Committed To Someone Larger Than Marriage

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

–Ephesians 5:25

Marriage is under attack, and I’m not even thinking mainly of so-called “same-sex marriage.” Individualism, consumerism, and career-ism have cheapened the perceived value and centrality of marriage. Marriage is now often viewed as simply a convenient social complement to a person’s other dreams and ambitions. If it gets difficult or slow or boring or requires more of us than we want, we just withdraw, punish our spouse and kids directly or indirectly, and eventually get out and cut our losses.

Unless, of course, Jesus is the point and power of your marriage. Anyone who has experienced marriage for more than a week will testify that it’s hard. That has been true across generations, cultures, and worldviews. Marriages don’t survive for decades on comfort and self-fulfillment, at least not happily. Marriages endure and thrive on unchanging, selfless mutual commitment to one another, and to something bigger, stronger, and longer-lasting than the marriage. Christian marriage, therefore, is an opportunity to show the world something—better, Someone—strong enough to keep a marriage together and make it unbelievably meaningful and happy.

Christian marriage declares the gospel more humbly, consistently, and clearly than almost any other kind of relationship we have in this life. That is why God’s counsel for marriage is cross-shaped. The path to the most beautiful, most powerful, most satisfying marriages is the road to Calvary. The Bible is clear that the behaviors and rhythms of the marriage covenant are a billboard of Christ’s forgiving, sacrificial, redeeming love for sinners. Paul repeats this in several ways, speaking to husbands and wives.

The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. (Eph. 5:23)

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Eph. 5:25)

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”This mystery is pro- found, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Eph. 5:31–32)

You rarely see this kind of Christ-like love in other relationships because the stakes are never as high. A husband and wife have covenanted before God to love each other until death. There are no exit ramps or escape hatches. That might sound scary to some, but we were made for this kind of love—covenantal, enduring, lavish, promise-keeping love. It’s how God loves us, and it’s the kind of love that confirms—tangibly and regularly—the gospel we share with our needy world.

TALK ABOUT IT

Finish this study by discussing what one or two truths stick out most in your mind and heart from these readings. Pray together that you both would flourish, and your marriage would thrive, as you rest together in something—Someone—even deeper and bigger than your marriage.