(This guest post was written by David Fulton from sidekicksanonymous)

A lot of the videos on this site deal with the experience of you as a believer in Christ: how to eat Christ (Aubrey), how to have a church meeting (Chris), not to be under condemnation (Arely), but the one that stood out to me was God’s Eternal Purpose (Garrett). While it is critical to understand our position and responsibility as believers, it is also crucial to see the God’s side.

He has a stake in this game; He didn’t send His Son to redeem us just because He’s so nice. God wants something. God is already many things to us: our Creator (John 1:3), our Shepherd (John 10:11), our Father (John 1:12), our Savior (Philippians 3:20), and our Head (Colossians 1:18). But there is one more thing that God wants to be to us. 

Isaiah 54:5a
“For your Maker is your Husband/ Jehovah of Hosts is His name”

From this verse, and from many more throughout the Old and New Testaments, we can see that God’s ultimate desire is to have the Church as a wife that matches Him. Particularly this verse shows that God had this intention from the creation of man. From the beginning, as God was forming Adam, He was intending to have a counterpart.

In Genesis 2:20 Adam names all of the animals, but there was no “helper as his counterpart.” God created Adam, and “saw that it is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). God knew this about man, not just because He is the omniscient God, but because Adam was made in God’s image and after God’s likeness (Genesis 1:26).

In response God takes Adam, puts him to sleep, and takes from his side a bone, from which He builds a woman. When Adam sees the woman he says:

Genesis 2:22-23
And the man said/ This time this is bone of my bones/ and flesh of my flesh;/ This one shall be called Woman/ because out of man this one was taken. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.

Adam has someone who is just like him to be his. He is no longer alone. The way seems to be clear for God to no longer be alone either. However, Satan steps in, we get this whole problem of sin, four thousand years pass, and then Christ comes.

In His crucifixion the Lord’s side is split open with a spear, and blood and water flow out (John 19:34). We know that the blood was for our redemption, but the water is for our purification. We need Ephesians 5:25-27 to see the significance of this.

Ephesians 5:25-27
Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word, that He might present the church to Himself glorious, not having sport or wrinkle or any such thing.

So just as what was taken from Adam’s side was material for Eve, what came out of the Lord’s side was the material for the church.

Ephesians 5:31-32
“For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This mystery is great, but I speak with regard to Christ and the church.”

So from the very beginning God purposed to have a bride, a wife, a counterpart to match Him. So on the cross the blood that flowed, the blood that is so precious to us, was just to qualify us. God couldn’t deal with us in our sinful state, but what was critical to Him, what His eyes were fixed on in that moment was the water, because the water makes us all corporately His beautiful bride that He has longed for from eternity past.

The last scene in the Bible shows us God and His wife, His match who are finally together for eternity:

Revelation 22:17a: And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”