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January 31 - May 2, 2021
In particular, lifelong marriage was seen as creating the only kind of social stability in which children could grow and thrive.
During the Enlightenment, things began to shift. The meaning of life came to be seen as the fruit of the freedom of the individual to choose the life that most fulfills him or her personally.
Instead of finding meaning through self-denial, through giving up one’s freedoms, and binding oneself to the duties of marriage and family, marriage was redefined as finding emotional and sexual fulfillment and self-actualization.
Rather, marriage was seen as a contract between two parties for mutual individual growth and satisfaction.
Marriage used to be a public institution for the common good, and now it is a private arrangement for the satisfaction of the individuals. Marriage used to be about us, but now it is about me. But ironically, this newer view of marriage actually puts a crushing burden of expectation on marriage and on spouses in a way that more traditional understandings never did. And it leaves us desperately trapped between both unrealistic longings for and terrible fears about marriage.
You are searching, therefore, for an ideal person—happy, healthy, interesting, content with life. Never before in history has there been a society filled with people so idealistic in what they are seeking in a spouse.
Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy.
We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change.
Modern people make the painfulness of marriage even greater than it has to be, because they crush it under the weight of their almost cosmically impossible expectations.
Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage.
In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime he or she fails you, it will not just cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love “in the bank” to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness at the moment.
“Whoever wants to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). He is saying, “If you seek happiness more than you seek me, you will have neither; if you seek to serve me more than serve happiness, you will have both.”
Others of us hope that unending affection and affirmation from a beautiful, brilliant romantic partner will finally make us feel good about ourselves. That turns the relationship into a form of salvation, and no relationship can live up to that.
Until God has the proper place in my life, I will always be complaining that my spouse is not loving me well enough, not respecting me enough, not supporting me enough.
What, then, would the effect be if we were to dive even more deeply into Jesus’s teaching and life and work? What if we were to be so immersed in his promises and summonses, his counsels and encouragements, that they dominated our inner life, capturing our imagination, and simply bubbled out spontaneously when we faced some challenge?
She was assuming that love is, in its essence, a particular kind of feeling. She was saying, “I feel romantic passion for you, and the piece of paper doesn’t enhance that at all, and it may hurt it.” She was measuring love mainly by how emotionally desirous she was for his affection.
But when the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give of yourself to someone.
One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love.
The best sex makes you want to weep tears of joy, not bask in the glow of a good performance.
In sharp contrast with our culture, the Bible teaches that the essence of marriage is a sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. That means that love is more fundamentally action than emotion.
Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit—that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back—then we “cut our losses” and drop the relationship.
Covenant is therefore a concept that is increasingly foreign to us, and yet the Bible says it is the essence of marriage, so we must take some time to understand it.
Why do we say that marriage is the most deeply covenantal relationship? It is because marriage has both strong horizontal and vertical aspects to it. In Malachi 2:14, a man is told that his spouse “is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant” (cf. Ezekiel 16:8).
To break faith with your spouse is to break faith with God at the same time.
So the covenant with and before God strengthens the partners to make a covenant with each other. Marriage is therefore the deepest of human covenants.
A covenant relationship is not just intimate despite being legal. It is a relationship that is more intimate because it is legal. Why
When dating or living together, you have to prove your value daily by impressing and enticing. You have to show that the chemistry is there and the relationship is fun and fulfilling or it will be over. We
The legal bond of marriage, however, creates a space of security where we can open up and reveal our true selves. We can be vulnerable, no longer having to keep up facades. We don’t have to keep selling ourselves.
Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.
When two people genuinely love each other, and are not simply using one another for sex, status, or self-actualization, they don’t want the situation to ever change. Each wants assurances of enduring commitment, and each delights to give those assurances.
Why is a binding promise of future love so crucial for creating deep, lasting passion?
Since promising is the key to identity, it is the very essence of marital love. Why? Because it is our promises that give us a stable identity, and without a stable identity, it is impossible to have stable relationships.
“If you were seventy-five, which would you rather have: years of steady if occasionally strained devotion, or something that looks a little bit like the Iraqi city of Fallujah, cratered with spent artillery?” Her parents’ marriage, the “creation of time and will,” was indeed more interesting than her fleeting romance, however passionate.
When you first fall in love, you think you love the person, but you don’t really. You can’t know who the person is right away. That takes years. You actually love your idea of the person—and that is always, at first, one-dimensional and somewhat mistaken.
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.
Passion may lead you to make a wedding promise, but then that promise over the years makes the passion richer and deeper.
only if you maintain your love for someone when it is not thrilling can you be said to be actually loving a person.
