Sacred Marriage Ch. 2

For Jason: Know that it’s my hope that God will have his way with me. Thanks for your grace.

There’s so much value in knowing how to communicate. In learning how to respond to your spouse. In tweaking the tone in your voice and the body language you wear. In thinking, gosh, even a split second before speaking. And in not throwing things across the room to make a point – I definitely think it was beneficial to learn that I was just looking for some negative attention there :). There are books and books out there on all that marriage stuff that I truly believe are helpful.

But more than helpful is one truth that is the most powerful for my marriage if I just daily wrapped my whole mind, body and spirit around it. I just wish I could breathe it in with a spiritual oxygen mask so I am sustained with truth, and not lies, as I breathe in and exhale out with only a renewed mind.

God gives us a gospel picture of marriage in that he calls himself our husband. He entered into a marriage, a covenant, just like we have. Except the bride he picked looked a liiiiitle different than how we planned of and dreamed of our own spouse. He pursues a whorish, adulterous, stubborn, faithless, rebellious, rejecting, straying, ignorant, careless, wicked people…his Bride. Interesting choice, if you think about it.

This is depicted in most of Scripture through the covenant he made with Israel. Some people often bring up the point that God was showing favoritism when he made Israel his “chosen people.” But it’s clear in Scripture that Israel just made one big fool of herself over and over and over and I’m kind of glad I wasn’t the one that he chose to help the whole world understand that no one is faithful except him. I don’t think it’s much to puff up your chest about. And I can’t puff up my chest either because it’s kind of the point that I am supposed to realize the depth of my rebellion when I read about Israel and I am supposed to see the lengths God goes to to restore our relationship no matter what I do to him.

Hosea is a man God calls to “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness” and the entire book of the Bible is a story of her straying from the marriage and him faithfully remaining. It’s a picture of our relationship with the Lord. (Poor Hosea). We didn’t start out pure on our wedding day with Jesus either. We came down the aisle adulterers in our hearts. And God put his righteousness on us, just like we put on a white wedding gown.

Derek Webb describes us this way:
i am a @#!*% i do confess
but i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle
I’m a prodigal with no way home
but i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to you

so could you love this child
though i don’t trust you to provide
with one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side
i am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers less wild
that i would take a little cash
over your very flesh and blood

So God marries us, his bride. He takes our sick hearts and gives us new ones (which Ezekiel describes as him taking our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh). And he leads and pulls and draws out our relationship with him. He does EVERYTHING in our marriage with him. Even the good that comes out of my heart for him, for his glory, is because he put a new heart in me, gave me a Holy Spirit to show me how to respond to him and then literally gave me the strength to carry out what pleases him. Talk about a one sided relationship.

I literally want to CRY. This is so lovely that it pains me. As a side note right now as I squint at my screen here at Starbucks, how do people not want that to be their story? Who would not want that to be true? I mean, the only thing I can think is that people might feel insulted by that description of who they are. But come on, we all know it’s true.

Anyway, just thinking of that extreme picture of a one-sided relationship I have a couple thoughts. One (and please know that Jason actually doesn’t do this, thank goodness), wouldn’t it be annoying if you carried your marriage with all your efforts and continual forgiveness and constant confessions of your own sins (and on and on) and your spouse never did any of that and thought they were so great? That would be beyond frustrating. I have to chill out just thinking of it. That seems like it would be the hardest marriage.

Well, that’s us. We (Christians) kind of get the idea that we’re amazing and we’re busy being the “bride” of Christ pretty well. And we puff up when we pray a lot or know a verse before anyone else or fill in the blank at the end of your pastor’s sentence. Gross. Ugg. Barf. NO. He. Does. Eeeeeeverything. Without him we can do nothing (John 15). Paul says, “What a wretch am I. Who will rescue me from this body of death? But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

So think about your marriage right now. Think about what things you think you contribute and what you wish your spouse would. Now think about what I just wrote here about your covenant with Jesus. He does everything. You do nothing. Now how RIDICULOUS is it when we get @#!*% off about our spouses not pulling their load? (Just think about what question generally without thinking specifically, especially if it’s something major or detrimental because Scripture does speak to those things differently). On average, our gripes are things that I am sure the Lord is going, “Seriously?” Because he could have a gripe list from the North Pole to the South. But he forgave the list from one iceberg to the other. And my list the size of my hand is growing roots of bitterness in me like no other. IT. IS RIDICULOUS.

When we do that we do NOT understand our marriage to Christ. We just don’t. And even though right now I am writing about this and I get it and the Holy Spirit has revealed these spiritual truths to me and they dwell richly in me, I am still a sinner who bends in my thinking on days I am not alert. And I grow my gripe list and I let my bitter roots grow and I withhold love and it’s all just RIDICULOUS. And on those days I have forgotten. Just like the Israelites. Hosea 13:6 says, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”

Ephesians 5:25-27 says “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”

I John 3:16 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

Being totally absolutely planted, rooted, and watered in the truth that my relationship with God looks like him being completely sacrificial should change 3 things:

1. It should change how I view obeying him. He did everything for me. He gave everything up. He died for me. So in view of his mercy, I should be willing to be a living sacrifice as well. In view of who he is and what he has done for us, “we make it our goal to please him.” (2 Co 5:9) And he is faithful to show us how. Because he’s already done it.
2. It should change how I view my relationships with other people. Jesus just gave his life away. In him, I shouldn’t just see the world and the people in it as for me, but I should see my life as for them, as a light and a depiction of Christ’s workmanship in my heart.
3. It should absolutely change the way I see my marriage and my husband. 2 Co 5:15 says “Those who lives should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” I was dead and now I am alive and I owe it all to Jesus. And it pleases him for me to now take my life and lay it down for others, especially and foremost in my marriage. And in this way my life and our marriage becomes this light that points a sinful world to a reconciling Creator.

So on a practical level. When Jason doesn’t apologize first, I should still step out humbly and recognize my own crap. And ask his forgiveness. And if he doesn’t recognize his junk drawer of sins, I should be patient pray for him so that his heart can experience the freedom that mine does by getting it out. And when I sin against him I don’t justify it or ignore it or make it small. I need to have sober judgement and consider how my sin affects him. And take that to him. And reconcile. And when my list of expectations a mile long of “who my husband should be” is haunting my mind, I must recognize that God is gracious with us, abounding in love and compassion. I must recognize that God has been crazy patient with me and my slow progress to respond to his Spirit. And that God is my God and not my husband. I must recognize that being in this marriage is not about absorbing from my husband all that I need for life, but using my marriage as an avenue to lean on God and learn who He is for me.

And I’m not saying you never communicate or care for each other or ever ever talking about any of your needs down to the little things like needing a date night. I’m not saying something black and white that turns you into a doormat or a silent spouse who doesn’t work through things.

But I am saying that almost for certain most of us don’t view our marriage for grounds to give ourselves away, like Jesus demonstrated for us. I’m pretty sure that living the gospel first with our spouse is the hardest city on a hill ministry we’ve got. It’s easy to love the Sally Janes down the street because we’re not looking to them for what we think we need. But giving away our lives selflessly to our spouses? That’s when we know if this Jesus stuff is real. And if we really have experienced the transforming truth that he gave away his life for us and we’re forever changed by his grace.

Thomas says, “If my marriage contradicts my message, I have sabotaged the goal of my life: to be pleasing to Christ and to faithfully fulfill the ministry of reconciliation.”

I am desperate to live this. I am desperate to scatter the lies that laugh at this. And I know as I die to making it all about me, I gain life. This. Is. True. And beyond lovely.