Marriage is not like sod that you buy and roll out and you are good to go. Marriage is not like those fake flowers you buy from Ralph’s and put on your coffee table. Marriage takes a lot of work.
Many wedding sermons that I have heard tend to be on the sappy, sentimental side and they have about as much depth as a Hallmark card. Marriage is many things, but it is anything but sappy and sentimental. Marriage is glorious but hard. Marriage is a burning joy and strength and yet it is also blood, sweat and tears. There are exhausting victories but also humbling defeats.
At night, as your head is about to hit the pillow after a long, hard day of marriage, I think many would identify with what Paul writes in Eph 5:32, that marriage is a profound mystery. It’s like riddle, a puzzle, a maze. It’s not a Hallmark card.
Eph 5:21-32
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
1) The Essence of Marriage
The essence or definition of marriage is a commitment.
31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
Be united and the two will become one flesh, one person. Leave and cleave. This speaks to a covenant. Marriage is a binding, exclusive, permanent, public, legal contract or commitment.
You might hear that and say, come on. Where is the romance? Or Scott and Joon may think, this is my wedding day. You have just de-romanticized marriage in my eyes. And I can totally understand that sentiment. Because if you watch any movies, like Titanic or Sleepless in Seattle (am I dating myself because I haven’t watched a romantic movie in a while), when you watch those movies, the essence of love seems to be feelings.
Love is a like a ditch. You fall into it. You fall into love, you see. Or love is like a virus. You catch it. It’s passive. You have no control. Love just happens to you. It sweeps you off of your feet. And this great tidal wave of emotion picks you up and you land on the shores of marriage. Love is like a forest fire. It will never be doused. Love’s passion will burn from this day until death do us part. You see that person from the other side of a crowded room and bells are going off in your mind. You see fireworks. The birds are chirping. Before you met this person, life was drab and black and white silent film, but now it is 3D 1080P technicolor.
Now, of course, you would never marry someone unless the feelings were there. Feelings get you to the altar. But anyone who has been married for more than a couple of years, we all know that feelings are not enough to sustain a marriage. I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but this is reality. You will fall in and out of like with your spouse. Your feelings toward your spouse are at an all-time peak on your wedding day. But your feelings will go up and down. Real love goes way beyond that.
In a moment, Scott and Joon will read their wedding vows and vows are commitments. They are future-oriented. A vow reads, I promise to be loving, to be faithful, to be cherishing, regardless of how I feel, until I die. Through sickness and in health, through all the seasons of life and all of life’s twists and turns, I promise to love you, to be there for you. That’s a vow.
Practically, this means that love is an action first and a feeling second. When the Bible says, love your neighbor and it says, love your enemy, it’s uses the same word. How is that possible? You feel absolutely no affection for your enemy, but you are called to love that person.
Right now, you guys looks at one another and you think, he or she can do no wrong. But there will be days ahead when the quirky things about the other that you think are so adorable today will annoy you to no end a year from now, or sooner. And on those days, your feelings toward the other won’t be there.
Most times, the feelings subside and the actions follow suit. Am I right? The flowers stop coming. The dates and dinners are no more. The strolls along the beach are replaced by romantic strolls down the aisles of Costco. It happens.
Act in a serving way toward one another, act in a tender way, out of a sense of obligation and commitment, even when you don’t feel affectionate, you act that way toward your spouse and the feelings will return. If you follow feelings first and no actions, your relationship will spiral downward.
The Bible says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Time and emotion, these are tremendously valuable. You invest and invest. If you love in terms of action even while the feelings are weak, you will come to like the other again. The feelings will return. Invest in them and they will become more lovely to you.
It starts with romance. It will end in despair unless you choose to invest. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Marriage is a covenant, an action first, feeling second.
2) Priority of Marriage
Second, I want to talk about the priority of marriage.
31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother…”
There is no society like Western society that de-emphasizes the obligation to your parents. But as an Asian, I think we appreciate how shocking this statement was for the initial readers in the first century. Is there any relationship in life while you were single that has been more formative and foundational in your development than parents. Your parents had a tremendous influence in making you who you are today. And that’s why we honor our father and our mother.
Yet, Paul, here is making the shocking statement that there is one relationship, other than Christ, of course, that is more fundamental than even our parents. If you study Genesis, you will notice that God did not put a parent and a child in the Garden. He placed a husband and a wife. This means that from this day forth, your spouse is the most significant relationship in your life.
The primary person in your life is your spouse. That means, you have to invest more time, more creativity, more emotion in your spousal relationship compared to any other person.
In life, if you put work first and health second, what happens? If your work comes first and you kill yourself trying to advance your career and you do this at the expense of your health, you will eventually have neither work, nor health.
Marriage needs to have first priority. Outside of your relationship with Christ, marriage has to be the center. If everything around you is weak, but your marriage is strong, it doesn’t matter what’s out there, you move out into the world in strength. If everything around you is strong, but your marriage is weak, it doesn’t matter what’s everyone else says about you, you move out into the world in weakness.
What can go ahead of marriage? Father and mother. Career. Even kids. Marriages are so bad these days that kids are placed ahead of spouse. You are walking on thin ice if the chief source of your love and emotional nurture comes from your kids.
Friends. Friends can come ahead of marriage. If any of these come before your spouse, you are in trouble.
Why? Because God invented marriage. We have to play by his rules. You break God’s rules and they will break you. If you neglect marriage, it will introduces problems into your life. Marriage has to have priority over all other things in your life.
3) Purpose/Mystery of Marriage
I want to end with my final point. The purpose of marriage is friendship.
31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
The purpose of marriage is friendship. Deep friendship. To become one flesh. One person. The purpose of marriage is oneness. Soul oneness.
In marriage, it’s like two rough pieces of rock on a collision course. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, those rough edges get smoothed over and eventually they fit together and become one.
Why is this type of molding and shaping only possible in marriage?
Imagine a bridge with structural defects. There are hairline fractures but you can’t see them with the naked eye until a 5 ton mack truck rumbles over the bridge and causes the structural defects to be visible. Marriage is like a 5 ton mack truck going through the center of your heart. In marriage, you will see sins and character flaws that you never knew were there. Your parents tried to warn you. But you didn’t deal with them because you were not in covenant with them. You were not intimate enough with them to deal with these issues. Your roommates tried to warn you, but you changed roommates because you didn’t want to deal with it.
Now, finally, in marriage, you are in covenant with one another. There is no running away. You are in close quarters. There is no saying, I need my space. There is no more privacy.
When marriage hits some rough patches, people make the mistake of thinking that the other person is the problem. The problems you experience in marriage, like those hairline fractures, were there before. It’s just that in marriage, those problems are being exposed.
When things get hard, don’t run away. Be a true friend.
The purpose of marriage is finding your best friend. C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves, compares erotic love with friendship love. Eros and philos. In eros, both parties are facing each other and staring at one another. In philos, two parties are standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder and staring out into a common horizon.
And what is that common horizon? v25-27.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
The common horizon is each spouse helping the other to become holy, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.
Marriage is not a human invention to make you happy. If you think that way, then if you are not happy, you can discard it. Marriage is a vehicle for your sanctification. Tim Keller calls this gospel re-enactment. Each spouse, through sacrificial service (action), each spouse is helping the other reach his or her future glory self. That radiant bride without stain or blemish.
You guys look great. It’s your wedding day. You expect it. The hair, the makup, the clothes. In a sense, the beautiful dress and tux that Scott and Joon are wearing today is a bit like kids playing dress up. Kids play the role of father and mother or doctor, but they are not big enough, not mature enough or old enough to know what that means. They are just pretending. But billions of years from now, each one of us in Christ will be on the inside, what we look like on the outside on our wedding day–that radiant bride, holy and blameless. It’s a guarantee.
And as you interact, you will see flashes of immortality, glimpses of divine glory, the radiant beauty in the other that God is working to bring forth more and more. Follow the biblical pattern for marriage and wait til you see what God has in store in both of your lives.