Marriage: A Living Parable Of The Gospel

Uh this sermon series we're in, it's called United.

This is the second sermon in the series, and we're looking at uh family, marriage, children, discipleship, right?

Last week, what we did is we worked from Genesis 1 and 2 to show that the family is God's plan for the flourishing of all creation.

The family is God's plan for the flourishing of all creation.

Now, we also looked at how uh the creation mandate was given to his image bearers, Adam and Eve, in the garden, and that mandate was a commission to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.

Now, the story that we understand and experience every day is that we failed to fulfill the mandate that was given to us, and that ultimately we saw how that mandate is fulfilled in the finished work of Jesus.

And he's bringing that mandate, that fulfillment into fruitfulness through the new family of which he is making by his blood, right?

That the church is the new family that Christ has purchased by his blood.

He's fulfilled the mandate and he's bringing it into fruitfulness uh through us, being on mission with him, right?

And so now here's what we're gonna see this morning.

If a family so let me step back just one bit.

Though Christ has fulfilled it, we joyfully participate in it.

Not from a place of trying to accomplish it, from a place of it's already been accomplished, and now we get to live it out, right?

And so we're still participating.

We looked at how that mandate wasn't revoked, but it was redeemed and restored in in Christ, right?

That coffee hit me.

Um how it was redeemed and restored in Christ.

So the mandate was never revoked, it's redeemed.

And so now we get to participate in that as God's people.

Now, if a family is going to be healthy, it's going to start with the marriage.

Fundamentally, the health of the family is primarily determined by the health of the marriage.

And it's from that relationship health is going to flow down and permeate every other aspect of your home.

So this morning, why we're looking at marriage is because last week we looked at family.

Now we're going to see how we start to establish a healthy family.

It's going to be in a healthy marriage.

So what we want to do is we want to this morning work to understand from the scriptures God's good design for a flourishing marriage and how it ought to put on display the beauty and mystery of the gospel to the world around us, right?

That's what we're going to try to walk away with here this morning.

So I want to start our study actually with the very end of the passage that we just read together.

So if you are in your Bible or app, Ephesians 5, 22 through 33, but we're going to look at verse 32 here as we begin.

It says this This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

So here's what the Apostle Paul is doing.

He's referring to the covenantal union between a husband and wife as a mystery.

That's important for us this morning because here's what we can tend to try and understand that with, right?

That word mystery has these connotations of an inability to fully understand, right?

And that there's a part of that that's true.

We're always trying to uncover the truth and beauty of the gospel.

We're going to be trying to uncover the truth and beauty of our spouses.

We're going to try to uncover the meaning of marriage.

This is going to be a lifelong pursuit.

There's a mystery in this of an inability to fully understand this side of glory.

But I value the way that this word mystery also means concealed power.

Think about this for a moment.

There's this concealed power hidden in the meaning of marriage.

Right?

And Paul says that this concealed power, it's profound.

It's intending to communicate this grandeur and magnificence.

If we could just truly grasp the meaning and purpose of marriage, we'd be able to release its full potential in our lives.

Now, Paul, he's going to allow us the ability to begin trying to see and know and understand this mystery, this divine power as he connects it to something.

What's he connected to?

Christ and the church.

Here's what I need us to understand.

If your marriage ends on you, your marriage is going to fail.

Your marriage cannot end on you.

It cannot end on your sense of happiness.

It cannot end on your fulfillment.

It cannot end on your self-actualization.

It cannot end on your hopes and dreams.

Your marriage cannot end on you.

If it does, it will fail.

Because the purpose of your marriage is to actually be transcendent beyond you.

And it's supposed to end on Christ.

It is the mystery of his glorious gospel of grace that your marriage is supposed to end on.

And when we do that, when we understand that, when we pursue that, we can endure.

This is what we need to see.

Because in seeing and understanding and functioning in your marriage as a beautiful display of the mystery of the gospel, you will be able to persevere and you will show a watching world how much he deeply loves you.

So we have to work to understand God's good design for marriage and his divine purpose in establishing it within his created world, if our marriages are ever going to be healthy and produce the flourishing that they were intended to.

Right?

Because what did God give man after he gave them the mandate?

He gave them covenant union to fulfill the mandate.

Right?

This is a tool, this is a gift, this is an ability, a power.

If we don't see marriage through God's lens, we're gonna struggle with its demands.

Right?

Because we're gonna resist sacrifice, we're gonna avoid submission, we're gonna cling to our selfish ambitions.

Eventually, what will happen is this we will twist and pervert marriage into something that serves us rather than something that sanctifies us.

Because that's what marriage accomplishes in our life.

Sanctifies us, makes us more like Christ, causes us to live sacrificially and selflessly, right?

This is a fruit of marriage.

And what we've done as a people is we've twisted and perverted marriage to serve us in all of our pursuit of our own individual happiness.

You see, our marriages are meant for more than that.

They're meant to point yourself, they're meant to point your spouse, and they're meant to point a watching world to Jesus' covenantal love for his bride, the church.

So marriage is a mystery that reveals Jesus' covenantal love.

Marriage is a mystery that reveals Jesus' covenantal love.

Now, Paul understands that this is gonna be difficult to grasp, right?

That's what 32 is really inserted in there for.

Hey, I understand this is gonna be hard to grasp, but but if you can start to begin to get this, it points to Christ in the church.

And then he comes into verse 33 and he just says, however, right?

He's like, look, this is gonna be tough, but if you can get this, you can get something.

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

This is the baseline cross-functional responsibilities of husbands and wives for a healthy, God-glorifying marriage, right?

Paul says, if you can't get all this in the mystery of Christ and the church, can you at least get this?

Can husbands, can you love your wife as yourself?

Wives, can you see that you respect your husband?

But I love what the Apostle Paul began with, because he began by striving to cause us to plunge into the depths of this mystery and how it plays out in his divine or in this divine interdependent relationship, covenantal union.

And he begins by addressing wives, right?

So, wives, 522, if you're following along with me.

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

So before we dive into this, what are we trying to do?

We're trying to see how the demands that's being put on us by Scripture to be lived out within this covenant marriage is transcendent beyond our own personal happiness, and it ends on the glory of Christ and his church.

Okay?

So that's what we're gonna try and understand in this mystery together.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, he says.

This instruction is for wives to bring the humble posture of submission into their marriage and offer it as a gift to their own husbands.

Bring this humble posture of submission into their marriage and offer it as a gift.

You see, this gift of submission, it should foster intimacy and it should fortify covenant because it's a precious gift that's not to be shared with any other.

We see that God gives gifts to the covenant of marriage.

It's exclusive in its very nature.

Same that wives should bring a gift into their marriage of submission that is not meant for any other man.

And it should foster this deep intimacy and trust.

It should allow for their covenant to be fortified because that gift is exclusive in its nature.

At the very heart of every man, ladies, is a desire to be respected.

When we talk about submission, I want to link it to being respected.

That's what men desire.

We want to see admiration of our ability, of the strength that we bring into the relationship.

We desire to see and experience the sincere regard for the vision that we have for our families.

Ladies, your submission is a gift that places substance into your husband who desires to be respected by you.

Here's what I mean by that.

I think submission accomplishes two things.

Now, we have to look biblically at this because it's not isolated or compartmentalized to the relationship of husbands and wives.

We see the call to submission all throughout the scriptures in different contexts, right?

We are to be submitted to one another as members of the body of Christ.

We are to submit to those in government power, right?

As citizens of this country.

We are to submit to Christ.

We are submit to the elders of the church.

We see submission in different forms and contexts throughout the scripture.

But here's what I think submission accomplishes.

The first thing is this I believe that it ascribes glory to the other person.

What do I mean by that?

Glory means weight, substance.

When you submit to someone, you build weight into their presence.

That they ought to be here, that they have meaning and value in their presence here.

When you submit to someone, you ascribe glory to them.

And the second thing I believe it does is it complements their role in your life as the source of supplemented strength.

When you submit to someone, you are acknowledging that you don't have everything that you need to accomplish what God has called you to, that you don't obtain or have within your possession every gift and every strength and every grace and every power.

You need supplemented strength in your life to be able to accomplish what God has called you to.

And so when you submit, you're ascribing glory to their presence, and you are complementing the supplemented strength that they bring to the table.

And you see, when wives, when you submit to your husbands, you place weight and substance into their presence.

This reverence, this deep respect, it builds something into the chest of your husband.

I don't know if you've ever seen a marriage where there was a husband who was striving to love his wife or striving to care for his family, and he had a wife that just would not submit to him, that was always causing tension in the home that could not fully trust.

You probably observed a shell of a man with an empty chest.

Because that rebellion stripped him of the substance of which he was designed for.

You see, this reverence, this deep respect, it builds weight and substance into the chest of your husband.

And to deny him this is to empty his chest.

Why do we have men without chests?

I think because we have many marriages where the women aren't striving to put weight and value inside of them.

Instead, it just becomes this weightless cavity, and the shadow of a man is all that remains.

But I want you to see something where Paul actually roots this submission.

Here's what we have to understand.

It's not rooted in the goodness of the husband, it's rooted in the lordship of Jesus.

Here's what we need to see.

You don't submit to your husband because he's a good husband.

You submit to your husband because of the lordship and perfect nature of Christ the bridegroom.

You see, it doesn't end on you, it ends on him.

And we have this problem in our culture today.

We have displaced office for character.

Here's what I mean by that.

In today's day and time, unless you have the character that demands honor and respect, we will not give it to you, no matter what office you hold.

The Bible is not aware of such a premise.

It doesn't hold to such a value.

The Bible says that the office demands honor and respect, no matter the character of the person holding it.

So why did David not touch Saul?

Saul, who was a wicked king over Israel?

He didn't touch Saul because Saul was king.

He honored and respected the office, even though the man didn't have the character as he held it.

Why does Paul tell Christians when the church era to submit and honor the emperor?

An emperor who is sowing them inside the carcasses of dead animals and allowing tigers to feast upon them, who's filleting the flesh off of their bodies, who's hanging them in his garden as torches for his parties.

Why does Paul say, honor him?

Because he's more involved with the office than he is with the character of the person who's holding it.

We have flipped that.

And I get it.

We come from a generation or generations of bad dads, bad husbands, bad leaders, bad whatever, and we've looked at the character of these men, and it's appalled us.

And we've established this value within side culture that you don't get our honor and respect unless you earn it through your character.

That is a foreign concept to the scriptures.

Not that character isn't important.

But ladies, let me tell you, you honor your husband because of the office of which he holds in your life.

Not because of his character.

Now, do we want men with great character?

Absolutely.

Do we want to see phenomenal fathers?

Do we want to see amazing husbands?

Do we want to see men who love and serve and are committed to the flourishing of this community and this city?

Absolutely.

Let me leave you with this and this point.

Wives, your level of submission is directly related to your view of and trust in Jesus.

Your level of submission is directly related to your view of and trust in Jesus.

If you have a hard time submitting to your husband, I would not examine your husband's life first.

I would examine your own sense of faith and trust in Christ.

Because Paul's connecting your submission to his lordship.

And when we trust him, when we have faith in him, when we're able to abandon all for him, we can submit to a husband no matter how good or how bad he is.

Verse 23, Paul then links the posture of submission with the greater why for it.

Here's this office, here is this honor and respect.

Verse 23, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.

So grounded in the gospel, once again, we see that the marriage is a portrait of the covenant that Jesus has with his bride, the church.

The church submits to Jesus as her head.

And when she does so, she ascribes glory to his name.

She complements his supplemented strength in the flourishing of the mission of which she's been called to.

And it's in this divine relationship, full of beauty and grace, that we see our own relationship in marriage.

The wife displaying the image of the church, and the husband displaying the image of Christ the head.

Man, what a privilege it is to display the beauty and glory of the church, women.

To display the image of the church in all her giftedness, her power, her courage, strength, and splendor.

The church doesn't contend for the place of the head, but she submits to Christ the head to compliment him and see the fullness of mission, the making and maturing of the church come to be.

What an honor it is.

Paul continues in verse 24.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Here's what this does not mean.

It does not mean total and complete subjugation.

You are not becoming the slave of your husband.

In fact, let me say this very clearly.

Calling you to anything unrighteous, your first point of faithfulness and submission is to Christ who calls you to righteousness.

Meaning, if your husband's calling you to something ungodly, sinful, corrupt, wicked, then you disobey him in submission to Christ your Lord.

So this doesn't mean subjugation, but it does mean vulnerable and intentional submission.

One that is total in your personhood, not leaving one aspect of yourself restrained or restricted.

All of you is for all of him.

Imagine if you would, and you've probably even seen people like this in your life, where they come to Christ and they want to claim him as Lord, but there's parts of their life that functionally, minimally functionally, they say, You have no claim over this.

You have no claim over my hopes and dreams, Jesus.

You have no claim over this secret sin that I so love and cherish.

You have no claim over my finances, you have no claim over the way I raise my children, you have no claim over what I do and my occupation, you have no claim here, right?

No, no.

When we come to Christ in submission, we bring all of ourselves to him.

Jesus, you can speak into every aspect of my being.

I'm not gonna keep one part from you.

This is what Paul's referring to here.

It's the fullness of the wife.

There's not one area, women, of your life that should be closed off from your husband.

There's no part of your life that is selfishly reserved for yourself and told to your husband that you have no place here.

Again, there's no call to subjugation, but the church does not, hear me say this: the church does not become a weak and meager slave to Jesus in so much as women do not become weak and meager slaves to their husbands.

No, the church under Christ becomes an empowered, gifted, priestly helper in joyful submission to him.

And so, women, you are not called to be a more pitiful version of yourself under your husband.

You're called to be the strength that he lacks, the giftedness that supports the mission, the helper that he could not do without.

The call to submission is not a sentence of servitude, it is a sacred invitation to participate in the living parable of the gospel.

Because when you submit to your husband as unto the Lord, you are not diminishing yourself, you're dignifying the marriage.

You're stepping into the divine role of the church, strong and radiant, full of purpose, offering your whole self in love, trust, and reverence.

Not because your husband is perfect, but because Christ is.

That Jesus is worthy of giving all of your life to, that covenant love is still beautiful, and that his design for marriage leads not to oppression but to flourishing.

This is the mystery.

This is the glory.

This is the gospel on display in your home.

Now let's get to husbands.

Women, you can take a deep breath.

Your part's way shorter in this whole passage.

Men, here's what I want us to draw our hearts' attention to before we dive into what the scriptures demand of us as husbands.

Your submission to Jesus came after you experienced his sacrificial love for you.

Let me say that again.

This should be the normative reality in our homes.

Your submission to Jesus came after you experiencing his sacrificial love for you.

Why do I say that?

I think there's a lot of times where men expect women to submit before they demonstrate a deep sacrificial love for their family.

The normative should be the very opposite: that your love for your family produces a joy-filled desire to submit to your leadership.

Verse 25.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

The call being made to husbands is deep work.

If the call to wives is deep trust, the call to husbands is deep work.

Men we should be exhausted when we go to bed at night.

Not because we've labored in our career, but because when we step through the threshold of our front door, we labored for the good of our family.

We're called to cultivate.

We're called to get our hands dirty in the work that is ahead of us, to see our family flourish, to love our wives.

This word love agape, we've talked about this many times at Sacred Mission, but in case you're new around here, let's revisit it together.

This word love agape, this functional definition we put forth is the steady intention of the will toward another's highest good.

This is rooted in your will, a determination.

It's not based on your feelings, it's not based on your circumstances, it's not based on how good things are going between you and your spouse.

This is something that's been determined within you to labor and work for the highest good of those in your life.

And this is the model, this is the reflection of God's steadfast love for his people.

All throughout the scriptures, we see them call to the steadfast love of God.

You know what that is?

That's rooted in God's good pleasure and determined will that he will do whatever it takes for the ultimate good of his people, even a people who generation after generation after generation acted a whore against him.

When he had every right to feel as though he should crush them, even though he has every right to feel as though he should push them away.

What does he do?

He doesn't crush them, he crushes his son to obtain them.

That's the steadfast love of God, that he will do whatever it takes to accomplish the ultimate good of his people.

Men, that's what you're called to.

You're not called to step through that front door and crush the heart of your wife or crush the spirit of your children.

No, you're there to crush your own sense of selfishness that you might work and labor for their ultimate good.

So, what do we need to do?

We need to first and foremost see the bedrock of love as servanthood.

Christ came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

You see, Paul sees an inseparable reality between Jesus' love for the church and the laying down of his life for her ultimate good.

As Christ loved and gave himself through serving the church by laying down his own life for her, the church would know and receive the full benefit of being loved by him.

And it's from this foundation of servanthood Paul's now going to reveal what the full benefit of being loved by Jesus entails.

And here's how he starts off that he might sanctify her.

One of the benefits of being loved by Jesus is to be sanctified.

You see, Jesus laid down his life so that he might establish the church as holy, set apart from the corruption and the decay of this world, and become glorious and radiant in splendor.

This is what Adam actually failed to do.

When we look at the call to Adam in the midst of the garden as God placed him there, he called him to work it and to keep it.

We've talked about this also with inside this church.

That language, work, means to serve, keep means to guard or to judge.

What Adam was supposed to do was cultivate the potential of the beauty of Eden and protect it from unrighteousness that would come in and corrupt it.

But instead, he abdicated a responsibility.

He invited the serpent in, and then corruption, death, and sin came along with it.

And so what does Christ do?

He comes and he crushes the head of the serpent.

He does what Adam failed to do so that he might sanctify us against unrighteousness.

Men, part of our responsibility as the protectors, judges of our home is to keep unrighteousness from coming in through our front door and corrupting our families, to guard against sin and wickedness, to fight for the purity of our home.

And this is how Jesus did it, though.

Having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

So Paul's relating Jesus' work of sanctifying the church to a husband's work of loving his wife, and he points to the husband's responsibility to support and encourage his wife in sanctification by making sure that the word of God is present in the home.

Because, husbands, it's not your work that cleanses her, it's the word that cleanses her.

So you have a responsibility to bring the word of God to your family that they may be washed by its water.

This is our call to be functional shepherd pastors of our home.

If we want to see what leadership really is, it is not making you the hero of your living room.

It is making Christ the hero of your wives and children's hearts, pointing them to Him.

And so we need to be these functional shepherds so that our wives and our families might grow and mature into the beauty of the gospel of grace.

And why did Jesus love the church in such a lavish way?

Verse 27.

So that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Here's one thing I want to say clearly.

I am grieved by the blemishes I have caused on my wife's heart and mind.

The times that I have been angry with her, the times I've tried to use force to get my way, the times I've been selfish, the times that I have blemished her.

I'm grieved by.

You see, the radiant beauty that Jesus desired for his bride, the church, he accomplished through laying his life down for her.

And it was the blemishes of nail-pierced hands and pierced feet that he would present his bride without any blemish at all.

That's what we're called to, men.

That if anybody's going to bear blemishes in this relationship, it's you.

You see, Jesus submitted the fullness of his life so that his bride would receive the fullness of hers.

This is the type of love that husbands are being called to, a love that requires deep work.

A love that's cultivated through the grit and grime of laboring for your family's good.

You see, men, we ought to love our wives toward magnificence, the way that Christ has loved the church.

Verse 28.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

Now, one of the primary reasons Paul reveals to us that Jesus loved his bride, the church, is because it was him loving his own body.

There was no separation of the two, right?

When Christ loved the church, he's loving his own body in this.

And so it's the unity of Jesus in his body, the church, that establishes the very reality of the one flesh covenant unity of a husband and a wife.

And so our love is not segregated between two individuals.

Our love is given to this united, singular, covenantal whole.

And he helps us understand this even further.

Verse 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

So Paul uses these words nourishes and cherishes to articulate and to clarify the meaning of the word love in the previous verse.

Now, this word nourish, it means to develop, to nurture, to exalt and to lift up.

For a husband to nourish his own flesh is for him to develop and nurture his wife into a more exalted state of self.

You want to what your work is in nurturing her or nourishing her?

It is to develop her into a more exalted state of self.

It demands an immense amount of intentionality, care, and attention to her.

And then he goes on to use the word cherish, and this word goes deeper emotionally.

This word means to comfort or to warm, to soften, as by heat.

It's actually where we get our English word for warm-hearted.

You see, a husband shows love to his wife by tending to her, caring for her, and intentionally laboring toward her healthiest person.

And a wife's submission is to receive this loving labor from her husband.

You see, the one flesh reality of the husband and wife sets the tone for the way that he is to love her.

A love that nourishes, exerts effort for her betterment, and cherishes one that warmly comforts her.

If Jesus loved the church because she is his body, then the husband is to love his wife because she is his body also.

You see, men, the weight of this calling, the demands that is put on us here in the scripture, it is not light or easy, but it is glorious.

Glorious work is always hard work.

You're not called to dominate your wife, men.

You're called to die for her.

Not to control her, but to cultivate her, not to demand submission, but to demonstrate sacrificial love, the kind of love that Jesus displayed when he bled and died for his bride.

Your love is meant to nourish her, lifting her up, building her confidence, and helping her flourish into the woman of God that she has been created to be.

Your love is meant to cherish her, to tend to her heart like a garden with tenderness and warmth and deep emotional presence.

This is not a passive love.

This is not a nine to five check-in and check-out love.

It's a love of sweat, self-denial, spiritual leadership, gospel pursuit.

It's a love that grows more radiant over time because it's anchored not in your own strength, but it is anchored in Christ's victory.

And so as you are revealing the mystery of the marriage, the mystery of the gospel ought to be more beautiful to you also.

Because the mystery of marriage, the concealed power that it holds, is that it's established to reveal Jesus' covenantal love to the world around us.

You see, the very meaning of marriage is transcendent in nature, moving beyond our own desires of fulfillment, happiness, and purpose.

Its meaning is discovered in plunging the depths of the glorious gospel of grace in God's design.

Wives, you reflect the beauty and strength of the church in reverent submission.

Husbands, you reflect the love of Christ in sacrificial leadership.

And together they form a living parable of the gospel, a mystery made visible in covenant faithfulness, mutual honor, and self-giving love.

This is why marriage matters.

Marriage doesn't end on you, it transcends you to end on him.

It's not ultimately about compatibility or about chemistry.

No, marriage is about covenant.

It's about revealing the mystery of Jesus with your life.

So if your marriage feels heavy, good.

It should.

It's a mystery to be entered into with awe and obedience.

Here's what I want us to understand.

This room is filled with broken marriages.

And I don't just mean the kind that end in divorce.

I mean every marriage in here has experienced the effects of our own brokenness and sin.

There's not a perfect marriage in this room.

We need Jesus.

Our hope has to be in him.

Grace has to be present.

The gospel has to be big enough.

Or else our marriages are absolutely doomed.

Because marriage is weighty.

Thanks be to God that the weightiness of marriage is not ultimately carried by us.

Because it's already been carried by Jesus.

And Jesus selflessly submitted to the Father in sacrificial love for his bride.

As I said, the truth is this: none of us live out marriage the way that God designed it to.

Perfectly.

Some of us we don't even do it good.

But there's a covenant here.

A covenant worth fighting for.

In our sin, in our brokenness.

We distort the mystery of marriage for our own comfort, our own control, and our own convenience.

Husbands, we often fail to love with sacrificial pursuit of our wives.

And wives, you often struggle to trust and submit with joyful reverence.

If we're honest with ourselves, we simply reduce covenant to contract.

As long as you make me happy, I'll stay in this.

But the moment you don't, I'm out.

Many of us we trade glory for just gratification.

We twist what's meant to display the gospel and we pervert it into something that exists simply to serve our own happiness.

But the good news is this Jesus never failed in his role as the bridegroom.

He pursued his bride and her rebellion.

He laid down his life for her while she was still covered in shame and consumed in guilt.

He gave everything so that she could be cleansed, sanctified, and made radiant in glory.

Jesus did the deep work of love.

The cross was not convenient, but it was covenant.

It wasn't romantic sentiment, it was real sacrifice.

And now by his spirit, Christ is forming a new family that is built on his blood and the grace that he extends to us through his finished work.

One where submission is no longer feared because love is no longer absent.

One where men no longer crush, but they cultivate.

One where women no longer shrink back, but they shine forth.

You see, the hope of your marriage, it's not in your ability to get it right.

The hope of your marriage is in his mercy for when you get it wrong.

Because it's his mercy that forgives the failures of yesterday and it empowers the faithfulness of tomorrow.

So we return to Jesus, our faithful groom.

And in him we find grace, glory, and the strength to live out this divine mystery.

Let's pray.