Pastoral Counsel to the Couple 

Personal Note: This afternoon I have the honor and responsibility to officiate at my nephew’s wedding. Here are some of the words of counsel I will share with he and his bride-to-be. 

Pastoral Counsel to the Couple

You will find no shortage of people offering you advice for your married life. While advice from people who know and love you can be helpful, I encourage you to focus on and accept God’s counsel. 

After all, God is love. A moment ago, we considered His words about love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. 

In this passage, God shares 16 descriptions of love. The biblical word for love used in 1 Corinthians 13 means a sacrificial, self-giving, other-centered love. That’s so different from how we use the word love today. Even when we say, ‘I love you,’ we often mean, ‘I love me and I want you to sacrifice for me.’

The Bible best defines love by picturing it. The most famous verse in the Bible, the one we see in the end-zone of football stadiums, John 3:16, says, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.’ 

God the Father so loved that He gave—everything—what was most precious to Him—His Son.

God the Son so loved that He gave—everything—His life. 

In Philippians 2, the Apostle Paul paints a portrait of Christ’s sacrificial love and tells us that we are to love one another like Christ loved us. Paul says, ‘Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of the other. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death —even death on a cross!’ 

Christ-like love gives. Christ-like love sacrifices everything. Christ-like love is other-centered. 

In a marriage, Christ-like love is unconditional. When things are rough in our relationship, we have to make a conscious choice to love the other person even if we don’t feel like, at that moment, they ‘deserve’ our love. If we truly love, we give, and if we give, we give sacrificially and not selfishly; we give unconditionally, not conditionally. 

In a marriage, Christ-like love means that when there’s a disagreement, that someone has to start the chain of love. Someone has to be mature enough to initiate a conversation by saying, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me. 

Wwith the type of love that God shows us in Christ, and that Christ showed us on the cross, you will build a marriage relationship that will last through all the storms of life. Your love for one another will bring you mutual joy beyond imagination. Love one another like Christ loves you, for Christ-like love never fails.