Good Marriage 2: Sacrifice and Marriage

In my last post I started to look at four characteristics of a good marriage according to the teaching of St Paul. Last time I argued that marriage is designed to be exclusive. Yet Paul doesn’t stop there. He offers some of the most radical teaching on the sacrifices required by marriage ever given.

Marriage Should Be Sacrificial

‘The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.’ (1 Corinthians 7:3-4)

In Christian marriage each partner should seek the good of the other ahead of their own. That is what Christians understand love to be. That is the value that underpins every other aspect of love. It is how you can love someone even when you don’t particularly like them.

This is radically distinct from contemporary understandings of relationships. One strand of contemporary morality thinks of relationships as essentially bargains between autonomous individuals who protect themselves and their own interests. This manifests itself in many different ways. Many are concerned about committing to others, to marriage, to having children and so on because of their belief in the need to protect themselves by holding themselves back.

One example is the move to writing one’s own wedding vows. Consider this example from the wedding of Jake and Amy in Brooklyn Nine Nine:

Jake: We’ve had a lot of crazy days… every single day I get to be with someone as amazing as you is crazy to me. I love you.

Amy: I’ve never been happier. Life is unpredictable; not everything is in our control; but as long as you are with the right people you can handle anything and you, Jake Peralta, are the right person for me.’

I was welling up at the beauty of the moment because I love those characters and have watched the show many times over. Yet it is striking that the focus is fundamentally upon what the person speaking gets from their partner rather than promises to give to their partner. Jake is happy because Amy makes him happy; he doesn’t promise to give her anything. Similarly, Amy is happy because Jake is the right person for her. There is no promise, simply an observation that the other has made them happy so far.

I’m not suggesting that there is a problem with personalising wedding vows as such. Yet it is instructive to contrast Jake and Amy’s ‘vows’ with probably the best Christian liturgy ever composed for marriage. In the Book of Common Prayer’s marriage service the groom is asked:

‘Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’

He responds simply, ‘I will.’

He doesn’t comment upon how she makes him feel; the focus is on his determination to bless and honour her. Here is a vision of marriage in which my own happiness is not my focus. My wife’s is.

My main job as a Christian husband is to prioritise my wife’s happiness. And she should have the same attitude to me. Yet paradoxically, Christians believe, it is in seeking the happiness of another that I will find myself fulfilled.

None of this should surprise us; it is the theme that runs throughout Christian ethics.

Again, marriage points to something beyond itself. Jesus said that he came ‘not to be served but to serve.’ Whether you are married or not, Christ put your life ahead of his own, your future over his, your happiness ahead of his own. He loved the church so much that he gave up heaven itself to come and win her. He was and is totally committed to seeking the good of others.

What Does This Mean?

In these blogs I try to offer some specific reflections on the implications of what I have argued for our everyday lives.

First, I wonder how many of our decisions as husbands and wives begin with the question: what is best for my spouse? What is it he/she would like? What nurtures their spiritual, emotional or physical well-being? This can range from things as small as being the one who gets out of bed and brings a cup of tea in the morning, through to career choices. For Christian couples this extends to allowing each other time to be quiet with God, to exercise, to nurture one another.

Second, it has implications for our physical relationships. As I commented in my last post, sex is an important part of marriage and there are times when we need to be willing to respond to our spouse physically even when we don’t feel like it.

Yet this goes beyond sex. Sacrifice means being physically present for our spouse. If all of our time is taken up at work, and we don’t have time to be present for our spouse, then we are not sacrificing ourselves for them. If all our time is taken up with children or with other people and we don’t have time alone with our spouse to talk, play, laugh, eat, then we are not sacrificing ourselves for them.

Third, this requires us to be honest about our motives. This goes beyond simply those who are married. We can kid ourselves that we are doing something for another (working longer, cleaning the house or any number of other things) when really what they want or need is us. We need to be honest about why we are doing things and see whether we are truly acting for the good of our spouse or not.

Finally, we can rejoice. This sounds impossible and perhaps naturally it is. Yet it is the pattern we see in Jesus Christ. He loved us in such a way that he gave up everything for us. For you. Naturally it may well be impossible to put another first yet God promises to do the impossible for and through anyone who will come to him.

Let me put it another way. You and I have been loved with an extravagant, selfless grace by the God of all time and space. In the words of St John, ‘Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.’

Good Marriage Resources

If you find yourself wanting to invest in your marriage, you desire a good thing: spending time assessing and reviewing our relationship is not a sign of problems but of a desire to keep on going well and to make the good even better. There are lots of good resources out there to help us. These are a few we recommend:

• The Marriage Book by Nicky and Sila Lee. This is an excellent manual for reviewing our relationships whether you are a Christian or not.
• The Marriage Course from Relationship Central. These are run at churches and other community venues across the country. The course lasts for a couple of months. You get to have dinner as a couple and are given space to talk about a whole range of issues from money to kids to sex in your own space away from others. There are also short sections of input from relationship counsellors and others to provide wisdom to help you find a way forward.
• The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. If you haven’t read this, you should whether you are in a relationship or not. It helps us assess how we communicate affection and love effectively to someone else.

 

4 Characteristics of a Good Marriage

For Christians marriage is an important subject.

Just as we are all called to be single and in God’s service at some point, so we are all called both to support the marriages of those around us and, more fundamentally, to participate in the marriage of Christ and the Church.

To put it another way, marriage is a picture of our relationship with Christ and so it affects us all.

So what does a good marriage look like? There is much we can say. Yet in summary, Christian marriage is designed to be exclusive, sacrificial, built on mutual love and respect, and a priority for those involved. Each of these qualities is a reflection of Jesus’ love for us.

I’m publishing a series of articles based on St Paul’s instructions to one of the earliest Christian churches in Corinth. You can find them in 1 Corinthians 7:1-6 and 29-31. It is only a couple of paragraphs long but might be the most helpful two paragraphs ever written on the subject of marriage. I’m going to pick up on what he says as I go.

Throughout this passage Paul is talking about sex which is the question he was asked by the church he wrote to. I’m not going to focus on that particularly because I’ve written about it extensively elsewhere but it should be a part of how couples think and talk to each other about these issues.

Marriage Should Be Exclusive

‘[E]ach man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.’ (1 Corinthians 7:2)

In a Christian marriage faithfulness is essential.  This is what it means to be married as a Christian. It is to give yourself to one other person. As the great Archbishop Cranmer put it in the vows he included in the old fashioned wedding service it is a commitment to ‘forsake all others’ for the person to whom you are married.

There is no room for a third party.

Christian understandings of marriage and intimacy include a commitment to vulnerability, union, trust and dependence that requires absolute commitment and exclusivity. I cannot be completely vulnerable to you unless I am sure that you are committed to me. If there is a risk that you might leave me, I have to hold something back from you to protect myself. Vulnerability and intimacy require exclusivity.

This pictures Christ’s absolute commitment to us. Paul says in Ephesians 5 that when we talk about marriage, we are talking about Christ and the church. Jesus Christ is so committed to us that he will never leave us. We can be completely vulnerable with him, give ourselves totally to him, because he says to us ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’

If Christ is so committed to us, husbands and wives should be committed to one another.

What Might This Mean?

What does this mean practically? I can only offer some suggestions but I think these are good principles.

First, it means don’t sleep with other people. Marriage thrives, and sex is better, when it is exclusive. Don’t cheat. Full stop.

Second, do sleep with your spouse. Sex is an important part of the deepening of relationships. There can be times when you don’t feel like it – especially when you have had children and there is exhaustion, physical changes particularly for women, and an enormous emotional upheaval for both partners. We can end up never feeling like having sex spontaneously and therefore not having sex. This is a warning sign. To be blunt, sex does not need to be spontaneous to be good. Sometimes even the best things in life need to be worked at.

Plan to have a romantic night off and be intentional about restarting your physical relationship even if you don’t feel like it. It is an investment in deepening your relationship and keeping you together.

Third, more deeply it means taking your partner’s side against the world around – it is about loyalty, trust and teamwork. Husbands should take have their wife’s back and vice versa. If we find ourselves consistently siding with other people or institutions then we need to ask ourselves whether we have really understood that we have a team and our loyalty is to them.

One particular danger is when we form relationships with people other than our spouse that draw us away from them. Very often this is where problems in our marriages begin – when we neglect our spouse and begin to see another person as an object of emotional or sexual desire. We are particularly vulnerable to this when we are apart from one another – at work or at the school gates.

I’m not saying that we should not have friendships, even deep friendships, with people of the opposite sex. But we should be aware that the good that they present comes also with a danger. To put it another way, often the first step towards infidelity is not physical but emotional. This is something of what Jesus was pointing out when he said that ‘I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’

If you find yourself in this situation (and it happens unintentionally) my advice is to talk to each other openly about it. Very often once it has been spoken, it loses all power anyway. And the relationship you have with your spouse is stronger for having been vulnerable with one another.

Good Marriage Resources

If you find yourself wanting to invest in your marriage, you desire a good thing: spending time assessing and reviewing our relationship is not a sign of problems but of a desire to keep on going well and to make the good even better. There are lots of good resources out there to help us. These are a few we recommend:

• The Marriage Book by Nicky and Sila Lee. This is an excellent manual for reviewing our relationships whether you are a Christian or not.
• The Marriage Course from Relationship Central. These are run at churches and other community venues across the country. The course lasts for a couple of months. You get to have dinner as a couple and are given space to talk about a whole range of issues from money to kids to sex in your own space away from others. There are also short sections of input from relationship counsellors and others to provide wisdom to help you find a way forward.
• The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. If you haven’t read this, you should whether you are in a relationship or not. It helps us assess how we communicate affection and love effectively to someone else.