The Wedding of Jacquelyn Morey & Tyler Stone

March 9, 2024

John 15:9-12

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” Everything Jesus says about love is grounded in this organic connection: Jesus the Vine, the Father the Vinedresser. We are branches joined to the vine. That means we have no life in ourselves. Our life is utterly dependent upon His. That’s the background for our Lord’s teaching about love, which comes eight verses later.

There, in Jn 15.9, Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” Notice that the Lord does not say, “Abide in love.” It’s easy to be in love – for a time. It’s easy to feel love when we’ve set a romantic mood and there are no crosses to bear.

But Jesus is not preparing His disciples for a make-believe life. He is preparing them and us for the way of the cross. And that way of the cross, as it pertains to marriage, involves first rejecting the soulmate myth. 73% of Americans believe the myth, that two people are destined to be together.

“Psychologist Scott Stanley … writes, a soulmate is ‘someone for whom you would not have to make major compromises’” [Brad Wilcox, “Don’t Buy the Soulmate Myth,” WSJ, 2/9/2024]. Well, as Wesley says to Inigo Montoya, “Get used to disappointment.”

Professor Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia, the most significant scholar of our day in the area of marriage and sociology, writes “that happiness—in life and in love—is less likely to be found when we pursue it directly…. Happiness is more likely to appear when we set our compass on destinations beyond ourselves and our own desires” [ibid.].

The good of marriage is precisely in subordinating your selfish desires to the desires of God for you. In marriage we repeat to the Father the words of Jesus, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” And then we say the same thing about the goods needed in the family: “Not as I will, but as God wills for the benefit of the spouse and children He gives me.”

And the spouse and children He gives us have needs, some of which are right now unforeseen. To meet those needs, Jesus does not say, “Abide in love.” No, He says, “Abide in my love.” What sort of love is that? The kind that abandons every claim.

Jesus, the true king, accepts a crown of thorns. He who multiplies loaves accepts fasting in the desert. He who is faithful suffers betrayal. He who is the Truth becomes the victim of lies.

His love makes no claims for Himself. He always seeks the benefit of the other. That is the love of a disciple, and it is especially the love of a husband or wife.

What does this mean for you? It means that your love makes no claims for self, but focuses on what is best for we. “We before me” is the key to a successful marriage.

Yet “we before me” still is not yet Christian marriage. For Jesus says, “Abide in my love.” And this involves a turning. In just a minute or two you will come and stand before the altar. You are not facing each other, but facing the altar.

You will turn and face each other for your vows and the exchange of rings. The vows are important, and they are promises made before God to each other. But the exchange of vows is not yet marriage. The marriage only happens when the LORD enters in and blesses you. And for that, you turn back to the altar and kneel. There you are not facing each other, but you are side by side facing the LORD. You are side by side in a posture of submission and dependence: submission to the LORD and dependence upon the LORD.

That is the strength of holy marriage: not gazing upon each other, but side by side trusting only in what the LORD gives to you. It is His will to bless you. He who promises this to you is faithful, and He will perform it. This is most certainly true! +INJ+