Have you noticed that most people in our culture today tend to have a very unrealistic view of marriage? Some have an unrealistically good view of marriage - like the young couple who, in the very beginning of their very first premarital counseling session said to me, “we really don’t need any of this because we just love each other so much.” I immediately thought to myself, “that is exactly why you need this!”
Other people in our culture have an unrealistically negative view of marriage in our culture. They look around at number of their divorced friends and they see so many unhappy and dysfunctional marriages among the people they know, and they wonder, “What is the point? Why get married at all?”
The Bible is neither naively positive, nor cynically negative about marriage. In fact, Scripture holds a very high view of marriage, but at the same time, it is honest about the conflicts and tensions that so easily occur between married people.
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure. - Hebrews 13:4
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. - Colossians 3:18-19
One of the central differences between a Biblical view of marriage, and the prevailing cultural view of marriage has to do with how you define the purpose of marriage. For many people in our culture (though they may not admit it) the purpose of marriage is to make you happy, to enhance your life through companionship, romance, etc. This is why so many people view divorce as a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem of their feelings of unhappiness in marriage - if marriage is supposed to make me happy, and I am not happy, then why not simply end the marriage?
Christian author Gary Thomas captures the Biblical understanding of the purpose of marriage in the subtitle of his book Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?
I am increasingly convinced that the surest way to be unhappy in life is to be obsessively focused on your own happiness. One of the amazing and beautiful ironies of the Christian life (especially in a marriage) is that when you place someone else ahead of you and when you place God above all, you discover that your life is full of a joy that you never had when you were focused on yourself! The fundamental difference is in the way we view our relationships. Take a few moments to meditate on this simple chart below that distinguishes the cultural view of “consumer based” relationships, with the Biblical view of covenant relationships.
Consumer Relationships
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Covenant Relationships
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you are the priority
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the other person is the priority
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focused on your needs and desires
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focused on the other person’s needs
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focused on what you are getting
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focused on what you are giving
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often flare up and flame out quickly
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steadily grow deeper over time
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insecure and unstable because it could end at any time
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secure and stable because of the deep commitment
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based on feelings & passions that change and fade with time
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based on a covenant promise regardless of how you feel
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actually less free & less intimate despite all of the rhetoric
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experience more freedom & intimacy because of the covenant security
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God forgive us for all of the times we have put ourselves first, protect us from the selfish prison of consumer relationships and grant us your grace to live in covenant relationships with each other and with you - Amen.
Jeff Frazier
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