Our Marriage Commitments And Vows

By God's mercy, we got married this past Saturday (18 APR 2026). 

Two days before our wedding, I was considering the difference between the traditional wedding vows and the personal vows I was planning to commit to at our wedding. And it hit me: vows are supposed to be kept! You should only take vows before God that you can actually keep, yet the personal vows I wrote were certainly ones that I would fail to keep. For example, one of my vows was from Ephesians 5 - to love my wife as Christ loved the church. Will I seek to do this? Of course! Will I fail at times? Sadly, yes. So I should not take a vow like this. It's like taking a vow that I won't sin anymore. That's not a wise vow to take. And it will heap up sin upon sin. As the Westminster Confession states:

Whosoever taketh an oath ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act, and therein to avouch nothing but what he is fully persuaded is the truth. Neither may any man bind himself by oath to anything but what is good and just, and what he believeth so to be, and what he is able and resolved to perform. Yet it is a sin to refuse an oath touching anything that is good and just, being imposed by lawful authority.

Traditional Vows 

The traditional vows can be kept. They basically state: stay married no matter what. You can do that, by God's grace. Or, as I told Mercy this morning, if you are a Christian, your choices once you get married are: 1) Stay married, or 2) Go to hell (I understand there are Biblical permissions for divorce and people can repent of unlawful divorces, but I am speaking generally here). True followers of Jesus stay married, no matter what - that's the basic content of the traditional wedding vows that we also took:

Joseph, take you, Mercy, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge you myself.

Personal Commitments

We chose to call our personal promises, personal commitments instead of vows. These are promises we are committed to do as best we can by God's help, grow in them, and pursue faithfulness to them as God commands. We chose to take the traditional vows as well. There is a reason people have been using the traditional vows for so long.

Dr. Michael Osborne, who officiated our wedding, reads the vows he made to his wife every month on the day they were married. This is a great practice, and Mercy and I hope to do the same. Below are the personal commitments we made to each other. May God help us keep them and grow in them.

Joseph's Personal Commitments

Mercy, / in the name of the Father / and of the Son / and of the Holy Spirit, / and by God's mercy / and for His glory, / I promise, with God’s help, / to seek to love you as Christ loved the church / and gave Himself up for her.

I promise to seek to die for you / and give myself up for you daily / and wash you with the water of the Word.

I promise to seek to live with you in an understanding manner / as heirs together of the grace of life.

I promise to seek to outdo you in showing honor, / to live in harmony with you, / to greet you with many holy kisses, / to serve you, / to bear your burdens, / to weep with you when you weep / and to rejoice with you when you rejoice, / to forgive you, / to confess my sins to you when I sin against you, / to encourage you, / to build you up, / to speak the truth in love to you when you sin, / to stir you up to love and good deeds, / to pray for you, / to provide for you, / to protect you, / to lead you to Christ / and help you be more and more conformed into His image / as we focus on the Word of God and prayer.

I promise to give you your sexual rights and not deprive you.

I promise to give you my heart, / my mind, / and my body / and to give them to you and God alone.

I promise to help us be most satisfied in God / because then, / He will be most glorified in us.

I promise to help you get for yourself / the most joy you can possibly get for yourself / in the world to come / and to help you store up treasure in heaven / and not on earth / where moth and rust destroy.

I promise to help us love the Lord our God / with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength / and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

I promise to lead us to believe / and to say to God with the Psalmist: / “Whom have we in heaven but You? / And there is nothing on earth that we desire besides You!” (Ps. 73:25)

I promise to lead us to believe / and to say to God with Habakkuk: / “Though the fig tree should not blossom, / nor fruit be on the vines, / the produce of the olive fail / and the fields yield no food, / the flock be cut off from the fold / and there be no herd in the stalls, / yet we will rejoice in the LORD; / we will take joy in the God of our salvation.” (Hab. 3:17-18)

I promise to remind you often / of who we are in Christ / and of Romans 8:28: / “And we know that for those who love God / all things work together for good, / for those who are called according to his purpose.”

I promise to help us to seek first the Kingdom of God with you, / knowing that all other things shall be added unto us.

I promise to lead us to have a marriage and family / that seeks to obey Jesus’ great commission / and make disciples of all nations, / teaching them to obey all that Jesus has commanded.

I promise to focus mainly on evidence of God’s grace in your life / and not on your sins and failures, / to focus mainly on how I can be a more godly husband / and not on how you can be a more godly wife, / and to be quick to confess my sin / and not let the sun go down on our anger.

I promise to point you and our family to King Jesus. / That's our King! / And to point you to His everlasting Gospel: / Jesus’ perfect Person and life, / His death on that cross, / His burial, / resurrection, / ascension, / and Jesus’ coming again to conquer all of His and our enemies.

I promise never to leave you nor forsake you / and with all God’s energy / that He powerfully works within me / to do all that I can / to present you as a pure virgin to Christ / on that last day. / And by God’s mercy, / I promise to seek to boast only in the cross with you / all the days of our lives / and to exalt His name together.

Mercy's Personal Commitments 

And today… before God, and the witnesses He has placed before us,

I promise— by God’s grace,

through the lens of our Lord’s holy Gospel,

and with the help of His Holy Spirit—

that I will strive every day to:

respect you,

live with you in submission out of reverence for Christ.

treat you as I would Christ,

always strive to make peace with you,

outdo you in showing honor,

build you up with my words,

not speak evil against you,

live in harmony with you,

bear your burdens,

care for you, count you more significant than myself, and be ready to forgive…

as God has forgiven me.

And…

And above all these…

I promise to put on love,

which binds everything together in perfect harmony,

for the honor and glory

of our Savior, Christ Jesus.

Amen.

One funny note: Mercy originally put these lines in her personal commitments as well, but then decided to remove them :)

And…

to support you in finding all the cheap stuff and stores—

especially Walmart.

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!