Why Fighting for Your Marriage Means Fighting for the Future
God gives us of the good things of this life, not only for necessity,
but for delight, that we may not only serve him, but serve him cheerfully.
Matthew Henry
RYAN
Chris and April had lost all hope. Like many of the couples who reach out to us for advice, their marriage was broken. They had both given up and had all but filed the divorce paperwork. Exasperated, tired, and depleted, Chris asked me point-blank, “Why is she—our marriage—even worth the effort? What are we even fighting for?” He was emotionally done, worn out by endless arguments and hurtful words. I looked him square in the eye and said, “Everything. You’re fighting for everything.”
It is undoubtedly true that you are called to fight to keep your marriage covenant and pursue your spouse with Christlike love. But the greater truth is that Christ is fighting on your behalf harder than you ever could.
You don’t fight for your marriage as much as Christ uses your marriage to fight for you.
You don’t pursue your spouse’s heart as much as Christ uses your spouse to pursue your heart.
You don’t prize your spouse’s affection with nearly the same ferocity with which Christ prizes yours.
Every refining moment in your marriage is a reminder of God’s relentless, unwavering commitment to draw you near and conform you to the image of Jesus Christ. Those moments are reminders to find all you need in Jesus and anchor your identity in him—to trust the sufficiency of what he has done instead of what you can do. That’s the most exciting (albeit counterintuitive) aspect of marriage! It’s not about you. It’s all about Jesus. It always has been.
In our time writing to married couples, we have often asked ourselves why. Why should we, they, you fight for a stronger marriage? What’s to be had on the far side of your marriage covenant—both here and now as well as when you’re dead and gone?
What’s the point?
We often ask ourselves those same questions. Especially when our marriage gets difficult. We’re quickly entangled in the weeds of daily life. It’s easy to lose sight of the grand storyline we occupy, the chief Protagonist, and our place in the plot. We must continually bend our sight upward to be reminded of exactly where we are, who we are, and of the Author penning the script. By God’s grace we know his divine intent—and we know how the story ends!
We know with forever certainty the answer to the eternal question of why: to sanctify God’s people and reconcile Christ’s Bride to him.
We don’t, however, know what will happen between now and then. And we don’t always know how he plans to accomplish his divine ends. Your marriage is a massive piece of God’s sanctification puzzle. Your marriage is undoubtedly a primary tool in God’s work to draw you and your spouse close to him. But the reason for marriage doesn’t end there.
God’s purposes for marriage extend inward to your heart and soul but also outward to the rest of the world.
The Commissioned Marriage
The foundational premise of this chapter is that your marriage is not only about your happiness—it’s about God’s eternal purpose in you and through you. Christ’s work in your heart always extends outward through your hands. The fruit of gospel-centered marriage cascades into every facet of human existence. Within the marriage covenant, children flourish. By families, the church is strengthened. And through the church, communities are reached with the good news of Jesus Christ. Just as Christ is the foundation of every thriving marriage and family, thriving marriages and families are the foundation of every flourishing society.
Do we fight for healthy marriages so we can enjoy an easier existence? Do we exercise our marriage muscles in hopes of living a longer, healthier married life? Happiness is indeed a potential result of healthy marriage, but it’s only part of the picture. And though those prospects are good, the larger picture is so much more exciting.
You are commissioned—called—to perpetuate the gospel through your marriage. To know and share Christ is your greatest call and your marriage’s most magnificent purpose. You’re probably reading this book for the betterment of your marriage here and now, but I implore you to lift your eyes also to there and then—to the distant future.
All of the glory and weight ultimately rests on Christ, but by God’s grace you can participate in his work in three tangible ways: discipling future generations, building the local church, and reaching your community with the gospel.
We’re in an era of Western culture when the idea of traditional marriage is only loosely coupled with raising children. A recent Pew Research study indicates that the number of children being raised by both parents in their first marriage has decreased by more than 37 percent since the 1960s. This, while children being raised in single-parent households has nearly tripled (that’s up 300 percent). Fifty years ago, births of children outside marriage were less than 10 percent of all babies born. Today, that number is greater than 40 percent. The study states, “While at one time virtually all births occurred within marriage, these two life events are now far less intertwined.”1 The reasons for these changes are complex, partially due to the rise in cohabitation and perhaps to a widespread cultural redefinition of sex, marriage, and family.
The recent upward trend of the non–nuclear family is unprecedented. There was never a time in human history when marriage between both parents played a less significant role in child raising than now. What’s more alarming is how rapidly the shift occurred—over the past fifty years. Think about that for a second: the norm for all of human history has completely changed in the past fifty years! It’s unprecedented. There’s no way to predict exactly what will happen, but we can safely say that, as a society, we’ve ventured far into uncharted waters. As a married couple committed to Christ, you are called to buck the trend.
While cultural norms for raising children have changed quickly and decidedly, the Christian view remains constant. There is no better venue for children’s eternal good than a Christ-centered, gospel-saturated marriage where both parents are present, engaged, and actively discipling them. As man and woman, husband and wife, father and mother, you reflect the image of God in unique, complementary ways to your kids. Your marriage is the first gospel account your children will ever witness. Through your marriage—how you love, disagree, reconcile, forgive, and sacrifice—your children can grow familiar with the gospel before ever cracking a Bible. They see a tiny glimpse of Christ’s love for his Bride and a picture of the potential unity—two becoming one—available to them with God through redemption in Christ.
Your children will witness an image of the implicit gospel simply by watching your marriage. But they should also hear the explicit gospel and commands of God as you “teach them diligently to your children” (Deut. 6:7). When we discussed priorities, we established that Christ isn’t just at the top of the priority list; he is the list. Everything in your life radiates outward from the person and work of Christ in your heart. A gospel-saturated life compels married believers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), and fulfilling Christ’s charge always begins in the home: spouses disciple each other, and parents disciple their children. Psalm 78 provides a clear call:
He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments. (vv. 5–7)
I know very little about my great-grandparents. I know very few details about their daily lives or even our family history. Our family doesn’t own any large pieces of land, and there are very few material inheritances to be had from Fredericks of the past. However, I am intensely grateful and forever indebted as I trace my faith inheritance back to them, and that is the greatest gift and legacy I could have ever asked for. Their faithfulness to the gospel, earnest commitment to prayer, and steadfast leadership of our family have bestowed upon me—our family and our children—the treasure of knowing Jesus. I hope and pray, by God’s grace, that our great-grandchildren will feel the same way about us.
When you fight for your marriage, you battle fiercely for the eternal well-being of your children. You fight for your grandchildren. It can be said that the wake of your marriage today extends hundreds of years into the future. I don’t say this to scare you but to urge you to trust Jesus even more. The salvation of your children isn’t in your control; only Christ can call and capture their hearts. But through your marriage, you are called to diligently till the soil of their hearts and plant seeds of the gospel. The ways you love and pursue each other, foster affection for Christ, and pass down your heritage of faith are all gospel seeds being planted and watered in the fertile soil of your children’s hearts.
Your marriage covenant is the gospel exemplified for your children to see and hear in ways they wouldn’t otherwise understand. Their faith doesn’t ultimately depend on you, but your marriage can put them face-to-face with a living, breathing example of the beauty and wonder of the gospel for the good of generations to come.
How God’s Family Is Strengthened
God values earthly family because it has always been a vital component in establishing his heavenly family. He created and commissioned the first family unit when he commanded Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). They obeyed and civilization erupted.
Throughout Scripture, the promises of God are passed down through blood. The Old Testament is rife with genealogical accounts, each charting family lineage as an important record of God’s providential fulfillment of his covenant promises. One’s family line was viewed as a résumé of sorts, and as such it was strongly tied to one’s identity. It was through the family of Abraham that God promised to make Israel a great nation, and it would be through the same family line that Jesus entered humanity to fulfill the promise of redemption. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection sprung wide the doors of God’s family to all who would place their trust in Christ. Today, the global church is God’s family—we are his adopted children and coheirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17).
It is not surprising, then, that families anchored by the covenant of marriage are vital to bolstering and beautifying the local church. In the same way Asaph reminded fathers to teach their children “so that they should set their hope in God” (Ps. 78:7), Paul exhorted fathers in the Ephesian church to “bring [children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). These charges and others like them are not just advice to parents for managing their children’s behavior. They’re divine calls to pass down the heritage of faith from generation to generation—and to multiply God’s people, the church.
As people who follow Jesus, you’re adopted into the grace and love—the family—of God. You are his dearly loved and cherished children. Knowing and being known by God bear real fruit in your lives in the forms of love, joy, peace, and so much more (Gal. 5:22–23). These benefits are your birthright as adopted children of God. But God doesn’t stop there.
Just as you’re adopted into the family of God, you’re commissioned to participate in his divine handiwork. He is your head; you are limbs of the body. “The church . . . is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23). You are Christ’s hands and feet in your community and, by extension of the global body of believers, the world. As marriages honor God, households are strengthened in Christ and the global body of believers is equipped to love and serve others, preach the gospel, and facilitate missional justice.
With this grander perspective we see the full magnitude of marriage finally taking form. You are called to a high calling of loving God and loving people, and your marriage is an avenue to sanctify you personally and to strengthen the action of the church globally.
How much more profound can the meaning of marriage be? Embracing the high calling of your marriage will anchor you in the never-ending and utterly meaningful purposes of God. Suddenly every struggle, every victory, and every mundane moment takes on new, profound meaning.
Selena and I pray that you and your spouse embrace God’s sovereign design and purpose for your marriage and fiercely hold fast to Christ. We pray that you operate as one from a place of strength in Christ. And we pray that your affection for Jesus pushes you outward and you find yourselves witnessing and participating in Christ’s work—as a couple and as a family—in ways you may have never imagined.
When we surrender our lives to Jesus we are ministers of his gospel. You need not be a vocational pastor or licensed priest (though that may be your calling). All followers of Jesus are his lay ministers (lay comes from laity, which means common people). Ministry is a byproduct of knowing God intimately and allowing him to pour out through us. In the same way, ministering through your marriage is an inevitable outcome of a loving covenant anchored in Christ.
We long to see Christian married couples en masse minister within and through fierce marriages. We aren’t called to simply love each other fully and end our mission there. Let’s explore our callings and live to see Christ change our world through the work he does in our marriages!
Marriages are the foundation of familial flourishing, families are the building blocks of the global church, and the church is God’s ultimate Bride and plan A for reaching a world full of people who desperately need him.
Marriage is astoundingly allegorical. Everything about it points to the loving courtship between God and his people through the person and work of Jesus. We’ve come from perfection in the garden and we’ll be made perfect again when united with Christ as his Bride. Until then, the sanctifying hand of God is hard at work preparing us for eternity, and covenant marriage is perhaps the tool he wields most.
Can you see it? Marriage is so much bigger than you! Thank God for that. Its purpose is far grander than just your love for each other. The covenant love your marriage embodies is a neon sign pointing us to the covenant promises of our powerful, loving, eternal God. Marriage is and always has been all about Jesus. A fierce marriage is all about God’s endless love for you, his careful molding of your heart, and his unquenchable passion to reach the lost.
FOR REFLECTION