"my husband beat the $h!+ out of me!"

Last night after our New Year's Covenant Service I was talking with a couple of lady's. A girl, no older than Antonina, came walking up the middle isle and asked if she could use our phone. I took her to the phone. She seemed upset. I asked if she was OK and she replied, "no. I'm not OK. My husband just beat the $h!+ out of me." I talked with her for a little bit and she didn't want to talk to the police. Then one of the lady's told me that the husband was outside. When I came out of the room the phone was in. The husband was walking up the isle with their 3 kids. I made him wait outside and I called the cops. Then we talked. In the end, the kids got taken to children's services and the police took the girl so that they would have some time apart and then so she could go home and get the $h!+ beat out of her again.

Through the whole thing, she insisted on her love for him and his love for her. He wanted to be very consoling and huggy. It almost made me sick.

I began thinking about what it really means to be married. As I thought I was reminded of something I'd written comparing explaining salvation based on the metaphor of marriage. So I thought I'd post it here:


“I believe in one baptism for the remission of sins.”

This confession, found in the Nicene Creed, is part of our (Nazarene) confession of faith. Further we subscribe to Wesley’s popular definition of a sacrament as “an outward sign of an inward grace…” but we usually forget to include the second half of the definition, “…and a means of grace by which we receive the same.”

So why am I bringing all this up? Because our soteriology (theology of salvation) seems to contradict this foundational confession of faith. How do we reconcile our evangelical emphasis of salvation by faith alone, which excludes baptism as efficacious in salvation, and the creedal bconfession that our baptism is “for the remission of sins”?

The key is in Wesley’s definition: “An outward sign of an inward grace” (faith alone) and “a means of grace by which we receive the same” (baptismal regeneration). Salvation is both by faith and by sacrament. How can this be?

Dr. Rob Staples, in Outward Sign, Inward Grace, directs our thoughts to marriage. He poses the question of what makes a couple married. Is it the love and commitment they share or the ceremony and ritual in which they participate that makes them married? The answer is a real marriage requires both internal and external commitment. The couple who shares love and commitment, but has not participated in the wedding ceremony is not married. Nor is the couple who has been through the ceremony yet lacks love and commitment truly married. Therefore, it is not an either or proposition, but a both and proposition.

I would suggest that we must take the metaphor further. Marriage requires both love and ritual, as noted above, but it must also be consummated sexually. A real marital relationship is one in which the love and ritual is consummated repeatedly and regularly. If any one of these components is lacking there really is no marriage at all.

So now we must bring the metaphor home to relate it to our theology of salvation. Salvation requires relationship, ritual and consummation – love, baptism, and communion. To fail to give adequate attention to any of these components is to fail to give our salvation the serious consideration it deserves.