First Love

Eph_5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

He’s talking about marriage, because this is what he requires of his bride, the church. Holiness. A many a years growing up in church I’ve heard this scripture about the “without spot or wrinkle” and have always wondered how would we ever make it. Does he really expect us to be without spot or wrinkle? How on earth can we live that kind of life? While preparing to teach on this very subject and asking God to give me a revelation, this is how the Holy Spirit presented it to me. How is a spot or wrinkle formed? Like most people I said a stain is made by an unwanted or unintended spill on a surface. Webster describes it as a small area visibly different than the surrounding area. A wrinkle would be an unwanted or unintended fold or crease in something, usually in a garment. As in life any spill can be cleaned up if it is dealt with immediately, it’s when we let it sit that it leaves a spot (stain). Then the Holy Spirit began to say a spot isn’t so much a spill on the surface as much as it is a spill that is allowed to sit. That’s when it becomes a stain, when nothing is done about it. So a spot in the spirit doesn’t mean that we won’t sin, it’s when we sin and allow it to continue, we don’t take immediate steps to rid ourselves of the sin, it’s the small foxes or little sins that we sometimes ignore. So what causes a wrinkle? Just like the spot it’s unaddressed sin. Our lives can fold through many situations, and we can address the sin with the Holy Spirit or hope that no one will know and just let it sit. The delayed answer is usually a heated iron at extreme temperatures. So we live most of our life in the heat of correction. I’d rather be between a rock and hard place than an iron and a hot place. Unfortunately, too much of the church membership live their lives cleaning spots and in the heat of ironing out wrinkles. We take grace for granted, in hopes of more time, allowing spots to take root making cleaning up that much more difficult and costly. Some spots/wrinkles we let sit because we’ve been hurt, sometimes we feel we have a right to have spots, because, “you don’t know what they did to me”. Now that we have allowed the stain to become a spot and the crease to become a wrinkle the measures we sometimes take to remove the blemish does more damage to the garment than it does to correct the problem. Sometimes because judgment is not swift and God continues to show his love and care for us we can get a false since of security believing that a little spot or wrinkle is ok, but it’s not. He’s coming back for a glorious church and won’t be taking spots and wrinkles back with him, only cleaned garments, because a Holy God requires a Holy Bride.