Romantic language is used in Scripture to picture the collective relationship the Church has with Christ, not the relationship any individual believer has with Christ. The Church is Christ’s Bride. No individual believer is Christ’s Bride. But even then the Greek word “Eros” never appears in the passages that talk about the Church as Christ’s Bride. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the Greek New Testament. Eros is a component of the marital relationship. But try making any marriage subsist entirely on that, and that marriage will fail. And it will not honor God, because it isn’t operating the way God designed and intends marriage to operate.
But affection toward God is not unimportant in the individual’s relationship with God. It is cultivated through prayer and worship and service. We are to be entirely consecrated to Christ in every part of our being. But when feelings fail, as they do in any relationship, agape love perseveres and knows feelings will be perfected eventually, as we move on into the eternal state where we will be resurrected physically and fully sanctified.
As Doug Wilson once said, men can’t feel what it’s like to be a bride normally. They aren’t designed to. But if they can, then that’s a whole different set of problems.
Leon Podles’ book “The Church Impotent” is a good survey of the growth of the effeminacy of the Church over time. These days you have female teachers and “worship leaders” and song writers, with effeminate men alongside of them, in the midst of a still effeminate culture. The consequence is a sappy, Romantic, sub-Biblical notion of salvation and all it entails. When you have women dictating the Church’s teaching, which they shouldn’t be, romantic overtones that warp one’s understanding of the Gospel are the result.
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