Bible Verses for Wedding

Do everything in love.

Four words — the shortest usable verse in the wedding literature, which is why it fits on a place card, a napkin, or the inside of a ring. Paul writes it at the end of a letter full of instructions about money and travel arrangements. It is a sign-off, not a sentiment.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Everyone quotes the second half; the first half is the argument for it. Printed on a card most people will read only "God is love" — which is fine, and worth knowing you are quoting a sentence that had a condition attached to the front of it.

And though one may be overpowered, two can resist. Moreover, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

The three-strand cord is the most printed wedding image in the Bible, and almost nobody reads the clause before it — which is about two people being able to resist an attack. It is a passage about not being alone when something goes wrong, not about a third party completing a couple.

Ecclesiastes 4 argues for the practical value of company: the preceding verses concern falling down, keeping warm, and being robbed. The third strand is never identified.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.

"A good return for their labour" is an economic clause, not a romantic one. Ecclesiastes is arguing that two people get more done — an unglamorous thing to print on an invitation, and possibly the truest one available. Fourteen words, and it sets on a single line.

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.

Finds is the verb, and it implies looking as well as luck. Proverbs treats a good marriage as something received rather than achieved, and that is a distinction most wedding speeches get backwards. Fifteen words, and it is traditionally read by whoever is giving the toast.

Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

The closing line of the ceremony reading above, on its own. Ten words is why this one appears on invitations while the full passage stays in the order of service.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Outdo yourselves in honoring one another.

Outdo one another in showing honour — a competition with an unusual object. Fourteen words, and it reads well on a table card, where guests will see it repeatedly.

However, from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Jesus is quoting Genesis here, and he is doing it inside an argument about divorce — somebody had asked whether a man may dismiss his wife. That is the setting of the most-read wedding text in the New Testament. It does not spoil it: the sentence was built to carry weight, not to decorate a ceremony. About twenty-five seconds aloud.

Asked by Pharisees testing him on whether divorce is lawful. Jesus answers by going back past the law to Genesis.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed.

Read the list again: most of it is what love does not do. Paul wrote it to a congregation that was suing each other and competing over spiritual gifts, so every clause was aimed at somebody in particular. It works at a wedding for that reason rather than in spite of it. Forty seconds aloud.

Written to the church at Corinth during a dispute about status and spiritual gifts. Nothing in the chapter is about marriage.

Set me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unrelenting as Sheol. Its sparks are fiery flames, the fiercest blaze of all. Mighty waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If a man were to give all the wealth of his house for love, his offer would be utterly scorned.

The clause people leave out is the one about jealousy, unrelenting as the grave. This is not a gentle poem — love is compared here to death, fire and flood, three things that do not negotiate. If you want a reading that says the thing you are promising is formidable rather than sweet, this is it. Read it slowly.

But Ruth replied: “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn from following you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD punish me, and ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

These are the most quoted wedding words in the Old Testament, and they were not said to a husband. Ruth is speaking to her mother-in-law, both of them widowed, on a road out of Moab with nothing arranged and no prospects. Which arguably makes them a better vow than a romantic one: the loyalty is promised where there is no advantage in it.

Ruth says this to Naomi, her widowed mother-in-law, after both their husbands have died. Some guests will know the source, so name it from the front — one sentence prevents the reading landing as a mistake.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Three verbs, and they are the ceremony's own structure: leave, be united, become one. Most orders of service move through them in that order without saying so.

And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Worth noticing that this is not about the couple. God is the subject throughout, and the two of them are included only by abiding in something that was already there. For a ceremony that has to say why these promises are being made in a church rather than an office, this is the sentence that does it.

If a man is newly married, he must not be sent to war or be pressed into any duty. For one year he is free to stay at home and bring joy to the wife he has married.

A law exempting a newly married man from the army for a year, and the stated purpose is to bring his wife joy. There is no more surprising verse in the wedding literature — somebody legislated a honeymoon. At a reception it lands as a joke; at a ceremony it lands as a claim about what the first year is for.

One of a short list of exemptions from military service, alongside a new house and a newly planted vineyard.

The LORD God also said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.”

Helper, here, renders a word used elsewhere of God helping Israel. It is not a word about a subordinate — worth saying aloud before anyone assumes otherwise.

Nevertheless, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Paul's own summary of the passage, which is why it is the safer thing to read aloud: it puts both instructions in one sentence instead of one of them alone.

Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

Honour is the word, and it is addressed to everyone present rather than to the couple. A marriage is described here as something a whole room is responsible for.

And over all these virtues put on love, which is the bond of perfect unity.

Love is called the bond — the thing holding the other virtues together rather than one more item on the list. Fifteen words, which means you can say it as a vow without losing your place halfway. Paul is describing what a community wears; a couple is the smallest possible version of one.

This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Set by comparison, and not a manageable comparison: as I have loved you. He said it on the last night before he died. Fourteen words is short enough to promise out loud, which is the practical test for a vow — any longer and you are reading rather than saying it.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her

Husbands get the longer and costlier half of the passage, and it is the half more often left out of the reading. Sixteen words.

Above all, love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Covers, not erases. Fourteen words that concede there will be things to cover — a more honest vow than most of the ones written for the occasion.

with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

Four words doing the work: humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance. None of them is a feeling, which is what makes the whole line promisable.