A wedding Sermon!

Forgive as the Lord forgave you

Well Ian and Janessa, first the good news, congratulations well done you have made it, you are now officially married!

Now for the bad news, if the history of marriage (even my own marriage but that matter), tells us anything about life, well take some really good pictures now, because this is as good as you are ever going to look, but before you panic that's okay -- it's the same for everyone!

And it's okay it was marriage isn't about appearances anyway, marriage is about a loving relationship. And a loving relationship is about serving the other person in marriage and about seeking after the other person's needs. A loving relationship isn't about appearances, it's about action.

Now choosing to get married is a good thing, in fact it's an excellent thing, the most excellent thing, it's a rich thing it's a rewarding thing, but it is also a scary thing!


Because you are choosing to make yourself vulnerable with another person, by giving everything you have to then and expecting them to care few in return. You give them everything you have, your body, your mind, spirit, your possessions, your whole life and expect them to treat it with care.

Ian your whole life now belongs to Jeanessa, and Janessa your whole life now belongs to Ian.

So the big question you should have right now is;
"how do we make this work?"
"How do we make our marriage work?"

And I know Ian will be sitting there right now thinking, just get to the point will you!

Well ok, he is the point, in only six words,
six words as the secret to marriage,
even Oprah can't do that!

So the six words are;
"forgive as the Lord forgave you!"

Which is the second half of v13 from Colossians 3 which we read earlier.

The bedrock, the foundation, the engine room of a loving relationship, is forgiveness. If you cannot learn to forgive each other, this relationship is going nowhere.

Love is the pretty shiny bit on the outside of a relationship that everyone else sees, but forgiveness is the hard work that has to happen to make the relationship go.

Now the question is, why do we need to forgive anyway?

Well because we are all human aren't we?
We all make mistakes, in all areas of life and especially in a relationship as tricky as marriage. And as hard as it is to believe today Ian and Janessa, you are going to offend each other.
An Ironclad, money back guarantee, and if you really lucky it won't happen till at least the third day of your honeymoon!

People make mistakes, sometimes we even do stupid things intentionally, and often we do it unknowingly, but we make its mistakes which hurt other people, and we offend them.

Now at that point, you have a few options open to you if you have been offended against.
So let me tell you what two very bad options are at that point;

Firstly, you can hold it against them and use it for bargaining power to rule over them for the rest of the day's of their natural life.

Or secondly, you can try on paper over it, and pretend like it didn't bother you at all.
And I can assure you, when you are first married, you'll basically go for this option every single time.

But neither of these options are good ones, because ultimately they don't fix the relationship, in fact they inevitably as night follows day, will lead to bitterness and resentment. Bitterness and resentment are toxic to a loving relationship, they eat away at it.

For this loving relationship to go anywhere, you need to be able to genuinely to forgive each other.

So the next question you should have is,
"how do we do that!".


The motivation and example of any loving relationship is found in God himself. God is a God who actively seeks to forgive in order to have a loving relationship.

As I said a minute ago, we're all human, we all make mistakes, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, we offend other people.

The Bible tells us that God is our loving Creator, our heavenly father, the one who gave us life and every other good thing we have. And yet we all know that we fall short of what he calls us to, because we make mistakes in our lives.

Sometimes we ignore God's instruction about how we should live, and at other times we offend him by just plain ignoring him and his role in our lives altogether.

We have made a problem in our relationship with God. But the Bible tells us that God has done something about this problem to fix our relationship. God offers to us forgiveness out of his great love. In fact a book of the Bible called Romans says in 5:8, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

God was the one whom we offended, and yet he is the one who took the initiative, who paid a heavy price, to restore the relationship.

Forgiveness is the engine room of a loving relationship. And we are called to forgive as the Lord forgave us.

Twice in this passage from Colossians we read, Paul tells us to “be thankful”, we are to be thankful to God that he would restore relationship with us through the death of his son on a cross in our place.

And because we have said yes, that is our wrongdoing, and we have said yes to his offer of forgiveness found in his son, we can be thankful to God for the loving relationship we share with him, and this compels us from a heart of thankfulness, to forgive others as the Lord who gave us.

Because of God's action we are able to understand deeply what it means to be forgiven, to understand deeply what it means to be in a loving relationship and because of this it forms the grounds and encouragement for us to be like our God and to offer forgiveness to those who have offended against us.

So this is the hard part, if you want a loving relationship, you have to take the initiative to forgive when you have been offended against. And the encouragement to do this is, whatever debt there is that they owe you, it is nothing compared to the debt you owed God.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Ian, when Janessa crashes the Ute, when she crashes the Ute into your power tools, when she crashes the Ute into your power of tools and pushes them through the back wall of your garage.
You need to take the initiative to forgive.

Jeanessa, when Ian says something unthinking and uncaring and offends you, when Ian says something unthinking and uncaring and offends you and your mum, when Ian says something unthinking and uncaring and offends you, your mum, and your best friend. You need to take the initiative to forgive.

Forgiveness is not a cheap absolution, but a genuine engagement in your relationship. Forgiveness isn't the avoidance it isn't suppression, but it is to deal truly with the issue through the action of speech and an attitude of grace from the heart.
It is to confront the issue, it is to confess wrong where it belongs to you, and then it is to have the other send it away upon the ocean into the sunset, never to return. And that part is important, Never to return.

Forgiveness is the foundation for a loving relationship, it is the engine room that makes it go. Forgiveness is the foundation for marriage.

Six Words:
“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”