Her name tag read, “I’m John Smith’s ex-wife. If you want to know why, just ask me.” The bitter scorn worn on her blouse like a scarlet letter.
“He left her for some lady at his church”. I don’t even know him and the words sink like a rock in the pit of my stomach. The crushing news of another Christian couple getting a divorce begs me to search out the problem and safeguard my own marriage against it.
“Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It displays the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his people to the world in a way that no other event or institution does. Marriage, therefore, is not mainly about being in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives. And staying married is not about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant and putting the glory of Christ’s covenant-keeping love on display.” From This Momentary Marriage, John Piper
“Telling the truth with our lives”. But do we love truth–God’s truth–more than we love ourselves…or at all?
What the entertainment industry has done to our perception of what love and marriage is supposed to be is devastating.
Love is not the romantic compelling of two people to be together. Love is a choice. That pitter-patter will weaken over time, and we are left with the choice to love, to pursue our mate and to represent a picture of Christ to the world in the choosing. Choosing to love, as Christ chose us, is true love.
More and more we would have the fleeting pitter-patter than to speak the truth with our lives about Him. Fewer and fewer Christians are concerned with God’s reputation, with obedience, with denying self and taking up crosses. Oh that we would love Him more!
We should be radically shaken about the dating system and the way we teach our children to approach finding a marriage partner. We handle it so carelessly, as if getting our children married is something we do just to make their lives happy! We must teach them the truth about marriage. I would encourage every Christian couple within reading of this post to give your ideas about dating serious scrutiny in light of what God says about marriage, not what the culture says about it, recognizing our grave responsibility to lead our children on a path toward holiness.
Three responsibilities of Christians concerning marriage:
- Understand the gravity of what your marriage says to the world about our Savior and purpose to say it well.
- Pass the baton of marital faithfulness to your children and grandchildren.
- Teach others around you–anyone and everywhere–about God’s design for marriage.
If holiness doesn’t drive our approach to marriage, we have no business touching it.