sermonshorts

This last weekend at Revolution Church I talked about the connection between our relationship with God and the relationship with our spouse. The focus of the message was that it is not possible to say that you love Jesus and to not love others. The primary way that we show we love Jesus is in how we show our love to others and that naturally includes our marriages. The heart for this message comes from the text in 1 John 2 that states that it is not possible to hate a brother or sister and say that “I am living in the light.” Now saying this, does present some difficulties so I wanted to clear some of them up.

1. Your relationship with Christ is a personal thing that is not dependent on anyone else including your own goodness. I have a relationship with Jesus a part from my wife and I will be judged alone when I get to heaven.
2. However, my faith is never solely a personal thing because it has to be lived out in a public manner, that includes ALL my relationships and most importantly my relationship with my wife.

The exact phrase that I said was “It is impossible to say that you love Jesus and have a marriage that is falling a part.” Well, let me expand a bit more on the thought. Maybe what I should have said is, “It is impossible to say that you love Jesus and have a marriage that is falling a part because of you.” The point is not if you have/had a bad marriage then you don’t love Jesus, but rather if your marriage is bad because of your sin and selfishness then you can’t fully say that you love Jesus. The idea of marriage is a biblical one and is one of the primary metaphors that the Bible uses to describe our relationship with the Father. We are the bride of Christ and He is our husband where we will be joined together with him at the renewal of all things in a marriage celebration. So the primary place that I live out my faith is in my marriage as a reflection of THE marriage that will occur in eternity. So having said that, my relationship with Jesus and my relationship with my spouse are linked because it is a union that God created and the place where I primarily show the same love that Jesus did. The problem arises when one person in the marriage is not Christ-like and therefore a marriage begins to fall a part. In that case, it DOES NOT mean that if your marriage falls a part then you do not love Jesus, however, it does mean that it affects it. If your marriage has fallen a part and you would admit that you did a lot of things wrong then obviously you were not following Christ with those decisions. Now, if you realized the mistakes that you made, confessed them to your spouse, repented of your decisions, lived to make amends and your spouse chose not to forgive and work on the marriage then that means you actually were living in a godly way. At the end of the day you cant control how anyone responds including your spouse however you can control how you respond. So the real question is not “am I still godly if my marriage falls a apart” but rather “did I act like Jesus in every way in order for my marriage to be restored?” The reason this is so key is because if you say that you love Jesus and you did not act the way he did then you do not fully understand the gospel. The gospel will not allow for us to live selfishly in any area and especially our marriage. Every marriage has rocky times and my marriage is certainly not immune. There have been times that we have fought, been selfish and had marital problems until we realized that neither of us deserved the other and the gospel lit us up to see our sin and therefore led to confession and repentance. Those actions led to intimacy and by default a more godly and satisfying marriage.

So, as an attempt to move forward ask yourself these questions:
1. Do you fully understand the weight of your sin and what Jesus did for you?
2. Are you living like others owe you or because of the gospel are you living to serve others and especially your spouse?
3. How can you begin to connect your relationship with Christ to all of your relationships and move towards confession and repentance?

All of our relationships are a reflection of THE relationship that we have with Jesus. I hope that this may help in understanding the connection between your relationship with Jesus and your relationship with others. And then lead you to live out the gospel everyday.