The Meaning of Marriage

INTRODUCTION

Marriage is God\u2019s idea. It is certainly also a human institution, and it reflects the character of the particular human culture in which it is embedded.

The most basic teachings by the Bible on marriage are that it has been instituted by God and that marriage was designed to be a reflection of the saving love of God for us in Jesus Christ. The teachings of Scripture challenge our contemporary Western culture\u2019s narrative of individual freedom as the only way to be happy.

Unless you\u2019re able to look at marriage through the lens of Scripture instead of through your own fears or romanticism, through your particular experience, or through your culture\u2019s narrow perspectives, you won\u2019t be able to make intelligent decisions about your own marital future.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

CHAPTER ONE: THE SECRET OF MARRIAGE

Marriage is glorious but hard. It\u2019s a burning joy and strength, and yet it is also blood, sweat, and tears, humbling defeats and exhausting victories.

God himself officiates at the first wedding (Genesis 2: 22\u201325). And when the man sees the woman, he breaks into poetry and exclaims, \u201cAt last!\u201d Everything in the text proclaims that marriage, next to our relationship to God, is the most profound relationship there is. And that is why, like knowing God himself, coming to know and love your spouse is difficult and painful yet rewarding and wondrous.

As comedian Chris Rock has asked, \u201cDo you want to be single and lonely or married and bored?\u201d Many young adults believe that these are indeed the two main options. That is why many aim for something in the middle between marriage and mere sexual encounters\u2014 cohabitation with a sexual partner.

\u201cSo if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after twenty-five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are low indeed.\u201d

The assumption is that marriage is a financial drain. But studies point to what have been called \u201cThe Surprising Economic Benefits of Marriage.\u201d A 1992 study of retirement data shows that individuals who were continuously married had 75 percent more wealth at retirement than those who never married or who divorced and did not remarry.

Also, children who grow up in married, two-parent families have two to three times more positive life outcomes than those who do not. The overwhelming verdict, then, is that being married and growing up with parents who are married are enormous boosts to our well-being.

Marriage used to be a public institution for the common good, and now it is a private arrangement for the satisfaction of the individuals. Marriage used to be about us, but now it is about me. But ironically, this newer view of marriage actually puts a crushing burden of expectation on marriage and on spouses in a way that more traditional understandings never did. And it leaves us desperately trapped between both unrealistic longings for and terrible fears about marriage.

When I met my future wife, Kathy, we sensed very quickly that we shared an unusual number of books, stories, themes, ways of thinking about life, and experiences that brought us joy. We recognized in one another a true \u201ckindred spirit\u201d and the potential for a bond of deep friendship.

However, sexual attractiveness was not the number one factor that men named when surveyed by the National Marriage Project. They said that \u201ccompatibility\u201d above all meant someone who showed a \u201cwillingness to take them as they are and not change them.\u201d Both men and women today want a marriage in which they can receive emotional and sexual satisfaction from someone who will simply let them \u201cbe themselves.\u201d They want a spouse who is fun, intellectually stimulating, sexually attractive, with many common interests, and who, on top of it all, is supportive of their personal goals and of the way they are living now. You are searching, therefore, for an ideal person\u2014 happy, healthy, interesting, content with life. Never before in history has there been a society filled with people so idealistic in what they are seeking in a spouse. A pornographic media culture may also contribute to unrealistic expectations of what their future soul mate should look like. Influenced by the sexy images of young women on MTV, the Internet, and on the runway in televised Victoria\u2019s Secret specials, men may be putting off marriage to their current girlfriend in the hopes that they will eventually find a combination \u201csoul mate.\u201d

The Christian answer to this is that no two people are compatible. What, then, is the solution? It is to explore what the Bible itself says about marriage.

The new conception of marriage-as-self-realization has put us in a position of wanting too much out of marriage and yet not nearly enough, at the same time.

C. S. Lewis put it vividly: Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become \u201cwhole\u201d and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing it is, means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is . . . learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

Marriage brings you into more intense proximity to another human being than any other relationship can. Therefore, the moment you marry someone, you and your spouse begin to change in profound ways, and you can\u2019t know ahead of time what those changes will be. So you don\u2019t know, you can\u2019t know, who your spouse will actually be in the future until you get there.

Modern culture had produced a desire for what he called \u201capocalyptic romance.\u201d At one time we expected marriage and family to provide love, support, and security. But for meaning in life, hope for the future, moral compass, and self-identity we looked to God and the afterlife. Today, however, our culture has taught us to believe that no one can be sure of those things, not even whether they exist. Therefore, Becker argued, something has to fill the gap, and often that something is romantic love. We look to sex and romance to give us what we used to get from faith in God.

After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We want redemption\u2014 nothing less.

But what is the secret of marriage? Paul immediately adds, \u201cI am talking about Christ and the church,\u201d referring to what he said earlier in verse 25: \u201cHusbands, love your wives as just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.\u201d In short, the \u201csecret\u201d is not simply the fact of marriage per se. It is the message that what husbands should do for their wives is what Jesus did to bring us into union with himself.

He died to his own interests and looked to our needs and interests instead (Romans 15: 1\u2013 3).

If God had the gospel of Jesus\u2019s salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only \u201cworks\u201d to the degree that it approximates the pattern of God\u2019s self-giving love in Christ.

There is so much to do that we don\u2019t know where to start. Start here, Paul says. Do for your spouse what God did for you in Jesus, and the rest will follow. This is the secret\u2014 that the gospel of Jesus and marriage explain one another. That when God invented marriage, he already had the saving work of Jesus in mind.

Is the purpose of marriage to deny your interests for the good of the family, or is it rather to assert your interests for the fulfillment of yourself? The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice.

There, then, is the message of this book\u2014 that through marriage, \u201cthe mystery of the gospel is unveiled.\u201d Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel\u2019s remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up. The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

Through the gospel, we get both the power and the pattern for the journey of marriage.

CHAPTER TWO: THE POWER FOR MARRIAGE

We are often running on fumes, spiritually, but we must know where the fuel station is and, even more important, that it exists. If we look to our spouses to fill up our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.

Love is patient and kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (verses 4\u2013 5) Repeatedly Paul shows that love is the very opposite of \u201cself-seeking,\u201d which is literally pursuing one\u2019s own welfare before those of others.

I call this \u201clove economics.\u201d You can only afford to be generous if you actually have some money in the bank to give. In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime he or she fails you, it will not just cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love \u201cin the bank\u201d to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness at the moment.

If two spouses each say, \u201cI\u2019m going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage,\u201d you have the prospect of a truly great marriage. The Christian principle that needs to be at work is Spirit-generated selflessness\u2014 not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself but thinking of yourself less.

If I look to my marriage to fill the God-sized spiritual vacuum in my heart, I will not be in position to serve my spouse. Only God can fill a God-sized hole.

CHAPTER THREE: THE ESSENCE OF MARRIAGE

How much are you willing to give of yourself to someone? How much are you willing to lose for the sake of this person? How much of your freedom are you willing to forsake? How much of your precious time, emotion, and resources are you willing to invest in this person?

The fact is that \u201cthe thrill of the hunt\u201d is not the only kind of thrill or passion available, nor is it the best.

Throughout history there have always been consumer relationships. Such a relationship lasts only as long as the vendor meets your needs at a cost acceptable to you. If another vendor delivers better services or the same services at a better cost, you have no obligation to stay in a relationship to the original vendor. In consumer relationships, it could be said that the individual\u2019s needs are more important than the relationship. There have also always been covenantal relationships. These are relationships that are binding on us. In a covenant, the good of the relationship takes precedence over the immediate needs of the individual. For example, a parent may get little emotionally out of caring for an infant. But there has always been an enormous social stigma attached to any parent who gives up their children because rearing them is too hard and unrewarding. For most people, the very idea of that is unthinkable. Why? Society still considers the parent-child relationship to be a covenantal one, not a consumer relationship.

Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit\u2014 that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back\u2014 then we \u201ccut our losses\u201d and drop the relationship.

A covenant relationship is a stunning blend of law and love. Love needs a framework of binding obligation to make it fully what it should be. A covenant relationship is not just intimate despite being legal. It is a relationship that is more intimate because it is legal. The willingness to enter a binding covenant, far from stifling love, is a way of enhancing, even supercharging it.

As we observed before, longitudinal studies reveal that two-thirds of unhappy marriages will become happy within five years if people stay married and do not get divorced.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self- righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

But the passion we share now differs from the thrill we had then like a noisy but shallow brook differs from a quieter but much deeper river.

Nearly everyone thinks that the Bible\u2019s directive to \u201clove your neighbor\u201d is wise, right, and good. But notice that it is a command, and emotions cannot be commanded. The Bible does not call us to like our neighbor, to have affection and warm feelings toward him or her. No, the call is to love your neighbor, and that must primarily mean displaying a set of behaviors.

Lewis went on to argue that, despite feelings of indifference and even contempt, you can change your heart over the long haul through your actions:

It would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. . . . The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you \u201clove\u201d your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.

My emotions were catching up with my behavior. If you do not give up, but proceed to love the unlovely in a sustained way, they will eventually become lovely to you.

Does that mean it doesn\u2019t matter who you marry, that you don\u2019t have to be in love with the person you wed, or that emotion is unimportant in marriage? No, I am not proposing that you deliberately marry a person you don\u2019t like. But I can guarantee that, whoever you marry, you will fall \u201cout of like\u201d with them. Powerful feelings of affection and delight will not and cannot be sustained. It is quite typical to lose the head-over-heels feelings for your mate even before you get married, because our emotions are tied to so many things within our physiology, psychology, and environment.

Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes: People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on \u201cbeing in love\u201d for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change\u2014 not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one....

And when that happens you must remember that the essence of a marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love.

In your actions you must be tender, understanding, forgiving, and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings.

Another notion we get from novels and plays is that \u201cfalling in love\u201d is something quite irresistible; something that just happens to one, like measles. And because they believe this, some married people throw up the sponge and give in when they find themselves attracted by a new acquaintance. . . . But is it not very largely in our own choice whether this love shall, or shall not, turn into what we call \u201cbeing in love\u201d? No doubt, if our minds are full of novels and plays and sentimental songs, and our bodies full of alcohol, we shall turn any love we feel into that kind of love: just as if you have a rut in your path, all the rainwater will run into that rut, and if you wear blue spectacles, everything you see will turn blue. But that will be our own fault.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE MISSION OF MARRIAGE

Genesis 1: 26: \u201cLet us make man in our own image.\u201d The Genesis narrative is implying that our intense relational capacity, created and given to us by God, was not fulfilled completely by our \u201cvertical\u201d relationship with him. God designed us to need \u201chorizontal\u201d relationships with other human beings.

There are two features of real friendship\u2014 constancy and transparency. Real friends always let you in, and they never let you down.

The inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person\u2014 having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

This means that friendships are discovered more than they are created at will. They arise between people who discover that they have common interests in and longings for the same things. While erotic love can be depicted as two people looking at one another, friendship can be depicted as two people standing side by side looking at the same object and being stirred and entranced by it together. Christian friendship is not simply about going to concerts together or enjoying the same sporting event. It is the deep oneness that develops as two people journey together toward the same destination, helping one another through the dangers and challenges along the way.

In tribal societies, romance doesn\u2019t matter as much as social status, and in individualistic Western societies, romance and great sex matter far more than anything else. The Bible, however, without ignoring responsibility to the community or the importance of romance, puts great emphasis on marriage as companionship.

(Hebrews 10: 24), are to affirm each other\u2019s gifts and hold each other accountable to grow out of their sins (Hebrews 3: 13), how much more should a husband and wife do that?

Physical attractiveness will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight.

It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, \u201cI see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, \u2018I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!\u2019\u201d

Screen first for friendship. Look for someone who understands you better than you do yourself, who makes you a better person just by being around them. And then explore whether that friendship could become a romance and a marriage.

If your spouse does not feel that you are putting him or her first, then by definition, you aren\u2019t.

Paul is saying that one of the main purposes of marriage is to make us \u201choly . . . without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.\u201d What does that mean? It means to have Jesus\u2019s character reproduced in us, outlined as the \u201cfruit of the Spirit\u201d\u2014 love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithful integrity, gentle humility, and self-control\u2014 in Galatians 5: 22\u201325.

So if we want to be happy in marriage, we will accept that marriage is designed to make us holy.

CHAPTER FIVE: LOVING THE STRANGER

Marriage changes us. Having children changes us. A career switch changes us. Age changes us. On top of everything else, marriage brings out and reveals traits in you that were there all along but were hidden from everyone including you, but now they are all seen by your spouse. Most people enter marriage through the \u201cin-love\u201d experience, and at its peak it is euphoric. Two people can become almost obsessed with each other. Marriage counselor and author Gary Chapman argues that the in-love phase, which he believes usually lasts several months to two years, includes the illusion that the beloved is perfect in every aspect that matters.

When this happens, people respond in a number of different ways. If your purpose in marriage was to acquire a \u201csoul mate\u201d\u2014 a person who would not change you and would supportively help you reach your life goals\u2014 then this particular reality of marriage will be deeply disorienting. You wake up to the realization that your marriage will take a huge investment of time just to make it work.

What if, however, you began your marriage understanding its purpose as spiritual friendship for the journey to the new creation? What if you expected marriage to be about helping each other grow out of your sins and flaws into the new self God is creating? Then you will actually be expecting the \u201cstranger\u201d seasons, and when you come to one you will roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Marriage brings out the worst in you. It doesn\u2019t create your weaknesses (though you may blame your spouse for your blow-ups)\u2014 it reveals them.

God has indeed given us a desire for the perfect spouse, but you should seek it in the one to whom you\u2019re married. Why discard this partner for someone else only to discover that person\u2019s deep, hidden flaws? Some people with serial marriages go through the cycle of infatuation, disillusionment, rejection, and flight to someone else\u2014 over and over. The only way you\u2019re going to actually begin to see another person\u2019s glory-self is to stick with him or her.

\u201cHow can you tell whether you\u2019ve got a friendship on which you can base a marriage?\u201d The answer that Kathy and I have always given is this. When you see the problems in each other, do you just want to run away, or do you find a desire to work on them together? If the second impulse is yours, then you have the makings of a marriage. Do you obsess over your partner\u2019s external shortcomings, or can you see the beauty within, and do you want to see it increasingly released? Then move forward. The power of truth that marriage has should hold no fear for you.

Marriage puts into your spouse\u2019s hand a massive power to reprogram your own self-appreciation. He or she can overturn anything previously said about you, to a great degree redeeming the past. The love and affirmation of your spouse has the power to heal you of many of the deepest wounds. To paraphrase a passage of Scripture, your heart may condemn you, but your spouse\u2019s opinion is greater than your heart.

\u201cThe praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.\u201d To be highly esteemed by someone you highly esteem is the greatest thing in the world. This principle explains why, ultimately, to know that the Lord of the universe loves you is the strongest.

The world tells us about our faults, and we know they are there, but God\u2019s love for us covers our sins and continues despite them. So Jesus has the ability to overcome everything anyone has ever said about or to you. In a Christian marriage, you\u2019re living that out in miniature.

Learn to give your spouse love in the way he or she finds most emotionally valuable and powerful. That is the only way to bring the remaking and healing power of love into your spouse\u2019s life.

What we call love currencies are often called \u201clove languages.\u201d This metaphor is also very helpful. If we say \u201cI love you\u201d to someone who does not understand a word of English, then the love does not get through. We are sending it, but it is not being received. We must learn to send love in forms that the other person can comprehend. A radio signal may be sent out on one frequency, but the radio receiver does not respond if it is tuned to another frequency.

Sometimes a particular form of love is more valuable because some significant person in your life was particularly inept at it. Sometimes a particular form of love is more valuable because some significant person in your life was particularly adept at it. Anyone who wants to give you love needs to know what those forms are and to express his or her love in those ways.

Never abuse the primary love language. Never withhold it to hurt the other, for the hurt will go deep. A man who greatly values getting respect from his wife in public will not be able to take it when she mocks him in front of their friends. A woman who needs lots of verbal affirmation will be devastated by the silent treatment.

After the euphoria wears off, if our spouse has learned to speak our primary love language, our need for love will continue to be satisfied. If, on the other hand, he or she does not speak our love language, our tank will slowly drain, and we will no longer feel loved. Meeting that need is definitely a choice. If I learn the emotional love language of my spouse and speak it frequently . . . when she comes down from the obsession of the in-love experience, she will hardly even miss it because her emotional love tank will continue to be filled. After some years of living with an empty love tank, she will likely \u201cfall in love\u201d with someone else, and the cycle will begin again.

It is helpful to simply list examples of different kinds of love languages. Just looking at a list can begin the process of discernment. Looking over the items, a spouse may say, \u201cIf you did that for me every week, things would be different in our marriage!\u201d And then you are on your way. I\u2019ll start with the category of Affection. Love can be given through eye contact, caresses, sitting closely together, and holding hands. This must not be done only when preparing for sex or it loses its integrity as a way of showing affection. Love can also be expressed through creatively finding situations that make focused attention easier. Plan walks, sitting before fireplaces, scenic drives, and picnics. Even making the effort to arrange these are an important sign and expression of love. Also, we can work on our own personal appearance as a gift to our spouse. Playfulness and fun are part of creating affectionate climates as well.

Love should be expressed verbally, not by simply saying, \u201cOf course I love you.\u201d We must learn to send messages of love in direct, personal, specific, and ever-fresh ways. Discern the strengths and gifts of your partner and communicate honest praise, appreciation, and thankfulness for him or her. The flip side of this form of love is refraining from harsh, critical words. Send love not just through the spoken word but through notes, cards, letters, and thoughtful reflections on special occasions, such as anniversaries. Finally, affection can be expressed through considerate, personal, useful, and beautiful gifts.

As we have said, friendship is essential to marriage, and this form of love has its own range of specific expressions. Friendship love can be cultivated by spending quality time together. That means doing something that at least one of you loves doing and that enables you to communicate while doing it. People immediately think of recreation and entertainment, and that is right, but doing common work tasks, like gardening or chores, bonds you together, too. Above all, show your spouse that time with him or her has priority in your life. Friendship love can also be expressed through showing supportive loyalty for, as well as interest and pride in, the work world of your spouse. If both have careers outside the home, it means each learning about each other\u2019s work and appreciating it. If the wife is at home engaged in raising children and housekeeping, it is crucial for the husband to be emotionally engaged and deeply interested in helping his wife make the house a home and a haven. Love can additionally be expressed by sharing each others\u2019 mental world. Reading books together (even aloud), discussing changes in one\u2019s thinking, studying a subject together, all these are included. Finally, friendship love is expressed and grows through both listening and opening up to the other. Friendship is above all a relationship in which it is safe to share fears, hurts, and weaknesses, an emotional refuge. Listening takes concentration. Some people are good at listening but not at opening up themselves, and vice versa. Trust is also built by following through on commitments, being reliable.

Serving each other begins with the most practical and menial tasks. If the wife is largely or fully engaged in childcare and housekeeping, that may entail the husband\u2019s participation in that work as much as possible. For example, it means happily changing diapers or helping with the house cleaning without being asked. But serving your spouse also means showing him or her great respect. It means giving your spouse the confidence that you will always speak up and stand up for him, that you will show loyalty and appreciation for her before other family and friends.

Serving your spouse also means showing that you are committed to his or her well-being and flourishing. This kind of love is given when you seek to help your spouse develop gifts and pursue aspirations for growth. One of the greatest expressions of love is the willingness to change, to make a commitment to change attitudes and behaviors in yourself that trouble or hurt your spouse. There must be an ability to take correction and to be accountable for real concrete changes. This kind of change is always hard, and nearly impossible without the grace of God, but it is also one of the most powerful signs of love in a marriage.

Finally, there is no greater way for Christian spouses to serve one another than to help each other grow spiritually. This means encouraging each other to participate together actively in church, in Christian community. It means reading and digesting Christian books together as well as studying the Bible together. And it means praying together. For centuries, Christian spouses have observed various forms of daily family prayer. Praying daily with and for each other is a love language that in many ways brings the other love languages together. It means being tenderly affectionate and transparent with each other. And you hear your spouse lifting you up to God for blessing. If you do that every day, or most days, it seasons your entire relationship with the love of God and of one another. This is by no means a definitive list of love languages or currencies.

Another example might be allowing your spouse privacy, either for brief or longer periods, depending on emotional needs. There can be no excuses for shutting one\u2019s spouse out of one\u2019s life, but different people have different capacities and needs for time alone or outside interests. Lists like these help partners identify and articulate what is often semiconscious and hard to put into words. The task before you is difficult but simple. Learn your spouse\u2019s love languages. Figure out together what they are, then brainstorm a handful of concrete ways to regularly give love in those forms. Then execute. Concretely give love to each other in deliberate ways every week.

The point is this\u2014truth and love need to be kept together, but it is very hard. When we are hurt, we use the power of truth without love. The solution is grace. The experience of Jesus\u2019s grace makes it possible to practice the two most important skills in marriage: forgiveness and repentance. Only if we are very good at forgiving and very good at repenting can truth and love be kept together.

One of the most basic skills in marriage is the ability to tell the straight, unvarnished truth about what your spouse has done\u2014 and then, completely, unself-righteously, and joyously express forgiveness without a shred of superiority, without making the other person feel small.

How do you get the power of grace? You can\u2019t create this power; you can only reflect it to others if you have received it. If you see Jesus dying on the cross for others, forgiving the people who killed him, that can be just a crushing example of forgiving love that you will never be able to live up to. But if instead you see Jesus dying on the cross for you, forgiving you, putting away your sin, that changes everything. He saw your heart to the bottom but loved you to the skies. And the joy and freedom that comes from knowing that the Son of God did that for you enables you to do the same for your spouse. It gives you both the emotional humility and wealth to exercise the power of grace.

I don\u2019t know of anything more necessary in marriage than the ability to forgive fully, freely, unpunishingly, from the heart. A deep experience of the grace of God\u2014 a knowledge that you are a sinner saved by grace\u2014 will enable the power of truth and love to work together in your marriage. Then, to the eye of God, as the years go by, you are making each other more and more beautiful, like a diamond being cut and polished and set.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our slight momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4: 16\u2013 18)

CHAPTER SIX: EMBRACING THE OTHER

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

These verses suggest strongly that the sexes, while equal in dignity and worth, are complementary.

The English word \u201chelper\u201d is not the best translation for the Hebrew word \u2019ezer. \u201cHelper\u201d connotes merely assisting someone who could do the task almost as well without help. But \u2019ezer is almost always used in the Bible to describe God himself. Other times it is used to describe military help, such as reinforcements, without which a battle would be lost. To \u201chelp\u201d someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in him with your strength. Woman was made to be a \u201cstrong helper.\u201d The word \u201csuitable\u201d is just as unhelpful a translation. This translates a compound phrase that is literally \u201clike opposite him.\u201d The entire narrative of Genesis 2, in which a piece of the man is removed to create the woman, strongly implies that each is incomplete without the other.

Genesis 3 recounts the Fall, in which both man and woman sin against God and are expelled from the garden of Eden. We immediately see the catastrophic change in the unity between man and woman. The air is filled with blame-shifting, finger pointing, and accusation. Rather than their Otherness becoming a source of completion, it becomes an occasion for oppression and exploitation. The woman remains dependent and desirous of her husband, but it turns into an idolatrous desire, and his protection and love become a selfish lust and exploitation.

But I do know that if a wife\u2019s role in relation to her husband is analogous to the church\u2019s submission to Christ, then we have nothing to fear.

Both women and men get to \u201cplay the Jesus role\u201d in marriage, Jesus in his sacrificial authority, Jesus in his sacrificial submission.

CHAPTER SEVEN: SINGLENESS AND MARRIAGE

What does this mean for our attitude toward marriage and family? Paul says it means that both being married and not being married are good conditions to be in. We should be neither overly elated by getting married nor overly disappointed by not being so, because Christ is the only spouse that can truly fulfill us and God\u2019s family, the only family that will truly embrace and satisfy us.

But Christianity\u2019s founder, Jesus Christ, and leading theologian, St. Paul, were both single their entire lives. Single adults cannot be seen as somehow less fully formed or realized human beings than married persons because Jesus Christ, a single man, was the perfect man.

The same idolatry of marriage that is distorting their single lives will eventually distort their married lives if they find a partner. So there\u2019s no reason to wait. Demote marriage and family in your heart, put God first, and begin to enjoy the goodness of single life.

So many people choose their marriage partner on the basis of looks and money, rather than on character, mission, future self, and mythos, that they often find themselves married to a person they don\u2019t really respect that much. Comprehensive attraction is something that you can begin to sense with people if you deliberately disable the default \u201cmoney, looks, and polish\u201d screening mode. If you do that, you may find (perhaps to your initial horror) that you have that attraction to persons who didn\u2019t make the grade under your old evaluation policy. Don\u2019t let things get too passionate too quickly.

One crucial way for you to avoid the blindness and mood swings of becoming too passionate too quickly is to refuse to have sex before you are married.

CHAPTER EIGHT: SEX AND MARRIAGE

Sex is God\u2019s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, \u201cI belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.\u201d You must not use sex to say anything less.

But though a marriage covenant is necessary for sex, sex is also necessary for the maintenance of the covenant. It is your covenant renewal service.

C. S. Lewis likened sex without marriage to tasting food without swallowing and digesting.

Sex is for fully committed relationships because it is a foretaste of the joy that comes from being in complete union with God through Christ. The most rapturous love between a man and woman on earth is only a hint of what that is like.

Martin Luther, for example, was reputed to say about sexual desires, \u201cYou can\u2019t stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from making nests in your hair.\u201d By that he meant that we can\u2019t stop sexual thoughts from occurring to us, they are natural and unavoidable. However, we are responsible for what we do with those thoughts. We must not entertain and dwell on them. And if we do something sexually that is wrong, we should use the gospel of grace on our consciences.

Each partner in marriage is to be most concerned not with getting sexual pleasure but with giving it.

Kathy and I often liken sex in a marriage to oil in an engine\u2014without it, the friction between all the moving parts will burn out the motor. Without joyful, loving sex, the friction in a marriage will bring about anger, resentment, hardness, and disappointment.

The husband\u2019s authority (like the Son\u2019s over us) is never used to please himself but only to serve the interests of his wife. Headship does not mean a husband simply \u201cmakes all the decisions,\u201d nor does it mean he gets his way in every disagreement. Why? Jesus never did anything to please himself (Romans 15:2\u20133). A servant-leader must sacrifice his wants and needs to please and build up his partner.

A wife is never to be merely compliant but is to use her resources to empower. She is to be her husband\u2019s most trusted friend and counselor, as he is hers (Proverbs 2:17). The \u201ccompletion\u201d that embracing the Other entails involves a lot of give and take. To complement each other means husband and wife need to hear each other out, make their arguments. Completion is hard work and involves loving contention (Proverbs 27:17), with affection (1 Peter 3:3\u20135), until you sharpen, enrich, and enhance each other. She must bring every gift and resource that she has to the discussion, and he must, as any wise manager, know when to allow her expertise to trump his own, less well-informed opinion.