A Crucified Bride

A Crucified Bride

"A Crucified Lord must have a Crucified Bride." - W.B. Dunkum

This may be one of the most powerful statements that you will ever hear about the church today. It says everything we need to know in a single short sentence. But what is a crucified church – because the church is, after all, the Bride of Christ?

If we are the church, then a crucified church must be one in which the majority of people are crucified. Yet, hold on a minute, we don’t crucify people any more – do we? So I suppose we need to look at what the Bible means by being crucified in Christ

Romans 6:6 “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Galatians 5:24 “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.”

Galatians 6:14 “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

I think you get the general idea here. Crucified in this context means a total denial of self in order that we might be “hidden” and only Christ is seen in us. Crucified means not even able to take offence at anything the world throws at us either verbally or physically. John Wesley was a bit like this. The story is told that he was riding his horse one day when it occurred to him that he had not been persecuted for three whole days. No insults hurled his way and, even more unusual, no stones or bricks had been thrown at him. Wesley thought about this and determined that he must be backslidden. Dismounting, he knelt and repented, asking the Lord for a sign that all was well. Someone promptly threw a brick at him and Wesley rejoiced in God his Saviour once again. Now that, I would like to suggest, is the epitome of being “crucified to the world”.

So, if we as individuals need to be crucified like this, then for the Bride to be crucified then a majority of believers have also to be so crucified. If we are to accept "A Crucified Lord must have a Crucified Bride.", then my assessment is that we all need to do some repenting before the Lord comes again and puts us all to shame – again.