Friday's Thoughts on Marriage

This is number 9 in a weekly series begun on December 21^st/13 with a post called, “Married Forever?

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Ephesians 5:21

Ah submission the dirtiest word in secular relationships. That's okay. Let them fight for their own rights. Let them demand change in their partners while demanding that their spouses accept them as they are. How functional atheists live their lives has nothing to do with us. On the other hand, I hope I'm getting the point across that our behaviours don't determine our character. Rather, our character determines our behaviours. When the Holy Spirit indwells us, when we abide in Jesus, our character becomes like that of Jesus. Humility and submission were two strong, strong characteristics of Jesus.

The fact is the ability to submit, the power and strength to submit our will to another is a sign that the Holy Spirit resides within. Submission to one another is a sign that you are being guided by the will and the wishes of Creator God. Humility (which the world wrongly associates with humiliation) along with the absence of pride (which the world sees as some sort of affliction) and a lack of self-will (which the world associates with social and economic suicide), is what allows couples in a Biblical marriage to show love to one another. In fact, the behaviours of love are actually the duties of husbands and wives in a Biblical marriage. It is only through a Holy Spirit guided ability to serve your spouse that you will be able to meet and overcome the hurdles that so often trip up marriages run by what passes for human wisdom.

Characteristics of those guided by the Holy Spirit are well known among those indwelt by Him: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control. These are the characteristics of Jesus and if you think about these for a moment, you will quickly see how each one is indispensable to a strong and stable marriage. We must allow ourselves to be transformed into the character of Jesus if we are to live out and model marriage as God intends for us. Anything less makes a mockery of stating that we are followers of Jesus.

Even though the circumstances of life change, the character of Jesus does not. That is what creates the ever present stability in a Biblical marriage. With these characteristics present in each partner, it's easy to see that these are not two needy people looking to someone else to solve their own insecurities or to give them value and worth. That's because they already possess these things because of their relationship with and the indwelling Spirit of Jesus. 

We function at our best on the indwelling strength and power of God's Spirit. 

We do not draw life from our partner. Unlike secular lives which produce songs claiming to “need you,” “I can't live without you,” etc., a follower of Jesus has learned that the worship of our Creator produces a human who is fully alive. That is what allows us to be the kind of people that our spouse deserves. To not draw our strength from God causes us to demand from our spouses something that is impossible for them to give.

More on this next Friday.

Friday's Thoughts on Marriage

This is number 8 in a weekly series begun on December 21^st/13 with a post called, “Married Forever?”

So which is it? Is the purpose of marriage to promote the good of family and society? Or is it to enhance the well-being of self? It might surprise you to know that Jesus didn't set marriage up as a choice between one or the other. I know, that's how the world views Biblical marriage - oppression of self-fulfillment. However, like most other things that have to do with Jesus and His teaching, the world is wrong. In reality, God brought marriage into being with the intent of showing that mutual fulfilment could only come through mutual sacrifice for one another.

To set an example for us, Jesus gave up His rights and He died to self to bring us into a healed relationship with Himself and then He said, “Follow Me, be like Me, do in your relationships what I did in My relationships. Submitting to Jesus by submitting to one another in our marriages brings personal fulfilment. A marriage where two people engage in loving surrender to each other drives away fear of abandonment, ends loneliness, and grows us into Christ-likeness. And that is the point of life (Romans 8:29). That is the “good” that God works for in all things for believers; to make us more and more like Jesus. The more you live out the Gospel of Grace toward each other, the closer you become toward each other and to Jesus. That's the secret, or the mystery of which Paul speaks.

Biblical marriage will change your heart and soul.

I heard a comedian once, who said, “No matter how smart you think you are, you're not that smart.” That's true, but so is the Bible which explains, “No matter how good you think you are, you're not that good.” We need to be changed. Society and the world at large needs us to be changed. A Biblical marriage will bring about that inner change unlike anything else. That is because Biblical marriage teaches us what it means to love.

Through expressing the enormous love that Jesus washes over us, we are truly transformed. However, this awareness of who we really are must be brought forth in an atmosphere of love. Without a loving environment, we simply will not hear the truth. In the absence of the certainty of love, men hear criticism as rejection and women hear it as a lack of love. With the certainty of love we not only hear the truth about our sin with which our partner must live, we long to repent of our sin and be changed. God's mercy and grace, freely received can then be freely given.

More on this next Friday

Friday's Thoughts on Marriage

This is the 7th in a series that began December 21^st/13 with a post called, “Married Forever?”

Last week I ended with the statement, “I maintain that without knowing the secret of marriage that Paul describes for us in the New Testament, no marriage can reach the level of fulfillment for the couple, and glorification of Jesus that it was intended to attain.”

The Secret of Marriage? I read through the whole Bible once a year, every year. It's taken me nearly two decades to get what Paul is talking about. Not because it's such a difficult concept, but because I simply could not sink below the surface of what he was saying. Its kind of like -

Paul says clearly, “I'm talking about Christ and the Church.”

I blink my eyes and say “Huh?”

“I'm talking about Christ and the Church (the body of believers). Husbands, love your wives just as Jesus loves the Church and gave Himself up for her.”

“Oh, you're talking about Christ and the Church! . . . Huh?”

Now I get it. Then I didn't. Mostly probably because I didn't want to hear what his words meant. I've since seen that many Christian husbands don't want to get it. Paul is saying that the secret to our role in marriage is to do for our wives what Jesus did to unite all of us with Himself. He gave Himself up for us. Jesus IS the greatest Being to ever exist. He is the Creator and sustainer of life and the universe itself. And then He gave up His glory, became a human-being, died on a Roman cross and paid the penalty for our sins.

He loved us.

He served us.

He gave up His rights as Creator God so that our needs might be met.

That kind of sacrifice made possible an intimate, healed and forgiven relationship with Him and He says to us husbands, 'THAT is how to do marriage.' Jesus and the Church is what God had in mind when He ordained way back in Genesis that, “A man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one.”

That's the secret that Paul is talking about. That is what keeps Biblical marriage from being oppressive as the world imagines it to be. In Biblical marriage the husband, under Christ, is the Spiritual Leader of the home. As such, the husband gives himself up and models for the family:

. Submission

. Love

. Mercy

. Kindness

. Patience

. Self-control

. Faithfulness

. Forgiveness

. Gentleness and

. Servant-leadership

Because God had this picture of salvation in mind when He instituted marriage between man and woman, the marriage can only be successful when each partner loves the other in a self-giving love.

Jesus said, “I did not come to be served but serve and to give My life . . .”

I often tell people (Christians) whose marriage is struggling, “If you try to fix this marriage, you will fail. If instead, you focus solely on repairing your relationship with Jesus (not your partner's relationship but your relationship), loving Him and obeying Him, the restoration of your marriage will follow as naturally as dawn follows the dark.”

Do for your spouse, what Jesus did for you and your marriage cannot fail.

More on this next Friday.

Friday's Thoughts on Marriage

The 2nd in a series:

Have you got a marriage partner who doesn't treat you good? It's not all h/her fault. You cannot expect a person to treat you good, if you chose to marry someone who is not a good person. In fact, you will not attract a good person if you yourself are not a good person. Health attracts health, sickness attracts sickness. I've said these things before on http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.ca/2006/12/will-i-ever-find-partner-whos-good-for.html so I won't go into it further here.

The reason that I love working with married couples, particularly couples in a Christian marriage, is because there is no relationship in all of humanity better suited to helping us learn to love than marriage. Of course any relationship can help, but none is better than marriage. I've long said,

“We get married because we think we're in love. In reality, it's marriage that teaches us what love is.”

Marriage as the Christian paradigm intends, mimics Jesus' philosophy of life, “I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life . . .”

In the Christian paradigm, the man is the Spiritual Leader of the home. As such, he is to model for the family:

. submission

. love

. patience

. gentleness

. forgiveness

. mercy

. kindness

. faithfulness

. grace

. self-control

. servant leadership, and so on.

Ultimately husbands and wives show their love for Christ when they unconditionally love their spouse. If you are not loving your spouse unconditionally, you are not loving Jesus. This is a huge, huge difference from what marriage means to most modern day couples.

In fact, completely ignoring empirical evidence regarding longevity of marriage, today more than half of all couples live together before getting married. That may not surprise you, but consider that only 40 years ago, only those on the dysfunctional fringes of society lived common-law.

It used to be that marriage taught dedication and commitment. It used to be believed that marriage provided a safe environment for children to learn about all aspects of life, since in the absence of safety, children function less well in all areas of life. Again, studies are congruent on this conclusion. Today marriage is all about self. I purposely leave out the term “secular marriage” because more and more marriages of couples that would call themselves “Christian” copy their secular neighbour's reasons for getting married. Marriage no longer has anything to do with reflecting God's nature, or trying to better society by bettering oneself. It's no longer about “us” and has become totally about “me”. In fact, the very thought of having a spouse who helps you to change let alone expects you to change is anathema to modern marriage. Not so for Biblical marriage.

More next Friday.