Mystery of the Bride

Part 4

Vicky Moots

Gen. 2:21b: “…and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.”  I suppose you could call this surgery a “ribectomy.”  A surgical procedure not only requires anesthesia, but it also requires the right instruments and a skilled surgeon.  God, the Great Physician, certainly qualifies to be the surgeon.

  

The instrument that is needed to remove a rib must be sharp enough to cut through bone.  Heb. 4:12 describes an instrument which is capable of doing that: “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow…”  Marrow is in the center of bone, so this instrument is certainly sharp enough to cut through a rib and to dissect away the flesh and muscle around it in order to remove it.

The work of surgery is not done by the body or by the rib, but by the surgeon.  God desires to do a work in us, to separate whosoever is willing, out from among the sleeping church, the body of Christ, just as He did to Adam’s rib while he slept.  This is not by our own works.  God will use the sharp two-edged scalpel of His Word to cut away our fleshly desires, and to prepare us to be a bride for Christ, if we are willing to let Him do it.  Paul declares in Eph. 2:10 that “…we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works…”  “Unto good works,” not “by good works.”  It is God working in us and through us that enables us to do good works which bring glory to His name.  We are a “work in progress,” but we must yield to the cutting of His Word if we want the work to progress.

The rib that was removed was still a part of the body of Adam, but God separated it out from the body for a specific purpose.  Paul said in Eph. 5:25-26 that Christ “…loved the church [His body], and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.”  The word “sanctify” means “to separate out or to set apart for a specific purpose.”  Along with the sanctification, or separation, comes the cleansing.  Note that Christ, Himself, does the work of separation and cleansing by using the Word of God.  We cannot sanctify ourselves.

In the same manner in which God separated out the rib from Adam’s body, He is separating out a spiritual rib from the sleeping church, using the instrument of the Word, and cleansing it, also with the Word, to prepare a bride for Christ.

When a surgery is performed, it is usually done for a reason, to fulfill a certain need in the body.  However, sometimes an organ, such as a kidney, is removed not because it is diseased, but because it is being donated to give life to another person.  That organ then becomes a living part of another living person.

In this case, God removed a living, healthy rib from Adam, in order to give life to Eve.  Part of Adam’s bone marrow, containing his own stem cells, was inside that rib.  As a result, when God formed Eve to be his bride from that rib, she actually had Adam’s very life inside of her, not just one of his bones.

If we desire to be a part of that separated group of believers who are being prepared by God to make up the bride of Christ, we must come to the place spiritually that we lay hold of the fact that we have the very life of Christ inside of us, which gives us new life and gives us hope.  In Col. 1:27, Paul refers to this as “…Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  What is our “hope of glory”? That we may one day reign with Christ as His bride! That is also God’s purpose and plan for our lives, so let us yield to the scalpel of God’s Word and to the hands of the Great Surgeon.