Marriage: Is love enough?

I wasn't going to write today. It's been a rough week, both physically and otherwise. But, I feel compelled to write something that has been on my mind all morning. There is a scripture in Ephesians where Paul is admonishing couples. Let's look at it real quick:

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: 30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
Eph 5:24-33 (KJV)

Before I go further, let me just say that I am not a marriage expert. In fact, I am the exact opposite! So, what I write can be taken any way you choose, but it's more for me today that I write.

Paul begins his admonition here with a statement (one that I did not include) about women submitting to their husbands and that the man is the head of the wife. Now, I am not going to deal with that part at all because the weightier matter is before us. Husbands, love your wives. Now, why did he say that? Love your wives? This instruction to love your wife is repeated numerous times in the canon of writings ascribed to Paul. I remember reading this one time and thinking, if a man has to be told to love his wife, he has a serious problem. Love is the very foundation of marriage, is it not?



I think the reason why Paul is saying this is that love is not a given in marriage, it never has been. During his time, marriage was a commodity, the most prestigious women saved for the men with the most to offer. How could you love something that you possess, own, so to speak? But, Paul is introducing a new paradigm; a new way of seeing marriage. Let's not forget the context here. He is speaking to the woman and her place in marriage as he understood it in the first century C.E. And in many ways, even this was a revolutionary concept. However, we must understand that it was constructed in a different day and time when a man's love for his wife was conditional at best and non-existent at worse.

What is more revolutionary, though, was that he tells these men in Ephesus to love their wives as Christ loved the church. This is where I want to shift gears a little, because, I think if Paul had been writing this in the 21st century, with all the emphasis on equality and the advent of feminism and women's rights, etc, I think he would have told both man and woman to love to each other in this way. Fact is, marriage today, won't work any other way. Oh, you might stay together, but life is going to happen and bad things are going happen and your going to one day have to make a decision whether or not your going to love your spouse in this "Christ loved the church way."

I know; this not pleasant. See, Paul defines what this love is all about: "even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." Sacrifice! "Oh, but you don't know what he did, or what she did!" Christ hung on the cross and looked down at people who were cursing and hating and hurting him, and he cried, "forgive them for they don't know what their doing." In that moment, he showed us what the ingredient of a good marriage really is; that is, a love that is willing to look past the obvious and see a person that you simply love. A person that you love enough that you would give all you could to see them become everything they were meant to be.

I'm not talking about victimization; that kind of stuff happens between two people where love is not present. My wife, years ago, when we first got together, told me that she would know who the right guy was when he spoke her name and it made her feel like she did when God spoke her name. I was sitting there and thinking, I don't have a chance! Then it dawned on me, there is only really one way that that could ever happen. It was if God's voice was speaking through the man. Unfortunately, its taken me eight years to even begin to get it right!

You can't love this way naturally. I don't care how long you've been married, how much you think you love your spouse and that your meant to be together for all time and eternity, there is going to come a time when your going to be called upon to forgive and to love and give yourself to the other in a way that is vulnerable and uncomfortable, to the point of being willing to sacrifice even your own right to be angry. Hmm... that's a hard one!

And, just for a bigger kick in the pants (mine), the minute you think your justified in taking vengeance, your going to be the perpetrator and that special someone is going to have love you like Christ loved the church. Your going to look back at what was done to you and it's going to pale in comparison and your going to to need this same kind of love...

You know, you always hear that scripture quoted, "love covers a multitude of sins." But, no one really believes that anymore, right? I mean, you do to me, I do to you. You hurt me, I hurt you. I think the most horrible job in the world would be to a sitting judge in divorce court. All that hate and vileness oozing out all over the place. What a toxic place to be.

Marriage is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. In fact, I've been married, essentially, for the past 22 years, but I never really understood what the work of marriage was all about--until recently. Today, I am married to someone that I love. (there's a period at the end of that sentence for a reason). Over the years, in ministry and in other settings, I've learned that a good marriage never means the absence of life shattering, earth shaking problems. No! It's what the two do when these things happen. Notice that I said when, not if. Mostly, we tuck our tails between our legs and we run and nurse our own wounds and we quit. And sometimes, yeah, that's appropriate; sometimes there is just nothing else to do, because it's takes two people loving this way to make a good marriage, a lasting marriage.

It would be enough if Paul stopped there. Most of us have enough trouble with step one. But, he doesn't, does he? He goes on to say that the the purpose of this kind of love is so that the other person can become all they are meant to be and be presented before the Lord blameless, exonerated from all wrongs. Oh my, have you done something to the person you love that you knew you simply couldn't take back? I have, and man does it hurt. When you can look at the woman that you love and see the hurt and the betrayal that she feels...

What does Christ do for the church, besides sacrifice? He stops the assignment of blame! He takes our sin and weaknesses and the things we've done wrong to our God and others, and he cancels the debt. You see, now, how important it really is that God be an integral part of any marriage? You can't do this kind of work, this kind of love, in yourself. You will fall and crash and burn and wither and die if you try to do this in your own power. But, just as God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, so it is that Christ is in us, and if we let him, he really can heal our marriages, tear downs the walls that have separated us in our own homes, our bedrooms...

And let me just state something here: I need this kind of love everyday. If you and I can't love our spouses or significant others in this way in the little things, we will never ever make it past the big problems of life. You say, well, I love this person, I would never hurt them! Never, say that! Most of us go into marriage with hope that our marriage will be different....

I would like to say that Paul was done and we could close this out, but he went further. He said that you needed to love one another in such a way that is consistent with how much you love yourself. Now, this is a problem, but here I don't think the emphasis is on love as much as it is on nurture, nourishment. Oh my! We're about to hit a nerve here. See, I give myself a whole lot more latitude than I give others. We can violate some one's trust and if they don't know about it.... but, let them do the same....

What Paul is saying here is that you have to give the other person grace in the same manner as you give yourself. Now, he's not saying that its okay to perpetrate wrongs upon the other person purposefully. What I think he is saying is that when your spouse sins against you, consider yourself first before you react.

Lastly, Paul borrows an Old Testament metaphor and he says that a genuine marriage, operating in the love of God, is a joining together of two distinct separate persons into a single being. You can't live in the same room with the other person for long without love. But, joined at the hip, it takes more than just human love and satisfaction, things, and... it takes an infusion of God's love operating in each and thus, making them one.

You would think that we would have it all together by now. Marriage seminars, books and audio cd's and everything you can imagine is out there to affirm and make our marriages better. Some work and some don't. But, I can assure you, that if you and I can let the love of God flow through us and into the life of the other person, then we'll be successful.

You say, Chris, this is self serving. Your marriage is coming out of troubled waters and your... Yes! Absolutely; a million times, yes! I said in the beginning, I was writing more for me. I need that kind of love from my wife. I need that kind of love for my wife. Love by itself has never been enough, and it never will be. Those of us who have been working at this for a while know that our love is self-serving and blind to the need of the other at times. But, God's love--in me--will always behoove me to consider my wife, Shery, no matter what. It will cover her so that her blemishes (and we all have them) are never seen, by me or the outside world...

May God help, bless, and keep our marriages!