The “biblical secret” to marriage? …

It’s almost a pet peeve with me … I do NOT like how preacher after teacher after church leader continues to make blanket and persistent statements that “marriage is hard,” “marriage is a struggle,” “it takes hard work to make a good marriage …”

Not only do I think that those statements are inaccurate, I do not believe they are biblical. Open the Bible and show me your biblical evidence for making such comments, persistently, to the people you lead.

I do believe that God intended for marriage to be a blessing and an enjoyment and I think we can enjoy marriage the way God designed.

I will say that I do think many marriages are not enjoyed, or even enjoyable, but the reason is because those marriages lack the biblical foundation — God’s design — for marriage.

Here is what I believe is at the heart of a marriage that is both enjoyable and a blessing: to establish the “cycle” of marriage that God lays out in His word. If we “do” marriage the way God created it to be experienced, then we won’t have to spend our time working on our marriages, but rather we can spend our time enjoying them.

So where’s the big “biblical secret to marriage”? Well it’s not a secret, just good biblical direction for marriage, and it’s found in Ephesians 5:21-33. Read the passage carefully:

“And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. As the Scriptures say, ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

The cycle is composed of a husband and wife mutually submitting themselves to one another “…out of reverence for Christ.” The starting point isn’t the mutual submission between husband and wife, but the individual reverence for Christ!

Here’s the key: if you have a man who genuinely reveres Christ and strives each day to live for Him, and a woman who does the same, and they actually live out that devotion to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit in them, then you can experience marriage as designed by God in a very powerful way.

The reason is because you are then enabled to submit yourself to the best interests of the other. Not only are you empowered to do so, but your desires will be the desires of Christ. Instead of being self-oriented, you will be other-oriented. Thus, who Christ is in the lives of both husband and wife, and who He is in the marriage, makes all the difference in the quality of that relationship.

Then the passage gives some specific information to the husband: the husband is to love his wife in the same way that he loves Christ, and in the same way that Christ loves us self-sacrificially. As Christ loved us so much that He gave Himself for us, and as He strives to make us better to present us an unblemished bride, the husband is to love his wife sacrificially and to do all he can to make her more beautiful in the Lord.

Wow, that’s a lot to ask of a husband! How could any man really be such a husband?

If the wife is doing her role, as given in this passage.

The passage shows us that the wife is to submit to and respect her husband the same way she does to Jesus Christ.

Wow! Now how could any woman respect any man the same way she does Jesus?

If that man is loving her the same way Jesus loves her!

It can be easy for a husband to love his wife self-sacrificially, and long to help her be as beautiful as possible in the Lord, if he is respected by her the same way she respects the Lord. And it can be easy for a woman to submit to and respect her husband if he loves her in the same way that Jesus Christ loves the church and gave Himself for it. And these things can be easy if both have as their single greatest passion a reverence for Jesus Christ.

When that cycle is at the heart of a marriage, that marriage will be a blessing and a great enjoyment.

Instead of preachers, teachers, and religious leaders continuously harping about how hard marriage is, maybe they should use at least half the time they spend ranting about marriage difficulties and instead teach the biblical truth we find in this passage in Ephesians. Perhaps then they would see marriages improve and become more like what God intended them to be.

If you want a marriage that will bless the socks off you, partner with your spouse to make this cycle of love as described in Ephesians the daily reality of your life. If you do, you will spend your time enjoying your marriage, just as God intended.

Scotty