Marriage: a Beautiful Challenge

Getting married is easy.  Having a healthy, godly, and successful marriage is hard.  It requires emotional, physical, and spiritual commitment from both parties.  More than anything, it is an exercise in sacrifice and service.  Marriages fail for many reasons, but no reason is quite as prevalent or as destructive as selfishness.

Scripture presents a particularly unified account of the selfless love that marriage requires.  Selfless love can be summed up simply: the denial of self to the benefit of the other.  However simple the definition of selfless love may be, living it out is another thing all together.  The key, as in all of life, is to look to Jesus as the ultimate example of selfless love.

In Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, Paul clearly indicates that Jesus, although being in very nature God, condescended to humanity to become the servant of all, and that we should likewise take an attitude and posture that emulates Christ's selflessness (Phil 2:1-10).  The foundation that is Jesus should be not just the root of our salvation, but the example by which we live our lives as well.

The selflessness of Christ is to be an example for the selflessness of marriage, especially for husbands (Eph. 5:25-27).  This is more than a convicting exhortation.  To live with an attitude and posture of selflessness requires devotion and focus to the Lord.  Only when we are focused on the Lord, Jesus, and His example by studying the Word, will we be truly able to live out the selfless love that successful marriage requires.

In reality, there are long-lasting marriages that are not rooted on the firmest of foundations.  However, God desires marriage to be more than mere civil financial partnerships with an emotional component.  Marriage is a divine pairing of two people to a single coupled person (Gen. 2:24).  Selflessness then is one half of the couple holding up the other half and vice versa.

Marriage is a constant battle that pits the pull of selfishness against Christ's example of selflessness.  The truth is that if both partners are living out Christlike selflessness, then they will have no need to be selfish as desires and needs will be fulfilled in and by the partner.  This truly is the beauty of marriage, not to discount how thoroughly challenging it is to implement.  But thanks be to God, who provides the example and the resources to have selfless marriages!