A Healthy Marriage
Selected Scriptures; 09/01/2024; Remsen Bible Fellowship
Introduction
I once was at a wedding where the minister began: “Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...” I was not, in fact, on the set of the Princess Bride…but the couple were homeschoolers, so it was pretty much the same thing. But marriage does bring us together for the sermon today, and in the weeks to come. Why a sermon series on marriage? Some of you will say, “well, I could use a whole series on marriage”, or perhaps you’re more apt to say, “my spouse could use a whole sermon series on marriage.” But we also have widows, and unmarrieds, and a lot of people who aren’t even old enough to get married yet--so is this really the best way to spend this time for all of us in the coming month?
I want to argue that the answer to that question is a resounding yes. There are a pile of reasons for this. Most important, and where this sermon series will ultimately lead us, is this: our faith is deeply shaped by our understanding of marriage. The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 5:31-32,
31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
This is to say, grasping God’s design in marriage - the union of one man and one woman to become one new union - has ramifications for our understanding of Christ’s relationship to the church. So there are few subjects more theologically important than a biblical understanding of marriage.
Culturally speaking, marriage has been under attack for a long time now - at least since the French Revolution in the late 18th century - and Christian norms of chastity, fidelity, and commitment are now largely considered repressive impediments to happiness, rather than the true path toward happiness. We can’t even agree on the definition of marriage anymore, with the Supreme Court imposing same-sex marriage on the nation in 2015 with the Obergefell decision.
And, practically speaking, this cultural pressure and confusion makes the already difficult task of marriage - committing to live your earthly life in union with another sinner - all the more difficult. You’ve often heard that half of all marriages end in divorce. That number is somewhat misleading. The number for first marriages is closer to 40%, with the rates jumping higher with each subsequent marriage. But 40% is still a LOT. You may also have heard the old preachers’ trope about Christian marriages failing as often as those among unbelievers. This is also misleading, as that data doesn’t control for religious practice. Among those who regularly attend church, rates of divorce drop 30-50% compared to others. So, I’m glad you’re here. One of the best things you can do for your marriage is simply show up to church together on a regular basis.
But friends, even a fifty percent drop from 40% leaves us at 1 in 5 marriages ending prematurely. That’s too many. Nothing makes Satan happier than ruining marriages. I just said that marriage has culturally been under attack since at least the French Revolution, but in a very real sense marriage has been under attack since the garden of Eden.
As the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, one of the best ways we can witness to the world is by building healthy marriages. Marriages where we joyfully look out for one another’s interests, not merely our own. Understanding God’s design for marriage is the foundation for our own healthy marriages, and healthy marriages are the building blocks of healthy churches, communities, and societies. Do you see the chaos in the culture and wonder, what can I do? Start at home. You can start to live in your home the way the Lord Jesus models and commands. Let’s read the three main texts people turn to in the NT for help in understanding what God desires from us in marriage.
Texts
Ephesians 5:22-33, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Colossians 3:18-19, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.”
1 Peter 3:1-7, “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct. 3 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4 but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 5 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.
7 Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.”
Transition
If we’re going to get started on building healthy marriages, we need to know what Biblical marriage is. I’m going to lay out a few basic assumptions here, which I argued more extensively in our Genesis series - and which I believe lie underneath those texts from the letters of Paul and Peter. I’ll simply lay them out here as what the Bible teaches, and refer you to those previous sermons if you want to hear a more extensive argument for them. We see, from the very institution of marriage in Genesis 1 & 2, that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, intended to be for life. It is the union of two beings who are different - men and women are very different, in case you hadn’t noticed - but there is also a deep sameness: made in the image of God, equal in value and worth in his eyes.
So far, not too controversial, at least not in a theologically conservative church. However, one of the topics we also covered when we were in Genesis was the idea of authority. God has built into human relationships, including marriage, structures of authority. These authority structures, contrary to what our society says, are not a matter of value distinction, and they do not necessitate “oppressive” power dynamics. They are in one sense, inescapable, because they reflect the structure of reality itself. And insofar as we want lives, homes, churches, communities, and societies to function well, we must live in line with this reality.
So when we turn to key marriage passages, like what we read in Ephesians 5:23, we find Scripture telling us that the husband is the head of the wife. Not that he should be. He is. He will either do a good job or a poor job in this role. The role is there, it isn’t alterable, it’s the way God made the world. He has given us jobs to do, and happiness is found, not in chasing our passions, but in properly stepping into and fulfilling the roles God has designed us for. We’ll spend time in this series looking at the roles described for husbands and wives. But before we get into discussing the ins and outs of roles themselves, I want to take some time here to think about the importance of roles in pursuing a healthy marriage.
Roles
Talking about roles might seem terribly un-romantic. Isn’t marriage supposed to be about romance, about keeping a fire alive between two hearts, about living with your soulmate? A “bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…”. Well, that’s what Disney will tell you. The Bible, though, sings a slightly different tune. But, you may protest, isn’t marriage about love? I mean, even Paul says in both Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 that men are to love their wives. But when reading those texts we must be careful about inserting our modern ideas of romantic love into the text, rather than seeking to understand what Paul himself meant when he used that word.
In the Bible when we read about love, what we find is a description of an attitude that leads to certain decisions and actions. It can be - though it need not always be - accompanied by certain feelings or emotional states. Which is another way of saying, in the Bible, feelings are downstream from love, they are not the definition of love.
Think about romance and warm feelings toward your spouse in this way: they’re like the furnishings and decorations that make your house a really nice place to live. Each home is going to look different, but homes that are well-decorated, thoughtfully adorned, with good furniture are pleasant places to be (even if they aren’t exactly your style). Romance between a couple, when they really enjoy one another, these things make those couples really pleasant to be around.
But, as wonderful as that furniture and decor can be, it’s not the sort of thing you want to build your house out of. You can put all that decor outside, and create a nice outdoor arrangement with your couch and chairs in the yard, and it might look magazine worthy. So long as the sun is shining. And life is going smoothly. But let a thunderstorm roll through, or even a long season of steady-drizzle, and how are those oil paintings and soft couches going to hold up? Not so well.
That’s what trying to build a marriage on romance is like. It’s not that romance and warm feelings are bad - they’re wonderful, which is part of why it’s plausible to think of them as the whole point- but they are really flimsy building materials.
If you’re building a house, you need lumber. You need 2x4s and 2x6s. You need trusses and joists. You need the materials to build something with structural integrity that can last through hard times. That’s what an understanding of roles and responsibilities does for a marriage - it provides you with the material to actually build with. Roles, responsibilities, and - to use another terribly out of date word - duties help us know what it is we should be doing, or what our approach to a given situation ought to be. This is part of why the New Testament instructions are role and duty-centric. Let me summarize those three passages we read earlier:
The wife is created to beher husband’s helper. This means she is to submit to her husband's leadership in the home, she is to respect him visibly in the way she speaks to him and relates to him. She is to honor him, and not to nag or seek to subvert his place as the head. She should focus on developing her inward beauty and being a good woman to live with more than her outward beauty and being a good woman to look at.
The husband is the head. He is to love his wife. What’s that supposed to look like - how does love act? He must be considerate and thoughtful of his wife’s needs, lay down his life for hers, read the Bible with her and instruct her from God’s word (that’s the idea of “washing in water with the word”). He must not be harsh, demeaning, or self-serving in the relationship - rather he must treat her as a fellow hei in the grace of life. If he doesn’t do this, won’t listen to his prayers (1 Peter 3:7).
If that summary of those three passages sounds suffocating, I would suggest to you that it’s because you have internalized, to one degree or another, the culture’s understanding of the issues, rather than the Bible’s. And if you’re tempted to stand with the culture against the Bible, I would just say this: how’s it working? Marriages are often unhappy, and a large number end in divorce. Marriage has become so denigrated in the modern world that many people are reconsidering if it’s worthwhile at all. Maybe it’s better to have many partners throughout life, or to live together - perhaps “married in your heart” - but without any real legal or religious commitment to formalize it. As G.K. Chesterton once quipped, it’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It, rather, has been found difficult, and left untried. So, too, with the Bible’s teaching on marriage. It may sound hard. But I’m going to challenge you to listen over the coming weeks to what the Word says. I can confidently say, as someone in a marriage where we - imperfectly, but genuinely - seek to apply God’s word to how we conduct ourselves in marriage, that obedience to God’s word is difficult: but not nearly as difficult, in the long run, as those marriages where people are trying to satisfy their selfish or sinful desires. God’s way is hard in a sinful world. But, long term, it’s not nearly as hard as rebelling against God himself.
Some of the best marriage advice we received early on was from a couple (whose marriage is as good as any I know), and they described their goal as to out-serve one another. Well, if we take the Bible as our standard of service and love, and make it our goal to “outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10), then we will be moving in the direction of marital health. And while picking up our marital duties and following Christ may not sound romantic as chasing happiness, the irony is that happiness is much more likely to live inside of a healthy marriage than in one where immediate happiness is always the goal.
So, here’s the outline for the coming weeks. We’ll spend some time - one week each - on the wife’s role and the husband’s role in the marriage. We’ll spend that time trying to understand how these different construction materials are used to build a marriage. We’ll then spend two weeks looking at two of the main areas where couples need to get better at learning how to understand and serve one another: communication, and sex. And then we’ll conclude the first week of October, Lord willing, by taking a deeper dive into Ephesians 5:31-32 and thinking about the gospel-picture of marriage. There is glory here worth long meditation. But, while it is worth long-meditation, given that it is the goal of this study, I think we also ought to give it some short meditation at the end of this sermon.
Conclusion
Let’s jump back to our analogy: I described romance and warm feelings in marriage as the decorations and the furniture in the house - they’re great, they’re even important. But they are not the house itself. If we try to build on those alone, or trust them to withstand the elements, we’re wishful thinkers at best, and willful fools at worst. Rather, it is duties, roles, and responsibilities of marriage - as prescribed by the scriptures - that make up the actual construction materials of a healthy marriage.
But let’s go down one more layer. Because I can build a very sturdy wooden structure, and if it is placed on the sand, how long will it last? Until the next time the sand shifts. You can have an excellent understanding of duties, roles, and responsibilities; excellent taste in carpet and wall coverings and furniture; and if your house has a bad foundation, it may all sink in and be worthless. You need a solid foundation. And the only sure foundation for a healthy marriage is a shared love of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you get this foundation right, it won’t protect you from life’s storms, it won’t even protect you from making all kinds of mistakes and missteps as you’re building your marriage. But it gives you the solid foundation you need to make weathering those storms and follies possible. When Christ is at the center you can survive just about anything.
But, again, our goal is more than survival - our goal here is health. And as a healthy home begins with the right foundation, so does the healthy marriage. Don’t get me wrong, I think the roles, the principles, and the priorities we’ll cover will help any marriage; whether both are believers, one is a believer, or neither are believers. But for a marriage to be all it’s meant to be, as a display of the relationship between Jesus and his church, then that marriage must be built by two people who have been transformed by union with Christ. It takes two people who have repented of their sins, received forgiveness from Christ, and are therefore patient with their sinful spouse and willing to extend forgiveness; and who are mutually committed to doing good to and for their spouse, a type of dedication motivated by the Holy Spirit. It’s only in this context that marriage can be all it’s meant to be.
And so I’ll ask: do you know Christ? Have you received his forgiveness, and trusted him alone for salvation? Do you have hope beyond this world - beyond your marriage - for eternal happiness? If you don’t know him, then turn to Jesus now. We’ll shortly be partaking of communion, where we celebrate what Jesus did for us on the cross - having left heaven’s throne, he came and stood in the place of his rebellious bride, and laid his life down for hers. He bore our sins in his body on the tree. If you repent of your sins and receive that saving - the dying and rising love of the Savior for his bride - then you are united to the church, and her head: our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you are so saved, then you have the most important marriage-building block of all: a heart that does not need to seek its own interest, but that can live for the glory of God and the good of your neighbor - and your spouse.
