THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
In the last two weeks we have looked at the
truth of marriage from the book of Genesis, the book of the beginnings. And we have learned that there are two
foundational truths concerning marriage, two truths upon which marriage stands. We must sink the roots of our faith deep into
these two truths.
The first is that
marriage is God’s doing. It is God’s
institution. When you are married, God
did that. God united you in a covenant
of marriage—one man, one woman—until death.
We learned from Genesis 2 that God made man, and God made the woman from
the man and brought the woman to the man and said, “Therefore shall a
man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.” Jesus made the point most clearly that
marriage is God’s doing for life when He spoke these words in Mark 10:6-9: “From the beginning of the creation God made
them male and female.” Then He quoted
from Genesis 2:24, “For this cause shall a man leave
his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one
flesh. So then, they are no more twain
but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder.”
Hear those words. Think about
those words from the mouth of Jesus Christ:
What God hath joined together.
Marriage is God’s doing. Every
marriage is God’s doing. God joins a man
and woman into one. So marriage is God’s
institution.
Secondly, marriage
is also God’s display. God has a purpose
for marriage. That purpose is His own
gracious covenant with us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Marriage is God’s showcase, or God’s model of
Christ and the church. That was God’s
purpose, or God’s design, God’s intention in giving marriage. God always has a purpose in all of His works. And the purpose of all of God’s works is to
reveal something about Himself. The apostle Paul makes this point most clear
in Ephesians 5:31, 32 when, quoting again from Genesis 2:24, he says, “This is
a great mystery”—namely, that a man shall leave his father and mother and shall
cleave unto his wife—“but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” In other words, when God gave the union of
one man and one woman in marriage joined together, holding fast to each other,
joined in vows and sexual union, God was portraying something. He was portraying the covenant of Christ and
the church. God’s intention for marriage
is that it be a model, a showcase, of Christ and the church. That lifts marriage out of the sewer of the
sitcoms and it elevates it to the clearest sky of God’s purpose and glory. That spells out what married people are to
be. Our calling as husband and wife is
to display the covenant, the faithful, forgiving grace of God to each other; to
mirror to the world what it means that Christ and the church are united in a
perfect bond of love and peace.
Marriage,
therefore, is pointing to something glorious and eternal. Marriage itself, said Jesus, will pass
away. In Matthew 22:30 the Lord said
that in the resurrection, that is, in eternal life and glory, they neither
marry nor are given in marriage.
Marriage passes away because marriage now is intended to point to
something. And when that something
comes, the model vanishes. What it
points to is Christ and the church—something that endures throughout eternity
and will be perfected when Jesus returns.
Marriage, then, is God’s doing. God married you. And marriage has God’s intention that your
marriage be a model of what is closest to His heart: the union of Christ and the church.
Now, if marriage is
to be this model of Christ and the church, then marriage must be based upon
forgiving grace. The most crucial,
central thing to practice in marriage is the forgiving grace of God. For how is it that Christ is married to the
church, to us? How can that marriage
possibly work? The answer is: forgiving grace. So our marriages are to be a display, a
showcase, of God’s forgiving grace.
This is how the
apostle Paul puts it in Colossians 3:12 and 13.
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of
mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one
another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do
ye.” The code of Christian conduct is
not based, says the apostle, on how others treat you, but, rather, as Christ
has done to you, so you are to do to others.
The code of Christian conduct is not fairness as we would interpret
it. It is not “Well, it’s my turn
now.” That is not the code of Christian
conduct. But as Christ did to you, so do
you to others—in every relationship of our life.
Now marriage is
not, “Well, as he did to me, I’ll do back to him.” Or, “If that’s the way she’s going to be,
I’ll show her!” No, you may not look to
your spouse, to see how your spouse has acted, in order to determine how you
are going to behave and act. But, as
Christ has done for and to you, so are you to do to your spouse. In other words, in marriage, you and I are to
live hour by hour in glad and humble experience of God’s forgiveness of
ourselves. That is the vertical—what God
has done for us. Then we are to
reflect that, we are to mirror that, we are to mimic that, we are to bend that
out on the horizontal, and we are to live hour by hour in humble, joyful
forgiveness and forbearance one of another.
Marriage, because it is to be the picture of Christ and the church, is
therefore the showcase, the display before the world, of God’s forgiving grace,
when husband and wife forgive each other even as Christ has forgiven them.
Are you on the
brink today of horrific feelings in your marriage, of resentment and anger and
bitterness? Have you fallen over the
brink into the awfulness and hardness of unforgiveness
and bitterness? What are you going to
do? What is the solution?
Marriage is a heart
issue. God says to you, “My child, sink
the roots of your heart into My forgiving grace. Remember what I have done for you. And so do ye to your
spouse.”
May that word of
God speak to all of us in every relationship of our life. May it speak to children and young people who
one day are to be married, that their marriage may be built upon that
rock. And may it speak to us who are
married. Marriage has a rule of
conduct. The rule of conduct in marriage
is this: As Christ forgave you, so also
do ye.
The apostle then is
saying to us that it is exactly out of the experience of what Christ in His
mercy has done for us and how Christ bears with us presently and of His mercy
and compassion, that we are to conduct ourselves and
we are to treat our spouse. Your
relationship to God is first.
And we need to
begin by asking the question, “Do I know that?”
Do you know that grace of God to you?
Have you truly tasted it? Is it a
mere theory or is it a living experiential reality in your soul? Is the reason for hurting relationships in
your family or in your church this, that you do not know, you have not tasted, what God has done for you? Do you believe and experience what God, by
grace in Christ, has done for you? Do
you embrace that wonder of pardon and forgiveness? Do you treasure it? Is it amazing, absolutely glorious? Is Christ all to you?
If that is the
case, then we will want to show that in our relationships to others, and
especially in our relationship of marriage.
You say, “But pastor, you are talking today of marriage. Doesn’t this truth that we are to treat
others as Christ has treated us apply to every relationship of life, not just
married Christians, but teenage girls as they live with each other in the
schools and boys and girls and brothers in the Lord Jesus in the church—must we
not always be showing outwardly to others what we have received inwardly of
God? And the answer to that is Yes! Always we are to
show forth the grace that God has shown to us.
But I emphasize marriage because marriage is foundational. It is the most long-lasting, the most
intimate relationship, and it is the picture of Christ and the church. That is why God gave marriage—to be a picture
of Christ and the church. Therefore,
especially in your marriage, practice your faith there! Do not begin by practicing your faith first
to the stranger, or first to the neighbor who does not live with you. But practice that experience of pardon and
grace that you have received of Christ, practice that first in your relationship
toward those closest to you, toward your spouse.
Now, what has
Christ done for us? Let us see how Paul
presented that in the beautiful epistle to the Colossians. The apostle teaches us that Christ has
delivered us from the wrath of God against our sin. In verse 6 the apostle speaks of the wrath of
God that is coming upon the children of disobedience. That is where we start. It is very important to start right
there. Christ has overcome the wrath of
God against our sins.
We are tempted to
think that our wrath and our anger against our spouse is
too big to overcome. But we must see
that the grace of God has overcome something infinitely greater—the wrath of
God against our sins. And how was that
wrath removed? Go back to Colossians
2:13, 14. We read, “And you, being dead
in your sins and the uncir-cumcision of your flesh,
hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was
contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” The apostle Paul says that God took our sins,
our debts, the handwriting of ordinances that were contrary to us, every
infraction that we have committed that spoke out for punishment—God took those
infractions, that sin, and set it aside by nailing it to the cross.
Now, you do not
literally take sins and put a nail through them on a cross and fix them upon a
cross. The apostle means the nails that
were driven through the hands and feet of Jesus and the sufferings of Jesus
upon the cross two thousand years ago.
Jesus bore all that was written against us. All the sins, all the infractions of God’s
people, chosen in Christ—God nailed those to the cross by pouring out the punishment
those sins deserved upon His beloved Son.
The apostle says, “having forgiven you all your trespasses.” This did not happen with any help from
you. You did nothing to remove your
sins. You did not deserve this. God did that graciously for you, before you
were even born. Now make sure you see
personally this most wonderful of all truths.
Do not sail over it. Do not let
it sail over your head. Do not have a
hard heart to it. God took the record of
all of our sins, and instead of holding them before our face and sending us to hell, He put them in the palm of His Son’s hands and drove a
nail through them into a cross.
Whose sins? My sins!
Your believing wife’s sins. Your brother’s sins. Jesus was punished as the substitute of God’s
elect children. You cannot believe that
too strongly. What Jesus did went beyond
forgiveness. For the
work of the cross goes beyond pardon.
The work of Jesus Christ was also righteousness. He obtained righteousness for us. God required not only the punishment of sin
but He required perfection. And Jesus
died both to bear the punishment of our sin and to obtain for us, by His
perfect loving obedience, a spotless righteousness before God.
So what has Christ
done for me? God, out of an immeasurable
love, gave His Son to bear my punishment and perform all righteousness in my
place. Through faith I know that right
now. I have His righteousness as
accounted to be my own. The Bible itself
puts it in such beautiful terms. II
Corinthians 5:21, “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
That is the
foundation of marriage. Marriage is to
be built upon that truth, upon an understanding of the grace of
forgiveness. Christ has forgiven you. The glorious streams of grace have fallen
down from heaven upon dirty, selfish, angry, bitter sinners—you and me—and has
cleansed us. And in the relationship of
marriage, which is the model of Christ and the church, which is supposed to be
reflecting what Christ has done for the church, we are to take that grace that
has come to us and we are to reflect that to our spouse. So the apostle says, in Colossians 3: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy
and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness,
longsuffering …even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
This is what it
means. Let the measure of God’s grace to
you in the cross of Christ be the measure of your grace to your spouse. That is the rule of conduct. Treat your spouse the way Christ has treated
you. As the Lord bears with you, even so
do you unto your spouse. The Lord bears
with you every day. Every day we fall
far short of His will. Indeed, the
distance between what Christ expects of us and what we achieve is infinitely
greater than what you expect of your spouse and of what your spouse
achieves. Christ forgave much more than
we ever do. Christ bears much more. Let this rule be the rule of your conduct,
whether you are married to a believer or an unbeliever: the measure of His grace to me is to be the
measure of the grace that I show unto my spouse, and unto all those with whom I
come into contact.
But you say,
“Pastor, you tend to be a bit negative when you talk about marriage. You talk immediately about forgiving and
forbearing. Isn’t marriage also about
romance and love? Can’t we have a little
more positive here? Where is the
love? Christ and the church, that is
love, isn’t it? Doesn’t Christ treasure
the church? And isn’t there a book in
the Bible (the Song of Solomon) that makes us blush over how tender Christ is
in doting over His wife, whispering sweet things to her? Don’t you believe that aspect of Christ and
the church should be modeled in the Christian marriage?”
The answer is: I sure do!
Marriage is to be two (male and female), humbling themselves in faith,
dwelling in love, seeking to please and meet one another’s needs. Yes, love.
But I stress that marriage models Christ and the church by showing,
first of all, forgiving grace. I stress
that because there is going to be sin in your marriage (and in all your
relationships). In your marriage there
are going to be those idiosyncrasies, those peculiarities, those habits that
that person has whom you married that simply get your goat. Little things, maybe. Or big things—he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t
understand, he leaves his clothes all around.
You need a way to manage that.
Still more, I speak
of forgiving grace because the way of forgiveness in Christ makes love flourish. The hard and rugged work of forgiving and
enduring is what makes those affections flourish when they seem to have
died. Anger and bitterness and
resentments can be so strong, like a tempest in our soul. But then we are brought to the cross to see
what we have done, and that Christ has forgiven us. Then, even though we are tempted to say that
our love in this marriage has died, when we are at the cross we are reminded
again of the grace that God has shown to us.
God is glorified
when two very different people, two people who cannot live together, two
selfish sinners who have hurt each other, are humbled before what God has done
for them, and in the light of what God has done they forge a life of
faithfulness, love, and tenderness, in the furnace of their trials, relying
upon Christ.
The Christian life
must be lived under the shadow of the cross.
The Christian marriage must never stray from the cross of Jesus
Christ. As Christ forgave you, so also
do ye. When you get too far from the
cross in your thoughts or in your experiences, you are going to be in trouble
in your marriage. That is the
battle. That is the focus. The focus in marriage is not, first of all,
the other person. But the focus is
this: What has Christ done for me? Do I know the grace of God? That is sweet. That amazing, that knock-you-off-your-feet
(off your pride) free grace! Does that
huge truth fill our hearts? God has
forgiven all our trespasses. He has
taken the record of our sins against us and nailed it to the cross. Drive that truth into your conscience.
Husband and wife,
that truth must be greater to you than any problem in your marriage. And if any problem in your marriage is a
bigger thing to your soul than what Christ has done for you in His mercy, then the
problem is that you do not know, you do not experience personally, what Christ
has done for you.
Believe this word
of God—this key to a happy marriage.
The rule of conduct
is this: What has Christ done for
me? When I bow before the cross and see
His amazing grace, that will awaken emotion and
affection. And as Christ has done to me,
so I will be resolved to do to my spouse.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy good Word. And we pray for
the softening of our hearts and the influences of the Holy Spirit upon
them—that out of the experience of Thy grace we may so walk and so treat our
husband or our wife that Thy name might be glorified in our marriage. In Jesus’ name, Amen.