P and J, it is a great honor to officiate your wedding today. P, it has been a real joy getting to know you over the last several years, to see the tremendous faithfulness and maturity that mark your life. J, I do not know you as well, but from the first time I met you, it quickly became very obvious why P was so taken with you. Before I met you, I thought maybe P was moving too fast in the relationship. After I met you, I thought he could not move fast enough! I’m confident no one here has any doubts that the two of you are an excellent match in the Lord. The world will be a better place tomorrow because the two of you are being united in marriage here today. You both inherit a legacy of faith that you desire to build upon and pass along to another generation. You want to build God’s kingdom by building a household together. There is nothing greater or more glorious than that. Even as your marriage today is an answer to many prayers, we trust God will continue to answer our prayers for you into the future.
Today a new household is being formed. This ceremony is a new creation event. P, you will be Adam and J, you will be Eve, in this new creation. Today, you begin your new life together as God takes the threads of your two lives and weaves them together into one. Today, the two become one. Today, you become one flesh, united in every way.
From this day forward, you will have new identities, new roles, new responsibilities, new privileges, even new names. Today you become husband and wife, the king and queen of a new domain. God designed marriage to be the covenantal union of one woman and one woman, sharing one life for the rest of their lives. Marriage is a covenant relationship established and formed by God — and what God has united let not man separate! This is God’s design.
Marriage is foundational — it’s foundational in the Scriptures and in civilization. The Bible begins with marriage, and it ends with marriage. From Adam and Eve in Genesis to the New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, prepared as a bride for her groom in Revelation, the Bible is bookended by marriage. And in the middle of the Bible, marriage is the primary metaphor God uses to describe his relationship with his people. Marriage supplies the basic symbolism and structure of the whole Bible — so much so, it is impossible to understand the Bible without understanding marriage and vice versa.
So, for example, when God’s people fall into serious sin, they are accused of adultery. Idolatry is spiritual adultery. Sin is understood in marital terms in the Bible.
Further, redemption is presented to us as a marriage. Redemption is a love story, a romance. The gospel is about a husband who saves and rescues his bride by laying down his life for her and defeating the dragon that imprisoned her. “Kill the dragon, get the girl” — that’s how the gospel is often summarized in our circles. That’s what Jesus has done for his church, which is his bride.
And further, marriage is necessary to fulfilling God‘s purposes for humanity and history. Men and women coming together in the covenant of marriage, to form stable families, to bear and raise children — this is how God’s purpose for creation is fulfilled. This is a key way God grows his kingdom — through Christian marriage, the formation of Christian households, creating children and passing the faith along to them.
Thus: Marriage commences history, marriage consummates history, and marriage continues history in between commencement and consummation. In a word, marriage is important.
P and J, the two of you have committed your lives to Christ. You trust in him alone for salvation. You seek to live faithfully as his disciple in all of life. You’ve been seeking to build your own lives on the rock that is Christ and today you will begin to build your life together on the foundation of Christ. Solomon tells us unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain. You will trust God to build your house — and that means building with Christ as the chief cornerstone.
There are two things I want to remind you of you as you begin your life together. These two things are basic, but very crucial. First, marriage reveals the gospel. Second, marriage needs the gospel.
First, your marriage is designed to reveal the gospel. That’s really Paul’s point in Ephesians 5. How does marriage reveal the gospel?
Think of marriage as a dance, where each of you have dance steps, and one leads while the other follows. Or think of marriage as a drama where each of you have roles to play in the story. P, in this script, your role is to play the part of Jesus, and J, your role is to play the part of the church. As you play these parts and fulfill this script, your marriage tells the story of the gospel. The story of the gospel shines through your relationship.
P, this means you are to love J and lead her as Jesus would. You protect and provide for her as Jesus protects and provides for his bride. You sacrifice for her and take responsibility for her. J, this means you reverence your man. You have an affectionate fear towards him. You to respect and submit to him in the Lord. You follow his leadership as his helper and his glory
When the two of you live by this script, when you dance according to this tune, when you fulfill these complementary roles, your marriage becomes a beautiful and compelling picture of the gospel. Your love story reflects the love story of Christ and the church. The world can see the gospel through you. God designed marriage for this purpose — to symbolize Christ’s relationship with his people. Many marriages preach a false gospel; make sure your marriage preaches the true gospel.
Ephesians 5 compares the married couple to a human body. The husband is the head; the wife is the body. He has to care for her even as he cares for his own body. She has to follow his lead even as the body follows its head. In a healthy human, head and body work together for the mutual benefit of both. The head directs the body and the body supports the head. Head and body seek the best for one another. That’s how you live together as one, as one flesh. And again, this is a picture of Christ and the church. God has called you into marriage so that you can create a picture of Christ’s relationship with his people in your relationship to one another.
But I also said your marriage needs the gospel. There are many ways in which this is true, but I especially want you to consider this: Even though both of you will seek to fulfill these roles and follow Christ in your marriage, you will fail at times. Each of you is a sinner, and that means you’re marrying a sinner. Sin creates friction in relationships and unless something is done, a relationship can eventually overheat and meltdown .
So what can be done about sin in your marriage? It’s very simple: forgiveness. Forgiveness is at the heart of the gospel. Christ is the eternal Son of God who became the Son of Man, lived a perfect life, and died for our sins, enduring the wrath we deserve so that we could be at peace with God. In the gospel, our sins are washed away and we are reconciled to God. But because the gospel assures us our sins are forgives, it also sets us free to forgive one another.
It is easy for a couple to get married, have their first significant conflict, and then think, “Oh no, what have I done? Did I marry the wrong person?” The answer is, “No, you did not marry the wrong person.” You can still live “happily ever after” — you just have to know that “happily ever after” means “forgiveness ever after.” The only way to get “happily ever after” is to have “forgiveness ever after.” There can never be a happy marriage were there is no forgiveness. A marriage without forgiveness will eventually crumble into misery; it will be fragile and brittle. And a marriage with forgiveness can survive and thrive through almost anything because forgiveness keeps the relationship alive and strong.
This means you have to apply the blood of Christ, not only to your own sin, but to one another’s sin. I urge you to keep short accounts. Be quick to confess sin, and be quick to forgive sin. The gospel humbles us, so we don’t have to pretend we’re more righteous than we are. We can admit our sins, shortcomings, and faults. We can confess our sins to one another, in the confidence that peace will be restored. The gospel continually reminds us that we cannot hold a grudge or grow bitter; because God has forgiven us, we must forgive one another.
A lot of people are cynical about marriage. We see it all around us in the culture. Many people think marriage is a failed institution so they reject it. But the problem is not with marriage. The problem is that so many people lack the skills needed to be happily married. One of those skills is the “gospel skill” of forgiving freely and fully even as God has forgiven. “Forgive, as you have been forgiven” — that is the rule of life for the Christian.
Another way your marriage needs the gospel that I want to stress is this: The gospel creates a community called the church and that community is absolutely essential to your life. God saves his people in and through the church. The church is to the Christian what water is to a fish. The Christian life is a churchly life.
God exists as a community; this is what we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity. The one God exist in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each fully God, each sharing in the same divine life, each equal in glory, but each distinct from the others, and living in an eternal fellowship of love and communion. Of course, because we are made in God‘s image, we were made to live in community as well. P and J, you need each other, but you need more than each other. You need the support, the encouragement, the accountability, and the wisdom found in the church. You need the community and oversight a church can provide. It is wonderful to love our earthly people and place — those natural affections are good and proper. But the community of the church will always will be the Christian’s true homeland. We are citizens of the new Jerusalem. The church is our holy nation. The church is our people in an ultimate sense. You cannot have Jesus and his benefits apart from his body and bride, the church.
In the church, you will be served and find opportunities to serve others. In the church, you will find mentoring, the wisdom of a multitude of counselors, examples to follow, teaching from God‘s Word, and everything else you need to grow and thrive in the Christian life and in your marriage. You cannot build the godly household you desire without being part of God’s household. God gives us his gifts in the context of the church. You need the church because you need the gospel and the gospel is continually proclaimed in and through the church. Build up your own household — but do so because you want to build up God’s household. Build your own kingdom as a new family — but do so as a way of extending and advancing God’s kingdom.
P and J, we are grateful to be here today to celebrate with you. We want to honor you and honor marriage. Most of all, we want to honor God. We love you and we are thankful for you. We thank God for his work in each of your lives, drawing you to himself, and now drawing you to each other. We thank God for the way his mercy, grace, and love are so evident in each of your lives. We are thankful for the kind of people you are — your commitments, character, and conviction. We thank God for uniting the two of you in the covenant of marriage today, and we look forward with expectant hope to the fruitfulness and glory your marriage will bring into the world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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