The purpose-driven marital relationship
What is the purpose of the marital relationship? Is it happiness? Too many Christian men and women, who prepare for marriage, and even after marriage, do not have a clear purpose of their marriage. That’s why we lean on our environments and emotions and we are not able to glorify God through our marital relations. So if we say that glorifying God is the purpose of a marriage relationship, then we must think about how to build a marital relationship that glorifies God. We must not have an ideal purpose of marital relationship blindly and be trapped in hypocrisy because of the inconsistency between our words and deeds. At the same time, we must not forsake the dream of divine calling that God has given us because of the realistic purpose. The important thing is balance.
The purpose of our marital relationship is twofold. The first is to show the image of Jesus in the life of each other, and the second is to love each other with Jesus' love. This has been my wife and my prayers until now and will be until the Lord calls us to heaven. To accomplish the second purpose of our marriage, that is to love each other with the His love, the first thing we are learning is to recognize and acknowledge we cannot love each other with our own love. After many conflicts with my wife, I have been learning to admit that I cannot love my wife with my strength and my love. I actually confessed this to my wife. I remember a memory that in scars, pain and tears I confessed to my wife could not love my wife even though I want to love her because of corruption and incompetence. The same is true today. I do not want to forget that I can never love my wife with my own strength and my love. That’s why I cannot but seek the love of God, the fruit of the Holy Spirit that is nobler, powerful, and perfect than our human love. I believe in Romans 5:5 that says when we believed in Jesus, the love of God had already been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. So with this faith, I am praying and seeking God to gradually fill my heart with His love as I recognize my weakness and imperfection of my love. I believe in the Bible, 1 Peter 1:22 – “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.” I myself first want to obey the Lord's truth and want to be purified myself so that I may be able to love my wife deeply, from my heart. The Lord’s truth makes me realize the weakness, incompetence, and inadequacy of my own human love and makes me to humbly acknowledge it before God and before my wife. Furthermore, it is my driving force for me to pursue God’s divine love. So I am experiencing the indwelling Spirit enabling me to love my wife and the Spirit continually working in my and transforming me as I listen and obey His Word. As we do so, our marital relationship will become more and more the Lord's love-centered relationship.
Sometime my desire for the Lord to fulfill the first purpose of our marital relationship, which is to showing the image of Jesus to each other in each other's life, causes me to drop tears of prayer. One day I confessed to my wife: ‘The gift I earnestly want to give you is the little image of Jesus Christ before my death.' Actually, I have nothing to give my wife. Even though I have something to give to my wife, I do not think there is any more precious gift than my little resemblance of Jesus. I am sure there is no other precious gift than my little resemblance of Jesus to my wife who knows the very preciousness of that gift. Despite these prayers of desperation, every day God makes me realize how I am far away from the Lord Jesus. I am surprised to see who I am when God reveals it through the spiritual mirror, the Word of God. This is the sinfulness in me, as Apostle Paul said in Romans 7. Although my heart wants to reveal the image of Jesus, but my frail body is sinful and has a rotten smell. Where is the Christians who will not suffer in this conflict?
What I feel a lot in our married life is that our image that we are very familiar with each of us displays more than the image of Jesus. Also, when God reveals how far I am from the Jesus’ image, I get discouraged by myself. Whenever that happens, God causes me to revive my soul with His Word, so that I can run again toward the purpose of our marriage. The Word of Truth which is alive and powerful enables me to turn my eyes from my own sinfulness to look at the light of Jesus who loves such sinner like me and thus was crucified on the cross to save me so that I may enjoy the freedom in the Truth. Also, the Spirit works in me not only to believe in Him but also to live a life of obedience so that the Word of God can be personalized in my life. The Lord who is molding me more and more gives me hope and encouragement by enabling me to focus on the Lord in our marital relationship. Because the Spirit enables my wife and I to keep the marriage vow by His goodness, faithfulness, grace and love, the work of the new creation that resembles Jesus continues from inside to outside. So we cannot think of marital relationship with our relationship with the Lord. If we separate our marital relationship with our relationship with the Lord, it is not true marital relationship in God’s sight. The true couple is the couple who loves each other according to the will of the Lord and who pursues the glory of God together. As we become more and more like Jesus, the pursuit of glory will be fulfilled. I hope and pray that my wife and I will become a couple who imitate Jesus more and more and love each other with His love so that our family will become more like heaven and glorify God.