Wedding Feast

“My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?” Matthew 22:12

We all enjoy weddings and when I get invited to a wedding, I usually plan way in advance what I will wear. Once I chose to wear a dull gold embroidered outfit made by a Japanese designer which I bought from the ukay-ukay. I thought that was a fitting wedding attire because I loved it! My sister however told me that no, on the contrary, it was not the right thing to wear for a semi-formal wedding because it was short! I was dismayed thinking the bride may have thought the same! 

In the parable Jesus told the chief priests and elders, He said that the kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. The invited guests did not come so he instructed his servants, “The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.”

The servants did so and the hall was filled. But when the king came to meet the guests, he saw one man not in a wedding garment and he was thrown out. Isn’t that so unfair? 

One can ask, what does the King expect? His guests were invited off the street!!! It's amazing that there were not more people unfit to attend a wedding! But you see, it was a Middle Eastern custom for the King to provide the garments for his guests. They had only to put it on.

In Genesis, after Adam and Eve sinned and they discovered that they were naked, they covered themselves with fig leaves. God rejected this covering made by their own hands in the same way that God would reject anything we did to "clothe" ourselves. Instead in Genesis 3:21, God made a covering for Adam and Eve out of the skin of an animal. Perhaps that animal was a lamb, a spotless perfect lamb. God killed the lamb and took its skin to cover the sin, shame and guilt of Adam and Eve. In Romans 13:14, Saint Paul admonishes us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, to clothe ourselves with Jesus. All of our righteousness, our good deeds are as filthy rags before God (Isaiah 64:6). Only putting on the righteousness of Christ will do if we want to have a place in the Wedding Feast of the King!