Gospel Power in Marriage

Tomorrow my man and I celebrate 25 years of marriage.  God has been merciful and very kind: “…through many dangers, toils and snares we have already come…’tis grace has brought us safe this far, and grace will lead us home”.  We are still learning much about Love, about Grace – God’s magnificent love to us, and our love for one another.  He’s blessed us in walking with us, teaching us; we celebrate this milestone with hearts full of joy and gratitude, knowing how little we deserve His lavish grace.

The amazing children-gifts He’s lent to us for these brief years threw a !stunning !best-ever! surprise 25^th anniversary dinner for us on Saturday evening, blessing beyond description, moment in time through which God’s blessings flowed unbounded.

culmination of days and days of creative labors and hard work, dearest daughters!

these musicians are amazing! (and helped serve, also, thus the apron)

delighted, overwhelmed: joyful evening

dear parents and lifelong friends

 bouquets done beautifully by our younger daughter

Surely we all are aware of how deeply marriage is under attack from every aspect of the matrix of our global culture.  We are reading aloud Gospel Intimacy by Alan Dunn (highly recommend) and I cannot help but quote at length.  It’s a bit of effort to dig below familiar or theologically loaded words and climb inside the Wonder of what is being said, but when we realize the Gospel Power that is ours to preserve marriage, to overcome difficulty and conflict, and to experience the unity of spirit to which we are called, that effort is well rewarded.  Ultimately, shall we subdue our determined hearts and seek first the glory of God and His righteousness?  Yes, then all these things shall be added unto you…

“John defines love theologically:  God is Love.  Here we have the light of our first guiding star shining on the subject.  God shows love by sending His Son as the propitiation for our sins, as the sacrifice which appeased divine wrath and averted divine judgment.  In the sacrificial death of Jesus we have atonement for our sin.  He assumed the punishment which we rightly deserve.  By His obedient self-sacrifice, He paid the penalty for our sin.  By His death, He defeated death by satisfying the demands of God’s justice.  By His resurrection He triumphs in new life, the life of eternity, the life of love.  Here then is love.  Love works to promote life.  Love seeks to solve the problem of death caused by sin.  Love mends sin’s separations.  Love brings life and unity.  Sin brings death.  Only gospel love can overcome sin and bring life to what would otherwise die.  This is the love we are to give one another in marriage.  We are to love each other with the love that God has for us in Christ.  John holds God’s gospel love before us and appeals to us to love each other in the same manner as god loves us.  Love each other with a love that addresses sin, that overcomes death, and that unifies what sin would otherwise separate.  Take the love that God has given to you in the gospel of Jesus Christ and give that same love to each other.

“Gospel love…is a love that originates in God and is expressed and defined by the gospel.  Gospel love is received from the Father in Christ Jesus by a living faith engendered within us by the Holy Spirit.  We receive gospel love from God and then give His love, gospel love, to our spouse.  We sometimes wonder whether we are capable of loving.  Are we not limited by our sin, determined by our genes, conditioned by our parents, habituated by our past?  If any man is in Christ, He is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come.  (2 Corinthians 5:17)  We are born of the Spirit and are new men [and women] in Christ.  He has liberated us in love that we might live in love.”  

--Alan Dunn

Meditating on this, this past week, I would add Philippians 3:13,16: “…one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ…let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind…”

The call of the hour is to begin living in the reality that is ours: we are one with Christ, sons and daughters of the King Eternal, and we have access to all His storerooms of power and blessing.