Transformed by Beholding the Glory of God

I recently finished reading “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence” by John Piper. Wow, I have to say it is the best book on marriage I have ever read outside of the Bible. It is a book that is valuable for men and women, married, single, parents, and those who aren't parents. Indeed, Piper actually addresses all of these categories of people in this book. The book has universal appeal because it gets at the very purpose of human existence for everyone—to glorify God by imaging the gospel. As you can guess by the title, the primary focus of the book is how we image the gospel in marriage. This book does not contain 50 steps toward a better marriage, nor does it expound on the numerous societal benefits of marriage. Rather, it gives us something much deeper by giving us a glimpse into the wonder of God’s design for marriage in the greater scheme of His glory and our joy in knowing Him for all eternity. I love this quote from it:

“Focusing on the pragmatic effects of marriage undermines the very power of marriage to achieve the effects we desire. In other words, for the sake of all these beneficial practical effects, we should not focus on them. This is the way life is designed by God to work. Make him and the glory of His Son central, and you get the practical effects thrown in. Make the practical effects central, and you lose both.” P. 177

Isn’t that true for all things in life? “Make Him and the glory of His Son central, and you get the practical effects thrown in. Make the practical effects central and you lose both.”

Knowing and beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ, by the Holy Spirit, through the Word in worship is how we see practical fruit in our marriages, in our friendships, in our churches, and in all aspects of our lives. Here it is in Scripture:

2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 4:1-6 “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

For a more on this topic, check out this post by Kristian:

http://thereligiousaffections.blogspot.com/2008/02/oh-taste-and-see-that-lord-is-good.html

Dear Heavenly Father, You are glorious! Please show us your glory everyday through Jesus, through the Word, and by the power of your Spirit, . Show us what it means to worship you, God. Show us the beauty of your character and the gospel of your amazing grace and radical love. Transform us through worship. Show us the unforced rhythms of grace--that our transformation flows from beholding and worshipping you rather than by our efforts and plans. In Jesus' Precious Name, Amen

Receiving Grace and Giving Grace

This is a continuation of my blog posts on my journey through the book, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence” by John Piper. The last year or so of marriage has been the best year of marriage because I think it finally occurred to Kristian and me that we ought to treat each other with the same grace that God has shown us as individuals (duh). We are both imperfect, sinful and have habits that annoy one another, but we realized that the beauty of loving someone is reflecting the sacrificial love of the gospel—laying down our lives for each other, not returning each other’s reviling for reviling, working for each other’s good unconditionally, and being patient with one another as we each grow and are transformed into who we are supposed to be. This is what gives God glory in marriages, and there is such freedom and joy in this! We are enjoying each other more than we ever have. We are learning to rely on and be rooted in God’s grace for each of us in order to give grace to each other. That’s what the next two chapters of “This Momentary Marriage” are all about. Here are my favorite quotes from Chapters 2 & 3.

Great Quotes from Chapter 3

“I asked my wife Noël if there was anything she wanted me to say at this point when I was preaching on this subject. She said, ‘You cannot say too often that marriage is a model of Christ and the church.’ I think she is right, and there are at least three reasons: 1) This lifts marriage out of the sordid sitcom images and it gives the magnificent meaning God meant it to have; 2) this gives marriage a solid basis in grace, since Christ ordained and sustains his bride by grace alone; and 3) this shows that the husband’s headship and the wife’s submission are crucial and crucified. That is, they are woven into the very meaning of marriage as a display of Christ and the church, but they are both, defined by Christ’s self-denying work on the cross so that their pride and slavishness are canceled.” P. 42 and 43

“…the main point of this chapter is that since Christ’s new covenant with his church is created by and sustained by blood-bought grace, therefore, human marriages are meant to showcase that new-covenant grace. And the way husbands and wives showcase it is by resting in the experience of God’s grace and bending it out from a vertical experience with God into a horizontal experience with their spouse. In other words, in marriage you live hour by hour in glad dependence on God’s forgiveness and justification and promised future grace, and you bend it out toward your spouse hour by hour—as an extension of God’s forgiveness and justification and promised help.” P. 43

“I am aware that all Christians, not just married ones, are supposed to do this in all our relationships. All of us, married and single, are supposed to live hour by hour by the forgiving, justifying, all-supplying grace of God and then bend it out to all the others in our lives. Jesus says that all of life, not just marriage is a showcase of God’s glory…But marriage is designed to be a unique display of God’s covenant grace because, unlike all other human relationships, the husband and wife are bound by covenant into the closest possible relationships for a lifetime. There are unique roles of headship and submission in a biblical and gracious way, they must experience what it means to build their lives on the vertical experience of God’s forgiveness and justification and promised help, and then bend it out horizontally to their spouse. That’s the focus in this chapter…the key to being naked and not ashamed (Gen 2:25)—when, in fact, a husband and a wife do many things they should be ashamed of—is the experience of God’s vertical forgiving, justifying grace bent out horizontally to each other and displayed to the world.” P. 44

“A profound understanding and fear of God’s wrath is exactly what many marriages need, because without it, the gospel is diluted down to mere human relations and loses its biblical glory. Without a biblical view of God’s wrath, you will be tempted to think that your wrath—your anger—against your spouse is simply too big to overcome, because you have never really tasted what it is like to see an infinitely greater wrath overcome by grace, namely, God’s wrath against you. So we begin with the wrath of God and its removal. In Colossians 2:13–14, Paul writes one of the most wonderful things imaginable: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Those last words are the most crucial. “This—this record of debt that stood against us—God set aside, nailing it to the cross.” When did that happen? Two thousand years ago. It did not happen inside of us, and it did not happen with any help from us. God did it for us and outside of us before we were ever born. This is the great objectivity of our salvation. Be sure you see this most wonderful and astonishing of all truths: God took the record of all your sins that made you a debtor to wrath (sins are offenses against God that bring down his wrath), and instead of holding them up in front of your face and using them as the war­rant to send you to hell, God put them in the palm of his Son’s hand and drove a spike through them into the cross. It is a bold and graphic statement: He canceled the record of our debt . . nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:14). Whose sins were nailed to the cross? Answer: My sins. And Noël’s sins. My wife’s sins and my sins. The sins of all who despair of saving themselves and who trust in Christ alone. Whose hands were nailed to the cross? Jesus’ were. There is a beautiful name for this. It’s called a substitution. God condemned my sin in Christ’s flesh. “Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3). Husbands and wives cannot believe this too strongly. It is essential to our fulfilling the design of marriage.
” P. 44 & 45

Colossians 3:12–13: "Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."

"‘As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive’ your spouse. As the Lord ‘bears with’ you, so you should bear with your spouse. The Lord ‘bears with’ us every day as we fall short of his will. Indeed, the distance between what Christ expects of us and what we achieve is infinitely greater than the distance between what we expect of our spouse and what he or she achieves. Christ always forgives more and endures more than we do. Forgive as you have been forgiven. Bear with as he bears with you. This holds true whether you are married to a believer or an unbeliever. Let the measure of God’s grace to you in the cross of Christ be the measure of your grace to your spouse.” P. 46

“Besides this biblical truth, we need the Holy Spirit. We need prayer. We need to meditate on the Bible for ourselves. We need to read the insights of others. We need the counsel of wise friends who are seasoned with suffering. We need the church to support us when everything falls apart. So I have no illusions that I could say here all that needs to be said to help you.” P. 47

“This is the ideal to aim at in marriage: two people humbling themselves and seeking to change in godly ways that please their spouses and meet their physical and emotional needs—to please them in every good way. Yes. The relationship of Christ and the church includes all that. But the reasons I stress living vertically from the grace of God and then bending out horizontally in forgiveness and justification toward your spouse are: 1) because there is going to be conflict based on sin and strangeness (and you won’t be able even to agree with each other about what is simply strange about each other and what is sin); and 2) because the hard, rugged work of enduring and forgiving is what makes it possible for affections to flourish when they seem to have died; and 3) because God gets glory when two very different and very imperfect people forge a life of faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Christ.” P. 47-48

Great Quotes from Chapter 4

This chapter is based on

Colossians 3:12-19 “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.”

“Let me say at the outset that I am aware—painfully aware—that there are sins that spouses commit against each other that can push forbearance and forgiveness across the line into the assisting of sin and may even warrant a redemptive separation—I choose the words carefully: a redemptive separation. I am thinking of things like assault, adultery, child abuse, drunken rage, addictive gambling or theft or lying that brings the family to ruin.” P. 53

“When Paul gets to Colossians 3:12, he has laid a massive foundation in the person and work of Christ on the cross. This is the foundation of marriage and all of life. The main battles in life and in marriage are battles to believe this person and this work. I mean really believe it—trust it, embrace it, cherish it, treasure it, bank on it, breathe it, shape your life by it. So when Paul gets to Colossians 3:12, he exhorts us with words that are explosive with emotion-awakening reality built on Christ and his saving work.” P.54

First, Piper goes into three descriptions of every believer:

Chosen—“We are God’s elect. Before the foundation of the world, God chose us in Christ. You can hear how precious this is to Paul with his words from Romans 8:33: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?” The answer is that absolutely nobody can make a charge stick against God’s elect. Paul wants us to feel the wonder of being elect as being invincibly loved. If you resist the truth of election, you resist being loved in the fullness and the sweetness of God’s love.” P. 54

Holy—“This is first a position and a destiny before it is a pattern of behavior. That is why he is telling us the kind of behavior to “put on.” He knows we are not there yet, practically. He is calling us to become holy in life because we are holy in Christ. Dress to fit who you are. Wear holiness.” P. 54

Loved—“If you are a believer in Christ, God, the maker of the universe, chose you, set you apart for himself, and loves you. He is for you and not against you. “ P. 55

“This is the beginning of how husbands and wives forbear and forgive. They are blown away by being chosen, set apart, and loved by God. Husbands, devote yourselves to seeing and savoring this. Wives, do the same. Get your life from this. Get your joy from this. Get your hope from this—that you are chosen, set apart, and loved by God. Plead with the Lord that this would be the heartbeat of your life and your marriage. On this basis now—on the basis of this profound, new, God-centered identity as chosen, holy, and loved—we are told what to “put on.” That is, we are told what kind of attitude and behavior fits with, and flows from, being chosen, set apart, and loved by God through Christ.” P. 55

He then goes on to say that out of this identity, the attitudes from Colossians 3:12-19 flow: “compassionate hearts and kindness, humility and meekness, patience and forbearance (and forgiveness).” P. 55

“Be merci­ful in your inmost being, and then out of that good ground grows the fruit of kindness. So husbands, sink your roots by faith into Christ through the gos­pel until you become a more merciful person. Wives, sink your roots by faith into Christ through the gospel until you become a more merciful person. And then treat each other out of this tender mercy with kind­ness. The battle is with our own unmerciful inner person. Fight that battle by faith, through the gospel, in prayer. Be stunned and broken and built up and made glad and merciful because you are chosen, holy, loved.” P. 56-57

“So, husbands, sink your roots by faith into Christ through the gospel until you become more lowly and humble. Wives, sink your roots by faith into Christ through the gospel until you become more lowly and humble. The gospel of Christ’s painful death on our behalf has a way of breaking our pride and our sense of rightful demands and our frustration at not getting our way. It works lowliness into our souls. Then we treat each other with meekness flowing out of that lowliness. The battle is with our own proud, self-centered inner person. Fight that battle by faith, through the gospel, in prayer. Be stunned and broken and built up and made glad and humble because you are chosen, holy, loved.” P. 57

“Forbear or bear with: The word is literally endure—enduring each other. Jesus uses it in Luke 9:41: “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to bear with you?” Paul uses it again in 1 Corinthians 4:12: “When persecuted, we endure.” That’s the meaning here: Become long-suffering persons and endure each other. Forbear. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor. 13:7–8).” P. 57-58

\“There are at least two words for forgive in the New Testament. This one used here (charizomenoi) means “freely or graciously give.” The idea is that when we forgive, we do not exact a payment. We treat people better than they deserve. So in this sense, you forgive when someone has wronged you, and therefore they are in debt to you, and sheer justice says you have the right to exact some suffering from them in payment for the suffering they caused you. You not only don’t demand the payment, but you “freely give” good for evil. That is the meaning of this word forgive (charizomai). Your ordinary disposition is forgiving—you do not return evil for evil, but you bless (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27; 1 Cor. 4:12; 1 Thess. 5:15).” P. 58

“Now what I find so helpful here is that Paul recognizes that both forgiv­ing and forbearing are crucial for life together—whether in church or marriage. Forgiveness says: I will not treat you badly because of your sins against me or your annoying habits. And forbearance acknowledges (usually to itself): Those sins against me and those annoying habits really bother me or hurt me! If there were nothing in the other person that really bothered us or hurt us, there would be no need for saying “endure one another.” P. 58

“We believe in the pursuit of personal change and holiness. We believe in small-group efforts to work on each other’s marriages. We believe in professional biblical counseling. But we are forty years into this glorious and maddening thing called marriage, and we are not naive. These two redeemed sinners will go to our graves imperfect and annoying. We are very comforted that Paul does not say, “Endure one another for the first ten years of your marriage till you have all the problems solved and all the sins overcome, then enjoy the green pastures of the last forty years of your marriage without the need for enduring each other.” Sorry to pop any bubbles out there. Well, actually, we’re not sorry. We would rather pop the bubble of naiveté and give you a possible way to endure and enjoy.” P. 60

Intimacy and Covenant-Love

This series is a continuation of my journey though the book, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence”. I am on Chapter 2.

I love what Piper draws out from Genesis 2 and 3 regarding marriage and being naked and unashamed. Prior to their rebellion against God, Adam and Eve experienced being naked and not ashamed (Genesis 2:24). After their fall, their nakedness caused them shame, so they sewed fig leaves together to make garments for themselves (Genesis 3:7). After the Lord confronted and rebuked Adam and Eve for their sin, He Himself clothed them with animal skins that He made for them (Genesis 3:21).

In Chapter 2 of “This Momentary Marriage”, Piper particularly examines Genesis 2:24 & 25: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

Piper asks what is the point of the man and woman being naked and unashamed in Genesis 2:25? While Adam and Eve did have perfect bodies—free from the effects of sin, disease, pain, and death--Piper suggests that Adam and Eve’s unashamedness pre-fall had nothing to do with their perfect bodies. He points out that physical perfection is not enough to produce unashamedness: “…no matter how beautiful or handsome your spouse is, if you are cranky, unselfish, or unkind, you can make comments in a way that shames the other person. Not being ashamed in a marriage relationship takes more than being physically perfect; the one who is look at you must be morally upright and gracious. Otherwise he or she can find a way to shame you. So mere physical perfection would not be enough to eliminate the possibility of being shamed” P. 32

Rather than being a result of their perfect bodies, Piper suggests that Adam and Eve’s unashamedness about their nakedness was rooted in the security of covenant-love. He says, “The first way to be shame-free is to be perfect; the second way to be shame-free is based on the gracious nature of covenant love. In the first case, there is no shame because we’re flawless. In the second case, there is no shame because covenant love covers a multitude of flaws. (1 Peter 4:8; 1 Cor 13:6)” P. 33.

Upon breaking covenant with God and consequently with each other through the fall, Adam and Eve felt shame over their nakedness. I love this explanation from Piper: “The foundation of covenant-keeping love between a man and a woman is the unbroken covenant between them and God—God governing them for their good and they enjoying him in that security and relying on him. When they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that covenant was broken, and the foundation of their own covenant-keeping collapsed. They experienced this immediately in the corruption of their own covenant love for each other. It happened in two ways. And we experience it today in these same two ways. Both relate to the experience of shame. In the first case, the person viewing my nakedness is no longer trustworthy, so I am afraid I will be shamed. In the second, I myself am no longer at peace with God, and I feel guilty and defiled and unworthy—I deserve to be shamed….In the first case, I am self-conscious of my body and I feel vulnerable to shame because I know Eve has chosen to be independent from God. She has made herself central in the place of God. She is essentially now a selfish person. From this day forward, she will put herself first. She is no longer a servant. So she is not safe. And I feel vulnerable around her, because she is very likely to put me down if that puts her up. So suddenly my nakedness is precarious. I don’t trust her anymore to love me with pure, covenant-keeping love. That’s one source of shame and self-consciousness. The other source is that Adam himself, not just his spouse, has broken covenant with God. If she is rebellious and selfish, and therefore unsafe, so am I. But the way I experience it in myself is that I feel defiled and guilty and unworthy. That’s, in fact, what I am. Before the Fall, what and what ought to have been were the same. But now what is and what ought to be are not the same. I ought to be humbly and gladly submissive to God. But I am not. This huge gap between what I am and what I ought to be colors everything about me—including how I feel about my body. So my wife might be the safest person in the world, but now my own sense of guilt and unworthiness makes me feel vulnerable. The simple, open, nakedness of innocence now feels inconsistent with the guilty person that I am. I feel ashamed. ” P. 35-36

I loved this insight from Piper and I believe it speaks not just to the barriers to physical intimacy in marriage, but also to the barriers to emotional intimacy and transparency in any relationship. I believe that these barriers leaves us with two options: 1) hiding to cover up our sin, living in shame and guilt, and retreating from pursuing others; or 2) confessing and repenting of our sin, living in freedom with our identities in Christ, and engaging in pursuing sacrificial love in the face of our vulnerability before others.

Adam and Eve chose to hide, live in shame and guilt, and retreat from God and each other. Piper describes this process: “So they tried to close the gap between what they were and what they ought to be by covering what is and presenting themselves in a new way. From their standpoint, this was the origin of hypocrisy. It was the first attempted—and totally unsuccessful—snow job.” P.36

Piper then goes on to discuss the fact that God Himself makes Adam and Eve garments of animal skins. Piper asks the question of why God would do this, “Was God aiding and abetting their pretense?” Obviously, the answer to that is “No”. Piper suggests that in clothing Adam and Eve, God was affirming that Adam and Eve were not who they were or who they ought to be. As such, it is proper that we wear clothing now.

“God ordains clothes to witness to the glory we have lost, and it is added rebellion to throw them off. And for those who rebel in the other direction and make clothes themselves a means of power and prestige and attention-getting, God’s answer is not a return to nudity but a return to simplicity (1 Timothy 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:4-5) Clothes are not a means to make people think about what is under the clothes. Clothes are means to direct attention to what is not under them: merciful hands that serve others in the name of Christ, beautiful feet that carry the gospel where it is needed, and the brightness of a face that has beheld the glory of Jesus.” P. 37

Piper also directs us to the compassionate and redemptive nature of God in the act of clothing Adam and Eve. God’s act of clothing them is “not only a witness to the glory we lost and a confession that we are not what we should be, but it is also a testimony that God himself would one day make us what we should be. God rejected their own self-clothing. Then he clothed them himself. He showed mercy with superior clothing. Together with the other hopeful signs in the context (like the defeat of the serpent in Gen. 3:15), God’s mercy points to the day when he will solve the problem of our shame decisively and permanently. He will do it with the blood of his own Son (as there was apparently blood shed in the killing of the animals of the skins). And he will do it with the clothing of righteousness and the radiance of his glory (Gal. 3:27; Phil 3:21). Which means that our clothes are a witness both to our past and present failure and to our future glory. They testify to the chasm between what we are and what we should be. And they testify to God’s merciful intention to bridge that chasm through Jesus Christ and his death for our sins. He will solve the problem of fear and pride and selfishness and shame between man and woman with his new blood-bought covenant.”

Amen!

As Piper points out, God’s vision for marriage in this life is still oneness, even post-fall. He directs us to Mark 10, where Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24 in speaking to the Pharisees about marriage: “6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Being naked and unashamed flows from covenant-love. Covenant-love enables intimacy and unity.

Taking Piper’s insights beyond marriage, I would say that the barrier to intimacy in every relationship is rooted in our inability to understand the pursuing, vulnerable, and sacrificial covenant-love that Jesus has for us and models for us to live out in relationships with others. Even while we broke covenant with God through our rebellion, God made a way for us by a new covenant with us through Jesus. We were poor, naked, wretched, and blind in our sins and our sin separated us from God. Because of our sinfulness, we were not as we ought to be. We needed to be clothed in order to be with our perfect God, and yet we could not clothe ourselves because all of our works are inadequate (they are fig leaves) and tainted with sin. So instead, the Son of God shed His blood to atone for our sin. Jesus is who He ought to be. Jesus has always been who He ought to be. Jesus was a worthy sacrifice to pay the price for our sin—to bring justice for the injustice we caused. If we trust in Jesus, we get to be clothed by God with the righteousness of Christ. If we trust in Jesus, we are part of God’s covenant people, lovingly adopted as God’s sons and daughters and co-heirs with Christ. This covenant-love is scandalous and its power transforms and empowers us! If we grow in our understanding of God’s covenant love for us, we will grow in intimacy with God and with others.

1 John 4

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

The beauty of growing in intimacy with God is that He shows us perfect love. He is the definition of perfect love. Perfect love drives out fear. We have no reason to fear knowing God and exposing ourselves to God because we will not be rejected, condemned, mocked, or despised by our perfectly loving God because our sin and shame is covered by Jesus. (Not only that--He already knows everything about us! We may try to hide ourselves from God, but He sees it all!) If we trust in Jesus, when He looks at us now, He sees Jesus’ Righteousness, not our imperfection and sin. How beautiful it is that we get to have honest, sincere, authentic, and true relationship with God because of Jesus!

Relationships with people, however, involve risk because we are not perfect and we do not love perfectly. We do not know how people will respond to our love. Sin makes us vulnerable to rejection, condemnation, mockery, apathy, and hatred from others. Our sin makes others vulnerable to these things when they open up and reach out to us. Yet, we are called to engage with people nonetheless. Jesus willingly made Himself vulnerable and indeed suffered rejection, condemnation, mockery, apathy and hatred from men. Jesus is our example of how to engage in risky love--pursuing, vulnerable and sacrificial love. Jesus was rooted in the glorious covenant love of His Father. In the same way, God’s love is our only solid foundation in enabling us to not only survive the damage that will inevitably be done to us by others as we risk ourselves in love, but to also keep loving in the face of it.

In this lifetime, marriage is the most intimate human relationship we will ever have, but it is still just a shadow. We are practicing for heaven where we will witness firsthand the glorious unity between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and we will get to participate in that unity with God and with each other!! I’ll leave you with John 17, which is one of my most favorite passages of Scripture. Read it with special note to: 1) the glorious oneness (intimacy, love, fellowship, submission/headship, equality, united vision, etc.) between Jesus and the Father; and 2) Jesus’ loving desire that we would be one as they are one.

John 17

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

This Momentary Marriage

This weekend we got a chance to hang out with a married couple who are our some of our dearest friends. We truly adore them and enjoy them. We always have a good time with them, laughing and talking. We’ve shared many memories together and they have been friends through good times and bad times. Because they are atheists/agnostics and we are Christians, we usually end up having a lot of interesting and passionate conversation. This weekend, we were talking about marriage and divorce. They were surprised to hear both Kristian and I say that we would not divorce one another even for infidelity. Kristian and I are committed to one another for as long as we both live, no matter what.

Last week, I received John Piper’s new book, “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence” in the mail. I actually won it from a Desiring God contest (thank you, Desiring God!). The conversation with our friends this weekend and reading this great book inspired me to post a series on this book.

You might think it strange that, on the one hand, I just said that my husband and I will never divorce, and on the other hand, I am reading (and highly recommending) a book called “This Momentary Marriage”. What I like about this book is that it puts Christian marriage in the perspective of eternity. On the one hand, marriage is profoundly holy because it is bond forged by God Himself and is crafted to glorify God by displaying the enduring covenant love of Christ for His bride, the church. Marriage (albeit imperfectly) mimics the intimacy, joy, love, and unity that already exists between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and also foreshadows the intimacy, joy, love, and unity that is increasingly experienced by God’s people in relationship with God and with His people. On the other hand, marriage is temporal and fleeting in that it is only a shadow of what is to come—the time when our intimacy, joy, love, and unity with God and with His people will be unfettered and uninhibited by sin. When that day has come in fullness, marriage will be obsolete. The image will be exchanged for the thing itself. The dress rehearsal will be over and the long awaited glorious day will be here!

Practically speaking, this view of marriage gives us much hope. Frankly, without the gospel, without knowing God and what He did for me, without knowing Jesus and His example, without experiencing the Holy Spirit, without knowing that there is a purpose in marriage that is bigger than Kristian and me, I don’t think we would stay married. (For more on what the gospel is, go to “labels” on the left side of this page and click on “the gospel”.) I will never forget what Pastor Mark Driscoll said at our wedding, “the only problem with marriage is the man and the woman”. This is so true! Marriage exposes the sinfulness and selfishness of human beings. As such, marriage requires forgiveness and sacrifice in order to survive. My husband cannot meet my needs perfectly nor can I meet his. I will (and have) failed him, and he will (and has) failed me. Marriage is hard and deeply painful. If there is no God, why shouldn’t I simply “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry”? Why shouldn’t I remain with Kristian while it suits me and then leave him when ceases to do so?

The reason why Kristian and I will be married for as long as we live is because we know that our bond is from God—our Sovereign God brought us together for a glorious purpose. Because of this, our love for each other is based on covenant and not on whether our needs or desires are being met by marriage. Our marriage is not the end-all and that we are not each other’s end-all. Yet, we are a gift from a gracious God to each other, and we get to delight in one another (indeed, God delights in our delighting in each other). We are able to sincerely love each other by the Holy Spirit as He teaches us how to sacrificially love and forgive through the Word and through the example of Christ’s sacrificial love and forgiveness for us. By God’s grace, we get to grow in love for and delight in one another. We are able to delight in how marriage brings us closer to God, while still recognizing that our joy now is only a foretaste of the even greater joy that is to come. We also get to be transformed by God’s grace together. As our sinfulness is continually exposed, we get to walk through repentance together, forgiving one another and helping one another. We get to serve others together, using the complimentary gifts God has given us as a team. There is a purpose in our marriage that is beyond ourselves. There is so much hope in that and this brings a sweetness to our marriage that I cannot describe.

“This Momentary Marriage” is all about the sacredness of marriage as being from God for the purpose of displaying the gospel of His glorious grace. (You can get the book “This Momentary Marriage” for $6.49 from http://www.desiringgod.org/Store/Books/ByTopic/45/. Desiring God also has a $25 gift set that includes “This Momentary Marriage,” plus a book of Piper’s poems, and CDs of a sermon series he did on marriage. You can get the gift set here: http://www.desiringgod.org/Store/OtherMerchandise/ByTopic/45/813_Marriage_Gift_Set/.)

Here are some excerpts from “This Momentary Marriage” that I have enjoyed so far:

Thoughts from Noёl Piper in the foreword…

“I know some couples who think and feel so much alike that they can work together, minister together, live together, and raise children together with hardly any conflict. Well, there might be a couple like that. But it’s not us.” P.9 (Kristian and I can totally relate to that one!)

“In our real life, I swing somewhere between two extremes. At one end of the pendulum’s arc, I’m in wonder: ‘How in the world did I get such an amazing husband? What did I ever do that he should have paid me a bit of notice, never mind that he asked me to marry him?’….By contrast, when inertia and resistance are dragging us downward, I’m asking myself, “How in the world did we get into such a mess? What happened to make us feel this kind of disagreement and unhappiness?” P. 9-10

“The pendulum of our marriage oscillates and sometimes wobbles, but it is suspended from above and is firmly attached. By God’s grace, it will not crash to the ground.” P. 10

From the Introduction....

"There is no human marriage after death. The shadow of covenant-keeping between the husband and wife gives way to the reality of covenant-keeping between Christ and his glorified Church. Nothing is lost. The music of every pleasure is transposed into an infinitely higher key." P.14

"This covenant-keeping love reached its climax in the death of Christ for his church, his bride. That death was the ultimate expression of grace, which is hte ultimate expression of God's glory, which is of infinite value. Therefore, when Paul says that our great and first destiny is "the praise of [God's] glorious grace (Eph 1:6), he elevated marriage beyond measure, for here, uniquely, God displays the apex of the glory of his grace: "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph. 5:25). P. 15 & P.16

"Romance, sex, and childbearing are temporary gifts of God. They are not part of the next life. And they are not guaranteed even for this life. They are one possible path along the narrow way to Paradise. Marriage passes through breathtaking heights and through swamps with choking vapors. It makes many things sweet, and with it come bitte providences." p. 17

From Chapter 1…

“The most foundational thing to see from the Bible about marriage is that it is God’s doing. And the ultimate thing to see from the bible about marriage is that it is for God’s glory. Those are the two points I have to make. Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God.” P. 21

“So, in sum, the most foundational thing we can say about marriage is that it is God’s doing. It’s his doing: a. because it was his design in creation; b. because he personally gave away the first bride in marriage; c. because he spoke the design of marriage into existence: leave parents, hold fast to your wife, become one flesh; d. and because this one-flesh union is established by God himself in each marriage.” P. 23

“A glimpse into the magnificence of marriage comes from seeing in God’s word that God himself is the great doer. Marriage is his doing. It is from him and through him. That is the most foundational thing we can say about marriage. Now we turn to the most ultimate thing we can say about marriage. It is not only from him and through him. It is also for him.” P. 24

“Staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant. “Till death do us part” or “As long as we both shall live” is a sacred covenant promise—the same kind Jesus made with his bride when he died for her. Therefore, what makes divorce and remarriage so horrific in God’s eyes is not merely that it involves covenant-breaking to the spouse, but that it involves misrepresenting Christ and his covenant. Christ will never leave his wife. Ever. There may be times of painful distance and tragic backsliding on our part. But Christ keeps his covenant forever. Marriage is a display of that! That is the ultimate thing we can say about it. It puts the glory of Christ’s covenant-keeping love on display.” P. 25

“Jesus died for sinners. He forged a covenant in the white-hot heat of his suffering in our place. He made an imperfect bride his own with the price of his blood and covered her with the garments of his own righteousness. He said, “I am with you… to the end of the age…I will never leave nor forsake you” (Matt. 28:20; Heb 13:5). Marriage is meant by God to put that gospel reality on display in the world.” P. 26

I’ll post more as I get through the book.