Understanding the Promise of Marriage

Chapter 3 Four Phases Of A Good Marriage

People change, situations differ, and dreams are shattered. But the same God who made marriage made it to endure the disappointments and predictable seasons of life that mark all good relationships. God can help us grow through the cycles of (1) expectation, (2) covenant making, (3) disillusionment, and (4) growing fulfillment, which we will be considering in the remainder of this booklet. Keep in mind, however, that the issue is not just what our Lord says about marriage. Solutions are found by discovering what He’s said about basic issues of faith and character and then applying those perspectives to the seasons of marriage.

EXPECTATION

“What can I expect to get out of marriage? What’s the payoff? My hopes are high and my dreams are bright. But will they be realized?” Let’s take a look at some of the more common expectations people have for marriage today. Then we will turn to the Bible to see what God expects of this relationship.

Our Expectations. Our society, both religious and secular, has established expectations for the marriage relationship:

1. Marriage will meet my needs.

•The need for affection and sexual intimacy.

•The need for companionship.

•The need for conversation.

•The need for financial security.

•The need to leave home.

Many of these expectations reflect reasonable and even God–given desires. The problem comes, however, when we pursue these desires with shortsighted strategies and motives. Many enter marriage expecting it to solve their problems. A daughter who cannot any longer tolerate the anger and coldness of her father or the criticism of her stepmother may get married merely to get out of the house. A son who feels that he isn’t respected by his parents may see marriage as a way of finding some of the personal affirmation he longs for. Yet all too often those who enter marriage to solve their problems end up saying, “She [or he] just isn’t meeting my needs.” Why don’t couples see this coming? Part of the answer is that many of them assume that …

2. Marriage will change him/her. Many enter marriage with a predetermined idea of what they want their partner to become. They may disclose it a little before the wedding, but it becomes all too obvious soon enough. They spend the next decade either trying to force their spouse into the pre–formed model they hoped for or expected or resenting that spouse for not living up to their expectations.

3. Marriage can be as free as we let it be. Some enter marriage with another, more subtle expectation. They’re generous in offering their partner a great deal of latitude and freedom—more than the partner is comfortable with. But at a high price. They want even more freedom for themselves. In return, they expect few demands to be made on them. It’s a live–and–let–live approach. “I won’t ask any questions, and I don’t expect you to ask any either.” Such attitudes are quite different from …

God’s Expectations. The Bible shows that God’s expectations for marriage are different from our own. When God said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and when he created Eve as an answer to that aloneness, he did more than just make a provision for man’s needs. The rest of the Bible shows that God has the following expectations for marriage.

1. Marriage will enable us to serve someone else’s needs. In writing his New Testament letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul made it clear that those who are married can expect not only the joys of the relationship but also the responsibilities that come with it (1 Corinthians 7:28–35). Paul indicated that in committing themselves to one another, husbands and wives must spend much of their time working hard to please one another (vv. 33–34).

For all its joys, marriage has responsibilities that limit our freedom to serve God in an unencumbered way. Our Lord knows that when we marry, we are choosing to serve him by serving the needs of our partner. Over time, we even have to learn how to keep the marital commitment from rivaling our commitment to, and dependence on, the Lord. That brings us to a second expectation. While we might enter into marriage hoping to change our partner, God’s expectation is that …

2. Marriage will change us for the better. Scripture doesn’t tell us to make sure our life–partner loves, respects, and gives us all the affectional, financial, and physical satisfaction we long for. The Bible never promises that God will make our mates into the kind of people we pray they will be. It does tell us, however, what kind of a heart God can enable us to have if we do our part in bringing out the best in our mate. Marriage by its very nature demands our own spiritual growth. For us to live with and love someone else “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” requires that we learn to put his or her interests ahead of our own.

Such love is a general biblical principle (Philippians 2:1–4), but the closeness and responsibilities of marriage give us an ideal setting to help us learn the real meaning of love. By its very nature, marriage demands commitment, risk, and unselfish investment. For a couple to achieve the unity and love and loyalty and blessing God expects, they must take giant strides of personal growth. They must learn how and when to abandon personal rights so they can experience the richness that comes when the true needs of others (not the selfish demands) are put before their own desires. God’s expectation is that in the most intimate and interdependent way …

3. Marriage will place us under the mutual spirit of love. The Bible makes it clear that when a man and woman join in marriage, they become one. And the controlling factor of their oneness is their mutual commitment to care for one another’s well–being for as long as they both live. Proverbs 27:6 reminds us that to be faithful, a friend must sometimes say things that will be painful to hear. The Bible does not give permission to nag, harp, or harshly criticize one another. But with love comes the responsibility to do everything possible to bring out the best in a mate rather than the worst. Love will not let us indulge the immorality or support the destructive addictions of our partner. As our God shows us by his own example, love is tough when circumstances call for it. The most significant of God’s expectations for marriage, however, seems to be reflected in his intent that …

4. Marriage will be a picture of Christ’s relationship to the church. God’s expectation is that husbands and wives will develop an enduring love by keeping their eyes on the “marriage” between Christ and His church (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:22–33): We are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:30–32). These expectations of God offer great promise for a new or restored marriage. They are expectations that lift us above ourselves and call from us the kind of love that has its source in God. These expectations form a basis for the covenant that is at the heart of marriage.

COVENANT

By repeating marriage vows and signing the license, a man and woman enter a covenant relationship that embodies all that God intended for marriage. Exchanged vows also anticipate those times of married life that are always more than we bargained for. The covenant anticipates those experiences of life in which marriage, with its unexpected twists and turns, reaches deeper, becomes more absorbing, and pulls more out of us than we ever anticipated. “Worse,” “poorer,” and “sickness,” do happen. And when they do, we can go back again and again to the promises we made to one another. Understanding what the Lord intended those vows to mean—at a depth we could not have anticipated when we made them—will help us over and over again as we experience all that marriage is.

A Lifetime Commitment. When a man and woman say, “I do,” they are vowing to each other before the Lord that they will stay together until one of them dies. The marriage vow is the verbal expression of a lifelong commitment made in the mind and heart. That’s God’s design. The richest fulfillment of the promise of marriage is anchored in that concept. When we say in the vow, “from this day forward,” we mean a lifetime. This promise is not made to be broken (Ecclesiastes 5:4). “How limiting!” some might say. Yes, such commitment is limiting. But it also sets a man or woman free to concentrate on the task of living out and adjusting and improving a loving relationship through the sincere give–and–take of life. Such a covenant allows husband and wife to give one another the gift of a vowed love—a lifetime promise—that will carry them through physical illness and divergent interests and job pressures and problems with teenagers and unbelievable stress in the relationship. So complex—yet so simple. “I made a promise, and with the help of God I intend to keep it. I’m a person of my word. I’m in this for life.”

A Shared Identity. In the fulfillment of the marital covenant, two become one. The man no longer lives only for himself, nor the woman only for herself. A new unity, a new diversity, a new family is established. Both remain distinct persons. Yet, from the Bible’s point of view, two now share a mystery of oneness. As the church is united to Christ, so woman and man become one. They walk up the aisle a diversity—a man and woman apart. They come back down the aisle as one flesh—a shared identity. Different backgrounds, different families, different educations, different hurts, different habits—yet now, in covenant, they are one. These two unique people have promised to walk the pathway of life together as one in a new, shared identity.

An Exclusive Relationship. The covenant relationship the man and woman enter when they say their vows calls for total faithfulness. Husband and wife are to love and be true to and cherish each other—exclusively! The man is to be true to his wife and she to him. The Bible gives no ground on this point. Current social practices notwithstanding, the covenant of marriage is with one person only.

From this commitment onward, the man and woman are expected to be true to each other. This is God’s expectation for marriage. And if they follow it, they will experience the wonderful promise of marriage. Because of this …

•We will concentrate our love on our mate.

•We will not be disloyal, even in little matters.

•We will not initiate nor encourage flirtations.

•We will flee temptation.

Oh, we will be tested. From within our own deceitful hearts, and from outside, will come urges to ignore that vow. The promise of marriage is built on a covenant, on the integrity of our word still being intact when one of us is called home. Only by remaining true to our word, and only by a deep desire to trust God’s plan, can we weather the next important phase of marriage …

DISILLUSIONMENT

It might begin as early as the honeymoon. The suspicion, the shadow that might already have been cast on the back edge of his or her thinking or emotions. A little smudge has appeared on her halo; a little tarnish on his suit of shining armor. She ignores it. But it keeps coming back. He’s not the gentle man she thought he was. He forgets about her feelings. She makes plans without consulting him. He makes financial commitments without telling her. She ends their arguments without resolution. Meanwhile, she’s disturbed by the thoughts she’s having. She has become preoccupied with his shortcomings. She remembers how good it felt as a single to be able to make her own decisions and spend her money on whatever she wanted. The more time goes by, the more unhappy and disillusioned she becomes.

Christian counselor Norman Wright, in his premarital counseling workbook titled Before You Say I Do, indicates that every marriage goes through stages of disillusionment. The new husband and wife run headlong into a gap between what they expected of their marriage and how it is actually turning out. It may occur on the honeymoon or while they are arranging the furniture in their apartment. They work it through, only to discover that disillusionment keeps on coming. It appears during the first months of the pregnancy, while their children are small, in career changes, when their children reach the teens, during their late 40s and middle 50s, and if the Lord gives them good health, into their 70s and 80s. This is how it is with a man and woman. Neither can be God to the other. Both are inclined toward their own selfishness. Neither is always satisfied to find contentment in God (Philippians 4:11–13). Both struggle with and often give in to a heart that is as sinful as the Bible says (Romans 7:14–25). And nothing exposes the flaws of human nature like marriage.

The Closeness of Marriage. The very intimacy and shared identity of the marital relationship can cause disillusionment because that degree of closeness exposes our hearts. Unlike business relationships, where the roles are defined to allow for professional distance, marriage is designed for oneness. The man and woman soon know each other so very well. They share the pleasure of sex, the stages of pregnancy and childbirth, the excitement of purchasing a new home, the good news of his promotion or her opportunity. They work through health or parental or teenage or financial crises together. They become so close that they know how each other feels and what the other is thinking.

But this closeness has a dark side. They know the best and the worst about each other. His inattention and absorption with work frustrates her. Her refusal to listen and trust his judgment angers him. She knows which words will make him angry or humiliate him. He knows she’ll be hurt by his compulsive spending, but he does it anyway. In the intimacy of marriage we show our selfishness, our impatience, our insensitivity, our anger. We become insulting, punitive, wounding. The closeness of marriage brings it out. It exposes us to our mate and, perhaps even more painfully, to ourselves. We begin to realize that our mate is not fulfilling our longings for security and affirmation and contentment. We feel betrayed. We trusted one another. Yet in unexpected ways marriage has exposed not only the faults of our mate but also of ourselves.

Wrong Motives for Marriage. All men and women, often without realizing it, enter marriage for some unhealthy reasons. Oh, they have a lot of right reasons—to find companionship, to have someone to love and care for, to enter a lifelong relationship, to honor the Lord. But as time goes by, it becomes obvious that even though “opposites attract,” this can become a source of frustrating opposition. Suppose the man knows he tends to be impulsive. He’s never learned to manage money. He makes compulsive purchases that keep him at the edge of financial disaster. So he chooses a marital partner who is not only physically attractive to him but who also is a steady, self–controlled person. Before marriage, she seems to like his casual and spontaneous approach to life. He, on the other hand, feels safe when he’s with her.

After the marriage, neither can figure out what’s happening. Suddenly they find themselves in a battle of wills over money. She has to play the role of the one who always says no. She’s disappointed in him. She feels the isolation and pressure of carrying a burden that should be shared. She married him to be his wife, not his mother. The marriage is in trouble because he entered into it with a wrong motive. Sooner or later, these underlying motives will show up. And when they do, they will lead to disillusionment that is also rooted in …

Destructive Behavior in Marriage. Some of those sinful, destructive patterns may be:

1. Nagging Criticism. A spouse may be motivated by feelings of inferiority or a need to divert attention from his or her own behavior. Such criticism helps us to see why Jesus taught us to first deal with our own sins before “helping others” with their problems (Matthew 7:1–5). Criticism is a dangerous source of disillusionment when it is used to keep attention off our own faults.

2. Anger. Outbursts of anger, unchecked and often over minor issues, attack the security of the marriage. Uncontrolled anger is dangerous to any relationship. Proverbs 22:24 says, “Do not make friends with a hot–tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered.” Yet, when anger suddenly shows up after vows are exchanged, the partner feels disillusioned and trapped.

Self–centeredness. When one spouse always has to have it his or her way, the result is contrary to the ways of God (Philippians 2:1–4). This can be disillusioning to those who thought that marriage would provide someone who would care for them.

Irritating Behaviors. The apostle Paul wrote that love “does not dishonor others, it is not self–seeking” (1 Corinthians 13:5). So when selfishness in sensitivities shows up either in public or private, a spouse feels unloved. He or she feels vulnerable, undermined, disrespected, and endangered. If our “best friend” treats us like this, where can we run from our enemies?

Emotional Dishonesty. One spouse may deny his or her feelings of frustration or disappointment. The perceived reason may be not to “hurt” the other person. The deeper motive, however, is to protect oneself from further hurt or conflict. Self–protection results in a lack of truth, a lack of love, and a growing distance and coolness that leads to deeper feelings of hopelessness. Disillusionment appears in every marriage. It’s inevitable. To claim that it hasn’t or won’t happen to us is to deny reality. How we face it when it appears may be the most crucial element of our marriage.

FULFILLMENT

The key question is, “Now what? Now that we have hit this rough spot in our marriage, what are we going to do about it?” The man’s and woman’s commitment to work through and resolve the issues creating the disillusionment is vitally important. It can lead to the kind of reconciliation and acceptance that makes marriage worth it for life. Some of us have known what it is like to feel the frustration and fear. The marriage is stuck. It isn’t growing. Yet we also see that running into the bedroom, slamming the door, and staying there for hours is not working. At this point, we need to realize that all is not lost. There still is hope. In fact, our disillusionment has actually brought us to the threshold of the very love and security we’ve been looking for. To cross over this threshold of fulfillment, however, we must …

Let Our Marital Disappointment Help Us to Face Our Disappointment With God. This step won’t be easy. After all, God is the one before whom we took our vows. He is the one we asked to bless our marriage. Yet, once again, He is the one who seems to have let us down. We may ask, “Should I be surprised? Isn’t He the one who let me have an alcoholic father or a suicidal mother? Should I now be surprised that He didn’t reach in and stop me when I drifted into a difficult marital relationship? He’s the one who hasn’t answered my prayers. He hasn’t changed my mate or taken away the gnawing emptiness inside me.”

We may be angry with God because our marriage is not going as we expected. We may be holding Him accountable or accusing Him of breaking His promise of happiness to us. But as we struggle, we are at least taking Him seriously. And in our struggle we can compare our experience with the stories of other people who have been disappointed with God before finding fulfillment in Him.

Over and over, the Bible introduces us to people whose disappointment with God bleeds through the pages of their lives. Yet again and again the Bible shows that disillusionment can become the doorway to fulfillment. Even Jesus endured to the point of saying in Gethsemane, “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). No one has ever suffered the betrayal, aloneness, abandonment, and abuse that Christ did in the course of His life and death. No one ever experienced the kind of unfair treatment that He endured when He paid the price for our sins. Yet He lived and died and rose from the dead to declare along with other godly men and women of Israel, that, in time, God always shows himself good and powerful and faithful to those who are willing to trust him to the end.

He can do the same for us in our marriage. Christ showed us by His own example that we were not made to find complete fulfillment or security in any human relationship. He showed us that we are made to find our protection and contentment in God, and that only in this realization can we be free to love and submit to one another. By His own example Christ also helps us …

Let Our Relationship with God Become Our Source of Marital Fulfillment. Followers of Christ are in a great position to face the issues that have brought disillusionment to their marriage.

Biblical counselor Larry Crabb wrote, “The difference between godly and ungodly people is not that one group never hurts and the other group does, or that one reports more happiness than the other. The difference lies in what people do with their hurt. Either they do what comes naturally: use their hurt to justify self–centered efforts to relieve it, caring less about how they affect others and more about whether they are comfortable; or they do what comes unnaturally: use their hurt to better understand and encourage others while they cling desperately to the Lord for promised deliverance, passionately determined to do His will” (Men And Women, p. 93).

Once we learn that our ultimate well–being depends on God and not on our spouse, we will begin to experience the strength of the Lord. Once a husband believes that his relationship to God is more important than his relationship to his wife, he will begin to find a personal sense of significance that doesn’t depend on his wife’s responses or affirmation. He will begin to love her out of the love that he has found in Christ (Ephesians 5:25).

Once a wife believes that her relationship with Christ is more important than her relationship to her husband, she can begin to find a source of security and acceptance that doesn’t depend on her husband’s ability to meet her needs. She can begin to accept her role as a wife out of the conviction that rightly motivated submission is actually a way of submitting herself to the lordship and provision of Christ (Ephesians 5:22–24).

This is not to say, however, that godly husbands and wives become independent of one another. It is important that we also …

Let Our Dependence on God Become a Basis for Loving Interdependence. A husband and wife who depend on God—who find their strength and sufficiency in Him—will not be overly dependent on each other. Nor will they demand an unhealthy independence or domination. God made man and woman as unique, specially gifted beings in His image. Neither of them is to rob the other of that God–given uniqueness. But when they say, “I do,” they’re choosing to give themselves to each other in a lifelong relationship. The Bible helps us to understand how a husband and wife can be one, yet also be true to the unique person God made each to be.

This kind of interdependence does not come easy for a generation that has seen divorce become epidemic. Yet for those who find their security in the Lord, and for those who are rightly motivated, it is possible for wives to accept and trust the Bible when it says, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as you do to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Ephesians 5:22–23).

The interdependence of husbands and wives also has implications for their sexual relationship. The Scripture make it clear that husbands and wives are to protect, enjoy, and share mutual expectations in the intimacy of the marital bed. The sexual dimension of marriage is designed by the Lord to bring continuing pleasure and exhilarating renewal to the relationship. When we offer ourselves to one another in love, God Himself is pleased. When we fail, the pleasure goes to Satan.

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