Revelation 21:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

This indicates that angels not only inflict wounds, but sometimes make incisions like physicians. At other times they also provide medicines that soften pain and bring healing. For just as earlier the angel sent punishments upon those who deserved them, so now he shows the saint the blessedness of the Church. He rightly calls the bride of Christ the wife, for Christ the Lamb, who was slain, betrothed her to Himself by His blood. And as a wife was created for Adam from the rib taken from him during his sleep, so the Church was joined to Christ through the outpouring of blood from His side during His voluntary death on the Cross, when He was wounded for us.

The angel is about to show the Church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, and he calls it the heavenly Jerusalem. Paul spoke of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “You have not come to a mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, nor to darkness, gloom, and tempest, nor to the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words. Those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them any more, for they could not endure what was commanded: ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ So terrible was the sight that Moses said.

The angel calls the Church wife and bride because, while remaining undefiled, she continually bears spiritual children for God. Or this is said because she is now betrothed to God and in the future will be led into the endless wedding feast.

The Church of Christ, or the heavenly Jerusalem, is called here the wife and bride because she was acquired by the precious blood of Christ as of a blameless and spotless Lamb (cf. 1 Pet 1:19). By this very fact she was betrothed to Christ and united with Him.

The bride, the wife of the Lamb. By the bride of the Lamb is meant the Church. Her being called Jerusalem here indicates that for God she will be the same chosen city that Jerusalem once was.