"Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife" –Rev. 21:9).
The "bride" is the church. The "Lamb" is Christ. The language here is symbolic of the marriage union between Christ and His church. We have all heard of men or women who have married into money. Today, they have pre-nuptial agreements, so that if they get divorced neither one can get all that the other wants. Well, in the believer's marriage union with Christ, we have a prenuptial agreement. It goes something like this –
God the Father chose us as the bride of His beloved Son before the foundation of the world. He chose us, not because we deserved it, as we were the least deserving, sinners who deserved nothing but His wrath. He chose us, not because we would earn His love and mercy, because we could not earn the least of His favor. We were sinners in a state of wrath and condemnation and justly so. God chose us out of His free and sovereign mercy. In order to glorify the Father and save His people, Christ, the Son, took us as His bride before the foundation of the world and agreed to fulfill all the conditions and requirements of our redemption and salvation. He came to this earth and fulfilled all those conditions by establishing a righteousness that would enable the Father to be just and yet justify the ungodly and that would demand our complete salvation!
Now as we entered into that marriage union, Christ shows us in the pre-nuptial that we have a right and title to everything that He by Himself has already earned for us. He says, "I will give you everything that pertains to salvation. You don't have to earn or merit the least of these blessings, because I have already earned it for you. You are entitled to the whole inheritance of grace because I have earned it, and I freely give it unto you. You are no longer bound by the curse of the law or the demands of the law in order to attain or maintain salvation or your position in the family of God. You have a permanent position because this is a marriage union that can never be dissolved. Why? Because it is not based on your qualifications or your earning power. It is based on MY qualifications and MY earning power, and I have already accomplished everything necessary to bring to you all grace here and all glory hereafter."