'In between' the Bride and the Groom

I witnessed a beautiful garden wedding of two of my closest friends, also my church co-workers, last weekend. On that occasion, I was asked to speak a few words of wishes at the reception. Since I am not married, I decided to share a paraphrased version of these wise words from Elisabeth Elliot:

Your equalities have been delineated: equally sinners, equally responsible, equally in need of grace, and equally the objects of that grace. That’s where the fifty-fifty matter ends. You take up life as husband and wife and you start laying down your lives – not as martyrs, not as doormats or ascetics making a special bid for sainthood, but as two lovers who have needed and received grace, and who know very well that they are going to keep on needing and receiving it every day that they live together.

–Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman, Chapter 36 (Emphasis Added).

This gospel-saturated concept of marriage is also captured and expounded by Dave Harvey in his book, When Sinners Say “I Do”: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage (Study Guide and Audio Book also available). Harvey writes:

There really is no end to the glories of the gospel, which is why we will spend eternity marveling that the Holy God would choose to crush his only Son for the sake of sinful man. The gospel explains our most obvious and basic problem—sin has separated us from God and from each other. Thus we are objects of God’s wrath. A Christian understands the necessity of the cross; our sin was so bad that it required blood, the blood of God, to take it away! Without the cross we are at war with God, and he is at war with us.

The gospel is therefore central to all theological truth, and is the overarching reality that makes sense of all reality… By the gospel we understand that, although saved, we remain sinners. Through the gospel we receive power to resist sin. Accurately understanding and continually applying the gospel is the Christian life. This also means that the gospel is an endless fountain of God’s grace in your marriage. To become a good theologian and to be able to look forward to a lifelong, thriving marriage, you must have a clear understanding of the gospel. Without it, you cannot see God, yourself, or your marriage for what they truly are.

The gospel is the fountain of a thriving marriage.

–Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say “I Do”, 24-25 (Emphasis Added).

Dave Harvey talks about why he wrote the book:

More Videos on each chapter of the book…

Chapter 1: What Matters in Marriage

Chapter 2: Waking Up With the Worst of Sinners
Chapter 3: The Fog of War and the Law of Sin
Chapter 4: Taking It Out for a Spin

Chapter 6: Forgiveness, Full and Free

Chapter 7: The Surgeon, The Scalpel and The Spouse in Sin

Chapter 8: Stubborn Grace

Chapter 9: Concerning Sex