You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity

by Francis Chan

People accuse me of going overboard in preparing for my first ten million years in eternity. In my opinion, people go overboard in worrying about their last ten years on earth.

We can’t afford to waste our marriage by merely pursuing our own happiness.

In a truly healthy relationship, we enable each other to accomplish more than we could have done alone.

There are plenty of marriage books that will teach you how to get along and be happy. This is not one of those books. I am not knocking those. In fact, we have learned some helpful principles from them over the years. The problem with those books is that they can make you feel like having a happy family is the goal of Christianity. They can make primary things like God’s glory and His mission sound secondary. They can nudge you into exchanging ultimate happiness for immediate happiness. To put it bluntly, those books don’t account for the fact that you can have a happy earthly marriage and then be miserable for all eternity. This book is about loving each other forever.

Christians in America have become experts at conviction—and failures at action.

We need to learn to err on the side of action, because we tend to default to negligence.

So many won’t do anything unless they hear a voice from heaven telling them precisely what to do. Why not default to action until you hear a voice from heaven telling you to wait?

We criticize the guy who fed too much sugar to starving children rather than criticizing the thousands who fed them nothing.

Things must be different in order to be better.

People who aren’t living well make matters worse by living together.

As a pastor for over 20 years, I have come to the conclusion that most marriage problems are not really marriage problems. They are God problems.

An accurate picture of God is vital to a healthy marriage. It’s vital to everything.

If we don’t stare at God, we’ll spend our time staring at lesser things. Namely, ourselves.

Again, our marriage problems are not really marriage problems. They are heart problems. They are God problems. Our lack of intimacy with God causes a void that we try to fill with the frailest of substitutes. Like wealth or pleasure. Like fame or respect. Like people. Like marriage.

The words in your Bible carry an unparalleled power to penetrate to your very core. They reach beyond your self-deception, your hypocrisy, and your false motives and expose your soul. You sit down to read this book, and it tears you open, doing God’s work in your heart and mind. We hear strong opinions from arrogant people all day long. We need to cleanse our minds by reminding each other of God’s actual words.

Protect your marriage by reminding each other that God is holy and Jesus will return at any moment.

A quote I heard recently: “We are God’s plan to make it believable that He is good and loving and true.” God has always chosen to reveal Himself through people. Just as He used the nation of Israel to show the world who the one true God was, He calls us to represent Him to the world around us. Our lives should make it believable that there is a God. The way we love our spouses should make the love of Christ believable and true. Wouldn’t it be incredible to know that your marriage actually drew someone into a relationship with Christ?

While the Bible helps us understand what marriage is and how it works, it is not a book about marriage. It is a book about God.

His dad is 95 and his mom is 96. They fell in love in the sixth grade and have now been married for 75 years. They have been best friends for 83 years!

A dead spouse cannot conjure up a living marriage.

If the Spirit of God is really inside of us, then His power will be obvious in our marriages.

So before the end of human history when the Savior and Judge will return to save and to judge, you were born. You are now called by God to showcase the power of His Spirit by the way you live. Your mission is to do this until He calls you home or returns to end human history, and you will then be rewarded—by the God who created you, the Son who died for you, and the Spirit who empowered you—for giving the world an accurate picture of His love.

We are called to paint such an attractive picture of marriage that it causes people to long for the coming marriage with Jesus.

But it’s one thing to preach the gospel and another thing to display the gospel.

displaying the gospel is the point of the church—the

We can talk about the forgiveness of Christ, but in the church we demonstrate th...

My point in all of this is to insist that there’s more at stake in your marriage than just your marriage. The beauty of the gospel is at stake.

We want our marriages to be filled with love, but maybe we’ve forgotten the best way to accomplish that: display the gospel. Lay down your very life for your husband or wife, but ultimately, for Christ.

We live in a time when Christians need to be told that they are supposed to live like Christ. That’s weird. What’s crazier is that people actually fight against this notion. “Christians” have come up with clever ways to explain why the followers of a suffering servant should live like kings.

Jesus was clear that following Him meant—get this—following Him. The church has put so much effort into inventing a new form of “following Christ” that doesn’t require imitating Him. We teach that even though Jesus allowed His rights to be trampled, we should fight for ours. We teach that even though Jesus lived simply, we have the right to live luxuriously (some prefer the term “comfortably”). Even as we teach that Jesus was rejected by the world, we pursue popularity.

If two people make it their goal to imitate the humility of Christ, everything else will take care of itself.

Arguments escalate when we want to be right more than we want to be Christ. It is easy to get blinded in the heat of disagreements. Soon, all we want is to win, even if victory requires sin. The one who wins the argument is usually the one who acts less like Christ.

Nothing is better than having God’s grace lavished upon you, and nothing could be worse than facing God’s opposition.

Every day, the world bombards you with messages of power, independence, and control. Jesus tells you the opposite: die to yourself.

This isn’t upper level, extra credit, AP Christianity. It’s what we sign up for—to die to ourselves and become like Christ. In an effort to gain “converts,” Christians often refrain from telling the full story. We want people to follow, so like cheap salesmen, we share the benefits without explaining the cost. We tell them about Jesus’ promises of life and forgiveness, but we don’t mention His calls for repentance and obedience. We avoid His promise that we will experience persecution. When we do this, we cheapen the gospel. The beauty of the gospel is that Christ is of such supreme worth that we would gladly sacrifice all to have Him. He is so beautiful that we would be fools to resist becoming like Him.

Baptism is meant to convey our death and burial with Christ. A Christian rises from the water in a picture of resurrection—brought up from the grave with a new life, a new identity (see Rom. 6:1–10).

Your problem could be that you’re not dead. You have never truly died to yourself. Picture your body hanging lifelessly on a cross. Paul states matter-of-factly that this is what happens to those who belong to Christ—“our old self was crucified with him” (Rom. 6:6). That is what we signed up for. We have told God that we no longer want to live for ourselves. We want Him to take over. We actually desire a Master. Unlike Adam and Eve in the garden, we want to submit to God’s rule. We are happy to surrender. We are happy to see our life become His.

Sometimes we can be like interpreters gone wild. Our whole job is to act like Christ and tell His message to the world, but we do and say our own thing instead. We are called to translate for God. We are supposed to represent Him and speak on His behalf.

Rather than speaking in a thundering voice from the heavens, God chose to speak through us as His ambassadors. And He chose marriage as a billboard by which He could shout His message. So He calls us to cultivate marriages that represent Him accurately.

I have been given a tremendous task. I am supposed to be Jesus. My love should remind Lisa of Christ’s love. The longer life goes on, the more she should feel like she is married to Jesus. I should be so selfless that it reminds her of the cross. I should have such a high standard of purity that she never has reason to doubt my faithfulness. Just as she would never dream of being lied to by Jesus, she should be confident that I will never waver from the vow I made to her.

I have had several women tell me through the years that when they look at the roles given to husbands and wives in the Bible, the role of the man is much easier. Really? Are you reading the same passages I’m reading? I understand that Paul’s instructions for wives are difficult to follow. But the command to love in the same way that Christ loved is not exactly a cakewalk. Our roles seem equally impossible. Thank God for His Spirit.

We cannot display Christ’s love without hurting. Jesus “gave himself” for the church. This speaks of His death. There was nothing He withheld from His bride.

If you are to love like Christ, then you also must concern yourself with your wife’s sanctification.

Here’s a blueprint for marriage: 1. We become overwhelmed by Christ’s care for us. 2. So we shower our wives with the same love we receive from God. 3. Then, people are shocked by our extravagant love toward our wives. 4. As a result, we are given an opportunity to tell them about the love of Christ that compels us.

People rarely marvel when they observe Christian marriages. We only shock through our mediocrity.

We will struggle with a worldly mindset if we aren’t careful to guard against it. Have you ever come back from a camp or retreat on a spiritual high, only to find that it doesn’t last once you’re back in the “real world”? Why does this happen? Because suddenly your mind is bombarded by a culture that wants nothing to do with Jesus.

Beautiful people make beautiful marriages. Jesus is the most beautiful person to ever walk the earth. Your best shot at having a beautiful marriage is if both of you make it your goal to become like Jesus.

You exist to make disciples. Your marriage exists to make disciples. You don’t want to stand before God at the end of your life with no disciples. Restructure your life. Re-prioritize. You exist to influence others.

God is currently on a mission. He is redeeming the earth. If I want to find my friend Andrew, I can usually find him at the gym. If I want to find Adam, he’s probably at the beach. If I want to find Lisa, she’s probably at Target. If I want to find Jesus, I should share the gospel with someone.

Jesus was not giving us His Spirit so that we could merely feel Him, like some kind of divine teddy bear. He gave us the Spirit and His power so we could be His witnesses.