This Momentary Marriage: A Parable Of Permanence - Softcover

Piper, John

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9781844743926: This Momentary Marriage: A Parable Of Permanence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844743926 ISBN 13: 9781844743926

Publisher: IVP, 2009

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There has never been a generation whose view of marriage has been high enough. And this is all the more true today.
Though selfishness and cultural bondage obstruct the wonder of God's purpose, his vision for marriage in the Bible frees us from small, romance-intoxicated views. As John Piper explains, 'Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It displays the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his people to the world in a way that no other event or institution does. Marriage, therefore, is not mainly about being in love. It is mainly about telling the truth with our lives. And staying married is not about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant and putting the glory of Christ's covenant-keeping love on display.'
This Momentary Marriage unpacks the biblical vision for marriage, its unexpected contours, and its weighty implications for married, single, divorced and remarried alike.
Reflecting on forty years of marriage to Noel, John Piper exalts the biblical meaning of marriage, exhorting couples to keep their covenant for all the best reasons.

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About the Author:

John Piper (DTheol, University of Munich) is the founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as the senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don't Waste Your Life; This Momentary Marriage; A Peculiar Glory; and Reading the Bible Supernaturally.

NoEl Piper (BA, Wheaton College) and her husband, John, ministered at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota for over 30 years. She is the author of Treasuring God in Our Traditions and Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God.

(Extract from) Introduction: Marriage and Martyrdom

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was engaged to be married to Maria von Wedemeyer when he was hanged at dawn on April 9, 1945, at the age of thirty-nine. As a young pastor in Germany, he had been opposed to Nazism and was finally arrested on April 5, 1943, for his involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

So he never married. He skipped the shadow on the way to the Reality. Some are called to one kind of display of the worth of Christ, some to another. Martyrdom, not marriage, was his calling.

Being married in the moment of death is both a sweet and bitter providence. Sweet because at the precipice of eternity the air is crystal-clear, and you see more plainly than ever the precious things that really matter about your imperfect lover. But being married at death is also bitter, because the suffering is doubled as one watches the other die, or even quadrupled if both are dying. And more if there is a child.

One Flesh Even in Death

That was the case with John and Betty Stam. They were missionaries with China Inland Mission. Having met each other at Moody Bible Institute, they sailed for China separately--she in 1931, he a year later. They were married by Reuben A. Torrey on October 25, 1933, in Tsinan. John was twenty-six; Betty was twenty-seven.

The region was already dangerous because of the civil war between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party. On September 11, 1934, Helen Priscilla was born. Three months later, her parents were beheaded by the Communists on a hill outside Miaosheo, while tiny Helen lay hidden where her mother left her with ten dollars in her blanket.

Geraldine Taylor, the daughter-in-law of Hudson Taylor (the founder of the China Inland Mission), published the story of the Stams' martyr dom two years after their death. Every time I read it, the compounding of the preciousness and the pain by the marriage and the baby make me weep.

Never was that little one more precious than when they looked their last on her baby sweetness, as they were roughly summoned the next morning and led out to die. . . . Painfully bound with ropes, their hands behind them, stripped of their outer garments, and John barefooted (he had given Betty his socks to wear), they passed down the street where he was known to many, while the Reds shouted their ridicule and called the people to come and see the execution.

Like their Master, they were led up a little hill outside the town. There, in a clump of pine trees, the Communists harangued the unwilling onlookers, too terror-stricken to utter protest--But no, one broke the ranks! The doctor of the place and a Christian, he expressed the feelings of many when he fell on his knees and pleaded for the life of his friends. Angrily repulsed by the Reds, he still per sisted, until he was dragged away as a prisoner, to suffer death when it appeared that he too was a follower of Christ.

John had turned to the leader of the band, asking mercy for this man. When he was sharply ordered to kneel--and the look of joy on his face, afterwards, told of the unseen Presence with them as his spirit was released--Betty was seen to quiver, but only for a moment. Bound as she was, she fell on her knees beside him. A quick com mand, the flash of a sword which mercifully she did not see--and they were reunited.1

Nothing Is Lost

Yes, they were reunited, but not as husband and wife. For Jesus said, "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). There is no human marriage after death. The shadow of covenant-keeping between husband and wife gives way to the reality of covenant-keeping between Christ and his glorified Church. Nothing is lost. The music of every pleasure is transposed into an infinitely higher key.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John and Betty Stam today are closer to each other in love than John and Betty Stam were, or Dietrich and Maria would have been, in marriage. They "shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matt. 13:43). Their magnificent perfection points to the glory of Christ. And in the age to come, their bodies will be restored, and all creation will join with the children of God in ever lasting joy (Rom. 8:21). ...

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