We worship and serve the triune God of Scripture, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our triune God is one God, and everlastingly the same. Our God is three Persons and constantly, surprisingly, different. God is without shadow or variation due to change. But at the same time, the Father is not the Son, and the Spirit is not the Son. But the persons of the Trinity are not distinct from one another in any kind of adversarial tension—the Father perfectly indwells the Son in harmony, the Spirit indwells the Son, the Son indwells the Father and Spirit.
All of this is wonderfully reflected in the institution of marriage. Everything our triune God created reflects His nature and character, and this would certainly have to be the case in His creation of the human race—the pinnacle of His creative work. Men and women are marvelously the same, suitable to one another, and men and women are astonishingly different, about as different as it gets.
Now because of the entrance of sin into the world, both the similarities and the differences have been misunderstood and distorted, and are the causes either of boring conformity, or clashes and quarrels. But this is not what God wants from us. Jesus Christ came into this world in order to forgive us our sins, and to model for us how He would have us relate to one another in all our relationships.
So in marriage, when a man and woman look at one another and see creational similarities—this is a design feature. When they look at one another and see striking differences at the creational level, this is also a design feature. It is not a sign that something is broken. This is how it is supposed to go. The only thing that should ever distress you in marriage is explicit, clear sin—anger, or bitterness, things like that. And when sin disturbs you, it should be your own sin first, long before the other person’s.
But I made a point of saying clear sin. This is because men and women constantly fall into the mistake of thinking the other person is sinning simply because they are being different. You think to yourself, the only way I would have ever done thus and such would be if my motives were wrong and sinful. My spouse just went and did that. Therefore, his or her motives must have been what mine would have been. This is a marvelous way to get all tangled up, and usually over nothing.
Let me give just one example—you will have the rest of your lives together to study and learn about the other 318 ways we do this. Men don’t open up their guy friends about a problem they have unless they are seeking counsel and advice. When they (finally) approach a friend, it is because they are looking for counsel, and the friend knows it, and so once the problem is clearly laid out, the friend says something like, “Well, what I would do . . .” The first guy listens carefully, and appreciates the input, thanks his friend, and then they go back to the normal level of their communication, involving duck hunting or football.
This always worked great, and one day . . . Blake . . . this fellow got married. And one day his wife comes to him with something that is really troubling her. He rejoices inside because this means that he will have an opportunity to help his bride, the one he loves. So she starts to lay out the problem, and he (somewhat eagerly) starts to offer suggestions. But as he does so, she starts to get exasperated. He is frustrated because she is not listening to his suggestions, and she is frustrated because he is talking to her as though she were a customer at Home Depot, and he was a clerk trying to sell her something.
After a couple times doing this, he might start keeping his mouth shut. And one time they had a really long talk, in which she poured out all her troubles, and he simply listened. At the end, she hugs him and says, “Thanks so much . . . I feel a lot better.” She goes to bed happy, and he is one baffled Home Depot clerk. “Why on earth would she feel better about anything? I didn’t give her any of my solutions. I just listened.” Exactly, she might say.
Men are task oriented. Women are relationship oriented. Men want to get to the solutions right away—let’s fix that trouble. Women want to make sure the relationship is solid and secure before anybody thinks about fixing anything. There is a place for both, a necessary place for both. If the husband tells her the next day, after their great talk, that he had been thinking and praying about it, and “here is something she might try,” the chances are good that she will really appreciate it. So the issue is not whether the husband offers what he has, or whether the wife offers what she has. The issue is when, the issue is timing. Remember, the only difference between salad and garbage is timing.
If the two of you together expect this kind of difference to arise in your relationship, and to do so regularly, and you rejoice before the Lord in it, you will have a great deal of fun together. But if you make the mistake of thinking that these creational differences—which go far, far beyond the simple physiological differences between men and women—are a personal affront to you, then you will be in the unenviable position of being constantly slapped around by the way the world is. But just imagine what it would be like to be personally insulted every time the sun rose in the morning, or affronted each time you noticed that gravity keeps you stuck to the floor. That kind of life would be a drag, and there are unfortunately many people who try to be married that way. I charge the two of you together, in the name of Jesus, to love and embrace what God has done in making us male and female, thoroughly united and quite different.
Blake, you are solid and responsible, a hard worker, and it is your solemn privilege and responsibility to continue to be this way, and then some. In what I said just a moment ago, you should have caught the difference between conforming to someone else and harmonizing with someone else. When you harmonize, you become a lot more like yourself, only you are not doing it defensively. The “way you are” becomes a gift you can give instead of being something to guard against alien encroachments. When you try to lose yourself in a conformist way, you cannot really do it, and it only sets the stage for future resentments and clashes. But when you lose your life in the way that Jesus teaches us, you are conscious of serving the other person sacrificially, but everyone who knows you, including your wife, can see clearly how much you are growing into a strong individual, a man of God. And so I charge you here today, as a minister of Jesus Christ, to be a Christian husband, the kind of man, the kind of husband, and the kind of father, that our world is desperately in need of.
Peggy, as long as you have lived in our community, you have brought a vibrant spirit and life into everything. The same thing is happening on this wonderful day—this is the day of Blake’s coronation, and you are his crown. God has filled the world with a lot of wonderful things, and it has been your special gift to be able to delight in them as they come, straight from the hand of God. Whether we are talking about children, or horses, or community, or life in general, you have been blessed with an ability to receive such gifts, and to adorn them. As it turns out, this means that you bring delight to his solidity, and he brings solidity to your delight—and you are to delight in that as well. God is giving you to a man, and it is your privilege to be the best gift he has ever received in this life, or ever will receive. He knows this, and I charge you before God and the holy angels to know it also. Your femininity is your glory, and as of today, it is his glory as well.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.