There are myriad topics, allegories, and themes that can be used to learn about God’s holy days. It’s always interesting to see what filters or “lenses” I’m viewing the holy days through each year as they come and go, particularly during the Passover season. This year there have been a few larger themes playing through my mind, in particular the holy days as picturing the marriage of Jesus Christ to His anointed bride.
Passover represents each and every one of us individually, as well as us collectively, entering into covenant with God and Jesus Christ. There are two types of covenants symbolized here—blood and marriage. It’s the marriage covenant and what it can teach us that I’m focusing on here.
The Bride of Christ
When looked at through one filter, the bible is a love story. It is the story of God bringing the whole world into His family, starting with His Son and His bride. In studying the marriage customs of ancient Israel, we can see how the holy days are an allegory for this process.
We’re told in Revelation of the actual wedding ceremony in heaven, the marriage supper of the Lamb. “Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory,” John relays, “for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints” (Rev. 19:7). This happy occasion does not happen out of the blue, though.
Instead, there are several important steps in this relationship that bring the bride and Groom to this point. If we tried to look at the marriage allegory only through our modern wedding rituals, we’d miss much of the deep and rich meaning laid out for us. It’s not perfect and all-encompassing—all analogies and allegories break down at a certain point—but the spring holy days help teach us about God’s relationship to us and how He will bring us into His family as His son’s pure bride.
Christ frequently used the rituals of this very familiar, very exciting event to illustrate things about Himself and what would happen in the future. He based several parables and sayings around marriage, including that of the marriage supper (Matt 22:2), the ten virgins (Matt 25:6, 10), and the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-20).
Paul took this theme further, telling us that “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”, and that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church—even laying down His life for her (Eph. 5:23, 25).
Weddings in ancient Israel consisted of three main stages: contract, consummation, and celebration. The contract stage, which is largely pictured by the spring holy days, involved making the marriage contract, paying the bride price and giving the bride gifts, and the departure of the groom, after which both bride and groom made themselves ready for the coming ceremony, consummation, and festivities.
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