Whore's Glory, Pt. 2
"Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come; yet you have the forehead of a whore; you refuse to be ashamed." - Jeremiah 3:3
If you have not read Whore’s Glory, Pt. 1, you can find it here.
Beautiful ugliness.
Empty satisfaction.
Impoverished riches.
The whore’s glory.
She’s not a woman captured against her will. She has a husband, worthy of her adoration, provision for her every need, and yet she chooses to leave again and again to take by illegitimate means what is already promised her if only she will be faithful. The forbidden fruit. The story of Adam. The story of Abraham. The story of Jacob. The story of Israel.
But what does it mean for us?
Context & subtext
There are two main ways to read any old testament text. And really, I would argue, we shouldn’t break the Bible up into “old” and “new” testaments. Rather, we should view the “new” as a continuation of the “old.” In scripture God was always making new covenants alongside previous ones or to ratify previous ones altogether. So, when we want to derive the meaning of the any text written before Christ (and the texts written after, too, for that matter), as one of my favorite expositors puts it, we must make sure to apply the first rule of sound biblical exegesis:
“Context, context, context.”
Finding that context was the point of Part 1—a fly-over of what God meant when he spoke of Israel as the whore; how she took his name in vain and broke the marriage covenant.
But then comes what I personally consider the second most important rule for deriving the meaning:
What is physical in the old is spiritual in the new.
Or, you could call this reading the subtext. Yes, I will risk having someone accuse me of “spiritualizing” the text. But there is a difference between allegorizing scripture to our own narcissistic ends (think of liberal theology or pop-Christian culture) and spiritualizing in the context of the gospel, which is something the new testament apostles did frequently. Never did they re-interpret the old testament to mean something divorced from the whole of scripture, but they incorporated additional layers of meaning to seemingly unidimensional texts, with Christ being the key to unlock the true essence of everything written before his appearance. Christ himself spent his earthly ministry doing this as well.
“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” - Luke 24:27
In one instance, Paul even uses the word “allegory” to describe the additional meaning he gave to an old testament text:
“Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia;
she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.” - Galatians 4:21-26
The whore in context
So, let’s look again at our theme with our two rules for interpretation in mind. As for immediate context, God made a covenant with Israel—the Mosaic covenant. Israel proceeded to break this covenant, playing the whore, taking God’s name in vain, and, consequently, incurring the curse of death wrought by the Mosaic covenant.
The physical nation of Israel incurred physical judgment for disobeying a physical set of laws. She was destroyed by her enemies. All these occurrences of waywardness resulting in judgment were prophesied with figurative (read: spiritual) language using the image of the whore.
(A side note on chronology)
I think one of many reasons we find the linking of prophecy with narrative confusing is because of the canonical order of the Bible. I suggest keeping a chronological chart handy to remind yourself which prophets were writing during which narratives of the old testament. This one from Creative Bible Study is the one I refer to frequently:
Looky there! Hosea (the MAIN book about Israel acting like a whore) is one of the first prophets to speak—during the time the events of 1 Samuel (which I quoted above) were occurring.
The whore in subtext
So where does this leave us regarding the subtext?
Israel was doomed in her unfaithful state. God made a covenant with her as his bride, calling himself her husband, but she took his name in vain. As mentioned above, her behavior and judgment were prophesied. The law was given to enslave her under the reality of her whoring, making it undeniable that she was guilty. And the penalty was death at the hand of her enemies. We look at her endless cycle of striving and failing under the law and know there was no hope of keeping her marriage covenant.
Though she looks beautiful, she is ugly.
Though it leaves her empty, she seeks to satisfy her lusts.
Though she flaunts her riches, she is poor.
Though she boasts in her glory, it is shame.
It was all a delusion. And there is no hope.
And then… we remember Abram. Standing in Israel’s shoes, we look backward to the never-before-seen solution Yahweh offered to Abram for his belief. And we look forward to what else was prophesied for this wayward bride. Not only her destruction, but her restoration, too. How?
Oh, how the prophets groped and longed to see and did not see! They longed to hear and did not hear (Luke 10:24)! God would send a Bridegroom who would pay the penalty for this scarlet whore and dress her in the purest white. All she had to do was believe it could be so.
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”- 1 Corinthians 2:9
And now, as the church, we look back. While we were yet sinners, chained to the delusion that we were beautiful, satisfied, rich and glorious, unable to be anything but unfaithful, God sent the Bridegroom to be faithful FOR us. Christ Jesus came and fulfilled the requirements of the Mosaic covenant.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” - Matthew 5:17
Christ kept BOTH sides of the covenant, incurring the curse of death upon himself that is due the sinner.
The new covenant
How does Christ impute to us this clean, white garment so we may be viewed by God as Abraham was? As having kept our side of the covenant, though God has done it in our stead? No longer do we look to a law written on stone tablets, to ordinances for elemental things, but the law is written on our hearts when we receive the seal of the Holy Spirit. This is how we appear before the Father of the Bridegroom unblemished: the Holy Spirit of Christ covers our sinful scarlet harlotry, enrobing us as a perfect faithful bride as white as snow.
Though the old covenant consisted of physical ordinances and physical punishments, it was only a teacher to bring us to a greater spiritual reality.
“Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,” - Galatians 3:23-25
Contrary to what Galatians appears to say here, the old and new covenants were and are on the basis of faith, meaning: just as we are now, those under the old covenant were saved by faith.
“For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.”
- Romans 4:13
Faith in what? It is not a general faith that hopes for what it does not know will come to pass. It is a hope for what it DOES know will come to pass. Faith that God would and did send the promised Bridegroom who would be faithful for us. Those under the old covenant looked forward and believed, saved by their faith that God would.
Those under the new covenant look back and believe, saved by our faith that God did.
Spiritual Israel
According to Romans 4, we in this new covenant are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. And according to Romans 9, it was never an ethnicity that made God’s people his:
“But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” - Romans 9:6-8
We are spiritual Israel. Or, if you will, God’s gathering and sanctifying the nation of Israel, his old covenant dwelling place, was a type and shadow of the greater work that God would do in gathering and sanctifying his church—the Israel of the new covenant, God’s new covenant dwelling place.
In the same way that Israel took the Lord’s name in vain when she was unfaithful, so we as new covenant spiritual Israel take the Lord’s name in vain when we call ourselves “Christians,” taking the name of Christ, and yet live like the world—in idolatry, whoring ourselves out to our passions, heaping up our own glory. Or so we think.
“But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”
- Revelation 2:4
“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” - Revelation 3:17
In our flesh we still tend to unfaithfully go our own way, though we should be turning our back on our Bridegroom less and less as we grow in the fruit of faithfulness. And we say along with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-25). We are covered by the righteousness of Christ. We get back up, repent, and keep moving forward. We praise God we abide under a better covenant and no longer suffer the promises of destruction as the nation of Israel did under the old covenant.
However.
Eternal judgment
The foreshadowed judgment is still to come. And it is eternal.
On that day, all who are part of Babylon (the kingdom of this world) and the whore of Babylon (all who took the Lord’s name in vain and were unfaithful) will incur the curse of eternal death upon themselves. More accurately, they are already under the curse of death, chained to delusions of grandeur, with only one hope of escape.
Only his pure bride, those who have faith that Christ kept the covenant FOR them will be blessed eternally with life and escape the curse of eternal death.
Destroyed with her enemies
A whore is a whore is a whore. Though the whore of Revelation 17 tends to garner a lot of speculation as representing something else, she is the same whore we see in Ezekiel 23, et. al. She has called herself the bride of Christ, taken his name, but taken his name in vain and prostituted herself out to Babylon. She has wickedly convinced herself that she can abide with her Husband while still going out into the world to throw herself at other men. “She refuses to be ashamed.”
This is why those who have heard the gospel and claim the name of Christ while living lawlessly will be judged more harshly on that day than those who have not taken the name of Christ. As Christ told Israel, who bore the name of God and yet did not believe when he entered their midst:
Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”
- Matthew 11:20-24
Have you been made clean?
So what of you dear sinner? Have you recognized your wretchedness, repented of your sin and trusted Christ to be your righteousness?
Have you recognized that you can never be a faithful bride? Or not even a bride at all had God not betrothed you? Have you trusted that God has kept his side of the covenant as well as YOUR side by sending Christ to be the faithful Bridegroom for you?
Have you taken his name in vain by claiming to be his bride and yet whoring yourself out to the world? Will you fall with Babylon on that final day or be found dressed in pure white because of your faith in Christ? Are you clean and dwelling with your Husband? Or do you feign faithfulness and chase your own temporal glory? As Christ said often, “He who has ears, let him hear:”
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” - Matthew 7:21-23
If, however, you know you have been made clean, may you read again with new eyes:
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” - John 14:1-4
The whore’s glory
Beautiful ugliness.
Empty satisfaction.
Impoverished riches.
The whore’s glory.
It’s an oxymoron.
And yet.
As it turns out, there is glory for the whore—if she will have it.
Because the King of Glory bore the ugliness of her sin, she can be beautiful.
Because the Redeemer left the grave empty, she can be satisfied.
Because the Bridegroom took on poverty, she can be rich.
It’s not her own, for she has none of her own. Her way leads to death (Prov. 5:5).
It’s His.
He offers it to her freely that she may live.
A slave no more.
Forgiven her treachery.
Righteous in his sight.
White as snow.
Glorious.