As we bring our series answering the question, What Good is the Church? to a close, I want to focus on the destination of the church or the church’s destiny. We are destined for glory! Our destiny is to one day be presented to Christ as a pure bride. Our lives are filled with this glorious anticipation of being between the time of being betrothed to Christ and waiting for the consummation when our betrothing will be finalized. We are in waiting for our Groom the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to ransom us away and establish his forever kingdom on this earth. He will establish the glory of his presence as the waters cover the sea. The earth will be filled with his glory and it has been promised that we will be forever reigning with him. The union of God and man, inaugurated at the incarnation of Jesus, is our destiny and will be finalized at the resurrection when we are changed from one glory to another, and this, forever!
We are talking much in this message about what will happen then, but the question might be what does then have to do with now? To answer that question, we turn to the book of Ephesians where Paul hints at our destiny as the Bride of Christ, his church, and connects that everlasting fellowship that will be had with the most intimate of human expressions given by God. Marriage, though temporary, is a picture of the everlasting unity we will have with God.
The church, as the gathered body of Christ, is having our dress rehearsal for glory. We are dressing for our destiny on the day our mortal flesh will put on the immortal flesh given through the power of the resurrection. We are in waiting with the assurance that our Groom, who has promised to soon come, is coming! The end will come, according to 1 Cor. 15, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and every power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. He is coming after the battle, after vanquishing every evil. Once there is no opportunity for evil, we can then be presented to Him, as Ephesians 5:27 says, in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.