Wedding Attire: What Will You Wear?

 By: Lauren Thomas 

White-tie, black-tie, cocktail, casual, formal, festive, semi-formal, destination, come-as-you-are. Does anyone else get confused about what to wear to a wedding? While some invitations leave you to guess, others spell it out. Either way, a wedding invite always causes me to briefly agonize over what to wear.

There’s a parable in the Bible in which the wrong wedding outfit resulted in real agony.

 

11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 22:11-13 ESV

 

In context, this is part of a parable in which those invited to a marriage celebration paid no attention to their invitation. This parable was likely a critique of the Jewish people who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. In the parable, the king’s response was to tell his servants to go invite anyone who would come. Here, the interpretation is that the Gentiles would then be invited to the celebration. But one of these guests was not properly attired. He got the invite, but paid no heed to the dress code.

 

If the wedding celebration in the parable represents Heaven, and if we have been invited, what then are we supposed to wear?

 

Paul used the symbolism of garments to represent what to wear and what not to wear in Ephesians 4:22-24, Colossians 3:8-14, and Romans 13:14. In general, we are to “put off” the old self, which is characterized by sinful deeds and thought processes. We are to put on Christ. There are layers (no pun intended) with this concept: 1) when we are “in Christ” (think “wearing” Christ), God looks at us and sees the righteousness of Jesus. 2) when we abide “in Christ” (again, think wearing clothing), we have union with the Father, 3) when we “put on” Christ, we take on the image we were made to bear, 4) when we “put on” Christ, our actions and deeds are those that would imitate the actions and deeds of Jesus.

 

We have all been issued a spiritual wedding invitation. The Bible spells out the dress code. I’ve got one question: what will you wear?

 

Reflection:

Look up the above passages; making two columns, list the words or phrases that describe what not to wear in one column and what to wear in the other column. Imagine the care that goes into dressing to attend a wedding. How might you put similar effort into spiritual dressing? What are you wearing, in a spiritual/symbolic sense on the day to day?