The Biblical Duties of Matrimony

I have said that marriage is more about what we give to it than what we get from it. That, of course, is a practical statement, for if we concentrate on what we're getting from it, we'll short shrift what we give to it and end up undermining it. Unfortunately, the sacrificial attitude necessary to maintain marriage is foreign to the narcissistic baby boom generation and all the alphabet generations that have followed. 

The result—the burgeoning divorce rate. 

One must give continuously, for a lifetime, to make marriage work. Thankfully, there are plenty of happy marriages for us to learn from. There's a fair of amount of not so happy ones to take lessons from too. Those that I've come across that are happy and long lasting are those in which the spouses haven't saddled each other with the burden of making each other happy. Spouses can share our happiness, we can be happy to share life with them, but they cannot, in themselves, make us happy.

Unhappy marriages are often laboring under the faulty assumption that marriage, or at least the one they're married to, is meant to make them happy. It is the epitome of immaturity and folly to expect another human being to have that much power as to hold the key to our happiness. Spouses do supply emotional comfort to each other, which takes different forms for husbands and wives due to the gender effects of the Fall, but they are not the source of each other's happiness.

Natural women were cursed to live in a contest of wills with their husbands: redeemed women provide their husbands the comfort of knowing that their wives respect and submit to them. Natural men were cursed with ruling over their wives and the frustration of their toil (a source of preoccupation): redeemed men provide their wives the comfort of knowing that their husbands love them sacrificially (ἀγαπᾶτε) and will lay down their lives for them. 

A husband who has the respect of his wife and a wife who's loved by her husband like Christ loves the church are people who have something that makes life worth living.

When we see ourselves and yield ourselves as bound in oneness, providing our spouse with the kind of comfort we've been speaking about, we give our mates a sense of belonging and security that nothing else on earth can truly supply. My first pastor used to repeat over and over again for the sake of all of us coming into marriageable age, "love is not a feeling, it's a commitment." So true. I wish we all went into marriage buying into that.

It's not just an emotional or relational dynamic, however. It translates into all those more tangible areas that mark our shared journeys. Being a reliable source of provision and care is just part of the package. One area along that line is the marriage bed. Despite our culture's incredible fixation on sex, and the Word's relative silence on what, exactly, goes on between a husband and wife, the Word does say that nothing is wrong with sex in marriage, that we should have as much as we like in whatever way a husband and wife agree upon, and that we should not hold out on our spouse.

Marriage will not work for the takers, the heartbreakers, the jerks, nor those who would shirk the obligations of love. Marriage is a picture of the love within the Godhead, and must be treated with the honor appropriate for such. Though, in our age, we have managed to treat marriage as no more than a paper plate or plastic spoon, used for a moment then tossed aside, there is still hope for us in the church. It begins when we dedicate ourselves to the biblical duties of matrimony.