When I was sitting in real estate school recently, I was struck by the negative view of marriage most of our society holds. There were so many jokes about splitting property in half after a divorce and a lot of sarcasm about past wives getting the house. I guess it makes sense that a lot of people have this jaded view considering that about half of the marriages today end in divorce, but that viewpoint is not right. The negative view of marriage held by a lot (even most?) of our society is not God’s point of view on marriage at all.
A few weeks ago in church, our pastor shared one of the most powerful testimonies about marriage I’ve heard in a long time. My pastor and his wife were out in their yard talking to two of their neighbors. Both these neighbors were divorced women and neither of them were Christians, but they started talking about marriage for some reason. By the end of the conversation, both women said the same thing… they wish now that they had stuck it out. They had watched friends fight for their marriage in the face of infidelity, abuse, and any other number of hardships, and in the end they admired the couples who fought through it all and stayed married.
What these ladies probably didn’t know is that their viewpoint – that marriage is worth it – is God’s viewpoint.
Marriage is good.
Now I’m not saying that marriage is easy. I am not saying that infidelity or abuse are acceptable. I can only imagine the wounds that many couples have suffered and the counseling and tears and hours and years that must go into the healing process. Micah and I celebrated our one year earlier this week in a little ocean side town in Washington. We didn’t have a lot of money with which to celebrate our anniversary, but it was very important to me that it was celebrated nonetheless. Micah and I were discussing whether or not it’s important to really celebrate anniversaries, and we decided that YES, it is. Because marriage is hard. It’s a lot of work, especially if you are striving for a good marriage. It means dying to self in new ways and loving someone else more than you love yourself. Serving someone else’s needs before you fulfill your own. It sometimes means giving up your plans or your desires and doing so with a smile. It’s hard. So when that day rolls around… when you’ve made it another year, I fully believe that day should be celebrated, because so many people don’t make it through another year. So many people don’t celebrate marriage.
Because despite the broken hearts and sarcastic attitudes about marriage that are so prevalent today, God’s plan for marriage is so incredibly different than that. When God created the world, the last thing he created was marriage. He made the oceans and the land and the sun and the moon and the stars and the plants and the animals and man. And after he crafted each marvelous creation, he stopped and noticed that “it was good.” Then he created man, but when he saw Adam just living life alone, God suddenly changed his viewpoint – “it is NOT GOOD that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). The world without marriage was NOT GOOD, and so God created Eve, the first wife, the first marriage, and it was very good (Genesis 1:31). God’s plan of creation was complete with the first marriage and instructions for Adam and Eve to begin a family.
As we all know, though, God’s perfect creation and the first perfect marriage were quickly corrupted by sin. Adam failed to lead Eve, Eve led Adam astray and their sons were involved in the first murder. Things got ugly pretty quickly. Marriage was marred.
But God was not unknowing. He knew that life, marriage, family, and all relationships would be contaminated. That people and marriages would struggle and suffer and sometimes fail because of sin.
However, our sin does not make marriage bad. In fact, Jesus, our Savior, when he came to save the world from sin and restore all of creation, used marriage as the symbol and the metaphor to help us understand his love and his mission. Marriage is still good.
The picture of the loving and eager groom taking his beautiful bride into the covenant of marriage is the picture God chose out of all pictures to express how much Christ loves His people. Christ loves the church like a husband loves his wife. Christ laid down his life for us like a husband is called to protect his wife and lay down his life for her. We, as God’s people, are called to love and serve Christ joyfully, just as we serve our husbands.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior… Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. –Ephesians 5:22-23, 25-27
Sometimes marriage is very hard. Sometimes it is difficult to serve Micah and to submit to his plan, much less to do so with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. But I know that in the end, marriage is good. It’s God creation. It’s God’s plan for me and for so many others to be shaped, transformed and refined through marriage. So despite what the world says about marriage today, regardless of the bitterness and the sarcasm about marriage that seeps throughout our society, I urge you to believe differently. Marriage is worth working for, sacrificing for, fighting for. Just as God has said from the beginning, marriage is very good.
probably my favorite thing you've ever written. very encouraging.