The Gospel And Your Marriage (Gospel: Part 1)
The Gospel And Your Marriage (Gospel: Part 1)
By Bradley Bennett
In this series, we will be exploring the beauty and power of the gospel within your marriage. We will discover how the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection opens the way for us to live out God’s good and perfect design for marriage.
The first time I celebrated my birthday while dating Amanda, she had people kidnap me. Yes, you read that right.
The kidnapping took place after I had chosen to work a double shift at work on my birthday (because I’m a scrooge and horrible at celebrating things!).
While I was walking out to my car, I was grabbed from behind by two guys wearing hoodies and masks. They quickly threw a pillowcase over my head and threw me into a car that had pulled up. For the next 15 seconds, I was certain I was going to die until I heard voices I recognized singing, “Happy Birthday”.
Coming to the realization that my new girlfriend had just planned and executed a kidnapping targeting me was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
Amanda, as I have continued to discover, is a multi-talented individual.
Eventually, they took the hood off me and drove me to a local beach where we had cake and celebrated my birthday, and my recent kidnapping, with friends.
As I look back on this memory, it’s funny to me just how differently our birthday celebrations look now. No longer is it kidnappings and late nights eating cake on the beach with friends. Often it’s simply going out to a nice restaurant, grabbing cold stone, and then settling in to watch a movie at home.
While that first birthday celebration together holds a special place in my heart (and nightmares!) — I also love the way we celebrate now. Our celebration of each other has grown, changed, and matured over the years. And in many ways, it’s a reflection of how we have both grown and changed as individuals.
Marriage is a beautiful and difficult relationship because it’s a refining relationship. It’s filled with moments of deep joy coupled with times of triumph and defeat. Through all of this, it often can feel like sandpaper to our souls as we find ourselves constantly confronted with areas in our life where we need to grow.
Culture’s Story For Marriage: Easy Love And Relationship
As a pastor, one of my favorite things I get to participate in is premarital counseling. It’s a season filled with so much confidence, new discovery, and anticipation as couples prepare for the life they will live together.
One of the things I love seeing the most is the unbridled confidence that these couples have that they will be able to overcome anything that comes against them as long as they have each other.
I often remember back to when Amanda and I were in that season. We were so full of optimism, believing that our natural flow of romance, communication, and love would continue forever without any effort.
And what couple doesn’t believe that? That’s what our culture tells us is supposed to be the story of our marriage.
Our world tells us that marriage is going to be romantic date nights, grand gestures, passion, and fun times. That being in relationship with one another will come easily and naturally and that love will constantly flow between you.
We’re brought into marriage with the story that our days will consist of long walks on the beach in the sun and candlelight dinners by moonlight. That once we say, “I Do”, that we are set for a lifetime of passion, fulfillment, and joy as we live “Happily Ever After.”
Sure, we know that things won’t always be perfect. But we expect all the problems to be external and that we will face them together, whatever may come.
For the vast majority of couples, it doesn’t take long for this story to break down. Before long, it becomes apparent that your spouse isn’t perfect and neither are you. You fail them and they fail you, and then you’re both frustrated.
And what you find is that the problems facing your marriage aren’t only external, they are also internal. Your problem isn’t out there, it’s in the house. It’s the two imperfect people who’ve chosen to spend the rest of their life together.
Then, eventually, the story culture spins for us just completely falls apart.
You see, there is no such thing as easy love or relationship in marriage. Why? Because we are all imperfect, fallen people living in a world broken by sin. And sin by its very nature breaks relationship.
It’s this reality that leads us to understand that this culture’s hope for marriage is ultimately incomplete. Because it does nothing to address the real, internal, issues facing your marriage… Which begin and end with the fallen people within it.
The Gospel Story And Your Marriage
The greatest hope for your marriage, and experiencing all that God has designed it to be, lies in understanding the good news of the gospel. Why? Because the Gospel reveals how a good God has created a solution to sin through great price to Himself.
In the gospel, we see a way to restore a relationship with each other that can actually allow us to live out the oneness in our marriage that it was created for.
The Creation: Perfect Relationship And Oneness
The first-ever wedding, between Adam and Eve, was a beautiful thing. There most likely wasn’t an open bar, dressed-up guests, or a DJ, but there was something even better. There was the creation of a perfect relationship between two different beings who were joined together as one. [1]
There was perfect relationship with each other and perfect relationship with God. And together, as one, they were tasked with imaging God in unique ways as they were fruitful and multiplied. [2]
It was beautiful and everything God desired for marriage. It was very good. [3]
The Fall: Division And Broken Relationship
The beauty of the original marriage didn’t last though. Just a few short chapters into the narrative of scripture and Adam and Eve’s perfect relationship has vanished. Rather than trusting in God’s good design and purposes for their marriage, Adam and Eve rebelled and trusted in what they thought best. [4]
This heart posture welcomed sin and division into the world, and ultimately into their relationship with each other and God. This is the fruit of sin, broken relationship with each other and with God, ultimately leading to death. [5]
This fall is played out in every marriage since Adam and Eve. Rather than being one and being united under God’s good design and purposes, we find ourselves as individuals fighting to fulfill our own selfish desires and needs. Each doing what seems best in our own eyes.
Instead of partnering together to image God and reveal his goodness, we fight against one another. This sin causes pain, hurt, and broken relationship.
It leaves us unable to be open, honest, intimate, or free in our relationship.
The Redemption: Oneness In And Through Christ
In our own strength, it is impossible for us to conquer the power of sin in our lives that drives a wedge into our marriage. Thankfully, Jesus has already done all that was needed through His redemptive work on the cross.
He did what none of us could, He lived a perfect life, united fully in relationship and will with God. He died that death that we could not die, the death of a righteous, perfect sacrifice. And through His sacrifice, He displayed what our earthly marriages can only image in shadow, the covenantal love between God and His people. [6]
A type of love where the partners lay down their lives for one another. Jesus’ love paved the way for us to die to ourselves in a similar way to see God’s purposes accomplished in and through us. [7]
This redeeming work of Jesus happened once for all but is played out over and over across our life as we grow in His likeness and love.
Through Jesus’ death, our severed union with God was restored and we have become one with our God through Christ. And this is good news for your marriage!
It means that through Jesus, you have been welcomed into the family of God and have received the inheritance that was due to Jesus, the only perfect son of God. The gospel means that you have access to the kind of love that restores, rather than breaks relationship. [8]
The love of Jesus is what caused him to love and serve the needy, love those that hurt Him, and ultimately lay His life for you and me. Through Jesus, this is the love that we can express and share within our union together.
The Coming Hope: Becoming One Forever
In this life, we live with the tension of here but not yet. We experience oneness with God and with others in part because we still live in a broken, fallen world. But through the Gospel, we have hope that one day we’ll be united as one in perfect relationship forever without the brokenness of this earth tainted by sin.
We won’t have marriage like we know it on this earth, because we will be able to experience something greater, true oneness with Christ forever. United with Him in perfect relationship for all eternity. Without brokenness, sin, or blemish. [9]
This means no more hurt or pain in our relationships with others. No more heated “discussions”, misunderstandings, careless words, betrayals, or failures. Because we will all be made perfect through the love of Christ.
The Good News of The Gospel
The gospel offers us a better way and a better story. It is good news because what Jesus did is the hope we need to face the real, internal, things facing our marriage — our fallen and sinful hearts.
What He has done on the cross has broken the power of sin in your life and your marriage. He purchased it on the cross once and for all.
Marriage can often feel like a chisel chipping away at us, but through the gospel, we have hope that those chisel strokes are the refining, redemptive love of Christ at work shaping us into His likeness.
Shaping us into people who show His love that unites rather than divides. A love that can empower us to live out the command to become one.