How the Royal Wedding is a Picture of the Gospel

There’s something special about a wedding. And something inside of our hearts flutters at the idea of a royal wedding. One where a girl marries a Prince. One where her simple look and style are extremely elegant. One where the whole world watches as she nears him and he whispers, “You look amazing.”

Weddings are a picture of the Gospel. What we see at a wedding is the covenantal joining of two stories. The Gospel is just that: the unbreakable linking of the greatest redemption story ever experienced with our own human stories. We see a picture of the Gospel when we look at Christ as the Bridegroom and the church as his bride. There is no greater redemption story than the Gospel wedding story.

The collision of cultures and races is a picture of the Gospel. Paul writes to the church at Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). It is exciting to see cultures, in this case American and British, collide in a way that has, for generations, been looked down upon. We even see races unite, which should give us a hope for generations to come. And propels us toward Gospel centeredness because the Gospel is for all races and for all cultures and for all peoples.

The pomp and circumstance are the lengths at which God’s heart stretches out toward us and is, indeed, a picture of the Gospel. We serve a rejoicing God. A God who celebrates. A God who celebrates us. “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). He takes great delight in us. We want people to celebrate us. We want people to dress up and have a party and line the streets in honor of us. And in the Gospel, God has done just that for us.

Sacrificial love is a picture of the Gospel. Reverend Curry, who spoke at the royal wedding, hit the nail on the head by saying, “That’s what love is. Love is not selfish and self-centered. Love can be sacrificial, and in so doing, becomes redemptive. And that way of unselfish sacrificial redemptive love, changes lives and it can change this world.” He’s getting at the heart of Romans 5:8, “God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It is a beautiful picture of the Gospel that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross of rejection for my redemption. Sacrificial love, which stands in my place, for my sins, and in doing so makes me in right standing with the Father is the Gospel.

Thank you for the reminder, Duke and Duchess of Sussex!