Like I have mentioned before in multiple posts, our marriages are direct reflections of our relationships with Christ.
As women of God, our christianity itself directly correlates to the manner in which we treat our husbands.
We treat our husbands the way we do because of how our spiritual life is either prospering or waning.
• In the latter part of Matthew 7:16, Jesus asked: “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”
• In James 3:12, the apostle James asked: “Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.”
The point of these verses is that show us that we actually reveal our true spiritual condition by the way we live. As Jesus put it: “Ye shall know them by their fruits...” (Matthew 7:16).
Because our marriage relationship is our most important earthly relationship, how we behave as a spouse is a reflection of who we are as Christians. Thus, by those guidelines, we must realize we can’t be “good” Christians” if we are behaving badly as spouses.
Usually our marital problems are a direct result of neglect in our spiritual life. The actual problem is NOT with our spouse, (although we often feel that way!) but rather a problem with our own relationship with God. In order to have a good, God pleasing marriage, our primary focus must first be on our relationship with Christ.
A pastor recounted this story about a couple he was counseling for marital problems —
A couple I was counseling were confused when they shared with me the marital problems they were experiencing and I responded by asking: “What does your time in God’s Word look like?”“How is your prayer life at home?”“Tell me about your involvement in the church.” The wife looked at me, bewildered, “I just told you that my husband yells at me. Why are you talking about his time spent in the Bible?” She was wanting me to just treat the symptoms! I, on the other hand, had to treat the disease. I explained to her why I ask these questions in counseling— Because the hope is that as a husband reads God’s Word and works on his relationship with God, he will become convicted of his sin and repent. He will become a more patient and loving. As God’s Word rejuvenates His spirit, he will become a Godly leader. No one has the power to change someone else’s heart. A person can only become changed through a relationship with Christ. Likewise in another similar session, a husband responded to my “diagnostic” questions by saying, “I just told you how my wife humiliates me in front of people! Why would you suggest that we should fellowship with other Christian friends regularly?” My answer to him was “Because other believers can provide accountability, vulnerability, and transparency. You can learn from others and be challenged by their examples. When you are not involved in the body of Christ, you will not receive the encouragement and exhortation God wants you to have. You will feel alone, as though you are the only couple having these problems. You will not have anyone in your life through whom God can regularly speak to you. We are made to have fellowship with other believers, and when we do not have it, that deficiency will manifests itself in other areas, including our marriages.
I, myself, too have seen this scenario played out multiples times over my life, growing up in church…. A husband and wife are having marital problems. By hearing the Word preached and by being exhorted to rise to a higher spiritual plateau, they each begin to submit themselves to Christ, and soon, their relationship issues began to improve.
Why did that happen? Did their difficulties simply disappear? No, those difficulties had been symptoms of the real problem—Christ was not the “crowned King” in their lives. When they started to put Christ first, the marriage problems were shown to be only symptoms, their disease was the lack of intimacy in their relationships with Christ! When they got that part right, everything else fell in place.
Over the years, I have seen couples active in church and having thriving relationships with God. The husband and wife pray and read the Bible together. Because they are doing well spiritually, their marriage too is healthy.
Other times, I have saw it happen the opposite way. Good, Godly happy homes began to get distracted from the Lord and the priorities in their lives shift. It wasn’t long before they started wavering in their church attendance. They began to pick up things of the world that they had once laid off. They became too busy for fellowship with others and they no longer were part of church functions. Soon, prayer and Bible reading became a thing of the past….
It wasn’t long before they too became “symptomatic” —their marriage begun to suffer. Why did this happen? It wasn’t so much a problem with their marriage per say…but rather, it was simply a byproduct of their waning spiritual life.
So remember this : Marital “problems” are usually just symptoms of not having Christ as the focal point in the marital relationship. If couples want a strong, healthy marriage, they each need a strong, healthy relationship with God. When a couple’s relationship with God is weak and unhealthy, their marriage will be weak and unhealthy as a result as well.
In God’s Word, husbands are commanded to love their wives just like Christ loved the church. This means husbands don’t love their wives because their wives are always perfect, nor because they deserve it nor because they always respect their husbands and submit to them wholeheartedly ... Instead, husbands are commanded to love their wives because they love God. The way husbands love (or don’t love) their wives is not so much a reflection of their wives. It’s a reflection of their own relationship (or lack of) with Christ.
If a man says, “I’m not going to love my wife because she…” and then he says something negative about his wife, he’s not making his wife look bad. In reality, he’s making himself look bad. He may be saying something about his relationship with his wife, but more importantly, he’s revealing flaws in his own personal relationship with Christ by his “bad”behavior: he simply doesn’t love God enough to love his wife properly.
In the Word of God, we, wives, likewise are commanded to submit to our husbands and to reverence (or show respect to) them. We must realize we aren’t expected to submit to our husbands because our husbands are perfect, deserve our submission/respect, always make the right decisions, or always love us the way we want to be loved. Instead, we, as wives, are expected to submit to their husbands because we want to honor and please God by OBEYING His command to render respect and submission to our husbands.
If a wife says, “I’m not going to submit to my husband, because he…” and then she says something less than positive about her husband, she’s not making her husband look bad. She’s making herself look bad. She’s revealing that something is wrong in her relationship with Christ: By her behavior, she is saying she doesn’t want to obey God’s Word! Her actions are demonstrating that she doesn’t want to please God by submitting to Christ and His authority over her.
This is why there’s no such thing as a spiritual, Godly husband who doesn’t love his wife, or a spiritual, Godly wife who doesn’t submit to and respect her husband... Just as a husband can’t love God properly without loving his wife, likewise, a wife can’t be submissive to God without also submitting to her husband and respecting him.
But like I said, husbands shouldn’t love their wives because their wives deserve it and wives shouldn’t just submit to/respect their husbands because their husbands deserve it. The fact is, we’re all sinners, and none of us actually deserve our spouse’s love or submission.
So who is worthy of our love and submission?
Jesus!
This is important to keep in mind in marriage, because sometimes, (because of our flesh and this fallen, sinful nature) we don’t want to treat our spouse the way God commands that we should. It is at those times that the motivation to obey doesn’t come from our relationship with our spouse. Our spouse is the one who is making us want to disobey God’s commandment and to react to their actions by giving place to the flesh ourself in the first place! It is at that moment that our motivation has to come from our own personal relationship with Christ. Thinking of what He has already done for us gives us the reason to obey His commandments (even when we don’t feel like it!) to be the right kind of spouse.
By envisioning the ransom Jesus paid for our redemption as an example of His great sacrificial love, we must chose to love even when our spouse isn’t being/acting very lovable. Despite what you hear in today’s world, true LOVE is not an emotion, but rather, Love is a conscious choice! We must chose to LOVE!
So by remembering how He gave it all for us, we must extend respect to our husbands even when they do not deserve our respect
….for Christ’s sake.
Go study out I Corinthians 13….
Charity (LOVE)
Charity suffereth long, and is kind;
charity envieth not;
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly,
seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity,
but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Wow! That can be a tall order at times!
Think about those verses in the context of your own marriage.
Do you suffer long (or have patience) with your spouse? Or you “fly off the handle” when they mess up or do something you don’t like ?
Are you kind to your spouse? Or are you always critical of them and tear them down with your words?
Are you envious of your spouse? Are you entertaining a jealous spirit?
Do you “vaunt” yourself? (Think more highly of yourself than you should— blame all the problems in your home on your spouse alone. )
Are you “puffed up” or full of yourself? (Consumed with your own needs instead of focusing on the needs of your spouse or are you, perhaps, becoming prideful of your own merits or goodness? )
Do you exhibit Godly behavior in your marriage? or are quick to “lash out” at your spouse?
Do you seek to please yourself by catering to your own desires? Or do you seek to please your mate by being considerate and thoughtful of their needs/wants?
Are you easily provoked to anger? Or do you show mercy and grace to your mate in difficult circumstance?
Do you give your spouse the benefit of the doubt? Or do you automatically think evil of their motives and intent?
Do you secretly rejoice in their mistakes as extra ammunition to hold over their heads for next time you both “get into it”? Or do you exhort and encourage your spouse when they make mistakes? 1 Peter 4:8 : And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
True love doesn’t keep score. True love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. It is quick to forgive and to “forbear” for Christ’s sake.
Do you “bear all things” in your marriage? Or are quick to find fault and be critical of your mate?
Do you believe in your spouse? Do you encourage them and “build them up”?
Do you share your spouse’s hopes and dreams? Do you both have the same vision for your home?
Are you supportive of your mate during challenging difficulties in life? Are you enduring the trials in life as his “help meet” or are you simply as a negative nag who is constantly being more of a hindrance than a help to him?
By asking ourselves those few questions (in context of I Corinthians 13) we can get a reading of the temperature/depth of our marriage. If your answers don’t correlate well with the Biblical love (charity) found in that chapter, you may see some room for improvement in your life.
Like I said before, the closer you get to God, the closer to each other you will become. Your marriage will become a reflection of the hidden man of the heart!! The more you surrender to the Lord, to His will, and His ways, the more you will see evidence of His Spirit in your home and in your life.
If this little study challenged you, I invite you to seek the Lord wholeheartedly and apply His Word to your heart and life! Your current problems will fade to the peripheral if you will give it all to Him and do everything by His plan!
From my heart to yours,
-Tiphanie ❤️
Food for thought —
Take an self evaluation of your own life
• What three words come to mind when you think about your marriage and your
relationship with your spouse?
• Are these the same words you want to
describe your relationship with Christ? If not,
what changes do you need to make?
• What does your personal walk with God look
like? How much time are you spending in
prayer and reading God‘s Word each day? If you are unhappy with your current answer,
what changes should you make?
Love this post. The passage quoted from 1Cor has always challenged my life ❤️