Marriage is like a three way light bulb. The first level is the joining of the husband
and wife. The second level is the
building of the family. The third level
is the love of God that illuminates everything.
It is true that the right marriage gets better as the years pass. This does not mean that there won’t be bumps
in the road but that they will be overcome.
What needs to be decided when choosing a partner is, was it your choice
or has the choice involved God’s help. Just
as a light bulb needs electricity to work, a marriage needs the spark of love.
When a man gets married, his primary responsibility in life
transfers from himself to his wife[1]. His responsibility is to love his wife as
Christ loves the Church and be willing, if necessary, to die for her[2].
When
a woman becomes a wife, according to the Bible, she becomes submissive to her
husband[3]. This is because the Lord has placed the
responsibility for the well being of the family squarely on the shoulders of
the husband[4]. If the husband is not fulfilling his
responsibilities, he needs to ‘man up’.
When a family begins to have children, the man picks up a
secondary responsibility which is that of his children. Children should never be placed above the
wife or husband. If a marriage partner
feels that their children should come first, they are in wrong relationship
with both their spouse and God[5].
Marriage is the joining of two souls as one entity[6]. I literally believe that the marriage
partners become spiritually and soulfully joined as one. If you can believe in the trinity of God, you
shouldn’t have trouble with this. Their
physical bodies become the property of each other[7].
Divorce, although not the best for us, in my mind can be
justified for a variety of reasons. If a
marriage partner does not, physically or in mind and spirit, truthfully become
a full partner; the contract was not entered in good faith, which is a breach
of contract. If there is physical and, or
mental abuse involved, the Lord wouldn’t want you to stay locked into a
catastrophic union. Couples who ‘grow
apart’ were not truly joined together in spirit. If sin causes a problem, such as a jail
sentence or continued infidelity which cannot be forgiven, it would be up to
the injured party to decide whether to continue in the marriage. Divorce is not an unforgivable sin. It is simply admitting that you are involved
in an intolerable situation from which you cannot recover. What we see a lot of today is people not
willing to put any real effort into the marriage and therefore it fails.
If you think that your marriage is in trouble you should
seek outside help (hopefully Christian based) before the problems fester beyond
the point of no return.
Remarriage is an option, if you are so inclined. This is especially true if your first
marriage was to the wrong person. I
believe (and have seen it) that the Lord has a perfect mate for anyone so
inclined. There are situations that
qualify as wrong reasons to get married such as lust, boredom with the single
life, thinking you need to get a family started or being unequally yoked[8].
Some
people get married for all the wrong reasons.
The only reason for marriage, in my opinion, is that the couple is so
much in love that they can’t survive, in spirit and soul, without being joined
together. The secondary reason for
marriage is to begin a family. True ‘Love
is a Many-Splendored Thing’[9], and
when the Lord directs the relationship it becomes all that much better[10]. I know from experience.
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