On my recent trip to the Holy Land we did something very special. We visited a church at Cana in Galilee, the site where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water to wine at a wedding. We had a ceremony there in which the married couples in our group renewed our wedding vows.
It was good to do this — to ponder the meaning of the vows spoken. And it got me thinking about the weddings in which couples write their own vows. We wrote some of ours oh so many years ago. But when it comes to the theology of marriage, those vows are normally deficient.
One Southern Baptist leader, Dr. Russell Moore says he doesn’t let couples he marries write their own vows. He was asked why not on his radio show. His answer was “because I think we are in a culture right now where many people assume that the wedding is the celebration of the love of the couple. Now, of course it is to some degree, but it is so much more than that, and the main point of the wedding is about more than highlighting the individuality of the couple.”
Dr. Moore went on to say, “In a biblical understanding of marriage the couple is being given to one another, and there is an accountability, a public accountability for the marriage, for the wedding. That’s the reason why Jesus is present as part of the community at a wedding at Cana and in the epistles of the New Testament the writings about marriage are not simply to the couples themselves but to the entire body of Christ. We are members of one another and we are responsible for one another.
And so when we are gathering together for a wedding, we have a gathering of witnesses.”
Pastor John Piper addresses wedding vows in his book, THIS MOMENTARY MARRIAGE. He writes: “When a couple speaks their vows, it is not a man or a woman, or a pastor or parent who is the main actor — the main doer. God is. God joins a husband and a wife into a one-flesh union.” Dr. Piper’s entire book is about how marriage is meant to glorify God. And that’s why Jesus said in Mark 2, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
When couples get married, they don’t know what they will encounter over time, or what their spouse will really be like in 30 years. That person could become a lot better. Or worse. That’s why we pledge: “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer…” and so on. John Piper says our forefathers who created these vows had “eyes wide open to reality.”
Betrothed couples don’t know what will come. When they’re twenty-something, they really don’t know. When, you pledge your troth — you promise faithfulness. In that God is glorified.