Death By Love: Chapter 3

From the intro of chapter 3 in Mark Driscoll's brand new book, Death by Love (73-74):

Luke and his wife were relatively new Christians who were trying hard to learn their Bibles and reorganize their lives to honor Jesus. They were only a few weeks away from the birth of their first child when Luke's wife confessed to him her darkest and most shameful secret.

She told him that before her recent conversion to Jesus, she had slept with one of his good friends. To make matters worse, much of their sin occurred in Luke's own home while he was away at work laboring lovingly to provide for his family.

Upon hearing what his wife had done, he was understandably filled with rage, humiliation, and panic. His rage was directed at his supposed friend and his adulterous liar of a wife. His humiliation was caused by the thought that he was oblivious to what was happening under his own roof and that he was intimate with his wife in the same bed where she had been with his friend, sometimes only hours prior. His panic was due to feeling trapped by the forthcoming birth of his child. As a new Christian, the last thing he wanted was to have his child grow up in yet another broken home, which meant he felt trapped in a marriage to a wife who had made herself his enemy.

Another pastor and I met with the couple immediately after his wife confessed her sin in deep repentance. Tears flowed down her face and soaked the front of her shirt. Her breathing was so heavy that I feared she would hyperventilate. She was a deeply broken woman whom the Holy Spirit had brought under deep conviction. She was panicked with fear as her mind raced through the various ways in which her husband could respond. Would he kill his friend? Would he divorce her and leave her as yet another single-mother statistic? Would she be stuck in a love¬less marriage with a distant and bitter husband who tormented her by withholding forgiveness for the rest of her life?

We were in one of those moments in which they would each choose a path that would affect the rest of their lives and the lives of their child and grandchildren. I tenderly kissed her on the top of her head and told her I loved her and that she had done the right thing in confessing her sin. I also encouraged her to make a full and complete confession so that there could be hope for the wound to heal without having to be reopened later by further revelations of sin.

I took Luke into my office, and he sat down in the chair. He was as furious as I have ever seen any man. His hands clenched as he gripped the chair arms. He was breathing heavily and his heart rate was obviously high. His eyes were focused and not blinking. His teeth were clenched behind pursed lips.

I asked him the simple question, "What do you want?"

"I want blood," he replied.

"You deserve it," I said. "They both should die."

I then went on to explain the doctrine of new covenant sacrifice to Luke. I tried to explain that he got his blood at the cross of Jesus. This letter is a further articulation of this great truth to my dear friend and his lovely bride.