Fully Redeemed In Him

For the past month, one of the primary things that the Father has been nudging me to lean into is the truth that no man nor woman may say or do things that defile His bride. He shared with me that in this hour, His bride, the church, (those that He has separated, sanctified, and purified) should not and cannot be touched by the defilements in and of this World. The word defile has since been enumerated in my spirit repeatedly since He showed me this. I was prompted to sit in the Word to understand better what it means to God to be undefiled in His sight. I wanted to understand why He was so protective of His bride and why He wanted me to understand the difference between defiled and undefiled. I looked up in the Strongs Concordance where in the Bible the words defiled and undefiled were written. I found that defile is written thirty-nine times, defiled seventy-one times, defiledst once, defileth nine times, and the word undefiled seven times. What struck me most was that defiled was stated ten times more than undefiled. Defiled was often stated in the Pentateuch that the Lord set forth in His laws and statutes. Yet, the verses that stood out the most to me were in the Song of Solomon 5:2 and Song of Solomon 6:9 because what He was highlighting to me what He sees in His bride. It says, in Songs 5:2 I sleep but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night”. In Songs 6:9 it says, “My dove, my undefiled is but one: she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and blessed her: yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.” 

The Lord highlighted that His bride is His number one choice. She is praised by others for she is complete and perfection. How fitting, for when we see a bride walk down the aisle the whole room looks at her in awe of her pure radiating beauty. That is how God sees us- like a bride walking down the aisle.

The next question I had was what did it mean to be addressed as undefiled? Did he only mean intimately undefiled, as in a virgin, or was there more?

In the Hebrew Concordance, it says the word tam or tawm. It means complete, pious, gentle, dear, perfect, plain, and upright. Tam means perfect and often stresses integrity. It states that it is often related to the word tamam a primitive root of completeness in a good or bad way and that it can also mean to consume, end, finished, complete, clean, upright, spent, perfect, done. In short, the word is meant to convey the idea that something is complete with nothing else expected or intended. It is complete in integrity, gentleness, piety, a dear and perfect Bride. It illustrates that God sees His Bride as complete, not something that needs more work, but rather perfect and dear in His sight.

As I began to weep, the Father revealed to me that no matter what others say or do to me, I am undefiled in His eyes. I am His beloved, a gentle dear one, to whom He chose and delights. He does not see me as something that needs fixing, but rather that it is in Him I am holy, gentle, pious, dear, perfect, filled with integrity and righteousness, clean, and upright. It had less to do with my sexuality and more to do with the intrinsic virtuosity of my being. He did not see me for what I lacked but saw me as complete. For it is as His Bride we are made complete. In His loving embrace, we are made complete. It has less to do with the flesh and more to do with how God sees us through the spirit. He sees in us something beyond the veil that the World places over every one of us

Yet what did it mean to God to have defiled written ten times more than undefiled? Perhaps, it is obvious to believers to grasp the concept that we are His beloved and that he views us as His gentle, dear, and completely perfected bride. Perhaps it is cliche to hear that Jesus loves you and that He sees us as His lovely bride.

To defile means chalal which means to bore, to wound, to dissolve, to break one’s word, to profane a person, place, or thing. How easy is it for us to be the defiled or defiler should we not allow the Father to delight in us first? How easy is it for us as the bride to fall trap to profane a person who we judge from the outside without getting to know them? How easy is it for us when we have wounds to bore the defilement of another who has hurt us, or to talk poorly of a church or a business that caused us pain? How easy is it for us to profane our belongings or the belongings of others by not taking care of them? How easy is it for us to break promises to ourselves, to others, or to God? How easy is it to bore (cause) the dissolution of relationships because of our pride or fears of seeing our part in causing pain? How easy is it to profane God by saying His name in vain in our words and actions? How easy is it for us to be wounded by the words and actions of others? How quick are we to dissolve a relationship with Christ because we have been wounded by others? How easy it is for us to defile our minds or bodies in ungodly sexual acts or to violate the marriage bed for our desires. These are all things that we can open ourselves up to, should we choose to put a wedge between ourselves and the truth of how God delights in us. If we forget how much He delights in us this is wear the defilement's can sneak in. I believe the reason it is in the Bible so many times is because God sees how easy it is for man to operate from His flesh and not from our knowing how He sees us. He wants to illustrate that there are many ways, not just sexual acts that can defile a man or woman. It is more about the soiling of our hearts that causes dissolution, breaking of promises, pain, and suffering. After all in we know in Matthew 15:18 it states, “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.”

We must be diligent in examining in what ways we have been the defiler in our lives and other’s lives, repent, reconcile, and make things right or we will continue to perpetuate the cycles of abuse, pain, and suffering that the world already offers people. We should be a lamp and light for all the world to see. If we perpetuate the sufferings of others anything we do in the name of Christ will be a loud clanging cymbal defiled by religiosity and our blindness.

How sad is it that leadership looks at others by their pain and sufferings and faults rather than as the undefiled bride, fully redeemed in Him? How heartbreaking is it that we all see the faults and lack of others without seeing them as Christ sees them first?  We will dissolve the church, the bride of Christ if we continue to address each other as the world addresses one another. The other way of looking at this is that the opposite of someone who is defiled is someone who is gentle and filled with veracity, piety, holiness, and purity. The bride of Christ is not the sinner nor the orphan, but the bride, belonging and included as perfection and completed in Him. We are all broken as individuals but finished in perfection in Christ. As we enter into August let us take a moment to meditate on how we can draw closer in love with true love, God. Allow Him to delight in us and make our hearts soft again, gentle, and upright. Let us yield to His warnings of defilement throughout scripture so that we can embody the perfection of Christ.

Lord, I pray that you would show us the ways that we have been the defiler and the defiled. Teach us how to allow you to delight in us first and how to rest in you. Teach us how to be gentle, pious, holy, and upright. Teach us how to be loving, merciful, kind, and seekers of your heavenly integrity and honor for ourselves and others. Teach us how to be humble and give us the courage to repent for our wayward ways so that we might begin to reveal the redeemed bride of Christ, fully perfected and completed in you! Amen.