Marriage

Marriage was created for saints, not sinners. God’s intentions for marriage was that it would be a physical demonstration in this world of the covenant that God keeps faithfully with his people. And on our wedding day, we have high hopes for ourselves and our spouses. And then we’re married for about 30 minutes. We’ve all blown it. Not a one of us stands perfect, without fault before God. Most of us don’t have any trouble admitting that. Those that do have trouble admitting that, let me suggest a good place to start. And since we are called to love our spouses as faithfully as Christ loves the church, and submit to our spouses (that is to one another…read it again) out of respect for Christ’s submission to the cross…once we admit and confess we have sinned against God, it’s probably not a huge leap to realize that we have hurt our spouses along the way as well. We’ve all blown it. We all would like to think we’ve blown it a little less than someone else. Sure, we reason, I messed up. But did you hear about so and so? She really made a mess! But we aren’t comparing ourselves to each other (Jesus told us to stop all that speck finding until we had removed our planks). We are comparing ourselves to Christ. And we’ve all blown it. “A wedding calls us to our highest and best—in fact, to almost impossible—ideals. It’s the way we want to live. But marriage reminds us of the daily reality of living as sinful human beings in a radically broken world. We aspire after love but far too often descend into hate.” (Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage) So what are we supposed to do with that? We can know what the ideal is. We can even do our best to strive for it. And we should. But when the reality of our sinfulness hits us like a bucket of cold water, what do we do? We seek a redeemer who covers us with his love. And that’s why Ruth’s story is told in the Bible. Not because Ruth and Boaz had a perfect marriage, but because in this season of their lives they acted in Godly ways. God is able to say, “I want to be the redeemer in your life. I want to cover your shame with my love. I want to bring you in out of the cold. I want to give you my name. I want to love you forever. Here is a good example of someone who did this once. Now, I want to do this every day for the rest of your life…for eternity.” Facebook has been full this week of hamartiology: the study of sin. Lines drawn. Statuses posted. Links shared. Our data plans have been exhausted. I wonder what we have learned? Several threads that really left me hurting were conversations about divorce. I told our worship leader that I was thinking about talking about divorce this week, and he said, “it is the elephant in the room.” In our fallen world, we can’t have a discussion about Christian marriage without also having a discussion about divorce. That’s not a value judgment; that is a statement. How are we supposed to talk about, think about, preach about divorce in our world today? Our world, where it is estimated that 20-40% of all marriages end in divorce; our world, where 1/3 of Christian marriages dissolve. Some point immediately to passages in Malachi, Matthew, and Leviticus that tell us that God hates divorce and remarriage results in adultery. It’s true. It’s all in there. And I have a very high view of scripture, so I am not likely to remove or avoid the parts I am uncomfortable with. But I also have a very high view of God and so I seek to understand His ways rather than lean on my own understanding. I’ve read, and studied, and prayed with the question in mind: God, do you really hate divorce? And here is what I’ve come up with: Yes. This realization came to me this summer as I have stood by the caskets of some hard-fighting men and watched the tears roll down their widows’ cheeks. I thought one day, “I hate cancer. God, I know you hate cancer. I hate what cancer does to people, to families, to communities. There is nothing good about cancer. I know that seasons of fighting cancer has resulted in strengthening people’s faith, their families, their own personal health. I have seen people take a cancer diagnosis and allow God to use it for their good. But cancer. No good. It doesn’t matter whether the person with cancer did nothing to deserve cancer or was told every day “you’re going to get cancer” until the day they were told: “You’ve got cancer.” Cancer is evil. It is the opposite of life. I hate cancer. And I can truthfully say God hates cancer. When one of his children has cancer, God immediately creates a redemption plan: a plan of healing for this life or the next. God knows we are not created for cancer; cancer has no part in God’s original creation; cancer will have no part in God’s new creation. But in this fallen world we deal with cancer. Cancer doesn’t frighten God, but it makes God angry because it hurts his children. God doesn’t become angry at the person with cancer…even if they caused their own cancer. God is angry at the author of cancer. Divorce is like cancer. It has no part in God’s original creation; we were not created for brokenness and pain. It will have no part in God’s new creation. But it is a part of the world we live in now. Sometimes divorce happens because we mess up. Sometimes divorce happens to us. And God hates divorce. Because, God hates to see his children hurt. He hates when we are striking blows at each other. He hates to see us squaring off, not loving, not forgiving. He doesn’t hate us. But he hates to see us hurt others, and he hates to see us hurt. Truthfully, God desires all of our marriages, if we are Christian people, to be an example to the world of God’s faithfulness and love. Paul says of our treatment of our spouses: “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you should love your wife as yourself, and to wives: your husband needs your respect.” What happens when our marriages are less than God’s ideal? What does God think of us when we fail each other: when we are selfish, arrogant, rude, unfaithful, violent, cold, or dishonest? God thinks: My children are hurt, and they are hurting each other. It pains me to see them like this. I wish they would not listen to the lies they hear in this world. I wish they would not allow their enemy to take them down paths of self-absorption, paths of fear, paths of greed, paths of sin. I wish they would believe and cling to the truth that sin will always take more than you bargained and leave you with less than it promised. But more than anything, I wish they would just look my way. If I could just catch her eye. If I could just grab his attention. I would remind them that I love them, that nothing can separate them from my love, that I have made a way for them to come home, that I welcome them (dirt and all). I would remind them that I am a God of second, third, fourth, and tenth chances. I would remind them that I already know what they’ve done and I’ve already paid the price of their debt. I would remind them that they are not the sum of their mistakes; they are precious, created in My image, and altogether beautiful. I would beg them to put on Christ, and not the rags of this world. I would hold a mirror of my Son so they could see that dressed in his righteousness they are perfect, without blemish, wrinkle, or stain. More beautiful than their earthly wedding day. I would wrap my arms around them, wipe the tears from their cheeks and tell them as many times as it takes to sink in: I forgive you.”