Untitled Sermon
22
WEDDING
1 Corinthians 13:13
And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (ASV)
A certain handbook on marriage services for ministers says that “five minutes seems too short and yet ten minutes too long” for the address! But how much of the Bible’s extensive teaching about love and marriage can be compressed into seven minutes?
Love is essential for a happy marriage. Marriage that has only lust and not love as its basis is on a very shaky foundation indeed. No wonder the apostle begins the next chapter with the words: “Make love your aim” (RSV).
I. Love is the greatest commandment
In Christian marriage each partner puts the other first and endeavors to please the other, for love “seeketh not her own.” Since our Lord said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another,” there will be more than natural love; there will be supernatural love that overcomes all problems, difficulties, and drawbacks. The Lord’s standard was very high: “As I have loved you … ye also love one another.” His love was sacrificial; it took Him to the cross. Ours must be sacrificial too, putting our own interests last, not first.
And true love is never static: “Increase and abound in love one toward another.” On your wedding day you may think that you cannot possibly love your husband/wife more than you do. Twenty-five years later you will discover that you do, and your early love will seem like “playing at it.”
II. Love is the greatest Christian characteristic
Faith and hope are great Christian characteristics; faith comes at the beginning of the Christian life, and hope sustains all the way along. But love is even greater. It is love that attracts two people together so that they want to become husband and wife. It is love that attracts others to the Christians so that they want to know Christ for themselves. Christians are “partakers of the divine nature” and since “God is love,” “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit”; it will be seen by others as they enter your new home, and they will want Christ as Head of their home.
III. Love is the greatest Christian covering
The Apostle Peter has almost as much to say about love as Paul. Peter wrote: “And above all things have fervent love among your-selves: for love shall cover a multitude of sins” (ASV). Love is like an umbrella or an apron—a covering.
None of us is perfect. On your wedding day you may think you and your partner are perfect, but time will reveal the faults and defects in each other. These will cause irritation to the non-Christian couple, and they will begin to find they are incompatible and seek grounds for divorce. “Love is blind,” they say; yes, but only for the honeymoon period. Afterwards comes the great awakening. It is then that for the Christian love covers up “a multitude of sins.” You do not attempt to change one another, for you have taken each other “for better or for worse.” But love enables you to go on loving each other as you are—with all your faults and failings, conscious of your own as well as of his or hers. After all, it was only because God’s love covered our sins that we became children of God, adopted into His family: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The death of Christ on the cross, and the blood shed at Calvary, were our covering, meaning that our sins were blotted out.
A few moments ago you said “I will” to each other. It was because you said “I will” to Christ that He came into your lives. Now He wants to live His life through you, so that His love shines through you, the love that is “as strong as death,” the greatest commandment, the greatest characteristic, and the greatest covering.