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᛭ INI ᛭

Paul says, “Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” (Eph 4) God in Christ forgiving you is the only way that you will indeed fulfill the Law of Christ and “love another as I have loved you.” Only through Christ’s forgiveness will forgiveness abound from you Chase to you Kali, and from you back again. Back and forth, rinse and repeat, from beginning today to the end of your lives—“Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

God in Christ forgave you by Christ dying for you. There’s no other forgiveness than dying for you forgiveness. That’s Christ’s for you, Chase, and for you, Kali, and really for all of us! Christ “bore your sins in His own body on the tree”—our trusting in other things, many other things, beautiful things, besides God alone, our misusing and abusing God’s name, or not using it all, our forsaking His Word and Preaching and Supper, our dishonoring parents, our anger, our lust, our grubbing for more, our gossip, our wanting more, always wanting more, never satisfied—all that sin, Christ’s. He “made peace by the blood of His cross,” “by His wounds you are healed,” forgiven, and so “in Him” and Him alone “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

God in Christ forgiving you is what marriage is all about because it’s what the Holy Christian Church and her relationship with Christ is all about. Christ dies for His Church, and the Church is died for by Her Christ. Christ saves and cares for the Church, and she is truly saved and cared for. Christ washes her with the watery Word, and she has no age spot or wrinkle or anything else. Christ nourishes her feeds her, and she is sustained and enlivened as His body through His body and blood, we, too, are members of His body by the bread we break and the cup we bless, for they are the Communion of Christ’s body and blood, as Paul says elsewhere.

As a living picture of this, the Lord has brought you together. No longer “you and me” or “yours and mine” but “we” and “ours.” “The two shall become one flesh,” and yet there is a proper ordering of things, which has nothing to do with who earns what or whose chores are whose. It’s not about power and dominance, such things have no place among God’s holy people at all, let alone Christian husbands and wives. No, it’s all about “forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

So forgiveness begins with him who’s the image of Christ, that’s you, Chase, and forgiveness’ end is with her who’s the image of the Church, that’s you, Kali. As Christ forgives the Church, and she in turn is forgiven. As husband and wife you are a living piece of art—reflecting and mirroring Christ and His bride, the Church. An image of forgiveness that you will pass on to your children. After all, there will be children: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I’ll make a helper fit for him.” And to this one flesh union the LORD God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Now, when it comes to the forgiving and being forgiven, you will mess up. Chase, you won’t always be Christlike for Kali, and Kali, you won’t be Churchlike for Chase. Such is the case when you put two sinners in the same house and bed as husband and wife. The Lord’s solution isn’t to share a cup of coffee or to make a cup of coffee (or whatever other thing you might do to say sorry). Though discussing the home front together and serving one another will give you a successful marriage, worldly speaking, at least, but spiritually speaking it would be a dead house and marriage.

The key then is again, as Paul says, “forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” God in Christ forgiving you isn’t just Calvary where Christ purchased forgiveness for you through His blood. This isn’t just you saying “I forgive you,” when the other says, “I’m sorry.” Those are, though, the three most important words for whenever those two most humbling words are spoken… No, the Lord always has more forgiveness for you, always more forgiveness than we have sins. And so the most important Cup for the spiritual success of your marriage and your household is the Cup of the Lord, the Cup of Blessing which we bless, for, as Paul says, “it is the Communion of the Blood of Christ.” For by being nourished with Christ’s body and blood, by faith alone you receive the forgiveness of all your sins.

“Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” That’s the Christian life of marriage. For God in Christ forgiving you is the only way that you will indeed fulfill the Law of Christ and “love another as I have loved you.” Only through Christ’s forgiveness will forgiveness abound from you Chase to you Kali, and from you back again. Back and forth, rinse and repeat, from beginning today to the end of your lives, when by virtue of your faith in Christ alone will you be ushered in to the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end.

᛭ INI ᛭