The gospel is this: Truth and love

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us.

(p. 48, Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage)

Random reflections from a wedding day

I was privileged to be at a wedding today. There was a very good sermon, from someone known by some of my readers, with three main points (if I remember rightly):

1. Marriage will be shaped by the God you worship. Because God is Trinity, God is a God of personal loving relationships, and because we are made in his image, it is other-centredness rather than self-centredness to our lives.
2. Marriage should be shaped by Christ's love for the church. Firstly, we are forgiven all the ways in which we will sin against our spouse. Secondly, Christ is our model as he self-sacrificially laid down his life for his bride.
3. Marriage should be a signpost to Christ. Marriage images Christ's love for the church, a wedding the Bride and Groom would like their friends and family to be present at even more than they like their friends and family being present now.

Frankly, I would struggle to imagine a better outline for a sermon on marriage.

I had an conversation with some of the bride's family members afterwards. They explained that they believed that God was impersonal love, but they didn't see the necessity of all the baggage of Christianity. Drawing on the first point of the sermon I tried explaining that to for God to be love he needed to have multi-personal. They disagreed. I was less coherent from there on.

Later on in the day I read the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians where Paul explains that he preached "the message of the cross", and knew nothing amongst them "except Jesus Christ and him crucified". It reminded me of something Tim Keller often asks: "Did your god die for you?"

Did your career die for you? Did your desire for acceptance die for you? Actually, we all know those gods are pretty poor gods in comparison to Christ crucified. "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many", but every other god comes to serve and take our life away from us.

One thing I wished I had also said to this couple, and perhaps even said first, was "did your God of love, love you so much he died for you?"

It genuinely is true that that is where we see most clearly what love really is (1 John 3:16), and who are God really is (1 Cor).

Marriage that sustains your love

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to a young married couple, "It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love" (HT JP).

What did he mean?

He could have meant that you have made these promises to love one another, and by an act of will you will determine to love each other for the rest of your life. After all imagine the shame if you fail to keep your word, or the hurt you'll cause by disappointing your wife. I often hear Christians say something like "love is not a feeling, it is a decision" and admittedly that is better than the "love what you feel like", but ultimately it is self-produced and powered by fear.

Thankfully I think I see something more beautiful in my married friends...

Bonhoeffer could also have meant that with your marriage you have a new identity (something that sadly our culture only recognises in the change of the bride's name). Of course, people do deny that identity and live as if they have another identity even to the point of separating. But to friends of mine their marriage is now so intrinsic to who they are that to decide they no longer love each other is like denying the sky is blue.

That's not to say that the old identity of being two flesh is not constantly trying to reassert itself, but that is the value of the marriage covenant. The ceremony creates the reality as a speech-act, and then echoes down through the rest of life.

By hearing repeatedly in words and actions that you are one flesh, Mr and Mrs, husband and wife, the reality of an identity of love is sustained.

Similarly, but on a grander scale where union is not physical but Spiritual (with a big 'S'), we need the Gospel repeating to us constantly because we continually forget our new identity. Hearing it again and again, or eating it in the Lord's Supper, sustains us in reminding us of who we are, and makes us more like the people we already are.

Another bit of wedding advice

Listening to: GF Handel: The Messiah (Pinnock)

Weddings are often the highlights of my year, so although I didn't watch all the Royal Wedding I enjoyed watching some of the highlights (esp the cartwheeling verger).

The sermon was very brief, and understandably couldn't say very much, but I think Huw Edwards' brief final comment on the BBC was the best analysis it is likely to receive. He called it "advice".

The same summary could be given for many wedding sermons I have heard, from evangelicals as much as anyone else. Usually the advice is very thoughtful and helpful, and the the Bishop's was too.

He was realistic about the difficulties that face married couples, and the reasons not to build our security on your spouse. Nevertheless, he said this was "a day of hope".... why?

Firstly, because of the potential for them to be "what God meant each one to be".

Secondly, because they had made a "solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, [they] are committed to the way of generous love".

Thirdly, because they have each other to change them into "their work of art".

What about the God of hope?

The Bishop briefly, but nicely, described "a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ". He encouraged William and Kate to live "in the Spirit of this generous God...following the example of Jesus Christ".

This is good but inadequate. In the Bishop's sermon God is the God of hope because of his example and what he enables, not for what he has achieved in our place and promises to achieve in us.

So it included no substitution and no promise, and because of that there was no Gospel.

Despite including so much that was good and true, without the good news, the advice was hopeless. Even the attractive 'promise' of his opening words by St Catherine of Siena threw the happy couple back on their own efforts to emulate the generous God: "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

From that very moment, I was reminded of Oswald Bayer's quotation:

But whatever the new human being of the modern age is, that is what he or she must first become. The gospel of freedom, which is universally said to exist, puts the human being under the pressure to redeem himself at the very same time, and calls for him to achieve the potential that is by very nature his already. But if freedom is not promised and imparted, if instead it is characteristic of me from the outset, if I define myself in relation to it, then I am weighted down, in my individual and collective subjectivity, with having to fulfill the promise of what has been provided for me - not freed for freedom but at the same time " to freedom condemned" (Satre). It is not that I am able to be free, but that I have to free myself.

(italics original, pp.65-66, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation)

So wedding preachers, please give us God's acts and promises as well as the advice, or you'll crush us all!

Engaged, not married

I recently gave my first ever children's talk at my church on the Isrealite elders' meal with God in Exodus 24:9-11 and its connection with the table of the bread of presence! The elders' meal is a typical ceremonial OT covenant meal following the inauguration of a covenant (cf. Genesis 26:30). I drew a parallel with photos we take to remember a wedding (the bread was a memorial, for God to remember his covenant). After all, the inauguration of the Sinai covenant was the marriage of God to Israel. Sadly the marriage was not a happy one.

Ezekiel 16:8-15 graphically describes the story of Israel's marriage.

"When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendour that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.

But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his." (cf. Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 3:20, Hosea 2)

Of course, the theme of marriage of God's people is strong in the NT too. In the NT Jesus is regularly referred to as the bridegroom set to marry the bride of the church (Matthew 9, 25, John 3:29, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:21-33, Revelation 18-22).

But I think I made a little misstep in my children's talk in drawing a parallel to our marriage to Christ. Because it is striking that in the NT our marriage is always future (when Christ returns), in comparison to the OT where the marriage is always past (at Sinai).

I need to think on this much more but I am increasingly convinced the as a conservative evangelical I (for great reasons) focus on the finished work of Christ, but forget that this is a promise of a still future glorious relationship that I currently only taste. There is so much more to come... while it was only downhill for the Israelites (that is until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in).

Luther on changing nappies

"If natural reason looks thus at married life, which is what the heathen follow, at the point where they want to be the smartest, then it turns up the nose and says: Ah, do I have to rock the baby, wash the diapers, make beds, smell stink, stay awake during the night, care for it when it cries, treat its rashes and sores, afterward take care of the wife, support her, work, have cares here, cares there, do that, do this, suffer that, suffer this, and all of what else the marriage estate teaches about what is disgusting and wearying. Oh, should I get caught like that? Oh, you miserable, poor man, if you have taken a wife, phooey, phooey, with the misery and messiness. It is better to remain unattached and, without troubles, to lead a peaceable life....

But what does the Christian faith have to say about this? It opens his eyes and sees all these small, insignificant, and despised works through the Spirit and is most sure that they are all decorated with godly pleasure as with costly gold and precious stones and says: Ah, oh God, since I am sure that you have created me as a human being and have produced this child through my body, I thus know for sure, as well, that it pleases you best of all, and I confess to you that I am not worthy to rock the little one, to wash his diapers, and to care for his mother. How have I come to be worthy of this without merit, that I have become sure of how I can serve your creature and your loving will? Oh, how gladly I will do such things, even such things as could be less important yet and more despised. Therefore neither frost nor heat, no amount of effort or work will grieve me, since I am sure that such work is pleasing to you."

(The Estate of Marriage, LW 45:39-40)

What do we actually mean by....

I'm currently burried under work, but I wanted to link to this post by Tim Chester. If you don't already read his blog you ought to, and stop wasting time around this neck of the woods. He has just posted a very suscinct definition of what we (should) mean by submission/headship within marriage:

• The wife puts her husband’s will before her own.
• The husband puts his wife’s interests before his own.

Brilliantly put I think.