In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, welcome.
We have gathered in the name of the triune God of Scripture. We are gathered under the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth. We are gathered in the name of Jesus, as members of His body. We are gathered by the Holy Spirit of God, who has gone out into all the earth to create a new humanity in Jesus Christ.
As Christians, we believe that God created all things, and that in Christ He has recreated all things. Let us first consider the glory of creation. The history of our world begins with the creation of heaven and earth, which itself was the result of God’s decision to establish a fundamental dualism. God spoke the cosmos into existence, and this meant that forever and ever there would be a division between that which is God and that which is not God. Not only did God establish this Creator/creature distinction, but He looked on the other side of that distinction and pronounced it good. He determined that it would be good for something to exist forever that was not divine.
And when we consider all that God did in the process of creating this world, we see that He loves to do this over and over. He divides the heaven from the earth, the light from the darkness, the sun from the moon, the sea from the dry land, and then ultimately, finally, the woman from the man. And all of these divisions He declared to be good.
Now when God divided the woman from the man, He was making one into two. He took a rib from Adam’s side and fashioned the woman out of it. But He made one into two in order to reestablish them in a different kind of union—so that the two might become one in a different and more glorious way. This shows that the divisions that God loves to create were not discordant divisions. The sun and moon were in harmony, as were heavens and earth. The man and the woman lived in paradise, and there was no conflict between them. There was no envious competition between the sea and the dry land. God created good divisions, harmonious divisions, complementary divisions.
So when our first parents disobeyed Him at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they did not introduce division into the world. What they introduced was a fragmented, inharmonious division, which is what sin always does. The division between one note and a completely different note is what makes harmony possible—but it is also what makes a discordant lack of harmony possible. We sometimes think that our first parents’ sin brought differences into the world, but what it actually did is take a world already full of glorious differences, and make them all jar and clatter against each other. The differences in themselves were good and necessary.
Because of our sin, we wrecked the world full of these delicately balanced differences, and brought them into conflict with one another. This is particularly evident at the pinnacle of creation, with man as the glory of Christ, and the woman as the glory of the man. Designed to complement one another, harmonizing wonderfully, our first parents fell quickly into blaming others for their own sin and folly. And that has been a pattern ever since. Men and women blame their differences for the conflict, when it is not the differences at all—it is the discordant differences. Sin is the problem, not distinctions.
Nevertheless, such misplaced blaming is common now. So, in this world, how dare any of Adam and Eve’s children ever get married? Isn’t this just asking for it? Apart from Christ, yes, that is true. But we are Christians, and we have asked God to bless what we are doing and saying here today. Let us trust Him to do so. In the full confidence that He has heard our prayer, how will this be accomplished?
The jagged nature of sin, the discordant nature of all our divisions, was the problem that has afflicted us since our first parents plunged the first humanity into that darkness. But God in His grace promised them, immediately after their fall into sin, that He was going to give the woman a seed so that she might be avenged on the serpent, and that her seed was going to crush the serpent’s head, bruising his own heel as he did so. This was accomplished, the New Testament tells us, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again from the dead—and all in accordance with the Scriptures. When this happened, God was establishing a new series of good divisions. He separated life from death. He separated holiness from sin. But fundamentally, He separated a new humanity from the old, dead humanity. The word Adam means mankind, and so when the Bible tells us that Christ was the last Adam, this means that He is the last mankind. And because sin wrecked the glory of division in the old humanity, the new humanity, separating from that, reestablishes the glory of harmonious division. We are Christians; we rejoice in sun and moon, earth and sky, sea and dry land. We are Christians; we love weddings between a man and a woman. This is creation. This is recreation. This is gospel restoration.
Paul, my charge to you is this. Remember, always remember, that the creational differences between you and Kari are glorious and good. God designed them, and He loves His design. As you grow in grace as a godly Christian husband, you are to be growing in your love for what God loves. A monotonous and very non-Trinitarian way to try to keep peace in the home is by making everybody sing the same note. Resist the temptation to move in that direction. Kari once commented to me how kind you have always been to her. Nurture that kindness—use it to lead her, teach her, comfort her, reassure her, provide for her, hold her, and to make room for her. In that kindness, expect her to be completely different from you, and rejoice in those differences. Refuse only the kind of differences that sin creates—because all the others are from the hand of God.
Kari, my charge to you is actually a variation of the same charge. If you learn to love differences while hating sin, you will be growing in the restoration of our lost and marred humanity. But if you identify all differences with sin, you will confuse matters significantly for yourself. If you assume that your husband’s motives for saying something are exactly the same as your motives would have been had you said something like, you have neglected this very important point. You are outgoing and exuberant, while Paul is thoughtful and deliberative. If you assume that Paul doesn’t care about something simply because he says that he wants to think about it, then you are not embracing your differences. It is possible that he said he wants to think about it because he wants to think about it. Embrace your differences. Glory in them.
And the two of you together are obviously ready to embrace the gospel importance of differences. Kari, you are someone of Norwegian descent who has lived many years in Japan, and Paul, you are of Indian descent and living in Texas. In other words, in some ways you are clearly way ahead of me here. So take all your differences in Christ—hold to them, cling to them. Find your pitch, and through the power of the Holy Spirit harmonize with them.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.