Nearly thirty-six years ago
I married my wife. It was a legal transaction and by it I was changed from the
state of being single to that of being married. I have a marriage license that I
can take out and read and know that all legal conditions were met and there is
nothing that can be brought against me concerning the satisfaction of what the
law of the land demanded. I get a certain kind of comfort knowing that we are
married legally and that no one can bring a charge against us in that matter.
But while all of this is true, necessary and good, if it was all there was to my
marriage I would be very unhappy! Paper certificates cannot show me affection. A
legal transaction cannot speak to me, embrace me or have fellowship with me. By
that transaction I was brought into union with a person, my beautiful, loving
wife! Without that marriage license we wouldn't be married but I didn't marry
the license! Now I've said all this because God uses the marriage union to teach
us something about the relationship of His elect to Christ. In our union with
Christ there is a legal satisfaction of all that would hinder us from being
joined to the family of the holy God. We are naturally part of Adam's family and
therefore under the curse of the law for having broken it. But in Christ Paul
says, "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of
Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the
dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." (Rom. 7:4) The everlasting
covenant is the wedding agreement in which God the Father chose me and gave me
to Christ. On the cross Christ died that He might make me without "spot or
wrinkle or any such thing" but "holy and without blemish...as a bride adorned
for her husband." The Holy Spirit came to me through the preaching of the gospel
that announced this good news and gave me new birth causing me to fall in love
with the Lord Jesus. That legal union brought about a living union between
myself and the Lover of my soul. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine" and
"as He is, so are we in this world." One thing I know, all who are legally
married to Christ are happily and personally married to Christ. By faith we are
not married to the benefits and privileges of Christ primarily, but to Christ
Himself. I do not come home each day to my wife, eat that which she has prepared
or delight in her presence because of a thing legal but because of love! Perhaps
this is why some who profess to rejoice in the legal satisfaction of Christ's
blood and righteousness can absent themselves from His worship, disobey His
plain commands, bring reproach on Him before the unbelieving world and isolate
themselves from His people. Christ said of the Holy Spirit, "He shall glorify
ME" and "He shall testify of Me." Now I know that you cannot speak of the Person
of Christ without speaking of His work. But there is a danger of viewing the
doctrines of Christ in such a way that they can be used by our sin-deceived
hearts to excuse in our relationship to the Person of Christ. Well did John Owen
put it when he said that doctrines, separate from Him, "have no living power,
but are as waters separated from the fountain; they dry up, or become a noisome
puddle, or as a beam interrupted from its continuity with the sun is immediately
deprived of light." I must say with an old preacher, "There is a vast difference
between, on the one hand, believing day by day in a living Saviour, and on the
other, resting satisfied with the salvation He brings, as if that were all."
Like Paul, "what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for CHRIST, I
count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of CHRIST JESUS MY
LORD, that I may win CHRIST, and be found in HIM, that I might know HIM!" Thank
God He was "pleased to reveal HIS SON in me."