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Repost of #626:

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

823 "The Church . . . is held, as a matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy. This is because Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is hailed as 'alone holy,' loved the Church as his Bride, giving himself up for her so as to sanctify her; he joined her to himself as his body and endowed her with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God."

Wrong. The Church is NEVER described as the bride of Christ in the Scriptures. Indeed, the Church is ALWAYS described as masculine. From MetaChristianity I - How to Unlock Bible Mysteries:

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Ep.4.13 ...until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

The Church is called "mature" which equals "a complete man" (Greek).

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Ph.3.3a For it is we who are the circumcision

The Church is identified with male circumcision.

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1Pe.2.5a you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood

The Church is illustrated as a "priesthood". Priests are men.

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1Pe.2.9a But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood

Again, priests are men.

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2Th.2.7b till he is taken out of the way.

The Church is called "he".

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Ga.4.29-31 At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. ...Therefore, brothers we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

The Church is identified as a "son".

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Ph.1.27b I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel

The Church is likened to "one man".

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Ep.2.15b-16 His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

Church = Israel + Gentiles = "one new man" = "one body"

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Lk.15.11-32 The Prodigal Son = the Church

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The Body of Christ:

Ro.12.5a so in Christ we who are many form one body

See also 1Co.10.17, 1Co.12.12,1 Co.12.27, Ep.1.22-23, Ep.3.6, Ep.4.4, Ep.4.12, Ep.4.15, Ep.4.25, Co.1.18, Co.1.24, Co.2.19, Co.3.15

Christ is a man.

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It is almost unnecessary to point out the obvious conclusion from the above verses that the Church is over and over referred to as masculine in Scripture, but I am willing to bet this is "news" to you, because the traditional teaching totally ignores that the evidence of these verses even exist. So what does the contemporary Church teach? (And I mean every single denomination, sect and cult!) They tell us that the Church is feminine in gender - actually the "bride of Christ".

So, where does it talk about the bride of Christ?

Re.21.2 I saw the Holy City , the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

Re.21.9b-10 "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City , Jerusalem , coming down out of heaven from God.

These are the only two contemporary NT passages that directly identify the bride of Christ. Now, clearly neither of these verses even remotely refers to the Church. Revelation declares that the New Jerusalem will come down to earth from Heaven. The Church, on the other hand, is strictly an earth-based entity. Eventually all members of the Church are purported to be transported to the heavenly Jerusalem , but there is no reason to believe this equates them to be the same. Re.19.7-8 states that the linen of the bride stands for the righteous acts of the Saints. Which Saints? Only those of the Church? What of those prior to the Church? Those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life (Re.21.27), include the Saints of all ages who will live in the New Jerusalem.

He.12.22-24 But you have come to Mount Zion , to the heavenly Jerusalem , the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, 23 to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

The heavenly Jerusalem is listed separate from the Church. To argue that they are the same in this verse one would also have to include Angels in the Church, which is absurd, and even more absurd you would have to hold that God and the Church are equivalent.

So, where could the tradition of equating the Church with the "bride" originate? Church tradition erroneously connects four other passages to the two Revelation passages.

Yeast in the Dough

Mt.13.33 "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."

The contention is that the yeast equals the Gospel, the flour equals the world, and the woman is the Church. The problem with this is that yeast is considered very symbolic in Jewish culture throughout the Bible. It always represents evil, sin, impurity, etc., and never represents anything good.

Ex.12.19 For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel , whether he is an alien or native-born.

Yeast was untouchable during the Passover.

Le.2.11 Every grain offering you bring to the LORD must be made without yeast, for you are not to burn any yeast or honey in an offering made to the LORD by fire.

Grain offerings to the LORD must be without yeast.

Le.7.12-13 If he offers it as an expression of thankfulness, then along with this thank offering he is to offer cakes of bread made without yeast and mixed with oil, wafers made without yeast and spread with oil, and cakes of fine flour well-kneaded and mixed with oil. 13 Along with his fellowship offering of thanksgiving he is to present an offering with cakes of bread made with yeast.

The cakes and wafers without yeast are a type of Christ (undefiled). The cakes with yeast are a type of man (defiled).

Mt.16.6-12 "Be careful," Jesus said to them. "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

Verse twelve defines yeast as...the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Lk.12.1 "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

The fact that the Pharisees don’t keep their own teaching makes the yeast equal to hypocrisy.

1Co.5.6-8 Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast--as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

Yeast equals malice and wickedness.

Ga.5.7-9 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 "A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough."

Paul equates yeast with keeping the Law.

Do not be fooled by the fact that the parable of the yeast in the dough is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven . As is indicated in the parable of the fishermen (Mt.13.47-48) there is good and evil in the Kingdom of Heaven . See also Mt.13.24-30.

So to view the woman as the Church one must also accept that the Church deliberately introduces evil (yeast) into the "kingdom of heaven". This makes no sense.

Forty Other Words

Ro.7.4 that ye should be married...to him (KJV)

The transliterated Greek word, here translated "belong to" (NIV), but translated "married to" in the KJV, is "ginomai". Strong's Concordance states that it can be "used with great latitude" and offers forty other substitutes that have nothing to do with marriage. So to establish this Scripture as definitive in relationship to the bride is unacceptable. Just because Rom. 7:1-3 uses a marriage between a husband and a wife as an example of a covenant relationship, this does not mean that the covenant between Christ and the Church is a marriage. If Paul was definitively trying to convey that Christ and the Church are in a "marriage" covenant he would certainly have used the Greek word "gameo" which can only mean "married to".

Work...in another man's territory

2Co.10.15-11.2 I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.

Paul is not here referring to the whole Church, but his own personal converts, (as opposed to "boasting of work done by others" [vs.15], and "work already done in another man's territory." [vs.16]), in which he was jealous over that he might present them to Christ. Paul says in verse one, "I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness." He is not making a doctrinal statement in verse two, but an illustration. He makes this point to his converts (that they are covenanted to Christ) because they have been easily persuaded otherwise by "those super-apostles" (vs.4 & 5). This presentation of verse two would have to happen in the heavenly Jerusalem (the bride). As far as being described as a virgin in verse two, in the parable of the ten virgins (MT.25) they represent all of mankind, not the bride, so there is nothing special about Paul's wish to present his converts as a "pure virgin". He was simply afraid they had been "led astray" from their "pure devotion to Christ" (vs.3).

Profound Mystery

This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. Ep.5.23-33

The NIV translation of verses 25 to 27 includes the word "her" four times, alluding to the Church. This is a bias in the translation. The Greek is neuter, so the proper translation is the word "it". The comparison is not of the Church with the wife, but with the husband's body.

Ep.5.23-33 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for ~~her~~ [it] 26 to make ~~her~~ [it] holy, cleansing ~~her~~ [it] by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present ~~her~~ [it] to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church - 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

First and foremost, Paul is not here teaching a formal doctrine about the esoteric dimensions of Christ and the Church. This discourse is about every day living for men and their wives (it is preceded by a discourse on not getting drunk, singing hymns and submission to each other, and followed by a teaching for children to obey their parents).

[Read the following slowly and carefully.] Paul first compares the wife and the Church to "his body" in verses twenty three and twenty four, and if taken in isolation one might become confused about the comparison Paul is making. But Paul continues on to explain his comparison in detail, and it is then that we see that the first two verses were simply an elementary foundation to set the stage for the details of his explanation. The comparison in verse twenty three is just that, a comparison, not a doctrinal statement of equivalence. It say's "his" body, not "her" body. The comparison is that of husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church (vs.25), as in husbands loving "their own bodies" (vs.28), and Christ loving "his own body", the Church (vs.29-30). Paul actually already explained this principle. Remember this verse from earlier?

Church = Israel + Gentiles = "one new man" = "one body"

The "profound mystery" is that a husband and wife become "one flesh" (vs.31), but then Paul states, "but I am talking about Christ and the church" (vs.32). Why would Paul say this? Because the husband "also must love his wife as he loves himself" (vs. 33) just as Christ does the Church. The wife is to be included as though her body and his body are "one flesh" or "one body" as in Ep.2.15b-16. But the direct comparison is the husband's body with Christ's body; "we are members of his body" not her body.

John the Baptist

Jn.3.29 The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.

John was not referring to the Church, but Israel . (John's ministry was strictly to Israel under the Law - this will be further expanded on later.) And applying the same nebulous symbolic linking of the above passages to the bride, John would be illustrating that the Christ was a bridegroom in the present tense. This would mean the bride would already have had to exist at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, so the Church could not be the bride because it would not yet exist at this point.

It is now clear that this tradition of equating the Church with the bride of Christ is completely false. There are a multitude of passages that show that the Church is referred to as masculine in Scripture, the bride is referred to by John the Baptist before the Church even exists, the virgins are depicted in the parable as all of mankind, and the four passages used as tenuous evidence to connect the Church with the bride of Christ are proven to be of no such consequence at all. So what is the true relationship between the Church and the heavenly Jerusalem ? Remember the question about the mother of the Church?

Ga.4.21-26 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 23 His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.

24 These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem , because she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.

Is it not amazing how we (as in the whole Church over a span of many, many centuries) can read a verse over and over again that is so unmistakable in its statement, that the heavenly Jerusalem is our mother (beside being declared the bride in Revelation), and yet completely miss its truth every time? (Notice also that the Church is also the son of the free woman.) Surely, the delusion of Church traditions can be the only accounting for this. Is this not also an amazing example of how Church tradition can so completely conceal a truth, (that the Church is referred to as masculine in Scripture in over twenty different passages), while unanimously accepting four ambiguous interpretations of Scripture as definitive of a contrary doctrinal error? And what exactly is it that they would have you believe? Christ is the husband and the Church is the bride. But in order to believe this a number of other convoluted conclusions must be swallowed as well. The heavenly Jerusalem is also the bride and therefore must also be the Church, even though the Church is on earth and the heavenly Jerusalem is in, well, heaven. And even though the Church is supposedly the bride and the heavenly Jerusalem is also the bride, the heavenly Jerusalem is also the mother, but somehow they missed that this would also make the Church the mother of itself?!?

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The RC church (and the Protestant church, for that matter) see Christ as some sort of perverted transvestite - a male head on a female body that is married to itself. But the Bible tells us that Christ's body is the representation of a masculine Church in over twenty passages, and the Church is never described as feminine or a bride. The New Jerusalem is the bride of Christ and the mother of the Church, her son.

I think that we can conclude that the RC church and the Protestant church are gender-confused.