(Validating and Illustrating the Gospel in Weddings)

By Albert N. Martin (Copyright 2012 Chapel Library)

[As I am going to continue with Albert Martin’s wedding manual, I’d like to remind us all that a wedding is a service of a public worship. Thus, the church expects that a couple married in church believes in God and desires that God be the authority guiding their lives. The church also expects that the couple recognizes the importance of lifelong commitment to their marriage vows. The church expects to have some normative influence on the shape of a wedding ceremony and all associated events. The church also expects to have continuing involvement in the spiritual life of the married couple. In order to have a public worship service for a wedding, I would make a couple of suggestions for future practice at Hope Church. First, pastors should agree to officiate at a wedding only if the intended marriage relationship has been endorsed by the Session. This removes pastors from the pressure to marry a couple because they demand him to do it. Second, by knowing that the Session must confirm their right to marry, they will find a greater sense of church community involvement in their church wedding. As we have been doing it, the church should establish a period of premarital instruction of counselling as a means by which to guard the permanency of wedding vows. Last, the church’s understanding of the meaning of marriage must be demonstrated by the shape of the wedding itself. For example, what kinds of songs should be sung and why? What meaning do various symbolic acts have (rings or signing, etc.)? What should be the content of the vows themselves? How does the “reception” relate to the wedding ceremony itself?

After Albert Martin declares that a wedding is a service of public worship, he says that a wedding must validate and illustrate the Gospel.] 

2. AWeddingThatValidatesandIllustratestheGospel

The Scriptures clearly teach us that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). A large part of the power of God in that salvation is God’s gracious work in delivering us out of this present evil world (Galatians 1:4). Furthermore, according to the apostle Paul, gratitude for the mercies extended to us in that salvation should lead us to live lives characterized by a settled determination that we will not be conformed to this world, but continually transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1–2). Your nonconformity to the world, particularly in several areas, should be patent in a truly Christian wedding service in order to both validate and illustrate what the gospel has done in your lives.

First, the mandate of nonconformity to the world should be patent in the language of the vows to be exchanged. A Christian couple that has embraced God’s design for the respective roles and relationships of husbands and wives, as revealed in the Scriptures, will desire to exchange vows that unmistakably reflect that they have clearly understood and are wholeheartedly embracing God’s directives for them in their new roles. The world has jettisoned the biblical directives concerning the husband’s divinely assigned role as loving head, provider, and leader. The world has rejected as well the wife’s assigned role as loving, submissive helper, partner, and follower. Surely, no Christian couple would want anyone to question whether they have rejected the world’s perspectives on these matters and have joyfully embraced the biblical teaching on the respective roles of husbands and wives. Therefore, if you compose your own vows instead of using the vows suggested by your pastor, we expect you to express clearly the biblical language of loving leadership and headship on the part of the man and loving submission on the part of the wife.

Furthermore, living as we do in an age of easy no-fault divorce, a Christian couple will desire their vows to express clearly that they are entering the married state, consciously and conscientiously committed to a solemn covenant “till death should part them.” Embarrassing experience inclines us to give one further word of caution concerning the content of your vows. Some words and phrases are perfectly legitimate in the private love language between a husband and wife. However, you should not include them in vows that are publicly spoken.

The second vital area in which a Christian couple desiring a truly Christian wedding can validate and illustrate the power of the gospel is in the area of modesty of dress. When the apostle Paul is giving detailed directives for behavior in the house of God (1Timothy 3:15), the first item he addresses to women in particular is modesty of dress that is consistent with true godliness (1 Timothy 2:9-10). For this reason, we believe that those who desire to marry in our house of worship by a servant of God in the context of a gathering composed primarily of the people of God must take seriously the biblical mandate of modesty. As previously stated, the perspective of the ungodly world is that a wedding is all about the bride. Part of that assumption is that the bride’s adornment, along with the adornment of her attendants, can be as flesh revealing and immodest as the bride and her attendants may choose.

In light of Romans 12:1-2, ought not Christian couples be concerned to show that the gospel has produced in them a conscious commitment to modesty of dress and demeanor as an expression of devotion to Christ? Therefore, Christians should not tolerate a wedding marked by the excessive display of flesh and dresses that reflect the world’s indifference to godly standards of modesty. The dress of the wedding party must validate and illustrate the gospel that is preached from the pulpit in your church. It is perfectly possible to negate the truth of the gospel by what we do as well as by what we say (see Galatians 2:14 for a clear example of this principle in operation).

Surely, any Christian woman desires her wedding to be an expression of what would be pleasing to her Lord and Savior. Is not the wedding a wonderful opportunity for a Christian woman to declare to all present on that occasion that God has placed in her heart a passion to be a pure and modest woman? Surely, a godly woman would not desire deliberately and knowingly to provoke lustful thoughts in the minds of men, cause shame and embarrassment to the hearts of the members of her church who are present at her wedding, grieve the hearts of her overseers, and compromise the gospel witness of the very congregation in which she is now making her marital vows.

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