Yet the marriage of the Lamb is the central goal of the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit has not come into the world primarily to give gifts to the family of God. He has been charged by God the Father with obtaining a perfect Bride for God's beloved Son. All else is helpful in realizing this achievement.

Only those who understand and enter total union will be included in the Bride, the true Church, the Complement of the Lamb.

How complete, how intense is the union to be? We do not have the vocabulary to portray adequately the intensity of the union to which the Lamb has called us.

The Lamb has taken the flesh from His bones and the blood from His veins so we may receive them into ourselves and become one with Him as He is One with God. The union that exists in the Godhead is the nature of the union into which we are to be drawn.

We are to be one with Him as He is One with the Father.

Becoming One with the Lamb enhances our identity but removes our individuality. Our identity is our uniqueness as a person. The working of the Spirit of God in us underscores our uniqueness. Each of us is to be made, through Christ, a unique expression of God's Personality.

In the process we lose our individuality. We no longer are a separate person, a will separate from Jesus. For eternity we are of Him and by Him and for Him. We are of one Spirit with Him. We are the extension, the completion, the fullness of Him. For us to present ourselves as separate from Him in any manner is to subtract from the total union to which we have been called.

Human marriage is a foreshadowing of what God is seeking. But our union with Christ is, in its totality of union, as far above human marriage as Heaven is above the earth.

God and the Lamb are unique as to identity but not as to individuality. They are called by one name—God. It is impossible to have the Father apart from the Son or the Son apart from the Father.

This is the completeness and intensity of the union to which we are being invited. This is what it means to be married to the Lamb.

When the marriage of the Lamb has been perfected our individuality (not our uniqueness as a person) will be gone. We will have one name with the Lamb. It will be impossible for anyone to have the Lamb apart from us or to have us apart from the Lamb.

The Lamb forevermore will be identified with us and we with the Lamb. There can be no dissolving of this total union. Neither time nor power can effect a division between the Lamb and those who have become bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. This is the eternal romance. It is the subject of the Song of Solomon.

To be continued.