Principles for a Strong Marriage

“Teacher which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.”  Matthew 22:36-8

Lord, by your grace I ask you to build my marriage on Christ.  I ask you to increase my love for you because it is right, but I ask for my marriage that my love for you will in turn spill over into my love for Leanne and increase it as your love abounds in my heart.  I cannot love her with your love if I do not have your love, so as I love you, bless my marriage. 

If you have read the previous blogs on marriage, you now know that God gives marriage a much deeper meaning than this world does.  Marriage is not just about a man and woman forming a family.  It acts out a living picture of Christ and the church.  In fact, that picture is the main point.  God wants the world to see a living, breathing portrait of what a relationship with Him is supposed to be like, so He has given the world husbands and wives. 

But the mere existence of husbands and wives does not guarantee a clear picture, for sin corrupts this world thoroughly, and marriage on Earth is thus a broken picture at best.  Divorce and marital dysfunction abound.  Abuse, selfishness, sexual sin, pride and an outright denial of God’s marital design all cloud the picture.  Marriages are sick, and the doctors don’t know what to do.  God, however, knows, and since marriage is His invention, husbands and wives would do well to listen to Scripture on how to live together.

This blog will begin such a discussion.  Over several blogs, I intend to relate some principles of a good marriage.  I present no new ideas.  Nor shall I be comprehensive.  So then.  Principle number one.

Walk with God

The best foundation for a strong marriage is Christ.  Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church.  When we live out the reality of Christ in us, we are actually living out a marriage, the marriage that our earthly marriage reflects.  If you want your earthly marriage to thrive, try thriving in your marriage with Christ.  People who build their marriage on something other than Christ drastically limit what their marriage can become.  Christ must be the center of your life and your marriage. 

You would think this would be common sense, but advice like this doesn’t seem to crack the counsel of the marriage experts.  The nonChristian experts simply don’t think this way.  Walking with God is as foreign to them as Pluto.  And the Christian experts may neglect this because, technically, walking with God does not relate only to marriage.  It deals with all of life and is, thus, from one perspective, not a marriage issue.  Some may say, “Of course, it goes without saying that a husband who walks with God will be better able to love his wife as Christ loved the church,” and then they move on.  In reality, however, this principle does not go without saying.  We need to say it. And we need to say it often.  People emphasize what their teachers emphasize.  If their teachers emphasize some new marital strategy but de-emphasize walking with God, we should not be shocked to find people talking about the strategy but neglecting their with God.   

Let’s be clear.  Walking with God is a marriage issue of the highest importance.  It is probably the single most important thing you can do to improve your marriage, and it is everyone’s business.   Imagine a soccer team training for the World Cup.  What if the players focused only on soccer techniques and neglected their general health and conditioning.  Would this impact the team?  Marriage is no different.  Walking with God impacts your overall spiritual health and how you relate to others. 

What this means is that, husbands, if you want a strong relationship with your wife, you need to hear and obey the Word of God in the rest of your life.  And wives, if you want to grow in your relationship with your husbands, grow in your relationship with Christ.  Whether you are a husband or a wife, get to know Jesus.  Learn from Him.  Talk with Him.  Love the Scriptures.  Pray from the heart.  Plug in to a church.  Share your faith.  Let go of money.  Give.  Cheerfully and generously.  Die to self daily.  Consider others as more important than yourself.  Ponder the Cross.  Rejoice in the Resurrection.  Trust in the promises of God, the goodness of God, and the power of God.  These are the sorts of habits that change the heart.  And when you change hearts, you change marriages. 

Don’t ever underestimate the power of God to change you and your marriage.  But understand that God works best when we do things His way.  Walking with God and insisting on our own way are mutually exclusive.  You shall have to let go of your own way.   As Christ lives in you, you will love your spouse better.  Because of this, in most instances, when one spouse draws near to Christ, the other spouse draws nearer as well.  Peter discusses this idea.  He says that unbelieving husbands “may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see [their] respectful and pure conduct.”  (I Pet 3:1-2)

But this doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes walking with God can create problems in a marriage, especially in marriages where one spouse is a believer and the other a nonbeliever.  While it is true that drawing near to Jesus will better help a husband love his wife, it is also true that drawing near to Jesus will change that husband’s priorities.  I have seen Muslim women divorce or separate from their husbands because the husband became a Christian and began to live as one.  I have seen secular men and women malign their Christian spouse who insisted on believing “that backwards, crude book of fairy tales”, who wanted to worship with God’s people, or who taught the children doctrines that the unbeliever considered harmful.  Let’s not be naïve.  NonChristians do not understand Christians.  And they cannot.  When a Christian begins to walk with Jesus within a mixed marriage, there will be problems. 

In these situations, the problems don’t change what you must do.  Walk with Jesus anyway.  As important as the marriage is, He is more important still, and the marriage will be healthier if you put him first.  When people put their marriage first, they live a lie.  They ignore the truth of why they exist and what marriage is in the first place.  Such marriages are already dysfunctional.  But when a wife puts Christ first and walks with Him, she begins to set marriage within its proper context.  She is freer to love, and she actually cares about her marriage more, for she begins to see what it really is. 

Building a marriage on the foundation of Christ does not remove all struggles or problems, but it changes us and helps us live in love and understanding and helps us respond to those problems in a healthier way.  We still live in a fallen world, and we and our spouses are still broken, sinful people.  As long as Earth remains, marriages will face problems.  Even good marriages.  Isn’t that all the more reason to walk with God.