Christian Marriage

I am reading a little jewel of a book entitled The Christian Family by Larry Christenson. It is full of practical Christian advice for (as the title suggest) the Christian family.  I am reproducing a portion of this book below.  This portion is challenging; it needs to be heeded by every Christian marriage.

In considering the structure of Christian marriage, the nature and place of romantic love needs to be reexamined.  We tend to give it a status of autonomous authority over a marriage.  Love is something that just “is”: Either you have it or you don’t, and there’s not too much you can do about it.  The disillusioned young couple discovers that “we just don’t love each other any more” and tearfully concludes that their marriage has lost its essential basis for existence.

Now love is an essential ingredient of marriage.  But the marriage does not depend upon love for its continued existence.  Rather, the love depends upon marriage for its continued existence. Marriage gives to love a situation of stability and permanence, wherein it can grow toward maturity.  Marriage rescues love from the tyranny of strong but immature feelings.  It forces a person to live out times of difficulty, and win through to new depths of love and understanding.

Love should never be allowed to tyrannize a marriage and threaten its dissolution. Couples who come  to the despairing conclusion that “we just don’t love each other any more”; should be told quite simply, “Well, start learning!”  When we have entered into marriage, God commands us to love one another.  Love, from God’s point-of-view, is not the basis for marriage, but the issue or outcome of a successful marriage. It is far more subject to the will than we suppose.  We help cultivate and develop love because we set our mind to do so.  In marriage, we are not the helpless pawns of love.  Rather, we train love to be that willing servant of our marriage.

This kind of love does not grow in the sandy soil of our immediate feelings.  It roots down into the rich subsoil of mutual esteem.   The woman holds her mate in high regards which God has conferred on him with the name ‘husband’; and man likewise cherishes the woman whom God has honored with the name ‘wife.’ A reverence for the dignity and honor which God has bestowed upon one’s mate establishes married love upon an enduring foundation.  Upon this foundation can be built the kind of love which St. Paul describes in I Corinthians 13 -

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  8Love never fails.

Marriage then, was not created for love rather love for marriage.  God established marriage before any mention of love (not that God didn’t love us), “ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. ” (Genesis 2:24) Love has been created by God to show its true self in marriage (which is a reflection of our relationship to God).