Kennystix's podcast
Marriage: Forgiving and Forbearing
The following resource is from desiringGod.org. The sermon text this evening is Colossians 3, 12 through 19. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Let's pray. Lord, there is a great cloud of witnesses. What a cloud of witnesses it is lining the way they finished the race as it were. They come around and they stand on the side and say go. You can do this, you can stay in this marriage. You can love, you can forgive, you can do this, we finished. Finish well. What a cloud of witnesses we have. God, may we take heart and may you pour out a spirit of covenant keeping love on us in this church. Church membership covenant keeping, marriage covenant keeping, contract covenant keeping rental covenant keeping, citizenship covenant keeping, oh God, may we be strong to keep our commitments just like you did when you died, to seal it forever. I will make with them a never lasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing them good and I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will never turn away from me and that you bought with your blood. We have not yet suffered unto the shedding of blood in the covenant keeping of our lives. Keep us faithful. May in Jesus' name, amen. Namely you cannot say too often that marriage is a model of Christ in the church. I said I agreed with that and gave three reasons. I will mention two of them, one, saying it that way, saying that which is basically Ephesians 532, lift marriage up out of the sitcom sewer into the high clear, bright, beautiful air of the glory of God where it was designed to be and the second reason she is right is that saying that over and over again puts marriage on the foundation of grace because if we're modeling Christ in the church, he bought the church by grace, he sustains the church by grace alone and therefore if marriage is a picture of that, marriage will be based on grace and that's what I began to talk about last time. Before that, there were two messages supporting that first reason, namely that when you say that marriage has its main meaning in modeling Christ in the church, you're lifting it up into something glorious and I unpack that by saying it's the doing of God and the display of God. Marriage is pointing to something glorious. Marriage itself is temporary. It's not ultimate, it's not God, not even close to God. It is temporary pointing to something glorious and eternal. So you remember what Jesus said, Matthew 22.30, "In the resurrection, they neither marry in the resurrection. When you are raised from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven," which is why my father, Bill Piper, will not be a biggomist in heaven at the resurrection, enjoying 36 years of marriage with my mother and then after she died, 25 years of marriage with my stepmother and now they're both dead and one day they and he will be raised from the dead and he will not be a biggomist because in the resurrection there will be no marriage because the pointer vanishes into the reality. It's all about Christ. I mean, that should help you grasp the wonder of what it is now so that you don't spend on it wrong investments. It is designed to point to something and then vanish into it so it should get started now in what it was meant to point to. So those were the first two messages and then last time I began to build on this second argument for Noel's statement, namely that you cannot say too often that marriage is a model of Christ in the church and the second argument is therefore it's built on grace. So last time I simply unfolded the general structure of Colossians 2 and Colossians 3 and the way Paul thinks, let me remind you of how that happened. Chapter 2 verses 13 and 14, 13 at the end, having forgiven us all our trespasses. So Christian husbands and wives, all their trespasses forgiven, cancelling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands. This, he set aside, nailing it to the cross. So the record of debt that is mounting against you every day, because you see in every day, the record of debt that is mounting against you every day is cancelled. How? By being nailed to the cross. Now you know as well as I, nails in wood forgive no sin. So what does he mean? He means they went through a hand into the cross. They went through a foot into the cross and whose was it? Mine should have been. It was the Son of God, which is why mine can be cancelled if I trust him. It's the gospel. It's the glorious gospel that we should be telling everybody in the Twin Cities. That's chapter 2. Marriage is built on that. Where sins were nailed to the cross, my sins were nailed to the cross. That's the foundation of marriage. Then, you get to chapter 3, especially verse 13, which we just heard, second half of the verse as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And you, the way I described it was this vertical forgiveness, vertical grace, vertical justification is coming down from Jesus through the cross and I now am so thrilled by it, transformed by it, so reveling in it that I now bend it out to my wife and she to me. And thus, marriage becomes a display of the covenant-keeping love of Christ and the church. Then I asked a question, "Why, Piper, are you going about it this way?" Why are you stressing forgiveness and forbearance instead of romance and enjoyment? And I gave you three reasons, here they are. One, because in marriage, there will always be conflict for the simple reason that there will always be sin and, I said, strangeness, idiosyncrasy, peculiarities about this person that get your goat, always to the end of time. And if you don't have a way to manage that, things are coming down. Secondly, hard, rugged work of forgiveness and forbearance makes possible the reawakening of affections that you thought were dead and they weren't dead, they were dormant, so that as you preserve the covenant safety by the hard work of forgiveness and forbearance, you preserve a place where the miracle of reawakening, of being in love, can happen again. Third, God gets glory when two very imperfect, very flawed, very different people forge a lifetime of faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Jesus. He gets so much glory from such a persevering faithfulness. So for those two reasons, I'm going about it the way I'm going about it now. My aim today is to go further into this issue of forbearing and forgiving. We passed over it way too quickly last time and they're here in the text. I'll read it in just a minute, but I want to preface this with a caution. I'm aware as I undertake to address issues of forbearing each other and during bearing with that there are sins against a spouse that push forbearance across the line into the assistance of sinning. I'm thinking of things like assault, adultery, child abuse, drunken rage, addictive gambling theft, lying that brings the family to ruin which may require a redemptive separation. And I'm not going to talk about that tonight. That's big, that's heavy, that's controversial and I will preach a whole message or two on separation, divorce and remarriage in a few weeks. So I just want you to know I'm aware that when I talk about forbearance, I understand there are horrific situations that are not easy to deal with. What I'm doing tonight is setting up a way of relating that I hope for hundreds of marriages will keep you from going there. And for some, pull you right back from the brink, ready to step over there. And God willing, perhaps for a few, bring back together some whom the world calls divorced. And I hope that single people and children will sow here what this is that they will be ready someday, if God wills, to build a life together on this rock of grace. So even though I know what I'm saying here is not the total solution to every kind of horrific situation, it is so true for hundreds and thousands of situations that might keep you from going there. So here we are Colossians chapter three. When Paul arrives in chapter three at verse 12, he has already laid a massive foundation in the person and work of Christ for our sins, the foundation of all of life, the foundation of all of marriage. So let me say real clearly, the main battle in life and the main battle in marriage is to believe in the person and work of Christ. When I say believe, I mean, trust it, embrace it, cherish it, treasure it, bank on it, breathe it, let it shape you. I don't mean some little signature or some little attendance at a meeting or some little growing up in a tradition. I mean, this is your life. Christ is my life. His cross is my life. This is my joy. This is my hope. From this, I love my wife. From this, I love my husband. Out of this, I find forbearance and forgiveness possible. The main battle in life is this. Do we believe him, trust him, love him, bank on him, saturated with him, drawing joy from him? Is he or all our life? There's the battle. It's not little tricks of how to get along in marriage. Christ being broken, being healed, being filled, being enabled to bend it out to another. So fight at the right place, fight at the wrong place, thinking, "Well, that's taken care of. I prayed that prayer when I was six." Not the point. Now is he my all. What he does now, having laid that foundation, is really beautiful. It is so beautiful. Many people have chosen these verses as their wedding text. I have done many weddings where this is what they wanted spoken about. So here we are, verse 12, and the first thing he does now is to tell us what kind of clothes such people wear, not these moral clothes, spiritual clothes, that's the image. Put on. Are we together at verse 12? Put on, then, then, on the basis of all that glorious Christ work. Put on, then, and now, bring himself to just go straight to the admonition. He's got to say it three more ways. Who you are, so get this now. Who are you? Three names for you, three glorious realities about your identity. Number one, put on, then, as God's chosen ones. Number two, as God's holy three, as God's loved ones. Now he's about to tell us what kind of heart attitudes and external demeanors are the clothing that should clothe that kind of person. So you will only know how to put on these moral spiritual clothes that are about to be listed. If you're this, chosen, holy, loved, let me just say a word about each of those, chosen. So the foundation of the world, God, according to Ephesians 1, 4, chose you for his own. Before you ever existed, if you're a Christian, he chose you. If you're not a Christian, become a Christian, and you will prove to be chosen. Now Paul loved this truth. He thrilled him, do you remember the words from Romans 8, 33, "Who shall bring any charge against God's what?" He left. You see what it did for him? I'm chosen, no charge can stand against me. It should have that emotionally effect on you. It's a thrilling doctrine that God moves on his people, and he chooses them for himself, makes them his own, such that if they resist that truth, they resist being loved. Isn't that sad? The fine fault with the doctrine of election is to find fault with being loved. Second, holy. Put on a certain kind of behavior and heart disposition because you are holy. You are holy, so become holy. You see this? I am talking to you, and you are chosen, you are holy, and you are loved. Now become these ways, and a good way to describe those is holy. So what's this? It's holy means when I chose you, remember how it goes in Ephesians 1, 4? We chose this before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy. Set apart for him no longer uncommon, no longer unclean his own special possession, or 1 Peter 2 9, I think, where it says, "We are a chosen people, a holy nation." That means not first that we've become good, we're becoming something, but we are holy in that he took us out of the mob and he set us mine, mine, my chosen, my loved ones, my family, my bride, and then he tells us how to dress ourselves. And the dressing, mercy, and meekness, and patience, and kindness, that doesn't make you holy in this first sense, you are holy, become what you are. There's the genius, there's the mystery of the Christian life we are taken, put into Christ, his righteousness is ours, we are holy in him, and now the question is, well, what do I wear? What do I wear? And the answer is put on, and now we'll go there in just a minute, these garments. But one more, loved, chosen, holy, loved. God shows his love for us, God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ, his son died for us. Husbands, your main job is to feel this. Human, holy, loved, chosen by God, holy unto God, loved by God. The main job of a husband is to know this, feel this, live in this, get hope from this, be changed by this, be thrilled by this, live out of this. That's the structure of the Bible. You are chosen, you are holy, you are loved. I'm going to tell you now how to dress in your marriage, kind of close to wear in your marriage. What's the same thing? This is your life. I am chosen. I am holy. I am loved. That's the way a wife lives. She's a Christian. Now on that basis, those three identity statements for you, it tells us what inner conditions and external behaviors are the right kind of clothing, fitting clothing, appropriate clothing to the chosen, the holy and the loved. So let's read it. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. Now what I see there is pairs, pairs, so I'm going to break it down and in these pairs, the first part of the pair is an inner condition and the second part of the pair is an external demeanor and the demeanor flows from the inner condition. See if you see it that way. Verse 12, the first clothing, compassion, kindness. Now literally old-fashioned, literal translation, bowels of mercy, guts of mercy, it's the way they talked, guts meaning a moved, a moved here is not just a thought, these are bowels of mercy. That's why it's just an internal condition. So mercy, compassion is something stirring down here. It's not an idea which is then brought to the will and kick this will into doing a few nice things for somebody, this is stirring. So we have to pursue that. Bowels of mercy and kindness and my argument is that kindness is the external demeanor. Kindness is the way you treat people when you are moved from inside by compassion or bowels of mercy. So there is one pair, inner condition of a heart that is easily stirred and moved and made to pity and feel compassion and mercy and then a behavioral style which is kindness at home to wives and husbands. Isn't it strange that we treat almost everybody else with civility but not at home? Very strange, but true and sad and changeable. So husbands, sink your roots by faith into Christ through the gospel until you become more merciful inside. Seek your roots by grace into the gospel until change happens here of more mercy flowing up wives, sink your roots by grace into the gospel until there's more mercy here flowing out in kindness. In other words, I'm saying fight the fight at the level of the gospel. Fight the fight by sinking your roots more in the gospel. It's not a technique, it's a miracle of transformation that comes by being slunk with your roots down in the gospel. Prepare humility, meekness, literally the word humility is loneliness, loneliness and meekness, the demeanor that follows when you're when you're meek, account others better than yourself and you are disposed to serve them and get under them and lift them up rather than board it over them. But inside it's coming from loneliness, loneliness. There's a marriage saver, husbands and wives, uppity, husbands, uppity, wives, selfish, self-centered, commanding, not lowly, broken-hearted, tender, contrite, yielding meekness. We're talking miracles here for the likes of us. Are we not? We're coming out at these guys in this room. You care, guys? You want to be this way, this to be the other way is easy. This is impossible. You want to challenge in your life, get low, be a servant, be meek, that's impossible. Except if you'll sink your roots down into the gospel by grace through faith until you're broken. When you hear God say, "You're my chosen, you're my holy, you're my loved," it should make you lovely. And if it doesn't, you're not hearing it right. You need to plead with God, "Oh God, give me ears." Let me feel what he's saying. Let me feel the impact of being chosen freely by grace, being set apart freely by grace, being loved freely by grace, break me with that, kill my pride, humble me, get me down below so that I can lift up, make me a servant in this family, wife and husband, wife and husband. We're not talking yet at the level of head, ship and submission. This is so important to get right first, mutually. Now the next pair is not a pair, sort of. Let's read from the beginning so you get it in the flow. Verse 12, "Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and loved, compassion, kindness, humility, weakness, two pairs, first, inside, next demeanor." Now patience followed by two participles. Patience comma, bearing with one another, that's number one, two, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving one another, each other. So I'm going to use just because it sounds nice, the old-fashioned word, forbearing, bearing with forbearing one another and forgiving each other. So here's the pair that's not a pair. Patience, and the second half of the pair is two, that's why I say it's not a pair, but it is a pair. Patience followed by forbearance and forgiveness. forbearance and forgiveness, flowing out of patience. Now what is patience? The Greek word makrahtumiyya, translated literally by the King James, long-suffering, makrah-makrah-dumiyya, long-suffering. Meaning, inside, if there's a short fuse, there should be a long fuse, a really, really long fuse, long-suffering is what patience is. And if there's this inner reality called patience or long fuse, it burns so long, it rains on it before it gets to dynamite, leads to forbearance and forgiveness. So I don't think we've broken the pattern here of inner reality, inner reality leading to external demeanor and behavior. And the inner reality here is long-suffering. So husbands, sink your roots by faith into the gospel until your fuse gets longer. Wives, sink your roots into the gospel deeper by faith until your fuse gets longer. And as you become a long-suffering person, I wonder if you would agree with me that when you get to this point in the text, you start to say, "You know, I think these inner conditions are connected to each other, bowels of mercy, loneliness, long-suffering." It is a heart that is easily moved by hurt of others. And a heart that is broken and lowly, not selfish, proud, uppity, arrogant, lowly and long-suffering. Where does anger come from? Anger is a marriage killer. I'll preach a sermon perhaps someday on this text coming at it from a totally different angle, and the title of the sermon will be The Roots of Rage. It's all here, it's all here. The roots of rage are here, that is the antidote. Where's the roots of rage? Rage is the opposite of long-suffering. Long-suffering grows out of lowliness and bowels of mercy. Bowels of mercy and lowliness flow from knowing yourself loved, holy and chosen. Anger is rooted in not believing the gospel. When I say believing, I mean not embracing, not cherishing, not treasuring, not being stunned and blown away, that my sins are forgiven and I'm loved and I'm set apart for God and I'm chosen from eternity owing to nothing in myself. How could I ever hold anything against anybody? That's where anger comes from, we don't believe it. And therefore I'm going to stay right at the center all my life in this pulpit. Because if you get the gospel, if it clobbers you, if it makes you lowly, if it makes you compassionate, if it makes you long-suffering, everything changes. A thousand counseling issues get solved if we get the gospel. If we go deep, and I'm not saying this happens like, "Bain, did you get it tonight? Good." You don't have to church anymore, that's not it. Yes, there are wonderful, stunning moments with Christ made some come tonight. But it's a lifelong, that's why I'm saying husband, sink your roots, why I've sink your roots. That's a daily thing. I do it every day, every morning I'm pushing my roots down into the gospel lest I drift away, lest I start to take it for granted, lest I cease to be amazed because to the degree that John Piper is not amazed at his salvation, no L.P.s. So let me say a few closing words, perhaps about forbearance and forgiveness because that's where we are, and that's what I said I would talk about, and you're waiting for the compost pile, perhaps, it's coming. Bearing with one another, are you with me there, verses 12 and 13, end of verse 12, patience or long suffering, yielding first forbearance. What does that mean? Let's just get real specific, what does forbearance mean? The word, I'll give you a couple of uses of it in the New Testament, is almost always translated endure or something like that. This is not a complimentary word to the relationship. Enduring one another doesn't sound hopeful, it doesn't sound positive. Enduring one another, that's exactly what it says. Here's a couple of verses, Luke 941, "O faceless and twisted generation," Jesus said, "how long am I to bear with you," there it is, that's the word, "faithless generation, I'm having to bear with you while I'm here, how long I'm getting tired of it." That's Jesus talking, 1 Corinthians 4, 12, here's Paul talking, "when persecuted we endure," that's the use of the word. So he says, now this is to the church and I'm applying it to marriage because marriage is the most intense, close, difficult relationship in the church. The church lives this way, marriage has lived this way, and he says, "put on the kind of clothes that a chosen, holy and loved person should put on, namely long suffering leading to forbearance, love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, and doers all things." The New Testament is not excessively romantic about relationships, it's just tough, stay in them, because if you stay in them, glorious things can happen. They really can't, they really can't, and if you jump from relationship to relationship, glory is gone, little bit of low satisfaction maybe, but glory gone, and your life is about glory, not about low satisfaction. And the second word is forgive, so first for bear, and then forgive. There are several words for forgive in the New Testament. This one means freely, graciously, give. It's used most of the time not in context of forgiveness, just giving, graciously giving, giving without exacting a payment. So when you give somebody something, you don't say, "Oh, pay." That's not this word, that's okay if you're selling something, but it's not this. So forgiving here is giving and not exacting, not demanding back. And the context would be, in the relationship, somebody has done something and they've gotten you to debt with you, they've hurt you, word, neglect, something hurt me or made me mad. And you could settle that by saying, "Now, that person, she, he, should pay, I'm going to make her pay." And we make people pay in various ways, get the last words, the in ugly word, you know, mope, don't you up in bed, there's lots of ways to make, you know, he's going to pay because he did bad to me, that's not what's going on here. He says, "Return good for evil without making her pay." That's forgiveness, that's a spirit of forgiveness, do not return evil for evil, but bless. Now what I find most helpful here is that both of these words are in the text for bear and forgive, for bear and forgive, forgiveness says, "I will not treat you badly because of your sins against me or your annoying habits, I will not treat you badly because of your sins against me and your annoying habits," that's what forgiveness says, forbearance says usually to itself, not always, I'll write the star article about this week, about confrontation which is in the title of the sermon and I'll say in a word about it because I ran out of space and I'm already out of time, but I'll put it in the star, usually forbearance says to itself, "Those sins against me and those annoying habits really bother me," that's what forbearance says and I won't hold them against you. If that weren't true, we wouldn't need this word endurance in the Bible. This word is here because they don't go away, right? The habit that you wish were different doesn't go away, you got to endure it. And when you bring the two together, forgiveness and forbearance, something amazing can be created, you know, the word singles and those of us who married for 30, 40 years, this is a no-brainer, and you marry a person, you don't know what they're going to be like in 30 years, you don't know what they're going to be like, you're shooting in the dark. Well, not totally, but you don't know, it could be better than you ever dreamed. You thought it would be B+, and it's A+, or it could be worse than you ever dreamed. You know, our forefathers who came up with wedding vows, which young people today try to massage into sad, contemporary imitations, didn't make these wedding vows with their heads in the sand. Their eyes were wide open to reality, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love, honor, cherish, till death do us part, there to I plight thee my trough. Do you have any idea what that means? I'll translate it, therefore I pledge you my faithfulness. This poorer suffering, sickness, they knew what they were doing to make that our bond. The compost pile, trying to pull together forbearance, forgiveness and all the things we've seen on closing with the compost pile. Picture your marriage. Now, I've said this was a discovery that Noel and I made over the years. I couldn't date it exactly, but I began to use it years ago in my wedding homilies when I preached to young couples, I would talk to them about the compost pile. Picture your marriage as a grassy field, and you enter at the beginning full of hope, enjoy, and you look out on the field and you see beautiful flowers and grass stretching and rolling hills and trees and it is beautiful. You want to walk in this all your days. The grass, the flowers, the hills, the sky, the warm breeze is not what happens to you, it's the relationship. That's the analogy. I'm interpreting it for you. I'm describing your relationship and on the wedding day, I want this woman and I want this man and we want to be together and walk in the beautiful fields of green grass and spring flowers and trees and hills and bright sunshine and cool breezes. That's the way it's going to be, and before long you step in a cow pie and in some seasons of your marriage they seem to be everywhere. This is not grass, this is just manure. Late at night they become especially prevalent when there's no sleep. There are more cow pies when you don't get enough sleep. These are sins, flaws, idiosyncrasies, weaknesses, annoying habits in your spouse and you try to forgive them and you try to forbear and the problem is they can tend to dominate the relationship everywhere you step, it smells. May not be true that they're everywhere, just feels that way. I think the combination of forbearance and forgiveness leads to the creation of a compost pile. Here at the compost pile you and your wife, husband, you begin to shovel cow pies into this pile and you put fence around it, hold them in and you shovel them in and you look at each other and you simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies, you just say there are a lot of cow pies in this field. You and I bring a lot of cow pies to this relationship so you start shoveling them into this fenced in compost pile and you say to each other, you know, we've got to do this because we're losing sight of the fact that we keep focusing on these cow pies. That's all we're thinking about. I mean we're looking for them to step in. So let's get them and throw them in one place, just throw them in a pile, compost pile, compost can do some good so let's throw them there and when we have to, we'll go there. We'll go there and we'll smell it and we'll feel bad and we'll deal with it as best we can, then we'll walk away from the pile, we'll walk away from it and we'll set our eyes on the rest of the field, this is right at the heart of what I'm trying to say. Satan and our flesh can begin to take a few disappointments, a few frustrations and multiply them so out of proportion that we think there's no green grass anywhere. There's no flowers anywhere, there's no trees, there's no hills, there's no sunshine, which is an absolute lie and then you say to each other, we're going to walk away from that pile, set our eyes on the rest of the field and we're going to pick some of our favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies and we're going to be thankful that that part of the field, that part of the field is sweet, it might be a small part now, but that part is sweet, our hands may be dirty and our backs may ache from all this shoveling, but we know one thing, we will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will go there when we must, this is the gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again we will only go there when we must, we won't go live there, we won't retreat there, we won't lick our wounds there, we won't pitch our tent there, we will only go there when we must and that gift we will give to each other again and again and again, why? Because you and I are chosen and holy and loved, gracious Father, everything I've talked about is only wrought by miraculous grace and so I ask now for me and Noel, for my children, for this church and for the representatives of Christ around the world that that grace would be given, that forbearance and forgiveness would flow out of long suffering which is rooted in loneliness and bowels of mercy which are rooted in being loved and holy and chosen which are rooted in sovereign grace, oh Lord, may that grace flow out to each other as we learn what it is to model Christ and the church, in His name we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to this resource from DesiringGod.org. If you found it helpful we encourage you to enjoy and share from thousands of resources on our site including books, sermons, articles and more available free of charge. DesiringGod.org exists to help you treasure Jesus more than anything else because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
John Piper | Because we are chosen and holy and loved, we can find the grace to see our spouses the way Jesus does.