God’s #MarriageGoals

I recently ran across the hashtag #marriagegoals. The results for that hashtag were a mismatch of things on Instagram (as are all hashtags), but the common thread was things that people either wanted to accomplish in their marriage or wanted for their marriage. This month, we’ve been talking about relationships. It’s helpful to keep the end in mind. We all have goals and ideas of what we want our marriage to look like. While having our own goals for our marriage are important, what are God’s #marriagegoals?

I can tell you one goal that God doesn’t have: your happines. Marriage isn’t about happiness. It’s a tool that God uses to make us more like himself. God has many such tools (including singleness). How does God use marriage? What are his goals for marriage relationships? Obviously, they are unique for each couple, but there are a few that I think are universal.

Marriage is being known

In Hebrew, the word “to know” means so much more than our English word. It isn’t just about intellectually being aware of something. It’s about being intimate with something. The word the Bible uses when it describes how we are to know God is the same word it uses for sex. In Genesis 2, Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she conceived. He didn’t just know who Eve was. He knew her in a deep relational way and a sexual way. This plays out in marriage.

Knowing your spouse well isn’t just about knowing fun facts about them or their preferences. Nor is it just about knowing them sexually. It’s both of those things, but it’s also more than those these. In the garden, Adam and Eve were naked and felt no shame. They were seen as they were, they were known, and they were accepted. We are to do the same thing in marriage.

You will know your spouse in a way no one else will. You will see them at their best and at their worst. In a unique way, you will know their personality, their hopes, their fears, their childhood wounds. You will know them and you are still to accept them. In this way, marriage is a picture of God’s love for us. God sees all of us, he knows us, and yet he still loves us. The unconditional love in marriage is meant to mirror God’s love for us. It’s one of God’s #marriagegoals

Marriage is a way God speaks to you

God can speak to you through your marriage. Sometimes it’s a tool he uses to communicate to you. He does this in a few ways. First of all, the Holy Spirit can often speak through your spouse. This person is connected to you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They love you. Therefore it should be no surprise that God might tell them something that you need to hear. This might not look like “I think God wants me to tell you …” It might be as simple as them making an offhanded comment that you needed to hear. It doesn’t have to look super spiritual for it to be God at work.

The other way God can speak to you through marriage is that often your marriage can serve as a thermometer. If your marriage is going well, there’s a good chance that other parts of your life are going well too. If things are not going well in your marriage, that might mean there’s something you and your spouse need to work on, but it may also mean that you have an issue elsewhere that’s leaking into your marriage. The problem might not be with your spouse. It might be your spiritual walk. You might be burnt out. You may be depressed. Everything affects your marriage, so it can often be a guide as to whether something is off in your life.

One of God’s #marriagegoals is that your marriage would be another way that God can speak to you.

Marriage is love in action

One of the biggest misconceptions in our world is that love is first and foremost a feeling. It’s not. The Bible tells us and shows us that love is an action. It’s a verb. 1 Corinthians 13, the classic text on love doesn’t use a bunch of feeling words to describe love. It uses action words. Things like patience, kindness, not keeping record of wrongs, not being envious, etc.

God demonstrates what love in action looks like through the biblical story as well. Sure, he tells us that he loves us, but his most poignant expression of love is the death of his son on our behalf. His love causes him to act.

In the same way, the love that we experience for our spouse should be demonstrated through action, not feelings. We shouldn’t depend on feelings to determine our actions either. Just as God loves us even when we don’t deserve it, we are to act with love towards our spouse even when we’re just not feeling it. As noted in last week’s post, the feelings of love in marriage fade and return. Love in action should remain constant, no matter how we’re feeling. That’s one of God’s #marriagegoals

Marriage is faithfulness in the mundane

Martin Luther argued that married life was harder than life in a monastery. While I’m not sure I totally agree with him in all ways, he has at least one good argument for this position. A monk or nun could devote their whole day to prayer and spend large amounts of time in isolation. The married person cannot. Family life constantly puts us in contact with others, which in turn causes frustration and conflict. We are surrounded by others whose lives are intricately connected to our own, but who often have different desires than us.

Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” In order for iron to sharpen iron, sparks have to fly. Conflict has to happen. It is by being faithful in the little things, the mundane things, that God conforms us to his character. While God requires this faithfulness for all people, married or single, it is a specially taxing requirement in the context of marriage and family.

Luther thought that marriage was one of the main places that Christians were called to live out the Gospel. It’s in the tedium of the daily life together that Christians learn how to be faithful in the midst of the small trials and testings of everyday life. I think he was right about that one. One of God’s #marriagegoals is that marriage would be a place where God can make us more like himself.

Marriage is working together for God

In the beginning, God says it’s not good for man to be alone. God had given Adam a task, to work the earth and tend it, and to be fruitful and multiply. However, in order to fulfill this calling, he needed help. He need Eve. Only together could they fulfill what God had called them to (especially that whole be fruitful and multiple thing). One of God’s #marriagegoals is that marriage should work in the same way today.

Husband and wife should be able to accomplish more for the kingdom of God together than they can separately. That doesn’t mean that all married people need to go into formal ministry. God calls his children into all sorts of professions. However, he calls all of us to be at work in his Kingdom.

We’re to be his hands and feet in this world, constantly pointing people back to him through our lives and our actions. We need each other to be able to accomplish this task. Marriage is a process that God uses to bring two people together to accomplish more together than they could alone. They should be able to support one another’s calling and help one another complete the tasks that God has called each of them to do.

God has #marriagegoals. They’re not always the same goals that we have for our marriage. However, since God is the one who designed marriage in the first place, we can trust that his goals are best.

Photo by Wu Jianxiong on Unsplash