Letters to the Family of God

Dear Friends.

My daughter will soon be getting married. It is going to be a small affair. It is my given privilege to officiate the ceremony.

In light of that, I have been thinking if there was some simple way to involve you, my friends. This letter, and a few more, is one of my answers.

I intend to let you listen in through bits and pieces of the premarital counseling they are receiving. It will not be everything, but it will be something.

Session One

There has never been a man or a woman, a husband or wife, a bride or groom, anyone in this world, beginning with myself, who does not have some deep flaws, that will stay with them their entire life. If by saying, they are the perfect couple, you mean they are perfect, that would be untrue.

No one then has not stood in great need of God's grace because grace is the only way God forgives. Grace is the only way God saves and makes people in the right with Him, right now, in life, and forever life past death.

And, of course, God's grace was costly to Him. Grace put Christ on the cross to die the most painful death anyone has died, taking the full punishment in His body for our sins.

Therefore, grace means a lot of things, but the main thing it means is a person does not become right with God by keeping rules. That is now how God builds and establishes a relationship. A person cannot earn God’s love, protection, and promises. A person cannot earn eternal life with Him.

However, a person becomes right with God in an unbreakable relationship by being honest about their sin, admitting they cannot do what is needed, and casting themselves on God's mercy.

Please have mercy on me, forgive me, please help me, is what they say. And in that, they will receive His forgiveness, righteousness, and acceptance. All of which is, in essence, the gospel, the good news.

If this is all true for the Christian, how can it be any less for the Christian marriage? In a marriage, God brings two imperfect and broken people together, and just as God looks at the Christian, and because of Christ, all God sees is the perfect righteousness of Christ. If a marriage lives in that truth, not simply to try and fix each other year by year, but rather accept each other. Even though the marriage will not be perfect, it will be safe, gracious, peaceful, meaningful, and honest, with no pretense, and quite lovely. And it will last, it will flourish, and it will be deeply satisfying.

Consequently, in your relationship as husband and wife, the same grace of God that made you right with Him is the same grace you are to extend to each other and make them right with you. To quote the Bible, where sin abounds, grace, much more abounds. Grace can never be earned.

Those of us who are married or have had the privilege of being married know that as powerful as attraction is, the beauty of your wife. The handsomeness of your husband, as powerful as that is, attraction is not all-powerful. It cannot sustain a marriage keeping the man and wife together. Health, wealth, vacations, vocation, location—where you live—they have not proven as of yet to keep a couple together. Sex, the great gift of God to marriage, is breathtaking—but it doesn't keep people together.

But more, much more significant, perfection, attempting to be the perfect wife or the perfect husband, which is a terrible burden to place on yourself or your spouse—will actually destroy a marriage, suck the life from it.

However, to be fully known and still truly loved is a gift from God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us, and gives power to the vows we make in the marriage that can be easy to break.

No one by nature can be great at marriage; only in our confession of weakness is how a person can discover God's strength. Therefore, what a couple needs to be better, to be the happiest, to stay together, is to know without Christ, they can do nothing. Therefore, before God, what a healthy Christian marriage needs is—need.

Epilogue

One of my favorite hymns says.