The Wedding Door

Everything in the earlier parts of this book points toward a wedding. God made husband and wife one flesh and called their union knowing. He called Himself Israel’s Husband and would not let her go. Yeshua called Himself the Bridegroom. The love of God is free, it came first, and the door to the wedding stands open. But the Bridegroom also told of a door that would one day be shut.

The Door Was Shut

In Matthew 25 Yeshua tells of ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five were wise and five were foolish. The bridegroom was delayed, they all fell asleep, and at midnight the cry went up that he was coming. Then this happened:

Matthew 25:10-12 And while they were going away to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut. Later the other virgins also came, saying: "Lord, lord, open up for us." But he answered and said: "Truly I say to you, I do not know you."

The bridegroom, the numphios, came, and the door “was shut,” ekleisthe in Greek, from kleio, to shut. Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the door closed behind them. When the others came and called, “Lord, lord, open up for us,” the bridegroom did not say, “You are late, but come in.” His answer through the door was ouk oida hymas, “I do not know you.” The parable ends with the charge, “Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hora ὥρα ho'-rah(hour) in which the Son of Man is coming.”

The love that invites is free, and the door stands open now, but the parable does not let anyone suppose that it will stand open for ever.

I Never Knew You

Yeshua spoke almost the same words in another place, in the Sermon on the Mount, and there He named the reason: “I never knew you — depart from Me, you who work the anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness)” (Matthew 7:23). The verb is ginosko γινώσκω ghin-oce'-ko, the Greek partner of the Hebrew yada, the knowing that runs from “Adam knew Eve” (Genesis 4:1) to “this is eternal zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life), that they may know You” (John 17:3).

At the wedding door He says, “I do not know you,” and to those who work anomia, “I never knew you.” In both places people call Him “Lord, Lord,” and in both the answer is the language of not knowing. Read together with the whole line of yada, this is a very persuasive reading of the two passages: those to whom He says “I never knew you” stand where the foolish virgins stood, outside the wedding door, not known by the Bridegroom and so not joined to Him. Calling Him Lord did not make them known. They offered their prophecies, their casting out of demons and their miracles at the door, all done in His name, but they had worked anomia, living without His Torah while claiming to belong to Him. Matthew 7:21 says plainly who enters: “the one who does the thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will) of My Father who is in the heavens.”

What the Bride Wears

There is another wedding scene in Matthew, and it turns on clothing.

Matthew 22:11-13 But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him: 'Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants: 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and throw him into the outer darkness — in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

The guest who came in without wedding clothes had no answer when the king asked him, and he was thrown into the outer darkness. Everything turned on what he was wearing, and Revelation says what the clothing of the bride is.

Revelation 19:7-8 Let us rejoice and exult and give the doxa δόξα dox'-ah(glory) to Him, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready." And it was given to her to be clothed in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the dikaiomata(ordinances) of the holy ones.

Both halves of verse 8 matter. The linen “was given to her,” so she did not earn her place at the wedding, and the clothing is a gift; and the linen is dikaiomata, the righteous acts, the ordinances done. A dikaioma δικαίωμα dik-ah'-yo-mah is what God has declared right, carried out. The bride is saved by grace, and she is clothed in a life that walks in what God declared right. The gift and the walk are not two different garments but one.

At the very end of the Bible a blessing is spoken over those who go in.

Revelation 22:14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, so that their exousia ἐξουσία ex-oo-see'-ah(authority) will be over the tree of zoe(life) and they may enter through the gates into the city.

This is the reading of the Byzantine Majority Text (Robinson–Pierpont 2018), the reference text of the YLV: hoi poiountes tas entolas autou, those who do His commandments, so that they may enter through the gates into the city. (Many modern English Bibles take the reading of other manuscripts here: “those who wash their robes.”) In the Byzantine reading, one of the last blessings in Scripture rests on those who do His commandments, and they are the ones who go in through the gates.

Turning, Then Delight

That is why the first psalm is built the way it is.

Psalm 1:1-3 Blessed is the man (ish אִישׁ eesh) who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked, and in the way of sinners has not stood, and in the seat of scorners has not sat. But his delight is in the Torah of the LORD, and in his Torah he meditates day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, which gives its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; and all that he does, he makes prosper.

The psalm begins with a turning away. Walking, standing, sitting: the blessed man does none of them with the wicked, not in their counsel, not in their way, not in their seat. Then it says what fills his life instead, a delight in the Torah of the LORD on which he meditates day and night. The word for delight is chefets, what the heart takes pleasure in. The word for meditate is hagah, to murmur, to go over something under one’s breath. He turns away from one path and delights in another. Turning away from evil is not enough to sustain a man; a life emptied of the wrong counsel has to be filled with the right one.

And so he becomes like a tree planted by streams of water, giving its fruit in its season, its leaf not withering: turning away, delighting, bearing fruit, in that order.

The Answer Love Gives

This is the answer that love gives back to the love that came first.

John 14:15 If you agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(love) Me, keep My commandments.

1 John 5:3 For this is the love of God — that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

“Keep” is tereo τηρέω tay-reh'-o, to guard, to watch over carefully, the same verb in both verses. The Bridegroom has loved first, and the bride answers by keeping what He commanded, and His commandments, John says, “are not burdensome.” The bride who delights in His Torah is the bride He knows, while the one who works anomia is the one to whom He says, “I never knew you.”

None of this makes the door a reward for those who never stumble. Scripture does not hide that the righteous fall. What it shows is the way a fallen man rises, keeps walking, and is still found among those who are ready when the Bridegroom comes.