for her which moved him to take that most dreadful leap into what was to be their watery grave.

Paul tells us, “Ye are bought with a price.”  In the book of Leviticus, the redemption value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty was fifty shekels of silver. But for a woman, it was thirty shekels of silver. Unknown to Judas and the priests, they would forever show the world, the thirty pieces of silver was not for Jesus, but for His bride. His death was for her redemption.

Unlike the bride in our story, who died with her lover, our story does not end there. For we not only died with the Lover of our souls, but were raised with Him, and now walk with Him in newness of life. Hallelujah! Saints of God, we’re on our “eternal honeymoon!”