Called to Peace
1 Corinthians 7:16 - For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Paul culminates our week of Scripture on a note of pure hope. He turns to the believer married to an unbeliever and asks a question that has fueled so many prayers: how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? How do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? One scholar calls this Paul's covenantal optimism, the settled confidence that God is still at work in that house. Your husband is not a lost cause. Your wife is not beyond reach. The very love you show under that roof, the very faith you keep, may be the thread God uses to draw them home. You could be the only Jesus they ever get close enough to see. So don’t write off the person sleeping beside you.
This is the heart of a Winsome Witness. Someone whose ordinary life, lived close to people who do not yet believe, quietly makes Jesus visible. And it’s where our whole journey through this passage has been heading. Paul has said some hard, but freeing things. Stop treating your body as only yours, because in marriage you belong to each other. Stop believing singleness is second-class, for the single person belongs wholly to God. Stop tossing out marriage when it gets hard. Stop thinking your spouse is beyond reach. And underneath every one of these challenges is a single truth the world will fight you on until you die: your marriage, your singleness, your whole life, was never meant to be about you.
Your life was never meant to be about you because it was always meant to point to Someone better. Every marriage is a living picture of a greater one: Christ and His church. He looked at a bride who was unfaithful and unlovely and didn’t even want Him, and He said, “This is my body, given for you.” He laid down His life. He made her holy. He stayed when every reason said walk away. That is the marriage your marriage was made to picture. And that is the love your singleness is free to pour out. The reason we can give ourselves away, in a marriage or a friendship, is that Someone gave Himself away for us first.
And this is why, when we gather this Sunday, we come as something more than a room full of married people and single people. We come as the bride of Christ, together. In the deepest sense, no Christian is finally single, because every one of us is being made ready for the one wedding that will never end, the marriage supper of the Lamb. So the widow, the never-married, the one whose marriage fell apart, the one who feels alone in a hard house — all of us belong, fully, to the same family and the same Bridegroom. Married or single, we are the bride. And we are all headed for the feast!
So walk into worship this morning as one who is wanted, and washed, and part of a bride the Bridegroom will never leave. And then go and live, and love, and give like Jesus, in whatever life He has given you, because it was always, from the very beginning, about Him.
Today: Before you walk into church, do this. First, think of one person you might have written off (a spouse you’ve stopped praying for, a family member you’ve decided will never change, etc) and hand them back to God in hope. Second, if you’re single or widowed, or walking through the wreckage of a divorce, show up to the gathering and let the church be your family. Sit with people and let yourself be known. You belong to this bride as fully as anyone in the room, and you are headed for the same feast!
Prayer: “I love you, Lord, because You loved me first and never gave up on me. Give me Your peace, and give me hope for the people I long to see come home. Make our whole lives, married or single, a gospel picture of You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
-PK