In This Series: The High Calling of Loving & Cherishing Your Spouse, Part 1
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at the high calling of loving and cherishing your spouse all the days that God gives you. This calling comes with five important implications: A call to know God, to be a loving person, to build a house, to exercise His dominion, and to worship Him. What are all the good things wrapped up in the vows we take on our wedding day? Let’s look at a few of these.
A Call to Know God
One cannot love like God unless one knows God. Implicit in the call to love your spouse is the call to know God and to be internally transformed by the gospel. When a soul goes from the terror of being rejected by God to the certainty of being accepted by Him, something dramatically changes; a person is born of God’s Spirit. A new identity emerges. A new understanding of God is awakened in the heart and a new capacity to love and serve God, rather than self, takes hold. As you daily love your spouse through displays of benevolence, compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, and kindness, you come to know the God who loves you in like manner. What a great idea! God’s plan for you to get to know Him is wise and very practical. As you, moment-by-moment, choose to love your spouse in the midst of the daily issues, interactions, and infractions of life, you come to know what is going on in God’s mind as He daily relates to you in like manner. Loving others is the way we come to know God. Behold the profound amidst the common.
A Call to Build a House
A call to love and cherish someone in the holy bonds of matrimony is a call to leave an existing home and establish a new, enduring one. We know that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25). Married life is a call to build a family upon Christ that will stand against the schemes of the devil. Those who embrace Jesus and His words build their house upon the only solid foundation that will withstand the temptations that undermine it and the worldly and satanic assaults that come against it. It will not fall under God’s judgment (Matthew 7:25). Satan hates Christian homes. He didn’t like God’s purpose for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, so he tempted them to live for themselves instead of God. His playbook hasn’t changed. He seeks to destroy marriages by tempting spouses to live for themselves, get easily offended, overreact in rage, grow in bitterness, and rival God and one another, until the house implodes.
Oftentimes, we encounter spouses who have had enough of the marital dysfunction in the relationship and want out. Their focus fixes upon an immediate remedy but blinds them to the long-term devastation that a marriage breakup will have on themselves, their spouses, and their children. With such spouses, we try to get them to look 25 years down the road and consider the legacy that they are leaving behind. Even though they may be in a difficult marriage, they can still build a strong home and leave behind a great legacy. The writer of Proverbs informs us how a house is built.
By wisdom a house is built,
And by understanding it is established;
4 And by knowledge the rooms are filled
With all precious and pleasant riches. (Proverbs 24:3-4)
Wisdom, understanding, and knowledge are necessary to stand against the lies of the devil and to weather the storms of life, but they also make a house glorious. Hasty exits destroy homes and play into the hand of the evil one. The great call to love and cherish your spouse is the call to build something that endures, bringing glory to God and blessings upon the earth, long after husband and wife are gone. God’s vision for your marriage is a glorious legacy.
A Call to Exercise His Dominion
God’s vision for a married couple involves togetherness. Reigning over each other is not the same as reigning with each other. It is the Devil that entices spouses to live in competition with each other. However, God wants them to reign in union with each other and with Him. Just as God intended for Adam and Eve to exercise His dominion over the earth and everything in it, including the Serpent, so God intends for husbands and wives to reign together today. He has placed all things under their feet (Psalm 8:6).
When two people come together who have been transformed by the gospel, something extremely powerful is created. A single soul satisfied in Christ alone exerts a force that causes demonic realms to turn backward. When two satisfied souls in Christ join forces, a spiritual power of atomic proportions synergizes. They cannot help but impact the world in God-glorifying ways.
Imagine a union of two people who love God supremely and who love and cherish each other without a residue of selfishness. Such a couple would be mighty in power. No amount of evil or difficulty would overwhelm them. They would share the joys of discovery, pains of hardship, toils of labor, and celebrations of victory. They would creatively and benevolently shape their world as they passed through it. They would be a delight to be around and a blessing to all whose lives intersected with theirs. And even after they were gone, the very memory of them would still linger, edifying all those who knew them. Their wisdom, faith, values, stability, and God-glorifying ways would be gifts passed on to the next generation. Beyond all these benefits, they would daily display in vivid colors the glories of the invisible God. Such is the high calling of marriage.
These are three of the five implications in the conclusion of the book my wife and I wrote together, Reigning Together: A Christ-Exalting Marriage. I encourage you to consider all five.
Now Walk Through the Land
Some readers might think that reigning together with your spouse is impossible or too ideal. Some might be thinking, “If only this were true,” or “I do not think my marriage could ever occupy such territory.” Start walking in the right direction. Occupying the land promised to Israel was a seemingly impossible task to those who were charged to take it. However, it all started with a step in the right direction. God said to Joshua, “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses” (Joshua 1:3). Before Joshua could occupy the land, he had to take a step toward it and keep walking through it. Regardless of how daunting the task is, you do not have to take all the territory at once. Start walking through the land and you will meet with God’s supply. God’s vision for your marriage is a Christ-exalting union that influences the world for good, takes territory for His glory, and worships Him as you do. No matter where you are in your marriage at the moment, there is a step to take in this direction. Those who take it will be met with the full support of Heaven.
Do not be like the foolish who take their wedding vows lightly. Death shepherds the foolish, but God redeems His people from it (Psalm 49:13-15). If you are in Christ, death is no longer your shepherd-master leading you and your marriage to the grave. The Lord is your Shepherd. He replaces the way of the foolish with the way of life (Psalm 23). Be among those who seek, by God’s grace, to honor their wedding vows, trust God with the outcome, and glorify Him in the process.
Lift up your eyes and see! God is mighty and sets great opportunities before His people. You have a solid theological and practical basis to grow in becoming the best spouse you can be. Let your daily expressions of pure and devoted love for your spouse be expressions of worship to God. Let His marvelous and enabling grace refresh your love for marriage, reawaken your wedding-day optimism, and renew your vision to grow in worshipping God together. Those who entrust themselves to God and humbly bow to His ways, as Isaiah says, “will mount up with wings like eagles” and “will run and not grow tired” (Isaiah 40:31).
May you reign together with Christ.
For more on how to love and cherish your spouse, see Reigning Together: A Christ-Exalting Marriage, available on Amazon.
