"The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready, it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure"- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints."
(Revelation 19:7-8)
A transformed life is not only the proper response but in fact a necessary response to faith.
White clothes in Revelation, when worn by the saints, always signify a gift from God given to those with tested and purified faith, the idea of buying the clothes from Christ is used to encourage believers to identify with Christ's clothes, which means to identify with Him and not with the compromising world. Therefore, the white clothes are not merely the saints' righteous acts but the reward for or result of such acts.
The saints are clothed with pure linen as a symbol of God's righteous final, end-time vindication of them because, in spite of persecution, they persevered in righteousness on earth. The full-orbed meaning of the pure garments is that God's righteous vindication involves judging the enemy at the very end of time, which shows that the saints' faith and works have been in the right all along.
This underscores the aspect of human accountability highlighted in verse 7 ["His bride has made herself ready."] Yet the readers can be encouraged to obey the exhortation with the knowledge that God has provided grace for them to clothe themselves now by the power of the Spirit.
(G.K. Beale)
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