The above photo is from our wedding in February 2022 🙂
Happy. Blissful. Fulfilling. These words come to mind when two people about to be married think about their future together. What about Confusing? Infuriating? Hopeless? These words had been the reality of my first year of marriage (more on that later). Everyone on the planet would be able to admit that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage. Everyone would agree that every marriage is bound to experience challenges. Nobody ever anticipates how painful it would be to put two completely different people together in holy matrimony. Let’s add to that mix the fact that both people are broken sinners that don’t actually realize how truly selfish and prideful they are. Now, let these two wretched souls do life together as one flesh.
The Refining Fire That Is Marriage
I cannot speak for all marriages but every godly couple I’ve spoken to, who have been married for 50 years or more, have told me that marriage is blissful. Marriage, they say, can be very happy and fulfilling. Is it because they found someone that is enough like them in personality, temperament, thinking and communication styles that they minimized conflict? No. Some of these long-married couples that have given me advice are very much alike, yet they offer the same reflections as the long-married couples who are polar opposites of each other. Perhaps it is because God’s favor has blessed them with exactly the right person to be happy with? Certainly not – God’s favor (grace) is already upon us because we have been chosen for salvation and sanctification. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor (see Ephesians 1:4, Ephesians 2:4-5, 1 Peter 1:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, John 1:12-13, John 15:16 among many other verses). Romans 2:11 says “God shows no partiality”. There is no such thing as “God’s favor” in the way Charismatics and the Prosperity believers view and teach it. If the successful couple are being real, they will tell you that a healthy marriage doesn’t just happen by finding “the right person”. It does not even happen by becoming the right person, as many secularists will say. It also does not result from seeking happiness and fulfillment as the purpose of marriage. In order to get to a consistently God-honoring and therefore blissful place the couple must go through the fiery furnace of refinement. In the midst of that furnace, each person must bear their cross (die to themselves) in order to follow His example. We should not only expect challenging times in our marriages, but we are to consider it an honor when God ordains suffering in our married lives. Suffering draws us in to know Christ and rely upon Him more deeply. In the participation of suffering as He suffered, we are conformed more to His image. We are in a place where we can experience His grace and His presence in supernatural, almost tangible ways — that is, to come to realize on a richer level His sovereignty, goodness, and mercy in such a way that it brings us to our knees in awe of how Holy he is and how wretched and helpless we really are. We are made “like Him in his death”. Suffering produces in us perseverance of our faith in Jesus as the source of everything we need and desire. Even more, suffering produces perseverance of faith in Jesus as the embodiment of our eternal hope (the crown of life). Consider these verses:
“Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:12)
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4)
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.
But rejoice in as much as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12-13)
“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,” (Philippians 3:10)
Wounds and Triggers
Let us go back to the confusing, infuriating, and hopeless words being the reality of my first year of marriage. My husband (age 41 when we got married) and I (age 37) had never been married before. We both have had many years getting set in our ways and living our lives not answering to any other human in our home. Going into marriage, we both thought we were pretty selfless and competent people. Within the first few months we saw how selfish and prideful we are deep down (because of the human condition of sinfulness that lingers in our flesh, at war with the spirit. See Peter 2:11, James 4:1, and Galatians 5:17). The way one spouse approaches life shocked the other to wonder “how did you survive on your own all these years?” or “how do you not understand what I mean even after I explained it to you in five different ways”? Our entire experience as brand spanking newlyweds has been discovering every annoyance about each other. Those annoyances became perceived character flaws and escalated in painful arguments. All kinds of either past wounds or unchecked wicked tendencies were triggered by each other frequently. I am ashamed to say, it had become a way of life and we were not walking in The Spirit in our home. But God in His mercy answered our prayers and is working in us in such a way that those wounds are beginning to be redeemed. By His grace, God has granted us true repentance where we are starting to see consistent fruit in our lives as individuals and as a couple. He took our self-perceived humility within both of us and replaced it actual godly humility. Instead of seeing each other as “the problem” we viewed ourselves as the one poisoning our union with our own sin. Sometimes we would both have that perspective. Other times one or the other would play the blame game and the spouse with the appropriate perspective would have to rely on the empowerment of Holy Spirit to enable us to give grace and entrust our spouse’s heart to God, which we weren’t always successful at doing but are getting better at it everyday. The Holy Spirit convicted us of things that we knew intellectually and believed affectionately in our hearts, but He caused our souls to be rattled at the core and embrace our call as husband and wife more deeply and seriously. God convicted us primarily through His Word, as well as in conversations with each other and biblically-minded married friends. The root of our issues was that we were preferring sin rather than stewarding each other’s hearts. We were choosing sinful words, actions, and mindsets over holiness. Our “needs” and feelings took priority over our God and the way He commands us to be towards our spouse, who first and foremost is a Brother and Sister in Christ, a fellow inheritor of God’s Commonwealth (Ephesians 2:19 and Philippians 3:20-12). My husband and I were forgetting the purpose for marriage is much bigger than us. That truth hit us like a bag of bricks. We were mortified.
God’s Purpose for Marriage
God spoke everything into existence, as described in the first couple of verses of the Holy Bible. At that time, He was already existing as three distinct persons within the one and only God in eternity past (Psalm 90:2, Genesis 1:1-2, Isaiah 48:16). The Triune God has always been in perfect relationship, headship and submission within this union (see 1 John 5:7-8). Also consider that Colossians 1:16 says “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” Since we were created by and for Him, bearing His image, though greatly flawed and not even revealing a fraction of a fraction of His magnificence, our greatest purpose for being created is to grow in the knowledge and grace of our Lord and to be used by God to bring Himself glory. Knowing all of this, it is certain that one purpose for marriage (a covenant designed and instituted by God when He created Man and Woman and presented Eve to her husband, Adam) is to demonstrate a shadow of an image of The Trinity (refer to Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5-6, Ephesians 5:21-23). The second purpose for marriage, as designed by God, is procreation. More specifically, bringing up the next generation of believers to share The Gospel (see Malachi 2:14-16, Ephesians 6:4) and to create a nuclear family with believers who will impact their community and society. And the third purpose for marriage is to represent The Gospel to a sin-dominated world so that God may use it to draw His elect to the Hope embodied and propitiated by Jesus (Ephesians 5:22-33, Galatians 3:28, John 13:35, 1 Corinthians 12:13). Our roles as husband and wife, as we live out God’s redemptive plan (which concludes when Jesus comes back for His Bride/The Church and His heavenly kingdom is established on earth as in heaven), is to point others to Christ’s sacrifice and the church’s appropriate response to that kind of servant-leadership.
Covenant
Marriage also paints a picture for God’s covenant with us through Christ. Covenant is a sacred, exclusive, permanent relationship that God is a witness to and a participant in; hardly the mere legal contract the world regards marriage as. God created marriage as a tangible representation of His permanent, unbreakable love, commitment, and protection to His chosen. That is why The Bible often speaks of God’s sorrow and “jealousy” towards the idolatry and rebellion of His people as that of a spouse (see Jeremiah 3:20 among others). That is why the Apostle Paul described Christ’s devotion to us as that of a husband to his bride throughout Ephesians and in 1 Corinthians 11:2.
Incompatible or Ordained For Sanctification?
To a lesser degree, but nonetheless important, marriage is designed for our sanctification. We are called to spiritually crucify ourselves and live not in our flesh but in The Spirit for Jesus Christ, who gave Himself up for us (see Galatians 12:20, 1 Thessalonians 4:3). Ephesians 5: 25-27 gives the best illustration of how sanctification works within marriage. In verse 25, a husband is called to love his wife as Christ does the church. What did Jesus do for us? He “gave himself”. He died. Husbands are commanded to give himself up as well – dying to his preferences, comfort, and pride. As a husband leads by example, He guides her to holiness, sanctifying her, washing her by the water that is the Word… because He is living in obedience to The Word. What if she is in a season where she makes it difficult for a husband to want to lead and sacrifice for her? He has to die to Himself and cherish her anyway, just as Christ died for a wretched sinner like him (Romans 5:8). The wife also has the command to respect her husband as unto The Lord. But what if her husband is in a season where he is not acting respectable? She must die to herself and respect him anyway, giving grace to him as Christ has abundantly for her. Doing so is honoring the Lord and pleasing to Him. All believers, married or single, are commanded to be doers of The Word lest we become hypocrites (James 1:22). Can profound sanctification happen as a single person? Absolutely! It had in my singleness, just like it has and continues to be in other single people’s lives. But what is unique about marriage, besides the explanations above, is God ordaining a man and woman, each with their own background, brain-wiring, personalities, giftings, etc. to make vows of living together, partnering together in every aspect of life, and loving one another permanently no matter what. That kind of set up naturally fosters an environment where you will fully see parts of each other that no one else on earth ever does – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – misunderstanding, hurt, and frustration is inevitable. And yet, you are still commanded to love each other tenaciously, sacrificially, for the rest of your earthly lives. Marriage is the most raw and faith-testing arena of life. When conflict arises in marriage and personality disparities are magnified, are we to chalk it up to incompatibility? If you have read up to this point, I think you already know the answer. Incompatibility is not an indication of a doomed, miserable marriage. It is God’s sovereignty and sanctifying work in your life and the life of your spouse, made visible. Incompatibility and suffering in marriage tears down the walls of our hearts and wakes us up to the depths of our sinfulness and our constant need for Jesus to fulfill us, to lead us, and to be our anchor of hope. And then, by God’s goodness and grace, He draws us into closer intimacy with Him and turns us into deeper places of repentance. Trusting in the faithfulness of God, His sovereignty over our lives and design for marriage has gotten my husband and I through the hurricane of our first year of marriage. We still have a long road ahead in becoming the husband and wife, the man and woman God is shaping us to be but His grace is more than sufficient to sustain us as individuals and as a couple desiring to honor Him by growing in holiness. And we are excited to see the fruit of the mighty work God is doing in and through our marriage over the rest of our lives on this side of Heaven.