Introduction — The Mystery of Marriage
Marriage is God’s idea. Scripture presents marriage as something God himself instituted — and designed to reflect his saving love in Jesus Christ. The teachings of Scripture challenge our contemporary Western culture’s narrative of individual freedom as the only path to happiness. The framework Paul offers is not one of isolated individuals pursuing their own interests but of mutual self-giving rooted in reverence for Christ: “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.”
Chapter 1 — The Secret of Marriage
Marriage is glorious but hard. It is a burning joy and strength, and yet it is also blood, sweat, and tears. The Bible presents it as the most profound of all human relationships, second only to our relationship with God himself. God officiates at the first wedding in Genesis 2:22–25, and when the man sees the woman for the first time he breaks into poetry: “At last!” Everything in the text proclaims that coming to know and love a spouse is difficult and painful yet rewarding and wondrous — very much like coming to know God.
The statistical verdict on marriage is overwhelming. 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. Children who grow up in married, two-parent families have two to three times more positive life outcomes than those who do not. Being married, and growing up with parents who are married, are enormous boosts to human well-being.
Yet something has fundamentally shifted in how people think about marriage itself. What was once a public institution for the common good has become a private arrangement for the satisfaction of the individual. Marriage used to be about us, but now it is about me. Ironically, this newer view puts a crushing burden of expectation on both marriage and spouse — leaving people trapped between unrealistic longings and terrible fears at the same time. The National Marriage Project’s surveys found that “compatibility” — men’s top criterion — meant above all a “willingness to take them as they are and not change them.” Never before in history has any society contained so many people with such idealistic expectations about a future partner. The Christian answer to this search cuts straight to the point: no two people are compatible — not as the word is usually meant.
The problem runs deeper than mere idealism. C. S. Lewis put it with stark clarity: “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.” That is the emotional logic of the self-fulfillment approach to marriage — and it is ultimately a counsel of death. This assumption overlooks something crucial: we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. The primary task becomes learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
But Paul, in Ephesians 5, names something unexpected: the “secret” of marriage. He says this mystery of a man and woman becoming one flesh points directly to Christ and the church — specifically to what husbands should do for their wives, which is what Jesus did to bring us into union with himself. He died to his own interests and looked to our needs instead. If God had the gospel of Jesus’s salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only “works” to the degree it approximates the pattern of God’s self-giving love in Christ.
Modern culture deepens this confusion by turning romantic love into a substitute religion. The cultural theorist Ernest Becker argued that contemporary people, having been taught they cannot be certain of God or the afterlife, have made romantic love into the thing that must supply meaning, hope, moral compass, and self-identity — what he called “apocalyptic romance.” We look to sex and romance to give us what we used to get from faith in God. What we want, when we elevate a partner to the position of God, is nothing less than redemption.
The question is not whether marriage should serve fulfillment or require sacrifice. The Christian teaching refuses that either/or: it offers mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice. Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel’s remaking of your heart from the inside out. The reason marriage is so painful and yet so wonderful is precisely because it is a reflection of the gospel: 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 2 — The Power for Marriage
We are often running on fumes, spiritually, but we must know where the fuel station is — and more important, that it exists. If we look to our spouses to fill our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.
Paul’s definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13 makes the direction plain: “Love is patient and kind … it is not self-seeking.” Love is the very opposite of “self-seeking.” But here is the practical problem: you can only afford to be generous if you actually have something in the bank to give. If your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then whenever he or she fails you, it will not simply cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love “in the bank” to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness in return.
The solution to a troubled marriage is not simply trying harder. If two spouses each say, “I’m going to treat my own self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage,” the prospect of a truly great marriage opens up. The Christian principle at work is Spirit-generated selflessness — not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. You cannot create this power from within. A God-sized spiritual vacuum can only be filled by God, and only when it is filled are you free to serve your spouse rather than demand that your spouse serve you.
This is why Paul prays not merely for better behavior from his readers but for an inner renewal of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control — is exactly the list of characteristics that make someone a great spouse. It is also a list of things that cannot be self-generated. You do not produce this fruit by an act of will any more than an apple tree wills its blossoms. The tree must be rooted in good soil and well watered. In the same way, the Christian spouse must be rooted in the gospel, watered by worship and prayer, nourished in community — and then the fruit comes. This changes what we should do when we are not loving our spouses well. We should not simply try harder. We should ask: what is it about the gospel that I am not understanding, or not believing, or not experiencing? That is the root issue. Address that, and the fruit follows.
Chapter 3 — The Essence of Marriage
Throughout history, two fundamentally different kinds of relationships have existed side by side. Consumer relationships last only as long as the vendor meets your needs at a cost acceptable to you; when a better option appears, there is no obligation to remain. Covenantal relationships are different in kind: the good of the relationship takes precedence over the immediate needs of the individual. Society has always understood the parent-child bond this way. Modern culture increasingly applies consumer logic to marriage — we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs. But a covenant relationship is a stunning blend of law and love — love needs a framework of binding obligation to become fully what it should be. The willingness to enter a binding promise, far from stifling love, actually enhances it — even supercharges it. And there is a bracing statistical reality: longitudinal studies reveal that two-thirds of unhappy marriages will become happy within five years if people stay married and do not divorce.
At the deepest level, what marriage makes possible is the experience of being fully known and truly loved. 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 a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. The passion that long-married couples share differs from the thrill of new romance like a quieter but much deeper river differs from a noisy but shallow brook.
Biblical love is not merely spontaneous emotion — it is a command, and emotions cannot be commanded. C. S. Lewis argued in Mere Christianity: “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ 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.” Emotions catch up with behavior. Lewis was blunt about what happens to feelings: “People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ 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 — 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.” When the glamour fades, the essence of marriage is what remains: 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 the dry spells will become less frequent and deep, and your feelings more constant.
Chapter 4 — The Mission of Marriage
Real friendship is defined by two features: constancy and transparency. Real friends always let you in, and they never let you down. George Eliot captured this quality memorably: “The inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — 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 is the atmosphere true friendship creates, and it is the atmosphere marriage at its best can sustain.
Friendships are discovered more than they are created at will. They arise between people who find that they share common interests and longings for the same things. C. S. Lewis observed the contrast vividly: where erotic love can be depicted as two people looking at one another, friendship is two people standing side by side, looking at the same object and being stirred by it together. Christian friendship is not merely enjoying shared entertainment; it is the deep oneness that develops as two people journey together toward the same destination, helping each other through dangers and challenges along the way.
Different cultures have weighted marriage’s components differently. In tribal societies, social status often matters most; in individualistic Western societies, romance and great sex dominate. The Bible, without ignoring social responsibility or the importance of romance, puts great emphasis on marriage as companionship. And if believers are to provoke one another to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24), to affirm each other’s 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 for one another?
Physical attractiveness will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. Socioeconomic status can change almost overnight. But marriage holds a deeper vision: to look at another person and get a glimpse of the one God is creating, and to say, “I see who God is making you, and it excites me. I want to partner with you and with God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, ‘I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!’” This means screening first for friendship — looking for the person who understands you better than you do yourself, who makes you a better person just by being around them, and with whom that friendship could become romance and marriage. 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, you have the makings of a marriage.
Paul’s vision in Ephesians is also explicitly formational: one of the main purposes of marriage is to make us holy — “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.” That means having Jesus’s character reproduced in us — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithful integrity, gentle humility, and self-control — worked into our ordinary lives over time. If your spouse does not feel that you are putting him or her first, then by definition you aren’t. And if we want to be happy in marriage, we will accept that marriage is designed to make us holy — and that holiness and happiness, in the end, are not competitors.
Chapter 5 — Loving the Stranger
Marriage changes us. Having children changes us. Career transitions change us. Age changes us. And on top of all that, marriage brings out and reveals traits that were there all along but were hidden — until daily proximity brings them fully into view. Marriage counselor and author Gary Chapman argues that the in-love phase, which usually lasts several months to two years, includes the near-complete illusion that the beloved is perfect in every aspect that matters. When that illusion breaks, people respond in very different ways.
If your purpose in marriage was to acquire a soul mate who would not change you, this particular reality 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. But if you began your marriage understanding its purpose as spiritual friendship for the journey to the new creation — expecting marriage to be about helping each other grow out of sins and flaws — then you will actually be expecting the “stranger” seasons. When you come to one, you will roll up your sleeves and get to work. Marriage does not create your weaknesses, though you may be tempted to blame your spouse for your blow-ups. It reveals them. And those revelations are invitations to repentance, not just occasions for frustration.
God has indeed given us a desire for the perfect spouse, but the invitation is to seek it in the one to whom you are already married. Why discard this partner for someone else, only to discover that person’s deep hidden flaws? The only way you will actually begin to see another person’s glory-self is to stick with him or her. Spousal love holds a unique power to reshape self-perception. Marriage puts into your spouse’s hand a massive power to reprogram your own self-appreciation — to overturn anything previously said about you, to a great degree redeeming the past. As Tolkien wrote, “The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.” To be highly esteemed by someone you highly esteem is among the greatest experiences available to a human being.
Love must also be given in forms the other person can actually receive. A sincere message sent in the wrong language may never land. If we say “I love you” to someone who does not understand English, the love does not get through. The categories are worth making concrete. Affection is given through eye contact, caresses, sitting closely, holding hands — and this must not be done only as a prelude to sex, or it loses its integrity. Verbal love must be direct, personal, specific, and ever-fresh — honest praise for your partner’s strengths, specific gratitude, refraining from harsh criticism, notes and letters on meaningful occasions. Friendship love is cultivated through quality time doing something at least one of you genuinely enjoys while enabling communication; through supportive interest in each other’s work; through shared intellectual life — reading books together, discussing changes in thinking, studying a subject side by side — and through the habits of genuine listening and opening up that build emotional safety over time. Serving each other begins with the most practical tasks — happily helping with housework without being asked — but extends to standing up for your spouse before others and showing deep loyalty. It also means the willingness to change: making a real commitment to change behaviors in yourself that trouble or hurt your spouse. Above all, there is no greater way for Christian spouses to serve one another than by helping each other grow spiritually — through prayer, church, Scripture, and reading Christian books together. Praying daily with and for each other seasons the entire relationship with the love of God and of one another.
But love alone is not enough — truth must accompany it, and truth without love becomes a weapon. The solution is grace. The experience of Jesus’s grace makes it possible to practice the two most important skills in marriage: forgiveness and repentance. You cannot create this power; you can only reflect it to others if you have first received it. If 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. The joy and freedom that comes from knowing 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 the emotional wealth to exercise the power of grace. 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.
Chapter 6 — Embracing the Other
Ephesians 5 speaks directly and provocatively to the structure of marriage. These verses strongly suggest that the sexes, while equal in dignity and worth, are complementary — designed to complete rather than replicate one another. The English word “helper” is not the best translation of the Hebrew word ‘ezer. “Helper” connotes merely assisting someone who could manage almost as well without you. But ‘ezer is almost always used in the Bible to describe God himself or military reinforcements — without which a battle would be lost. Woman was made to be a “strong helper.”
What does complementarity look like in practice? It means there are real, deep, glorious differences between the sexes — differences that are not merely social constructs but something woven into creation and designed to enrich each other. It does not mean one sex is superior or that all the differences are ones of temperament or role. It means that husband and wife, precisely because they are different, can bring each other things the other could not supply from within. The differences are not problems to be overcome but gifts to be received — if both parties come to the marriage with humility, curiosity, and eagerness to learn from someone genuinely unlike themselves. Two mirrors facing each other produce an infinite regression but no new light. It takes genuine Otherness to generate true completion.
Genesis 3 recounts the Fall, and the effect on marriage is immediate and catastrophic. The air fills with blame-shifting, finger-pointing, and accusation. Rather than the Otherness of the sexes becoming a source of completion, it becomes an occasion for oppression and exploitation. Redemption means working actively against this distortion rather than accepting it as simply how things are.
If a wife’s role in relation to her husband is analogous to the church’s submission to Christ, we have nothing to fear — Christ’s authority over the church is never used to please himself; it is exercised entirely in service of the church’s good — he gave himself up for her. Both women and men get to “play the Jesus role” in marriage: women in sacrificial submission, men in sacrificial authority. Both roles are forms of self-giving love, not self-assertion. Headship that is truly modeled on Christ is not a license for self-interest but a profound call to responsibility, service, and sacrifice.
Chapter 7 — Singleness and Marriage
Christianity’s founder, Jesus Christ, and its leading theologian, St. Paul, were both single their entire lives. Single adults cannot be seen as somehow less fully formed human beings than married persons, because Jesus Christ — a single man — was the perfect man. 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 who can truly fulfill us, and God’s family is the only family that will truly embrace and satisfy us.
The idolatry of marriage distorts single life in the present — and the same idolatry will distort married life once a partner is found. The remedy is to demote marriage and family in your heart, put God first, and begin to enjoy the genuine goodness of single life now. Choosing a spouse wisely is still deeply important. So many people choose on the basis of looks and money, rather than on character, mission, future self, and mythos, that they often find themselves married to someone they don’t really respect that much. One crucial way to protect clear judgment during the process is to refuse to have sex before marriage. Sexual intensity before commitment creates a blindness and emotional volatility that robs you of the very discernment you most need when making one of the most consequential decisions of your life.
Meanwhile, the church must become a genuine family for its unmarried members. Jesus redefined family not biologically but around allegiance to himself: “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” The church is therefore the primary family for all Christians, whether married or single. Singles are not on a waiting list for real life, not incomplete people who just haven’t found their other half yet. They are full members of God’s family with gifts to offer and a place to belong. When a local church takes this seriously — when married couples open their tables and their homes and their lives to single adults — it realizes the New Testament vision of a community where both the married and the unmarried are equally at home and equally essential.
Chapter 8 — Sex and Marriage
Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, “I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.” The physical act carries a meaning built into it, and you must not use sex to say anything less. Though a marriage covenant is necessary for sex, sex is also necessary for the maintenance of the covenant. It is, in the fullest sense, a covenant renewal service.
C. S. Lewis likened sex without marriage to tasting food without swallowing and digesting — the pleasure is real but the purpose is thwarted, and in the end both the act and the person are diminished. 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 final union will be.
The orientation of sex within marriage is outward, not inward. Each partner 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: without it, the friction between all the moving parts will burn out the motor. Without joyful, loving sex, the friction in a marriage will produce anger, resentment, hardness, and disappointment. Martin Luther reportedly addressed sexual desire with characteristic directness: “You can’t stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from making nests in your hair.” Sexual thoughts are natural and unavoidable; we are not responsible for their arrival. We are responsible for what we do with them — whether we entertain and dwell on them. And when we fail sexually, the gospel of grace is the right instrument for the conscience.
The principles of headship and completion that run through the whole book apply in the bedroom as well. The husband’s authority is never used to please himself but only to serve the interests of his wife. Jesus never did anything to please himself (Romans 15:2–3). A servant-leader must sacrifice his wants and needs to please and build up his partner. A wife, for her part, is to be her husband’s most trusted friend and counselor, as he is hers (Proverbs 2:17). To complement each other means husband and wife need to hear each other out, make their arguments, and engage in loving contention with affection, until they sharpen, enrich, and enhance each other. She must bring every gift and resource she has to the discussion, and he must, as any wise leader, know when to allow her expertise to govern his own less well-informed opinion.