Biblical perspective on Marriage and how...
We will be delving deeper into what constitutes a biblical marriage in contrast to the modern-era's idea of marriage.
First things first. Marriage is a sacred thing. However, in the modern era, it has morphed into something truly unsightly and, in most cases, unrecognizable from its genuinely intended biblical model.
Let’s consider this narrative:
”Eighty-year-old Noah Calhoun, who lives in a nursing home in North Carolina, describes the lonely and sometimes painful nature of his final days. Noah knows that he has lived an ordinary life by most people’s standards, but he insists that having known “perfect love” has been enough for him. Noah wanders down the cold halls of the nursing home to visit the room of another patient—a woman—who barely acknowledges him as he sits down beside her, opens up a small notebook, and begins to read to her. Noah is hopeful that today will be the day a miracle happens.
The story flashes back to October of 1946. As dusk falls, Noah sits on the porch of his sprawling home in New Bern, North Carolina. Noah is proud of the work he’s done on the old plantation house—a few weeks ago, a reporter even came to interview him about it and take pictures. Noah is a simple man who spends his days kayaking, reading poetry, and playing guitar with his neighbor Gus. But all the while, Noah pines for a lost love: in 1932, he shared an intense, romantic summer with a young woman named Allie Nelson, whose family came to visit New Bern for several months. At the end of the summer, after losing their virginities to each other, Noah and Allie parted ways. Though Noah wrote Allie many letters, she never answered them, and he has not heard from her or seen her since.”
Does this “perfect love” description sound familiar, hokey, or like a Hollywood romance?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, there’s a reason why it sounds familiar! The reason being it is part of the plot line for the movie “The Notebook.” This, in all seriousness, has got to be one of the worst “love stories” out there when considering the topic of this article, “biblical perspective on marriage.”
It’s highly praised among certain circles because it’s so romanticized and makes you feel all a flutter thinking that maybe someday you could have such a passionate love with your spouse and that there would be nothing that could separate you from each other, like with Noah and Allie! Sounds genuinely exceptional, right?! Well, the reality is there are numerous things wrong with this movie… and I mean multiple things!
Nonetheless, let’s consider the societal norms for the era we find ourselves in. Whether you are in the church or out of the church, despite some cases and a few geographics, it makes no difference in the outcome.
We currently live in a society, one could also say, an echo chamber where it’s acceptable to play the dating game as young as twelve. All you need to consider is how you feel around someone of the opposite sex. Does your heart go all a flutter on you? Is it difficult to breathe around them? Does their smile enamor you?
Well, let me be the first to tell you if you haven’t already caught on to this principle, none of that matters! Yes, they are nice things to experience, but they should not be the deciding factor in a Christ-centered relationship.], Bear in mind this is at any age.
However, we’re inundated with symbolic images of “the perfect love story” and what a perfect relationship should look like. We are so far out of our depths when it comes to the reality of it all that when a genuine relationship materializes; we’re ill-equipped to handle the weight and breadth of a sincere biblical marriage, much less a relationship.
See, it’s one thing to say we understand the principles of a godly relationship or that we want to “save ourselves” and “stay pure.” But what about the instance that you as a couple or you as an individual don’t do a good job avoiding tempestuous situations? And now it’s midnight, and you two are sitting up close enough to smell what the other had for breakfast with some slow jams on, and you wake up naked next to each other, wondering what happened.
Well, the greatest lie we tell ourselves is that we can put ourselves in compromising situations and come out victorious! It’s a lie straight from the pit of hell. But we do these things consistently. And if you do find yourselves in situations where you are tempted to act on some inhibitions. It’s going to go one of two ways: either one of you will pump the brakes because of an internal conscience, or you’ll find yourself making a poor decision.
Let me caveat by saying this. Many teens, young people, and older individuals have no qualms about these situations and would applaud them. However, being that the basis for this article is from a Christian perspective, we’ll continue with the current mindset/line of logic.
To help illustrate some of the biblical principles of a Christ-centered marriage, we look at a few examples from RPM Ministries:
”1. Both of You: Keep Putting Jesus First; Keep Loving Jesus Most: Matthew 22:35-38
Love God most with your most: with all your heart, soul, mind, and spirit. Repent of anything you put on the throne above Jesus. Put Jesus before yourself. Put Jesus before your children, your work, your ministry. Put Jesus before your need to be right. Put Jesus first. Love Jesus most.
7. Both of You: Speak Life Words, Not Death Words to Your Spouse: Ephesians 4:29; Proverbs 18:21
When your spouse hurts or fails you, do this: 1.) Find comfort in Christ. 2.) Seek hope in God. 3.) Take the mote out of your own eye. 4.) Forgive the mote in your spouse’s eye. 5.) Love like Christ. Say this, “My spouse is doing ______. I’m going to respond like Christ by thinking and doing ______.” Speak life-giving, helpful words about and to your spouse. Words that nourish them according to their need, that it will benefit your spouse.
9. Husband: Shepherd Your Wife with Christ’s Sacrificial, Other-Centered Love: Ephesians 5:22-33; 1 Peter 3:7
Husband, your #1 calling as a husband is shepherding your wife. Shepherd your wife like Christ shepherds the church: with death-to-self, sacrificial, agape, mature, other-centered love. Continually ask God to empower you to live out Ephesians 5:22-33. Seek to know your wife richly and to treat her with respect as a spiritual heir with you (1 Peter 3:7).
10. Wife: Respectfully Love Your Husband Like the Church Loves Christ: Ephesians 5:22-33; 1 Peter 3:1-6
Wife, your #1 calling as a wife is to love your husband with respecting love (Ephesians 5:33). Mature respect encourages strengths, affirms gifts, and gently, humbly challenges wrongs. Mature respect speaks the truth in love to help your husband to keep growing in Christ—because you are for your husband and believe in Christ’s work in him. Continually ask God to use your godly life to draw your husband closer and closer to Christ (1 Peter 3:1-6).”
There’s much to digest here, so let’s start at the top.
While pondering this excerpt from 1), “Love God most with your most: with all your heart, soul, mind, and spirit.”
We are reminded of the pyramid analogy!
The short and sweet of it suggests that there is a pyramid, and at the bottom corners, there we are “husband and wife,” and Christ is at the peak of the pyramid. Well, the closer we (Husband and wife) get to the peak of the pyramid, it results in us as a couple getting closer to our spouse and, more importantly, to Christ both in our marriage and personal lives! How fantastic is this imagery if you catch on to what it involves?!
Next, we have an excerpt from “7) When your spouse hurts or fails you, do this: 1.) Find comfort in Christ. 2.) Seek hope in God. 3.) Take the mote out of your own eye. 4.) Forgive the mote in your spouse’s eye. 5.) Love like Christ.”
Folks, let’s be honest; we’re human, and we’re bound to hurt one another from time to time. And the majority of the time, it will be unintentional or contextually misunderstood. It’s just going to happen! So be prepared; the critical lesson to learn is how to deal with it. The above excerpt exemplifies the proper response.
This next part sounds like the “cliche Christian response,” But hear me out, part of loving like Christ is forgiving and not just “forgiving.” But indeed, cast that out of your heart and work to see your spouse as Christ sees them.
What offense? What hurt? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ!
It’s not by any stretch of the means an easy thing to do. It is easy to say, but what about when the rubber meets the road?
What about when you’re facing down the “D word.”
and you can’t see any other way out? Well, honestly, that’s when you should be praying fervently. It’s easy to recite your wedding vows on the day you get married and mean them! But how about when you realize that marriage is not as easy as you thought it would be? And things just aren’t going the way you expected! What about then?
Will you falter?
Well, here’s the good news! Circumstantially there is redemption! You may have to deal with feelings and emotions you previously discarded and or refused to acknowledge, or you may be in this boat due to out-of-your-control circumstances; you stepped away from your marriage. Well, again, here’s the good news, as long as you have even a shred of moral fiber in your being. Your “heart” will cry out for what you did not realize you missed! At that moment, draw near to Christ, for there is saving grace!
Is there always a “happy ending” for marriages on the rocks? No, sad to say, but No. Sometimes things die, and sometimes you get your one chance at marriage, but the saving grace is that if you are both believers and have even a shred of moral fiber in you.
There’s always a crack for Christ to work his way into your marriage. “God hates divorce!” I was lovingly but bluntly told that by a relative of mine when I was away from my wife and family! There are a lot of moving pieces as to why I flew the coup, none of which is easy to boil down.
BUT GOD! He saw fit to work on my heart through the fervent prayers of “the saints.” consequently, I could not arrive at “the peace” I thought was at the end of my tunnel in my bipolar madness! And I can honestly say I am blessed beyond belief to have such a prayer warrior for a wife and friends.
As well as extended family involved in the mix.
Lastly, we’ll boil 9) and 10) into this concise explanation. Within God’s design, he created Man and Woman! To be one flesh, to live together, and for the woman to be the helpmate to the man! But that is not meant to be in a chauvinistic manner; that’s to say that the woman is to be a support to the man, and the man to be a protector to the female, Now I’ve met some couples where the female is man enough for the both of them, lol. Nonetheless, that’s beside the point.
We have to refrain from looking at marriage as if the male has to be the breadwinner in the family and the female has to stay home and be “Nancy homemaker.” That damages things. Yes, it is true; man needs a mission and a purpose. But it doesn’t have to mean we go back to the 50s-era stereotype.
I’m a stay-at-home dad, But I still work. However, I work from home! While my wife, whose God-given calling has brought her into the education field, goes out every weekday and works her tail off! We make it work.
With all that said, I’m still called to a specific set of biblical standards as the husband. And there is no way to neglect those duties, nor would I want to, even if it were an option.
I’m called to raise these children to a biblical standard, a functional, lived-in, honest standard.
Not cliche nor hypocritical. But Honest, as the day is long, and lastly, faithful to Christ’s standard of what a biblical husband should exemplify!
What does that look like? Well… there are numerous articles, books, and studies on this definition.
So you’ll have to do your own homework on that! But I can leave you with this.
Four main categories are an absolute must for a biblical husband to exuberate.
They are as follows: Protector, Prophet, Priest, and Provider.
One last nugget of truth here, and then we’ll bring this to a close. For more insight into the “Four Ps,” check out and consider buying Voddie Baucham’s book “What he must be if he wants to marry my daughter.”
With everything I’ve just expressed, understand there is the political and social ideology that “love is love,” with the mindset that *man and man can lie together* and *Woman and Woman can lie together* I don’t and never will subscribe to that notion. You physically have that option in our socially and politically correct society today! But don’t expect me to ever sympathize with it. Love is not what’s under correction. The problem is thousands of people wanting to achieve something that an entire city of people happened to be destroyed because of an unholy lustful desire! There are no two ways about it. And Yes, I am loving; yes, I am sympathetic! But don’t expect me to be socially or politically sympathetic to something God calls an abomination. With that said, there are those out there that will take scripture and twist it and pervert it to say I’m a terrible, backbiting, judgmental Christian and my opinions should be devalued, but that’s because they want to justify their sinful desires and if they can deflect the sinful behavior onto those shining the light on said sin. They will, in effect, feel validated in their blissful ignorance.
Nonetheless, that’s not how it works. Think of it this way. Gravity doesn’t care who, what, or why you are the way you are; if you step off a cliff, you will fall until an equal force meets your force! And that’s going to be a one-way ticket to absolutely squashing your “anti-theistic beliefs.”
With that, I bid you adieu!