Reset Your Marriage
WRITTEN BY DREW MATZ
Getting Back to Basics
The Earth has made yet another trip around the sun. This is the time of year when we are encouraged to get introspective. At New Years, many of us critically examine the triumphs and failures of the previous year and are challenged to set new goals where we succeeded, and to do better where we have failed.
For those of us who are married, you may find yourself looking at the state of your relationship and wondering where you can find improvement. Perhaps you want to increase your prayer and devotional life together. Maybe you want to improve communication, or make more quality time for one another (especially if you have children).
While our New Year’s resolutions are often fun, quirky ways we go about setting new goals, it may also be a perfect time for us to return back to the fundamentals of marriage and search out the scriptures for wisdom and guidance. Here are three key passages we can utilize to help reset our marital lives:
Genesis 2:21-22
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
It is sometimes in the subtle details that God teaches his people some of the deepest truths about himself and about one another. One of these details is in the creation of Eve out of Adam. When God created women, he took her not from his head so that she may rule over him, nor from his feet so that he may trample over her. Rather, God took the woman out of Adam’s side as his equal. Furthermore, she was taken from the rib, the bone closest to his heart. Thus, it is helpful for us to remember that our marriage is truly born of one flesh. It is a partnership, each with their own roles. Returning to this understanding can help our marriages to flourish.
Ephesians 5:25-27
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
There is in marriage a profound mystery that is only captured when we compare it to the love that Christ shows for his bride, the church. Husbands are called to lead their marriage as Christ leads the church. He readily sacrifices for her and his family, ready to lay down his life for them. Through his headship, the family is sanctified. When we understand the role of the husband as an imitator of Christ, our role as husbands becomes clear.
Matthew 19:1-9
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
One of the most shocking of Jesus’ teachings to his contemporaries was his high view of marriage. It might be said that his teaching wasn’t so much a high view of marriage as it was the original view of marriage. When the Pharisees challenge Jesus on his view of divorce, he cuts through their sophistry and lawyering and returns back to the Garden of Eden. Here he quotes Genesis 2 and reaffirms the purpose of marriage as it always was. For Jesus, marriage is the bonding together of two into one flesh. Their bonding is not intended to be separated except for in death. This can help us to reset our hearts and minds within our marriages, keeping our intentions within Jesus’ purview.
A Healthy Resolution
As we examine the previous year of our lives and reset our relationships this New Years, let us always remember the gracious gift that God has given us in marriage. If you’re struggling in your marriage, return to the scriptures where we can be sure that God is speaking. Though we may not always meet our resolution goals, Jesus never fails to receive us graciously and teaches us to reflect himself in our marriages.