What God Has Joined: A Covenant Of Love That Lasts
Friends, we have gathered today for one of the most joyful and serious things human beings ever do together. We have come to witness two people make a promise before God and before this company of witnesses, a promise that will shape every ordinary Tuesday and every extraordinary moment of the years ahead. So before we celebrate, let us listen. Let us open the Word of God and hear what the Creator of marriage has to say about what is happening in this room today.
We are reading from two passages. The first is Genesis 2:18-24 in the Christian Standard Bible. The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him." So the Lord God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal; but for the man no helper was found corresponding to him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. Then the Lord God made the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. And the man said, "This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called woman, for she was taken from man." This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.
The second passage is 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
These two texts belong together. Genesis shows us the origin of marriage. First Corinthians shows us the character of the love that holds it together. Let us spend a few minutes with each.
The Origin Of Marriage
Notice that marriage does not begin with a human idea. It begins with a divine observation. God looked at the man and said, "It is not good for the man to be alone." This is the first time in the creation account that God calls something "not good," and he says it before sin ever enters the story. Loneliness is not a consequence of the fall. The need for companionship is woven into the fabric of what it means to be human. God himself designed that need, and then God himself met it.
What follows is one of the most tender moments in all of Scripture. God forms the woman not from the dust of the ground, as he formed the man, but from the man himself, from his very side. When the man wakes and sees her, his response is a burst of poetry, the first song in the Bible. "This one, at last," he says. There is recognition, delight, and belonging all at once. And then the text draws a conclusion that Jesus himself would later quote: "This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh."
Three movements are in that sentence. Leaving. Bonding. Becoming one. Marriage is not the addition of a new relationship to the old ones. It is the creation of a new household, a new covenant unit, the most intimate union one human being can share with another. The word translated "bonds" in the CSB carries the idea of clinging, of holding fast. It is the language of loyalty and commitment, not merely of affection. This is covenant language. What you are doing today is not simply a celebration of how you feel about each other. You are entering a covenant, a binding promise made before God, witnessed by this congregation, and held together by his faithfulness as much as your own.
The Character Of Covenant Love
That is exactly why we need 1 Corinthians 13. The love described in this passage is not the love of a greeting card. It is not a feeling that rises and falls with circumstances. Paul describes love as a series of deliberate choices, a way of acting toward another person day after day, especially when it is difficult.
Love is patient. That means love absorbs frustration without retaliation. Love is kind. That means love looks for ways to serve rather than ways to be served. Love is not self-seeking. That is perhaps the most countercultural line in the entire passage. In a world that tells you to protect yourself and pursue your own happiness first, the apostle says that genuine love sets the self aside for the good of the other. And then the climax: love never ends.
This is the love that sustains a covenant. Not the feeling of a wedding day, beautiful as that feeling is, but the daily, chosen, Christ-shaped love that gets up and tries again after a hard conversation, that forgives when forgiveness is costly, that stays when staying is hard.
And here is the good news at the heart of this message. You do not have to manufacture this love on your own. The apostle John tells us that we love because God first loved us. The love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is not merely a human ideal. It is a description of how God in Christ has loved his people. He was patient with us. He was kind toward us. He bore all things on our behalf. He endured the cross. His love never ends. When you draw on that love, when you return to the gospel again and again and let it reshape how you treat each other, you will find a supply that does not run dry.
A Charge And A Blessing
So here is the charge for the two of you as you stand at this threshold. Leave well. Bond faithfully. Cling to each other with the tenacity that covenant demands. And when the love described in this chapter feels beyond your reach, go back to the One who is its source. Keep Christ at the center of your home. Pray together. Forgive quickly. Serve each other generously. Let the grace that saved you be the grace that shapes your marriage.
And to everyone gathered here today, know that you are witnesses and supporters of this covenant. Pray for this couple. Encourage them. Surround them with the kind of community that helps a marriage flourish.
May the God who designed marriage, who brought the first bride to the first groom, who joins what no one should separate, hold the two of you together. May his love be the foundation under your feet, the light in your home, and the joy that carries you forward into all the years he gives you. What God has joined, may his grace keep.
Amen.
Sources Consulted
Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 1 (Waco: Word Books, 1987).
Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990).
Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).
Andreas J. Kostenberger with David W. Jones, God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation, second edition (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010).
Thomas R. Schreiner, 1 Corinthians, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018).
Before preaching: verify every biblical reference, replace general language only with couple-approved details, and revise the message in your own Christian tradition and pastoral voice.