The origin of the following quote may seem a little odd but stick with me and see if it doesn’t prove helpful for your thinking about the gospel and its application.
This quote was taken off of a comment thread from a blog titled The Institute and was pointed out to me by a blog called Jollyblogger. To add to this confusion, the commentor remains anonymous (all the more reason to use discernment in reading it). Oh well, here it goes.
Luther said that the life of a Christian is a life of repentance. The same goes for life in marriage. A marriage in the context of the gospel always has repentance and forgiveness available when sinners eventually sin. Thus surviving in marriage isn’t based on how strongly in love you feel at any given moment, but upon the promise of God to bless repentance and forgiveness. From that sure foundation, a man and woman can get busy in the gospel’s mission of loving their neighbor, with their first neighbor being their spouse.
That is why I DO think “we just need to preach the gospel more.” But I mean to preach the gospel fully so that it touches all aspects of life’s brokenness, as the Bible preaches it. That means we don’t just preach the gospel as a theological abstraction for people to assent to or not, as if their assent will magically cure their marital (or other) problems. It means we get our hands and our hearts dirty by engaging with the mess of our friends’ and neighbors’ lives. It means we show people that their identity is found in Christ, not in their spouse or their spouse’s feelings about them. It means we show them that the example for them to follow is that of Christ’s committed love to His bride, the church, rather than the example of their parents and step-parents who have each been divorced at least once. It means we explain to people that their obsessions with pornography, shopping, eating, gambling, working, etc., are actually bondage, but Christ came to give freedom. It means that we teach people that their family’s mission is not to become wealthy or secure or happy but to serve their neighbors. There are countless ways that the gospel is the answer to the struggles of marriage.