"But I speak of Christ and the Church"

Preferred Pronouns and the Bride of Christ

In the beginning was the Word. Not a word, but the Word through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made that has been made (John 1:1-3). For confessional Lutherans, this truth establishes something foundational about language itself: words are not merely convenient labels we apply to a pre-existing reality. Words, rightly used, participate in the order God has established. When God spoke creation into existence, His words brought forth reality. “Let there be light,” and there was light. “Let Us make man in Our image,” and He created them male and female.

The creation account establishes that sexual differentiation is a divine design. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). The image of God is expressed in the creation of humanity as male and female. This is not a spectrum; not a social construct, but rather a creational reality spoken into being by God Himself. Genesis 2 elaborates on this foundational principle with the account of woman being formed from man’s side, establishing both a unity and distinction between the man and the woman. This is a fundamental Christian metanarrative: as I mentioned in a previous article, when the Pharisees questions Jesus about divorce, instead of appealing to the Law of Moses, Jesus appeals to the creation account.

This distinction between male and female, established in creation, finds its ultimate meaning in the relationship between Christ and His Church. Saint Paul calls this “a profound mystery” (Ephesians 5:32). Earlier in the chapter, Paul presents the relationship between husband and wife as participation in the cosmic reality of Christ’s love for His Church. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” The husband’s role is an image of Christ the Bridegroom; the wife’s role an image of the Church as Bride. The fundamental elements of human sexuality are at play: Christ is the active lover, the one who initiates, pursues, sacrifices, and cleanses. The Church is the beloved, the one who receives, responds, is saved and made beautiful by the Bridegroom.

The Song of Solomon stands at the center of this cosmic, nuptial theology. This erotic love poem, celebrating the mutual desire and delight between bride and bridegroom, has been recognized throughout Church history as the supreme expression of the love between Christ and His Church, between God and the soul. Solomon’s imagery is unabashedly physical and gendered. The bridegroom praises his beloved: “Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves” (1:15). The bride responds with her own praise of her beloved: “Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful” (1:16). The masculine and feminine are distinct and essential. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (1:2). This is the bride’s receptive desire, the longing to be united with the beloved who takes the initiative, leaping over mountains and bounding over hills (2:8) to seek His beloved. The bride waits, watches, and opens to him: “My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me” (5:4). The sexual imagery is not accidental or culturally conditioned, it is theological. The bride’s breasts are “like two fawns, twins of a gazelle” (4:5). The bridegroom’s “left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me” (2:6) reinforcing a posture of intimate submission. Male and female bodies, designed for union in a one-flesh relationship, are more than a metaphor, they are the sign God chose to image the reality that is Christ and the Church; the lesser light to point to the greater Light.

(The prophets in the Old Testament further bear witness to this image in a negative sense: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea use the image of a prostitute to identify Israel as a bride who has not been faithful to the bridegroom, and yet the bridegroom continues to call her back to a faithful relationship.)

The Church is not simply like a bride; she is the Bride. Christ is not simply like a bridegroom; He is the Bridegroom. This imagery reaches its consummation in the Revelation of Jesus Christ, where the telos of all history is revealed as a wedding. “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7). The new Jerusalem descends “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (21:2). The angel tells John, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (21:9).

“A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” - Martin Luther

Every letter in the LGBTQ+ acronym finds a different way to make nonsense of the Bridegroom-Bride imagery threaded through the Bible. Can a bride be simultaneously “he/him” and yet receptive to their savior? Can a bridegroom be “she/her” and pursue the bride? If we accommodate these perversions in identification, how do we preach Ephesians 5? How do we read the Song of Solomon? How do we celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb without offense? The answer, inevitably, is that we cannot. In the process of capitulation on pronouns or redefining marriage the image of Christ and the Church is destroyed. Marriage between one man and one woman is the symbol; the union of Christ and Church is the reality. If we lose the intelligibility of the symbol, we obscure the reality. Participation in preferred pronouns, even with the best of intentions, necessarily participates in a theological claim.

A theology of glory seeks to climb up to God through human achievement, wisdom, and power. A theology of the cross receives God’s revelation in hiddenness, weakness, and suffering. Self-determined identity is a theology of glory par excellence, asserting human will over truth. You cannot claim to be a theologian of the cross and accommodate a preferred pronoun.

“To act against conscience is neither right, nor safe.” -Martin Luther

When you accommodate a preferred pronoun, your conscience knows that you are lying. The body of the person you are accommodating testifies against you. Every time you speak that lie, you prick your conscience, which becomes seared and calloused over time. You are training your conscience to lie for whatever “greater good” you are working towards - rationalize it however you want - but it probably comes down to comfortable relationships or your paycheck. This rationalization is even worse when it comes cloaked it in pious terms, like sharing the Gospel at a more convenient time. And, dear Christian, you know this. You know you are capitulating. Surely you feel the discomfort. The worst of it is you are not only searing your conscience, but you are further damaging the conscience of your neighbor. You aren’t just accommodating someone’s feelings; you are participating in their deconstruction of the faith.

So confess with the Church of all ages: male and female, He created them. Christ is the Bridegroom, the Church is His Bride. We await with eager anticipation the day when the Bride is perfected and the Bridegroom ushers her in to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Until that day, the Church prays, “Come, Lord Jesus.”