The following are some thoughts from the writings of John Piper from his marriage sermons and book entitled This Momentary Marriage
Marriage
She is God’s gift to me—far better than I deserve. We speak
often of the wonder of being married till one of us dies. It has not been
trouble-free. So we imagine ourselves in our seventies or eighties—when divorce
is not only sin, but socially silly—sitting across from each other, perhaps at
Old Country Buffet, and smiling at each other’s wrinkled faces, and saying with
the deepest gratitude for God’s grace: “We made it.”
Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And
ultimately, marriage is the display of God.
What these words point to is marriage as a sacred covenant
rooted in covenant commitments that stand against every storm “as long as we
both shall live.”
The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it
exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how:
Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed
people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate
purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his
church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why
you are married.
In Genesis 2:17, God had said to Adam, “Of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall surely die.” I take “the knowledge of good and evil” to refer to a
status of independence from God in which Adam and Eve would decide for
themselves apart from God what is good and what is evil. So eating from this
tree would mean a declaration of independence from God.
In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins,
for without it no human fellowship,
least of all a marriage, can survive.
But now I want to emphasize another truth about grace: It
not only gives power to endure being sinned against, it also gives power to
stop sinning…Grace is not just the power to return good for evil; it is also
the power to do less evil—even power to be less bothersome. Grace makes you
want to change for the glory of Christ and for the joy of your spouse. And
grace is the power to do it.
One of the things that is crystal-clear in Ephesians 5 is
that the roles of husband and wife in marriage are not arbitrarily assigned,
and they are not reversible any more than the role of Christ and the church are
reversible. The roles of husband and wife are rooted in the distinctive roles
of Christ and his church. The revelation of this mystery is the recovery of the
original intention of covenant marriage in the Garden of Eden. You can see this
most clearly when you ponder what sin did to headship and submission and how
Paul’s teaching here in Ephesians 5 is so perfectly suited to remedy that
corruption. When sin entered the world, it ruined the harmony of marriage not
because it brought headship and submission into existence, but because it
twisted man’s humble, loving headship toward hostile domination in some men and
lazy indifference in others. And it twisted woman’s intelligent, willing,
happy, creative, articulate submission toward manipulative obsequiousness in
some women and brazen insubordination in others. Sin didn’t create headship and
submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and
destructive.
Therefore, headship is not a right to control or to abuse or
to neglect. (Christ’s sacrifice is the pattern.) Rather, it’s the
responsibility to love like Christ in leading and protecting and providing for
our wives and families.
Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary
responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in
the home.
When a man joyfully bears the primary God-given
responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership and provision and protection
in the home—for the spiritual well-being of the family, for the discipline and
education of the children, for the stewardship of money, for the holding of a
steady job, for the healing of discord—I have never met a wife who is sorry she
married such a man. Because when God designs a thing (like marriage), he
designs it for his glory and our good.
Sin is what you feel and think and do when you are not
taking God at his word and resting in his promises.
To put it another way, while the contentment of faith does
not put an end to our hunger, weariness, or sexual appetite, it does transform
the way we go about satisfying those desires.
1William Lazareth writes: “As to the recommended frequency
of marital coitus, the hale and hearty spirit (if not the actual words) of
Luther’s sexual counsel is reflected in the humorous couplet traditionally ascribed
to him: ‘Twice a week, hundred-four a year / should give neither cause to
fear.’” Luther on the Christian Home (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960),
226.
Jesus said, “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a
cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no
means lose his reward” (Matt. 10:42). Of course, Jesus also said that we should
love our enemy (Matt. 5:44), and Paul said to give a cup of water to our enemy
(Rom. 12:20). That kind of love will receive its reward. But here Jesus says to
show simple kindness to people precisely because they are followers of Jesus.
And that too will receive its reward.
But the one I want to mention is this: God made bodies and
material things because when they are rightly seen and rightly used, God’s
glory is more fully known and displayed. The heavens are telling the glory of
God (Ps. 19:1). That’s why the physical universe exists. Consider the birds of
the air and the lilies of the field, and you will know more of God’s goodness
and care (Matt. 6:26–28). See in the things he has made his invisible
attributes—his eternal power and divine nature (Rom. 1:20). Look at marriage
and see Christ and the church (Eph. 5:23–25). As often as you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you declare the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor. 11:26).
Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor.
10:31). The material world is not an end in itself; it is designed to display
God’s glory and to awaken our hearts to know him and value him more.
The greatness of marriage is not in itself. The greatness of
marriage is that it displays something unspeakably great, namely, Christ and
the church.
The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show
God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is
a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for
God-like transformation.
As husband and wife, they are a drama of the
covenant-keeping love between Christ and the church. That is where God wants
children to be. His design is that children grow up watching Christ love the
church and watching the church delight in following Christ. His design is that
the beauty and strength and wisdom of this covenant relationship be absorbed by
the children from the time they are born.
So Paul knows that if a dad can help a child not be overcome
by anger, he may unlock his heart to a dozen other precious emotions that make
worship possible and make relationships sweet.
Some people never grow out of this childish
self-centeredness: “My emotions are the measure of your love; so if I am
unhappy, you are not loving me.” We have all experienced this kind of
manipulation.
The point I am stressing is this: When Paul says in
Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,” don’t just
stop doing things that provoke anger; start doing things that prevent and
overcome anger. Start doing things that awaken in the heart of a child other
wonderful emotions so that they are not devoured by anger—the great emotion
eater.
Few things are more painful than divorce. It cuts to the
depths of personhood unlike any other relational gash. It is emotionally more
heart-wrenching than the death of a spouse. Death is usually clean pain.
Divorce is usually unclean pain.
This is the work of God, not man, and it does not lie in
man’s prerogative to end it.
This is amazing. It implies, in other words, that there are
laws in the Old Testament that are not expressions of God’s will for all time,
but expressions of how best to manage sin in a particular people at a
particular time. Divorce is never commanded and never instituted in the Old
Testament. But it was permitted and regulated—like polygamy was permitted and
regulated, and like certain kinds of slavery were permitted and regulated. And
Jesus says here that this permission was not a reflection of God’s ideal for
his people; it was a reflection of the hardness of the human heart. “Because of
your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.”
Therefore, remarriage after the death of a spouse is not
only legitimate, but it speaks a clear biblical truth—after death there is no
marriage.
We are not left alone. He is with us to help us. If we have
been sinned against, he will make it right sooner or later (Rom. 12:19). He
will give us the grace to flourish while we wait. And if we have sinned, he
will give the grace to repent and receive forgiveness and move forward in
radical new obedience.
The reason for the omission is different: Focusing on the
pragmatic effects of marriage undermines the very power of marriage to achieve
the effects we desire. In other words, for the sake of all these beneficial
practical effects, we should not focus on them. This is the way life is
designed by God to work. Make him and the glory of his Son central, and you get
the practical effects thrown in. Make the practical effects central, and you
lose both.
The beauty of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and
his church shines brightest when nothing but Christ can sustain it.
Recent Comments