Marriage: a Covenant not a Commodity

Download the discussion questions (PDF) or see them listed below. We highly encourage you to listen, think, and talk about the sermon. These are questions you can reflect on by yourself, with your family, or with your small group.

1. A covenant love means loving someone based on a promise rather than their performance. Why is that kind of love so difficult for our human hearts to practice, and how does it force us to rely on the Gospel?”
2. The sermon noted that we often make love conditional (“I’ll love you well, if you love me well”) In what practical ways do you catch yourself treating relationships as a transaction with love as its currency? How can a Christian move from “they have to earn my kindness” to “I am committed to covenant love”?
3. Hosea’s marriage in the Old Testament and Ephesians 5* in the New Testament, show that marriage is designed to be a picture of the gospel. Explain how you think this should work. In other words, how are people supposed to see Jesus Christ and the gospel in Christian marriage?
4. How does the story of Hosea impact the way you understand God’s love, and how does this change your view of marriage?
5. For those hurt by divorce the sermon emphasized that there are no “second-class citizens” in the church or “scarlet letters” in the Kingdom of God, and that God never wastes our pain. How does the truth of the Gospel help someone get past the pain, guilt, and family brokenness of divorce without letting it define their identity?
6. How does this sermon speak to people who are not married? What can everyone (married, divorced, single) learn from this week’s message and how can it help them grow?
7. What is one practical, concrete step you can take this week to live out covenant love?

*Ephesians 5:31-32

***31“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”32This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ***