When Sinners Say "I Do": Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage
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If you are married, or soon to be married, you are discovering that your marriage is not a romance novel. Marriage is the union of two people who arrive toting the luggage of life. And that luggage always contains sin. Often it gets opened right there on the honeymoon, sometimes it waits for the week after. But the suitcases are always there, sometimes tripping their owners, sometimes popping open unexpectedly and disgorging forgotten contents. We must not ignore our sin, because it is the very context where the gospel shines brightest.
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to get to the heart of marriage, we must deal with the heart of sin.
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When the sin we bring to marriage becomes real to us, then the gospel becomes vital and marriage becomes sweet.
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Your marriage can be built or rebuilt upon a solid and enduring foundation. But we must start where the gospel starts; there lies the hope for sinners who say “I do.”
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reading this, the question obviously matters to you. Our goals for marriage don’t stop at “will it last?” or “will it work?” What people in this most significant of relationships long for is a marriage that will thrive and grow even in hard times.
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What we believe about God determines the quality of our marriage.
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What we believe about God determines the quality of our marriage.
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This is why the Bible is so important. As God’s Word, it fills marriage with eternal and glorious significance. It also speaks as an authority on what a marriage is meant to be. It is both the evaluative standard for marriage and the key to joy in marriage. It’s a wonderful, freeing thing to realize that the durability and quality of your marriage is not ultimately based on the strength of your commitment to your marriage. Rather, it’s based on something completely apart from your marriage: God’s truth; truth we find plain and clear on the pages of Scripture.
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This also means that the gospel is an endless fountain of God’s grace in your marriage. To become a good theologian and to be able to look forward to a lifelong, thriving marriage, you must have a clear understanding of the gospel. Without it, you cannot see God, yourself, or your marriage for what they truly are. The gospel is the fountain of a thriving marriage.
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Marriage was not just invented by God, it belongs to God. He has a unique claim over its design, purpose, and goals. It actually exists for him more than it exists for you and me and our spouses.
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Marriage is not first about me or my spouse. Obviously, the man and woman are essential, but they are also secondary. God is the most important person in a marriage. Marriage is for our good, but it is first for God’s glory.
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Marriage is set within the world—and within your home and mine—as a reminder, a living parable of Christ’s relationship to the church.
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The daily struggle with sin experienced by genuine Christians underscores the fact that while Christ certainly saved us, he does not transform us instantly and completely into non-sinners. That glorious process begins the moment we are converted, and continues throughout our life on earth, but it will only be finished when we leave this fallen world.
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whatever we try to do in our own strength does not have as its goal the glory of God and does not get its life from the fountain of the gospel.
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dealing with the sin problem is key to a thriving marriage.
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Looking first at our own sin as a root cause of the problems in our marriages is not easy, and it certainly doesn’t “come naturally.” The sin that remains in your heart and mine opposes God and his people. It obstructs our joy and our holiness. It eclipses thriving, healthy marriages which are testimonies to God’s goodness and mercy.
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I don’t like cats, but I’m wildly in love with Kimm, and because she loves cats, I manage to tolerate this one.
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Paul’s acute, even painful awareness of his own sinfulness caused him to magnify the glory of the Savior!
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A great awareness of one’s sinfulness often stands side by side with great joy and confidence in God.
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Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Savior. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.2
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I recognize the enormity of my sin, seeing myself as the worst of sinners, then I understand I have been forgiven much. That’s when biblical reality begins to make sense. I start to see God as he truly is. His vastness becomes bigger than my problems. His goodness comes to me even though I’m not good. And his wisdom and power are visible in the perfect ways he works to transform me from the inside out.
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Wisdom for our marriages then, is not found in “how to” books, or in formulas for success. It is found in putting our beliefs into gear and heading down the road of wisdom with God behind the wheel.
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True humility is living confident in Christ’s righteousness, and suspicious of our own.
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we should be suspicious . . . selectively, permanently, and internally. As the worst of sinners, in the day-to-day conflicts of marriage, I should be primarily suspicious and regularly suspicious of myself! To be suspicious of my own heart is to acknowledge two things: that my heart has a central role in my behavior, and that my heart has a permanent tendency to oppose God and his ways.
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Scripture does not give me permission to make the sins of my spouse my first priority. I need to slow down, exercise the humility of self-suspicion, and inspect my own heart first.
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Jesus is not concerned here with which of you is more at fault in a particular instance. His emphasis is your focus, what you find to be the most obvious fact to you whenever sin is in view. He’s calling for the inspection to begin with me. In light of who we are compared to God, and because of the reality of remaining sin, it is nothing more than basic integrity to consider our sin before we consider the sin of our spouse. To do otherwise lacks integrity. It’s hypocritical.
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Beware the off-ramp of pride.
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In marriage, this means that God will create opportunities to reveal and then deal with sin that keeps us from living in wisdom.
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Mercy sweetens marriage. Where it is absent, two people flog one another over everything from failure to fix the faucet to phone bills. But where it is present, marriage grows sweeter and more delightful, even in the face of challenges, setbacks, and the persistent effects of our remaining sin.
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Mercy doesn’t change the need to speak truth. It transforms our motivation from a desire to win battles to a desire to represent Christ. It takes me out of the center and puts Christ in the center. This requires mercy.
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Self-examination alone cannot produce a sweet marriage, but only self-examination can provide the humble clarity of sight I need to serve my spouse. My own logging efforts position me for speck-removal.
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God has set us in our marriage, at this time, with this person so that we can perform an extraordinary task of ministry.
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All the same, we are called to this specialized surgical task, appointed by God to exercise all our abilities, however meager, yet to rely on him for the outcome. The essential instruments in this work have never changed: Wisdom, courage, and meekness.
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Marriages grow sour when spouses engage in surgery casually, carelessly, or without the informed consent of the patient. But marriage becomes sweet when spouses, recognizing that each one will probably need corrective surgery from time to time, give one another permission to wield the scalpel as needed.
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My friend Mark often asks me if I have any thoughts or observations about his character or behavior. In this regard he’s a “model patient,” and I want to import his example into my marriage. It’s important to me that Kimm is aware that I want correction, not that I will merely tolerate it. When I pursue correction it tells her she is welcome to operate, because I know I need the help.
Sean Brereton
I think I feel like a failure if I need correction. That needing it lets Paige down
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Here are some diagnostic pre-op questions to help you operate wisely when it’s time to give surgical reproof.
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Prayer is not just some formality we walk through before wheeling our spouse into the spiritual operating room. It should be a heartfelt expression of our dependence upon God. In prayer we are reminded of our surgical limitations—we can operate, but we cannot heal; we can speak, but we cannot convict concerning sin. Only God can do that (John 16:8).
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Transformation takes place in the midst of daily hustle and bustle.
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Am I prepared to humbly offer an observation rather than an assumption or conclusion?
Sean Brereton
I skip right to the conclusion.
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the most helpful surgery is often exploratory. Similarly, the most helpful reproof frequently comes in the form of open (not leading) questions, because questions create the dialogue that invites more penetrating observations.
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If we sow loving honesty and courageous care, we will reap growth in godliness. If we avoid confrontation, we’ll just get confrontation anyway, because sin unaddressed is sin unconfined. In an attempt to preserve peace, we sow war.
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This is the courage that commits to staying involved in personal ministry well after we begin to speak.
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Because God’s purpose for reproof is not to achieve a hassle-free marriage but to inspire repentance unto godliness. And repentance and change, friends, simply takes time. When sinners say “I do,” we must be committed to the entire process of helping each other grow in godliness through life.
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To truly care for your spouse in the moment of confrontation, your words and manner of delivery must be designed to encourage repentance.
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I don’t want my spouse to be convinced by my earnestness, as if my good intentions could confer any power to change. I want my loved one to turn to God in repentance, if he or she has indeed sinned. I don’t want my words to make a spouse feel “caught” in sin, because I don’t want to create a temptation to be more concerned with fixing a problem than encountering God. Confrontation is not a “gotcha” event.
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feelings of sorrow alone aren’t necessarily conviction. We can be sorrowful for many reasons, including selfish ones. We can be sorry for the bad consequences of our sin, sorry we were caught, sorry we lost someone’s respect. This kind of worldly grief can’t begin to address the true offense of sin, and it can’t begin to change us. Only godly grief brings repentance. And only repentance testifies to the surgical effect of God’s truth applied to our sinful hearts.
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A. W. Tozer said, “The meek man . . . will have attained a place of soul rest. As he walks on in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meekness brings.”6
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In marriage, to be meek is not to be weak or vulnerable, but to be so committed to your spouse that you will sacrifice for his or her good. A meek person sees the futility of responding to sin with sin.
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What is my agenda, my motivation, in bringing some sin to the attention of my spouse? Often these motivations are less than noble. Dumping anxieties, securing concessions, indulging fears, punishing the one who hurt us—these desires can drive us to speak too quickly and for the wrong reasons. Believe me, I know! But the goal for a surgical conversation is not simply to smooth things over. It is to care for our soul mate and ultimately to connect him or her to God.
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Christians who cultivate an appreciation for God’s grace and who seek to apply that grace to every area of their lives, position themselves to know a joyfulness and effectiveness that only God can grant.
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