Forgiving and Forbearing – TMM Chap 4
Continuing the theme from Chapter 3 of how marriage illustrates the fact that Christ’s relationship with his bride is built on a basis of grace, Chapter 4 speaks about two forms which that grace must take. Colossians 3:12-13 tells us
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.(Colossians 3:12-13 ESV, emphasis added)
If you are quick to anger, instead of being long-suffering, the root is probably lack of mercy and lack of lowliness. In other words, being chosen, holy, and loved has not broken your heart and brought you down from self-centeredness and pride.
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.”
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God’s Showcase of Covenant-Keeping Grace – TMM Chapter 3
When asked what she wanted John Piper to say at this point, his wife Noel said “You cannot say too often that marriage is a model of Christ and the church.” Piper gives three reasons:
- This lifts marriage out of the sordid sitcom images and gives it the magnificent meaning God meant it to have
- This gives marriage a solid basis in grace, since Christ obtained and sustains his bride by grace alone, and
- This shows that the husband’s headship and the wife’s submission are crucial and crucified.
Chapters 1 and 2 discussed the first reason. Chapters 3-5 will deal with reason #2 – how the grace of God should impact our marriages as they become showcases of new-covenant grace. Piper says we do this by “resting in the experience of God’s grace and bending it out from a vertical experience with God into a horizontal experience with (our) spouse.” This is the basis on which we can be naked and not ashamed in spite of the fact that we have much to be ashamed of.
In order to really hold this in perspective, it is critical that we hold close the memory of the wrath of God that we deserve. “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.” Our sins were nailed to the cross, but not only our own but those of our spouse as well, if we are married to a believer. Piper says, “Husbands and wives cannot believe this too strongly. It is essential to our fulfilling the design of marriage.”
But the gospel goes beyond mere forgiveness, amazing as that is. It not only wipes away our debt but it credits us with the perfect righteousness of Christ himself! So not only can we bend outward the grace of God in forgiveness but also the justification that makes us righteous. Piper says, “As the Lord counts you righteous in Christ, though you are not righteous in actual behavior and attitude, so count your spouse righteous in Christ, though he or she is not righteous. Of course, this doesn’t remove the need for repentance and forgiveness, but grounded in the words of Col 3:12-13 it gives us a basis for forgiving and forbearing with our spouses.
In the next chapter, we will explore Forgiving and Forbearing.
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Naked and Not Ashamed – TMM Chap 2
Continuing the series blogging through John Piper’s excellent book This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence we come to Chapter 2: Naked and Not Ashamed. After establishing the covenant of marriage in Gen 2:24, Gen 2:25 tells us that “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” So what is the point of this verse?
Piper postulates that there are two possible reasons why they would not be ashamed. First, it could be because the effects of sin had not yet blemished them and so they had perfect bodies. “In other words, their freedom from shame was because they had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Is that the main point” (p 32)? Piper argues no for three reasons:
- No matter how perfect your spouse is, if you’re selfish and unkind you can make comments that shame them.
- Verses 24-25 are intended to be relevant after the fall, not just for these two pre-fall individuals
- Verse 24 (covenant one-flesh union) creates the relationship where verse 25 (naked and unashamed) can happen.
So instead Piper opts for the second possibility, that they are free from shame because they have no fear of being shamed by their spouse. Because each of their spouses was sinless, they would not fear the other doing anything to shame them.
So what relevance does this have for us. Notice that there is much more power for living without shame in the second reason than in the first. We might think that if I were sinless and perfect I could live shame free, but that is both untrue (I am sinful and imperfect) and insufficient (my spouse could probably still shame me). Instead the hope for living without shame is found in a covenant love that does not fear being disapproved by the other, in spite of my imperfections.
Marriage was designed from the beginning to display the new covenant between Christ and the church. We have seen this in Ephesians 5:31-32. The very essence of this new covenant is that Christ passes over the sins of his bride. His bride is free from shame not because she is perfect, but because she has not fear that her lover will condemn her or shame her because of her sin. (pp 33-34 emphasis added)
But when they sinned, each instinctively new that the other had chosen independence from God and was now selfish at heart and no longer trustworthy. They also knew they had done that and that things were no longer as they should be. Their nakedness was the first effect of their sin (Gen 3:5-7). They felt both vulnerable to shame from their spouse and defiled and unworthy because of the loss of fellowship with God. They clothed themselves with fig leaves in an attempt to deny that shame, but God foreshadowed his redemption by killing a sacrifice and using the skins to make them new clothing.
A couple of questions for thought and comment below:
- Have you ever thought about the two possible sources for shame?
- How have you been guilty of putting shame on your spouse because of your own sinfulness?
- If “the very essence of new covenant love is that Christ passes over the sins of his bride”, are you willing to reflect Christ in this way?
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Staying Married is Not Mainly about Staying in Love – TMM Chap 1
Continuing the series blogging through John Piper’s excellent book This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence we come to the first chapter entitled “Staying Married is Not Mainly about Staying in Love.” Here Piper first really makes the case that marriage is about something infinitely more than two people in love wanting to live their lives together. Our culture simply does not understand this, and neither did Jesus’ culture (Matt 19:10-12) or any human culture. Our sin and selfishness blind us to the wonder of God’s purpose for marriage.
Foundationally, marriage is God’s doing. Piper illustrates this in four ways:
- It is God’s design. He saw the solitude of the man and knew that he needed a helper suited to him (Gen 2:18). When Adam realized none of the animals would do, God created another creature in His image for Adam (Gen 1:27)
- God gave away the first bride. I’ve never seen this before but, as the Father of the bride, God “brought her to the man.” (Gen 2:22)
- God spoke the design of marriage into existence by saying “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24)
- God performs the one-flesh union. The preacher doesn’t make the couple one flesh and it doesn’t happen at the consummation. God joins them together and it is not in man’s power or prerogative to destroy (Mark 10:8-9).
But ultimately, Piper argues, this marriage that God has created is designed for God’s glory. That this holding fast and one flesh union is a sacred covenant is implicit in Genesis but becomes explicit in Ephesians 5.
Christ thought of himself as a bridegroom coming for his bride, the true people of God (Matt 9:15; 25:1ff; John 3:29). … Christ knew he would have to pay for his bride with his own blood. He called this relationship the new covenant … This is what Paul is referring to when he says that marriage is a great mystery: “I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Christ obtained the church by his blood and formed a new covenant with her, an unbreakable “marriage.”
The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how: Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.
Staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant…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! (pp 24-25)
So the most important thing about marriage is showing in real life the glory of the gospel. Let me share a couple of questions for reflection and comment below:
- How does the idea of marriage as a display of Christ’s covenant keeping love change the way you think about your own marriage?
- Does this mean that it is not important whether you stay in love? If not, what role should your feelings play in your marriage?
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Blogging thru “This Momentary Marriage” – Introduction
I recently completed my first reading of what has become my new favorite book on marriage, and it comes from my favorite preacher. In This Momentary Marriage, John Piper looks at the biblical teaching on marriage from a perspective not often taken, asking “What is it’s eternal meaning?” The result is profoundly convicting and instructive.
In her forward to the book, John’s wife Noel Piper shares about their own marriage and how their extreme differences have led their marriage to swing on a pendulum between “How in the world did I get such an amazing husband?” to “How in the world did we get into such a mess?” However, in spite of the ups and downs, she affirms that marriage is ultimately a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the church. That’s all marriages, regardless of sin. So the question she asks is, “How clear and well-focused is the portrait of Jesus that our marriage is displaying?”
The Introduction begins with the story of Dietrich Bohnoeffer, who was engaged to be married when he was hanged at dawn on April 9, 1945 by the Nazis for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.Piper writes:
So he never married. He skipped the shadow on the way to the Reality. Some are called to one kind of display of the worth of Christ, some to another. Martyrdom, not marriage, was his calling. (p 13)
Piper then shares the story of John and Betty Stam who were martyred in China leaving behind an infant daughter. They were reunited in heaven, but not as husband and wife for there is no marriage in heaven (Mark 12:25).
The shadow of covenant-keeping between 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. (pp 14-15)
In “A Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote
Marriage is more than your love for each other…In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal – it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.
So this is the theme of the book:
to enlarge your vision of what marriage is…The meaning of marriage is the display of the covenant keeping love between Christ and his people. … It is a good gift from God, but it is only one possible path along the narrow way to Paradise. Marriage passes through breathtaking heights and through swamps with choking vapors. It makes many things sweeter, and with it come bitter providences. Marriage is a momentary gift.
In the coming weeks, I will be blogging through the fifteen chapters of this short 180-page book, sharing some of the most meaningful insights that I have gained as a result of reading it. I hope they will be meaningful to you as well.
If you’d like to read the entire book, which I highly recommend, it is available for free in PDF form on Piper’s web site, or you can purchase it from the common sources.
Some questions in the meantime:
- Does your own marriage swing on the pendulum from idealism to pessimism? Do you spend more time on one end or the other?
- Have you ever considered marriage as a picture of the relationship of Christ and the church?
- What do you think about Jesus’ words that there will be no marriage in heaven? Does that disappoint you? What about Piper’s comment that in heaven “the music of every pleasure is transposed to an infinitely higher key?”
- Bonhoeffer talks about marriage as more than a personal thing but as a responsibility toward the world. How does that strike you? How would it change things if you approached it that way?
Share your thoughts or comments below
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