Marriage as a Bumper Sticker for the Gospel: A Wedding Reflection

Stories typically have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it’s often not until we know the ending of a story that we realize all that was happening in the beginning, and for that matter, in the middle. When we think about the story of God’s love for the world—what Christians call the gospel—and we reflect upon what that good news story has to do with marriage, we learn something precious about God.

Bumper Stickers

Before we get there, I’ll tell you a story. My first pastorate was in Tucson, Arizona. In Tucson there was one particular, prominent church that gave its attendees bumper stickers with the church’s name and logo on it. I guess I should say that I presume that they gave out the bumper stickers and asked people to put it on their cars, as opposed to simply sending out covert volunteers during the service to slap the stickers on cars in the parking lot. I assume they did not do that. I do think if we had that “ministry” at our church, there would be people who would want to join the team, which is one of several reasons why we don’t.

I would see these bumper stickers all over Tucson. Nearly every time I saw one, I would wish I was privy to a conversation that I was not privy to; I wish I had been in the staff meeting when a leader presented the idea for the bumper stickers.

I imagine it going like this: “So, I have an idea I want to run by you,” says the summer intern. “I’m thinking that the Christians who call our church home, have lives so wonderfully transformed by Jesus, that Jesus is actually influencing the way they drive. In fact, our people drive so courteously, thoughtfully, safely, and law-abidingly, that we should capitalize on their good Christian driving. I think more people will come to our church based on how our people drive if we put our logo on their cars. Let’s have their driving advertise how wonderful it is to come to our church.”

I would have liked to have been in that staff meeting to hear the response. Evidently, they bought the sales pitch.

I’m poking fun at that idea and all of our poor driving, which, whether we are Christians or not, is often not done so courteously and law-abidingly.

But in a real way, God has set up the story of redemption to be a story about marriage. God has chosen—as strange as it might seem to us—to advertise his goodness through the vehicle of marriage. Marriages are to display not merely the couple’s love for each other but God’s love for his bride.

The Beginning

In the beginning of the story of God’s love for his people, God creates a man and a woman in his image. He creates two co-rulers of creation, a King and a Queen if you will, to multiply and have dominion over the earth.

Sometimes when we hear the language in Genesis of having dominion and subduing, we think of carbon footprints and corporations polluting the oceans and so on. In other words, we think of the bad kind of subduing. But in the context, the King called Adam and the Queen called Eve, are to rule the way God was ruling: In each subsequent day of creation, God took raw, unformed material and made it better; he made an environment more and more cultivated and suited to life and beauty. And as Adam and Eve ruled, they were to do the same. God’s intention for their ruling was not just for their benefit but for others too.

Consider the familiar phrase, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In the story, there’s no mother and no father yet, so what is that about? God is setting up a pattern that he intends to continue after the garden of Eden. It’s a good pattern. God has a grand purpose for marriage, not only for the individual couple but the work of advertising that he’ll do through marriage, if you allow me to use that word advertising.

What we see in the biblical story, however, is that shortly thereafter, Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and everything about everything got hard and ugly. When they fell into sin, Adam’s sin plunged all of us into ten thousand problems, including those in marriage (cf. Romans 5:12–21).

The Middle

And yet, despite all our issues of sin and struggle, in the middle of God’s story, we see that God still chose to liken the joy of marriage and the joy of a bride and groom, to the joy of knowing him. One example of that is from the prophet Isaiah where God likens the joy of being clothed in the garments of salvation to the joy of being decked out on your wedding day.

. . . for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isaiah 61:10b)

In the New Testament, which is that part of the Bible written ]after Jesus came to earth, an author says something similar in a letter to a church in a city called Ephesus. But this time the wording is more specific. After quoting the passage from Genesis about a man leaving his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife, the apostle Paul writes, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). Paul sees in marriage an advertising scheme, a way to display to the world how much God loves the world.

Marriage: Not a Job Interview but a Covenant Relationship

For us to make sense of that, we have to understand marriage, not how most people understand it today, but how God intends it to be. Here’s what I mean. It’s common for people to think that marriage is simply a more serious version of dating and living together. But that’s not actually true. Yes, marriage is more serious than dating, but marriage is not just the next level of dating or living together; marriage is a new, special type of relationship. When couples date and, sadly, live together before marriage, that positions the relationship like a job interview that doesn’t end.

However, God considers marriage a covenant relationship, not a consumer relationship or an extended job interview. In marriage, you already have the job. Thus, a covenant relationship is not focused on whether the other person delivers the goods. A covenant relationship is one based on a solemn vow to uphold your end of the agreement regardless of whether the other person does.

And this is why covenant relationships are so beautiful. In a covenant relationship you can be truly known—known in all of your glory, but also known in all of your depravity and shame and failures and insecurities—and not only known but still loved. This is the meaning of unconditional love: truly known and dearly loved.

It’s God’s intention that marriage would be this type of relationship—one not based on what the other person does, but rather, through “better and worse, sickness and health, richer and poorer,” the marriage holds.

God has designed marriage to work this way to display to the world the way he loves people in what Christians call the gospel; the gospel is the heart of Christianity. God doesn’t love us because we always look the way a couple looks on their wedding day, a handsome groom and a beautiful bride. The gospel is the good news that, in Jesus, God has undertaken a rescue mission for his enemies or, we might say, for a faithless bride. It’s good news that God is not interviewing me for the job of being a Christian, as though if I just perform well enough for long enough, well, then he’ll love me. If this is how you experience God, you don’t know him as he desires to be known.

Let me be more specific. The Bible teaches that Jesus lived a perfect life; he was utterly faithful to God his Father and loved him supremely. Then out of love for his Father and us, Jesus went to a cross and died, suffering the ultimate punishment for our sin, not his. Then he rose again, indicating that all punishment for anyone who trusts in Jesus is gone. The posture of God toward his children is now only that of strong, warm covenant love.

This is the mystery that Paul wrote about, the mystery that is no longer a mystery. A pastor once wrote a poem that has a few lines that speak to this. The lines go like this:

. . . marriage, from / the first embrace, is but the small / and faulty echo of a thrall / and union high above . . . (John Piper, “Joseph: Part 4,” Desiring God, December 21, 1997)

Marriages are but a faulty echo of the greater union, the author says, the union of God with his people, the union of Christ the groom with the church, his bride. I think that’s true.

You might ask the question if this is only true of good marriages. It’s not. Even our imperfect marriages testify that there is something greater, something better out there. I’ll explain. When a couple has a rotten season of marriage, or when a person wants to be married but is not married, it’s not usually that they think marriage itself is terrible. They feel disappointment because they hope for better from marriage. To use a metaphor, if I were eating cardboard, I wouldn’t be surprised that it tasted awful; it’s cardboard—of course it tastes bad. But if we were feasting, and the food was rotten and made us sick, we would be frustrated because we know feasting should lead to joy.

And so, the hurt of a sad marriage is compounded because we know, in our heart of hearts, that it was not supposed to be this way. In other words, even our sadness over broken marriages testifies, sometimes as a whisper and sometimes as a shout, that marriages are supposed to be good and that there is more to marriage than a marriage.

The End

Look what God says about marriage in the last book of the Bible, the end of the story.

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:6–9)

As I wrote above, stories typically have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s often not until we know the ending of a story that we realize all that was happening in the beginning, and for that matter, in the middle.

Throughout the biblical story, we get hints of the greater purpose of marriage, which becomes explicit in the book of Revelation. All the joy, all the feasting, all the celebration, all the love, all the “for better’s and for worse’s,” point to the great day of feasting and joy and celebration at what the Bible calls the “marriage supper of the Lamb,” a phrase used twice in this passage to refer to the great feast of the redeemed at the end of time. The Lamb is a way to refer to Jesus, the one who paid for the wedding. Weddings are expensive. I know those who sit on the front row of a wedding know this well. Jesus paid for the great wedding feast with his life. And one day all the forgiven will feast together.

On Christ’s behalf, as a preacher of the gospel, I invite you to that feast. You only need to give God your empty hands and your hungry belly. And he promises to feed you rich food (cf. Isaiah 55:1–3; John 6:35).

Marriages display this gospel, which is why marriage is a high and honorable calling. May God, in his grace, enable the good news of the covenant love of God to be the centerpiece of our marriages. And may our marriages become beautiful bumper stickers pointing people to the fierce and forever love of God.

* Photo from Marc A. Sporys by Unsplash

Pinterest Perfect Wedding Pressure

The pressure on couples to have a beautiful wedding is enormous, far more than when Brooke and I were married 12 years ago. When we were married, Facebook had only been around for one year, which meant no one expected us to release breathtaking photos. All of that has changed.

Last year, a year in which I was a part of seven weddings, I wrote an article for Desiring God titled, "The Problem with the Pinterest Dream Wedding." In it, I encouraged Christian couples to keep what is the center of their marriage (the gospel) at the center of their wedding ceremony.

Heather Sells, a reporter for CBN, recently interviewed me about that article and the broader trends we pastors are seeing at wedding ceremonies. Sells notes, “That 10 years ago, couples spent $16,000 on a wedding with an average of 110 guests. Today, they’re spending an average of $28,000 with 124 guests.” That increase in cost is far more than mere inflation. Also, in the last decade, the average length of engagement has increased from 8 months to 13 months.

Why do you think this is? Why the increase in cost and length of engagement? Why do weddings need a clever hashtag on social media? Why do couples feel the need to have Pinterest-perfect centerpieces? And why do I, as a pastor, feel the need to preach the perfect wedding homily?

I’m not sure all of the reasons, but I do have a few guesses. In the interview I say,

Culturally I think right now we’re at a place where our identity is not so much looking upward to God and who He says we are in the Gospel—the good news that we’re His sons and daughters in Christ—but rather who we posture ourselves as in social media.

You can watch the video interview here, which includes my comments and those of a few others.

[Picture by Allef Vinicius / Unsplash]

Husbands, Praise and Praise Again

Rise and rise again
     until lambs become lions.

That’s a line from the movie Robin Hood (2010) with Russell Crowe. It means you must do something over and over until change happens; in this case, you must repeatedly summon the courage for battle until the fearful become fighters.

Recently, while teaching through the book and video series, The Mingling of Souls: God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption by Matthew Chandler and Jared Wilson, I came across something I wrote almost twelve years ago. It’s a reflection on the way King Solomon repeatedly praises his bride in the Old Testament book the Song of Solomon (also sometimes called, the Song of Songs).

I wrote it for my then fiancée, now wife, Brooke. But I also wrote it for myself. I hoped it would shape the type of husband I would become, even as it (hopefully and subsequently) would shape my wife. Perhaps I could summarize what I wrote in this way:

Praise and praise again
     until brambles become lilies.

Buy on Amazon

The point is that a husband is to praise his wife, so constantly, so faithfully, that it changes her.

I don’t think the poetry in my line is as strong as the original from Robin Hood; I’m missing the alliteration of “l” (lambs, lions). But my line does have an allusion to Song of Solomon and the way he praises his bride. In 2:2, he says, “As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.”

All of this to say, I gave the below reflection on the Song of Solomon some fresh polish, as well as making it more generic so that I could share it with you. May God use it as a helpful reminder—for me and husbands everywhere.

*     *     *

Right in the middle of the Old Testament, there is a Hebrew love poem written about King Solomon and his bride. In the book, she is not named, though she is referred to once as the “Shulammite” (6:13).

There are a number of different ways to interpret the book. One popular and, I believe, helpful approach is the “chronological” view. (This, by the way, is the view taken in The Mingling of Souls). In this approach, the eight chapters are understood to follow the couple’s relationship from their initial attraction, to their dating, to courting, to wedding, to honeymoon, and finally through married life.

But one thing is for sure: Solomon’s bride is not a rock of security and self-confidence, or at least not originally. In 1:5-6, she says to her friends,

I am very dark, but lovely,
     O daughters of Jerusalem,
like the tents of Kedar,
     like the curtains of Solomon.

Do not gaze at me because I am dark,
     because the sun has looked upon me.
My mother's sons were angry with me;
     they made me keeper of the vineyards,
     but my own vineyard I have not kept!

Can you hear her insecurities? “Do not look at me.”

Apparently, she was not from a wealthy family; her brothers made her work all day outside in a hot vineyard while her “own vineyard,” that is her body and personal appearance, she didn’t “keep.”

If you only read the beginning of their love song, however, you would not expect the Shulammite woman ever to say, “Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits” (4:16b). Yet this is precisely what she whispers to Solomon on her wedding night. She almost sounds like a different woman. And in many ways she is. Something changes, something massive changes.

Brooke and me after our wedding, May 29, 2005.

Throughout the book, Solomon devotes himself to praising and prizing “[his] sister and [his] bride” (4:9). In fact, of all the twenty-one verses that Solomon speaks before chapter five (the consummation of the marriage), not a single verse is missing a praise of her physical beauty, strength of character, or an expression of his desire for her to come away with him.

Solomon praises her eyes three times; her cheeks, fragrance, and lips twice; and her neck, teeth, lips, mouth, breasts, tongue, and her chastity are all admired once. And he pronounces her beautiful six times (1:8, 15 [twice]; 4:1 [twice], 7).

The amazing thing to ponder is that this practice doesn’t cease after the honeymoon. It doesn’t even appear to slow down. He’s like the Energizer Bunny of Praise. Four times, he calls her beautiful (6:4, 10, 7:1, 6). In fact, in the sixteen verses that Solomon speaks after 5:1, only his closing verse (8:13) does not contain overt praise of his wife. Yet even in this line, he expresses his desire to hear her voice.

And this, as I understand it, changes everything.

Husbands, praise and praise again until brambles become lilies.

[Picture by Rachael Crowe / Unsplash]

Consumer v. Covenant Relationships

There’s a lot of pressure on engaged couples to have the perfect wedding. I recently wrote about this in an article called, “The Problem with the Pinterest Dream Wedding.”

After the article was published, an author, Catherine Parks, reached out to me. Parks co-authored a book with her mother about this very topic. It’s called, A Christ-Centered Wedding: Rejoicing in the Gospel on Your Big Day. I just finished reading it last week.

If you’re engaged or if you have a friend or family member who is, this book would make a great gift. It’s full of sturdy, gospel-centered advice to counter the pressures to have the perfect wedding and keep the focus where it ought to be. Catherine Parks and her co-author, Linda Strode, write in the introduction,

Don’t get us wrong—we aren’t saying ... you shouldn’t ever look at Pinterest or magazines [to help create the perfect wedding]. We have just seen so many couples suffer through planning their weddings, weighed down by all the pressure to make them unique and perfect. (p. 2)

This has been my experience working with couples, too.

But this pressure to have a “dream wedding” sometimes spills over to the pastor who officiates the wedding, at least I know it does to me. In my article for Desiring God, I wrote,

There’s something in me, something ugly, that longs to preach Ephesians 5 better than it’s ever been preached: a sermon that engages the un-churched, dazzles the mature Christian, and rescues the estranged couple off the cliff of divorce.

Buy on Amazon

Each time I share a message in a wedding, it’s a little different. That’s because every couple is different. Below is the most recent message I shared at a friend’s wedding. In it, I talk about the difference between “consumer” and “covenant” relationships. I find this distinction to be a helpful way to explain the greater meaning of marriage.

It’s possible that Timothy Keller has said something about this, perhaps in a message I heard him preach on Proverbs or maybe in his book The Meaning of Marriage; it all runs together for me. (If you know where he does this, let me know.)

Anyway, the below message takes me about 8-10 minutes to share. I’m not sure it’s a “Pinterest dream wedding sermon,” but it’s what I’ve got for now.  

[Note, I changed the names of the bride and groom. Also, these reflections followed a reading of Ephesians 5:22-31 done by family members.]

*     *     *

At this time, I’m going to share a few comments about marriage and about the gospel. These comments are for all of us, but I would especially like to share them with you, John and Jessica.

I will say, though, that if you are here and you are not a Christian—perhaps you haven’t been to a church in a long time, or ever—you may be thinking, “I knew it; here it comes.” If that’s you, that’s okay. If I were you, I might feel that same way.

However, I would encourage you to listen in because so often I find that what people think Christianity is all about, is really not what it’s about at all. And discussing for a few moments the deeper meaning of marriage might be a wonderful way for you to consider what it is that Christians actually believe, at least at the core of our faith.

Marriage is, according to the Bible, more than a lifelong commitment to each other; it’s at least this, but it’s also more. Marriage is a reflection of what the Bible calls “the gospel.” And what I’d like to explain, just briefly, is how your marriage—and all marriages—are to reflect the relationship that God has with his people and God’s people have with him.

A good way to do this is to talk about two types of relationships. I want to talk about “consumer” and “covenant” relationships.

Just so that I’m not misunderstood, both types of relationships—consumer and covenant—have a proper place. Both can be very appropriate and healthy. A problem occurs, however, when we mistake a covenant relationship for a consumer one. To be more specific, the problem is when we mistake the covenant of marriage for a consumer relationship.

But let me back up. When we talk about consumer relationships, what do we mean? They are one-sided relationships where, as long as the other person keeps doing his or her part, then we will do our part. We have these relationships all the time. For example, many times in the last two years, when John and I would meet to talk about life and pray for each other, we would go to either Starbucks or our favorite local coffee shop, Little Amps. These are different types of coffee shops, I know, but I like them both. But I’m in a consumer relationship with them both. If one of them stops “delivering the goods,” well, eventually, I’m going to stop going.

The hallmark of a consumer relationship is that as long as they—the other person—holds up their end of the bargain, then I’ll hold up mine. If they change their product quality or if something happens, well, I’m free to do what I want; it’s my money.

I was talking with my father last year, and he told me how recently, yet reluctantly, he changed his home and car insurance carrier after over thirty some years with the same company. There was an incident that made him change, which I won’t go into. But I bring this up because my father is the most brand-loyal guy I know. When he finds something he likes, he sticks with it. But even for him, even in his loyalty, his relationship with an insurance company is still a consumer relationship.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Again, the problem comes when we bring this consumer view of relationships into marriage, which is to be a covenant relationship.

A covenant relationship is not focused on whether or not the other person delivers the goods. No, a covenant relationship is one based on a solemn vow to hold up your own end of the agreement regardless of whether the other person does. This is the most beautiful of all relationships because it means that you can be truly known—known in all of your glory, but also known in all of your depravity and shame and failures and insecurities—and not only known, but still loved. This is the meaning of unconditional love: truly known and dearly loved.

It’s God’s intention that marriage would be this type of relationship—one not based on what the other person does, but rather, through “better and worse, sickness and health, richer and poorer,” the marriage holds.

Those statements, which are so often included in wedding ceremonies, wouldn’t make any sense in a consumer relationship. If the baristas at Starbucks start spitting in my coffee, well, they are not going to be getting my $2.23 for a grande dark roast, which, by the way, I get with no room for cream or sugar. (Just mentioning that in case anyone ever wants to get me one.)

So, what does this have to do with anything? Let me come back to where I started. John and Jessica, your relationship in marriage is a covenant relationship. It’s to be a place where you truly know each other and deeply love one another—unconditionally.

And the reason that God has designed marriage to work this way is because it displays to the world the way God loves people in the gospel. This is the heart of Christianity. Christians do not believe that God loves us because we have done good; that would be a consumer relationship. Rather, at the heart of Christianity is the covenant love of God.

The sad truth is that all of us, according to the Bible, are more like a faithless bride than a faithful one. Or to put it another way, we have spit in God’s coffee. And the gospel is the good news that, in Jesus, God has undertaken a rescue mission to win back his bride. It’s the good news that God sent his Son, Jesus, to do what we could not, would not, did not do.

The Bible teaches that Jesus lived a perfect life; he was utterly faithful to God the Father, and loved him supremely. And then out of love for God, Jesus went to a cross and died, suffering the ultimate punishment for sin.

Marriage is to display this. Specifically, you John, as a husband and based on the passage of Scripture just read (Ephesians 5:22-31), are to love Jessica as Jesus loves you: sacrificially and unconditionally. This is a high and honorable calling.

And Jessica, your beautiful part is to represent the Church—the part of a loving, responsive, committed Church. Jessica, as an equal in person and value, you are to be John’s best friend and his most devoted helper, that together, you may accomplish the purposes of God, and in doing this, you will display to the world the beauty and blessing that it is for us, the Church, to follow God. You also have a high and beautiful calling.

I want to end with this. Yes, you have your roles to play and yes, you ought to do them well, just as we all ought to do them, but you must remember something in the process: God loves you, both of you, John and Jessica. And though you will both inadequately display the gospel in your marriage, remember that you are not saved because you do right, but because God loved you even while you were at your worst, and he continues to love you. May this gospel of the covenant love of God be the centerpiece of your life together.

[Photo by Josh Felise / Unsplash]