God pursues us like a lover, with all the suffering that entails

Michie said:

The term “passion” has multiple meanings: It can refer to strongly felt emotion, especially love, as in, “He felt passionately about her.” Yet it can also describe great suffering, especially the afflictions of Jesus in what we call “the Passion of the Christ.” I’ve always been intrigued by the Gospel of John, in which both these senses of “passion” converge in the account of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus — a picture John paints, if you will, with the colors of a wedding! A wedding? Yes! Although at first it would seem that a funeral and a wedding have nothing in common, the apostle John insists that Jesus’ death was actually a marriage, one in which the divine bridegroom gives his body for his bride.

This idea of God being the bridegroom of his people has deep roots in the prophets of ancient Israel, such as Hosea, who spoke in the voice of God himself to describe a future in which “I will now allure her (Israel), and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her” (Hos 2:14), and again (Hos 2:16-20):

On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, “My husband” … And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

Moving to the New Testament, we find that, of all the Gospels, it is John’s that most clearly portrays Jesus’ fulfillment of these beautiful prophecies. The fulfillment climaxes at the cross, but John prepares us to understand the cross by describing several events earlier in Jesus’ life that foreshadow his role as the divine bridegroom.

For example, Jesus’ first miracle in the Gospel of John is to change about 180 gallons of water into the finest wine for a wedding in Cana (2:1-11). In ancient Judaism, the bridegroom was responsible for providing wine for his own wedding party, so the point of this miracle is that Jesus did the job of the bridegroom … and did it on a massive scale: enough wine for a royal wedding!

Continued below.

God pursues us like a lover, with all the suffering that entails

Discover how the Gospel of John reveals Jesus’ passion as a divine wedding — where the suffering Savior is also the loving Bridegroom.

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But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it; I pray you, have me excused.' And another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; I pray you, have me excused.' And another said, 'I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.' (Lk 14:18-20)

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Deu 6:4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD;
Deu 6:5 and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
Deu 6:6 And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart;
Deu 6:7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
Deu 6:8 And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
Deu 6:9 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deu 6:10 "And when the LORD your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you, with great and goodly cities, which you did not build,
Deu 6:11 and houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, and cisterns hewn out, which you did not hew, and vineyards and olive trees, which you did not plant, and when you eat and are full,
Deu 6:12 then take heed lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Deu 6:13 You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve him, and swear by his name.
Deu 6:14 You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are round about you;
Deu 6:15 for the LORD your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
Deu 6:16 "You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.
Deu 6:17 You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he has commanded you.
Deu 6:18 And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land which the LORD swore to give to your fathers
Deu 6:19 by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has promised.
Deu 6:20 "When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which the LORD our God has commanded you?'
Deu 6:21 then you shall say to your son, 'We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand;
Deu 6:22 and the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes;
Deu 6:23 and he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land which he swore to give to our fathers.
Deu 6:24 And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as at this day.

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