Why Jesus is My Hero #50 of 52

I’m getting married on Saturday. It feels a bit surreal that it’s quite so soon all of a sudden, having been waiting for it for months and months. Suffice it to say, I am very excited about this fact.

But I’ve had some good reminders recently that it’s not the most exciting thing going on in my life. Marriage is just a picture of the much cooler blessings that are coming to those who are Christians, and in Christ the good God who gave the gift of marriage has given us blessings far beyond comparison. Listen to the Apostle Peter:

“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. … But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:4-10)

In Christ, God the Father has called Christians out of darkness into his marvellous light. Not out of singleness into his marvellous state of marriage. Not out of unemployment into his marvellous world of work. Not out of low self-esteem into his marvellous place of confidence in who I am. But out of darkness into his marvellous light – we were saved from God’s wrath and ignorance of him and an eternity of hell so that instead we could enjoy life forever in his presence, adopted as his children, living his way with all the blessings of life with him poured out upon us.

Getting married may well be one of the greatest temporal blessings I’m likely to ever enjoy in this life, and so it’s only right that I should be not a little excited and very very thankful to God. But ultimately it is only for this life, and I need to keep reminding myself of the much greater eternal blessings Jesus has won for me at the cross. As Peter writes a little later on, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”