Marriage for Immortals
Living With People Who Will Live Forever
On your wedding day, tons about you changes. It’s true. A woman takes her husband’s name. A man becomes responsible before God for his wife. You have to learn to live together. What you have taken for granted about many things in life, like how to fold socks or how to organize the pantry or when to get up in the morning or how to prioritize your budget – some or all of that probably changed. The day before your wedding you were a single man or a single woman, and the day after your wedding you were a wife or a husband. You had become one flesh. You had formed a new family. You had changed, and many things in your life changed. Like kids for example. That will change you even more.
But here’s the thing: despite the massive, monumental changes that did (or will) occur after your wedding, there is something even more massive, even more fundamental that will never change. On the day before your wedding, you were a son or daughter of the King, beloved of God, purchased by the blood of Jesus, secure in His firm grasp forever. And the day after your wedding, you were still that blood-bought child of God, saved for eternity. That identity can never change, shift, or be affected in the slightest.
And this is so important. You need to understand this deep in your bones because many marital problems arise from misunderstanding this. People say that their wife or husband “complete” them. They say they are lost without their spouse. They say there was a hole in their heart without them. And there is a sense in which that is true. I get that. Love is like that. And I thank God for it. But there is another sense in which those sentiments are actually all wrong. There’s a sense in which those sentiments can be pure idolatry. In other words, if you are placing all your hopes on marriage, if you think that being Mr. Husband or Mrs. Wife or finding Mr. or Mrs. “Right” is going to “complete” you and fulfill all your deepest longings and desires, I’ve got news for you.
