Revelation 19:7-8; Ready! (4)

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Revelation 19:7-8 (KJV)  Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. 

There is a righteousness of justification, and a righteousness of life and sanctification. There is a righteousness which is the free gift of God in Christ Jesus, and a righteousness of man’s own active obedience to God’s ordinances through faith without works, and a righteousness which is the fruit of faith, consisting of works springing from and wrought in faith. And both enter into that adornment of the Bride wherein she maketh herself ready. She is clothed with a fine and shining linen of “righteousness of the saints,” the righteousness of a free justification by faith in her Lord who died for her, and the righteousness of a life of earnest, active, and grateful devotion to make herself meet and worthy for so good and gracious a Husband.

Luke 20:35 (KJV)  But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:

Luke 21:36 (KJV)  Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.

Ephesians 4:1 (KJV)  I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, 

Colossians 1:10 (KJV)  That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; 

Revelation 3:4 (KJV)  Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.

But it is not certain that the clothing of herself in these righteousnesses is all that is embraced in the Bride’s preparation for the wedding. That is the part of her ready-making as respects this life; but who knows what else remains for her to do after this life is over, or what practical activities remain for the saints between the moment of their removal to immortality and the heavenly solemnities which are shadowed to us under the idea of the marriage of the Lamb? Heaven is no more a scene of quiescence than earth. There is far greater and sublimer history than pertains to them here. And who know into what grand activities the people of God are ushered when their mortality is swallowed out of life? or with what preparations they may then be called to busy themselves for the sublime events and ceremonies that lie before them in their instalment unto the relations and dignities of their everlasting state? The celestial population seem to know of ready-making in heaven, which comes after the ready-making on earth, which is to them a subject of glad rejoicing, and of new and special giving of glory to God. But just what is is, or exactly to what it relates, we must content ourselves not to know till the time for it comes.

[Joseph A. Seiss, The Apocalypse – An Exposition of the Book of Revelation, Kregel, 1987, 429]