Now, where do I start with this prompt?
Let’s begin with a reality that is so basic and fundamental and at the same time is not emphasized by most of society and even the church. This is going to be a primer on my take on the essentials of off-the-cuff Biblically based marriage counseling.
Marriage is an institution that has been established by God to serve many purposes of God and to the glory of God. It was and is so important, God created this relationship between a man and a woman as a root of all other relationships. Marriage in itself is an organization, a unit, from which the strength of the larger government takes its shape and more importantly, Marriage is intended to symbolize the eternal relationship between Jesus Christ and the Church.
So… no… the main reason to get married is not to gratify yourself sexuallyalthough pleasurable and intimacy is intended for Godly marriage. Or as one passage suggests, that wow man, you’ve got chemistry overload.
More properly: But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. – 1 Corinthians 7:6.
Let’s continue…
The responsibilities in Marriage, with God at its head should form a bulwark for the growth of communities and society at large. It’s also one reason why Marriage should be blessed by God, why two Christians need to be quite clear-eyed, as much as possible about their commitment and the fact that God hates divorce. If you grew up with a surrendered and Biblical understanding of Christianity then this may not hit you with too much dissonance.
Let me digress a moment, writing of the society at large, there were recent parallels made recently regarding the rampant fraud being perpetrated by new, let’s say, very un-Christian immigrants who had no qualms about ripping off the American medicare and hospice care funding. In another instance, back during the pandemic and when Communist agents were outrageously stockpiling medical facemasks beyond the normal limits, vain perpetrators took to social media and were simply tickled that Americans businesses are so gullible. The point that was made was that our American systems are based on a public that maintains some sense of honesty, or more bluntly, understands the 9th Commandment which means false witness, or lying, or to intentionally misrepresent yourself is a sin punishable by God. This is not to say that there are not entrench pools of corruption in every society, but a main point our system works well if people follow the God given moral laws, a.k.a the Ten Commandments, as it was in the establishment in the United States, the God-fearing citizenry were actualizing a Christian based American ethos.
So where does that ethos, of doing the Godly things, get nurtured?
Maybe not many of you were brought up with that idea that God intended that all people should worship one true and living God, and hence in every Marriage should properly consist of a man and a woman who are submissive and serving to be obedient and grateful to God, to live righteously as possible for God’s glory. You probably didn’t hear that in the premarital counseling either. Let’s drive further into the dissonance in hopes that some of it will resolve.
The core purpose of parenthood is to represent the relationship between Christ and His Church and in that light, to raise children who in turn, love and worship God and who will grow to become Godly parents and raise Godly children, who in turn would favor and prioritize marriage and the creation of their own families. As parents, we need to lead our children in light of the Gospel and with the idea that Marriage and family is very good, even more good than the essential and important work that we do to achieve, survive, and provide.
AND IF, one is not blessed by Marriage and a family, they are not without purpose, no, not in the slightest, because the ultimate hope of every human being, married or not, rests in the Gospel and there is no effort that is wasted, up until the very end of our lives we are called to repent (in effect, hate sin) and trust in Christ and to spread the good news of Salvation by grace.
I bet that wasn’t necessarily in the top ten reasons to get married either, right? Corporate worship on a family scale. For some reason I don’t think these ideas are making it into the average premarital counseling session. I can imagine a flippant remark like, “We’ll see you at church! (We need more people in the pews and donations in the offering plate).”
With all this as a structure of the purpose of Marriage, it’s a lot easier to understand why a man or woman should be looking for a God-serving and God-seeking partner. Quite bluntly, how in the world would any Christian hope to achieve these Godly family goals without a willing partner who shares the same goals. Guys, don’t go into marriage thinking to can do it single handedly and neither should wives think that all is good if they can themselves reshape the man they marry. Well, you’re into a long fight or life of passive aggression. In few words, beware, some of the most productive times or years ever will be necessarily spent on hammering out issues and struggling because of the conflicts between God and the world ruled by Satan (and that doesn’t; mean Satan is only working in one person in the Marriage).
When two Christians get married, there is the ultimate marriage counselor built into the relationship. No it’s not the local pastor or the rent-a-chaplain who is here today and gone after the dinner. God himself, the harmonizing factor between two proud and self-righteous sinners, resides over the relationship and should be sought after in the effort to resolve differences.
If anything is apparent in any marriage is that there will be conflict, conflict that you have never experienced, but God willing, conflict that is resolved well before the eternal judgment. There will be real disagreement, disillusionment, hurt and pain. But the process of suffering and resolving that hurt and pain become paramount, the reality of being children of God, and being divinely forgiven for the miserable degenerate wretch of a sinful person you are next to a holy and righteous God (though merciful) has deep spiritual ramifications and power to heal, power to resolve, power to reconcile, power to be at peace all to God’s glory and by God’s blessings.
The practical blessings from a Gospel filled relationship, is the power of forgiveness, and the effort to repent. If anything, making yourself vulnerable to your marriage partner, will reveal many things, many rough edges, including pride and sinful behavior and world of secondary interests, even ministerial ones, that will ultimately take a back seat to values and goals that are more important for the sake of Marriage and family. Remember, God hates divorce and only allowed Moses to accommodate rare (though real) cases rooted in the growing hardness a self-righteous and conceited heart(s) of some.
A believer trusting God helps with each person’s perspective on self-interest, each one is commanded by God to aim to perfect the relationship. In part, this is highlighted by how a man needs to sacrifice himself for his wife’s good as Christ did for the Church and, conversely, the woman needs to serve her husband as to the Lord, that’s what submission and male headship means. These are both humbling and powerful guidances/commands by Christ, the effect is ultimate harmony in marriage through an order, where the husband and wife have equal value before God but differing roles in a divinely instituted relationship.
One of the most husband and wife centered passages in the Bible is this:
22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32 This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. – Ephesians 5:22-33
Notice the language is not full of “love your wive, except.…” or “she respects her husband, unless…” because marriage is meant to model God’s eternally perfect love for imperfect people, the Commitment of Jesus Christ to the Church. Based on God’s design the language are more like commandments because speaking of Marriage blessed by God, 9 What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” -Mark 10:9.
These very words are often proclaimed in vows during marriage ceremonies, but to more fully understand the level of love, sacrifice and commitment one must understand Christ’s sacrifice to redeem a fallen and unlovely people.
If all this feels daunting for those who feel this seems alien, consider one of the secular adages about marriage relationships: “Opposites attract but similarities keep together.” I would assert that two independently minded and sinful people who have chose to serve Jesus Christ as Lord is essentially the most powerful similarity any two people could share because it is supernatural and God the Creator is actively involved.
Granted, there are many differences that can stress even the bond through Christ, but the strong need for humble sacrifice and service, with a focus on the life of a family, goes a long ways to help bridge gaps. On the other hand, in western culture especially, the drive for ambitions outside of the home are very strong, this is where it can be challenging for both men and women.
There are many influential Bible teachers who understand the priority of tending to not only their congregational flock, but their family, knowing that executing a ministry like the stereotypical startup company is not what God intended and pastors and ministers are meant to lead by modeling the ideal Christ centered and marriage loving, servant oriented relationship. This doesn’t mean that every parent or father needs to be a 24/7 at home dad, or never travel, but these potential diversions from a father’s or mother’s primary roles of leading his family need to be prayerfully addressed.
Much has been promoted about women working out of the home, encouraged to be ambitious and financially independent. While these characteristics are not bad in themselves (e.g Proverbs 31) modern practice often neglect the God given, biological, and life realities of womanhood. In regards to a wife, the Bible instructs submissive to the husband and to the Lord and extols motherhood. Can all of a woman’s ambitions run tandem in today’s marriages, even with a couple submissive to the Lord? Not easy, but possible given the study and seeking to obey God’s will, mutual respect for eachothers differences but with an attitude of repentance towards idolatry, (i.e. money, power, social standing, materialism).
Another role that father and mothers are to have in the church is to help mentor the young and young couples in the ways of Christ-centered manhood and womanhood. I think this is the area that has just been obliterated in the modern church. The culture is so Godly family un-centric, not only because we often live in isolation instead of the ghetto society many of earlier immigrant generations, but to exacerbate the problem, the values society promotes are not Christ-centered, schools are often not simply neutral in their socialization or education of sex and gender, they are often the anti-thesis of the promotion of Christian values which is to say more exactly, God’s moral standards.
Part of the reason for this often out of touch developments in the school system is the system has detached itself from the moral calling intended for Marriage. If parents understood the real impact of sending their children to school systems that do not promote Christ-centered moral values, then we as parents have received what we did not have the wisdom to take responsibility for. The buck has to stop someplace, and blaming it on your parents or somebody else, even Communism or Sharia Law, doesn’t hack it. These anti-Christian ideas would not gain foothold if the family was intact under a God fearing Christ centered manly leadership.
It’s time for men to stand in the gaps and stop playing games by ignoring the reality of the Godless spiritual void and existential weakness of allowing surrogates to take on a man’s Christ-centered spiritual leadership roles.
As parents, we ended up handing off our God given responsibilities to a system that quietly, if not diabolically, detached itself from fearing God. There’s enough blame to go around, but this can be rooted in a man’s dereliction of duty (e.g. Adam didn’t stop Eve and then blamed Eve for succumbing to the Temptation),
There needs to be a new shooter game that gives points to a man who stands up for his spiritual leadership duties.
You may have noticed that I blame it on men, I blame it on husbands who are distracted with far less important things, leaving the school board issues to what is in effect, and is often the case, moral relativist, which in turn is in effect, no morality at all. It’s a situation where the red light and green light swap positions and the goal posts keep on changing.
There’s got to be at least one Godly man with Cross bearing qualities that God uses to drive the fear of God into every man’s heart in every church. He’s the spiritual veteran who has a battle scar across his face (maybe even a real one) and will drive men to take their place in the gaps in the protective wall of family, which is in effect the Church, and society.
In my understanding of God’s will, it’s going to be a man because it is by God’s plan that iron to sharpen iron. A woman taking on this responsibility in the Church has got to be a rare exception and departs from the divine model of Marriage order (though women, including in Biblical history, have stepped up in the void of male leadership).
Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another. – Proverbs 27:17
Here’s my thought, why husbands need to serve God as the Head of the family and give themselves up to their wives as Christ did for the Church. This is the balance between a woman submitting to her husband, but the husband should lead with that kind of authority. This doesn’t mean that woman are meant to be thoughtless and naive. A wife needs to be extolled by their husbands. A wife’s perception, their own sense of motherly justice, protection, and provision for the family and other unique viewpoints are essential to the working marriage, in humility and respect, the entire family is then driven with order, purpose and mission. Children learn from that, but it needs to be Christ centered, because, remember, all God ordained Marriages are intended to glorify God, symbolize Christ’s sacrificial love of the Church and the submission of the Church to Christ.
An essential part of the order is a innate desire to build up each other like any team that prepares to compete.
What about non-believers married to believers?
All the aforementioned is more or less based on Biblical ideals, much paraphrased in my effort to scratch this post out, but this is perhaps the category, of being spiritually unequally yoked, where most couples find themselves in (whether to are aware of it or not). If both are non-believers, that is out of the scope of this article, although the Gospel still plays a big part as one or both may come to genuine faith ( and henceforth may their family be blessed) then this comes into play.
The focus of the believer is the same, but the evangelistic and ministerial focus becomes much more within the family rather than outside the family, Ministering to ones own family becomes even a greater portion of a believer’s spiritual walk. This is no less necessary in God’s eyes than Billy Graham speaking to 10,000 people. If God has placed you, a believer, in a marriage with a non believer, God’s rules do not change. God hates divorce and the Apostle Paul add more color to the reality:
But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband 11 (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
12 But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not divorce her husband. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. For otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. 15 Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave. The brother or the sister is not enslaved in such cases, but God has called us to peace. 16 For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? – 1 Corinthians 7:10-16
Through Christ and the spirit of forgiveness and strength the endure, undergirded by serving God and glorifying God in all manner of life circumstance, you can serve in an unequally yoked and non abusive marriage and God will bless you.
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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