How To Make Much of God in My Marriage

Every human is called to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. It’s a command from God. This command shows how glorious and loving God is. He commands us to have our joy complete and satisfied in Him. But because of sin we are unable to find satisfaction in this command. We're unable to find satisfaction in Him. But praise God for the gospel, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). The fact that the Son became human like us, was tempted but without sin, and loved the Father fully with all His heart, soul, strength, and mind, shows that He (Jesus) is someone that we should zoom in on.

Not only did He love God fully, Jesus laid His life down for sinners. By laying His life down He stood in our place and paid for our sin by taking our punishment on the cross. After His death for sin He rose again to never die again. He ascended back to heaven with the lives of His people, hidden in Him until He returns to get His people and to judge the world.

What does this have to do with me loving my wife? This has everything to do with me loving my wife. First, I’m called to love God and then I’m called to love my neighbor as myself. In every way, because of Jesus, the gospel points the eyes of my heart to love God and to love my wife without making her an idol. How? Because God loved me first, I respond to His love through the gospel, and because of the gospel by the Spirit I desire to obey Him. In obeying Him, this is how He says I should love my wife while honoring Him, and without making her an idol. This is what His Word says about me loving my wife:

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. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself (Ephesians 5:25-28).

God is not mad or against me loving my wife in a full passionate way. He is against me “loving” her in a way that is opposed to the gospel. So, I’m not making an idol of my wife when I dive in to love her. God is not separate from that. God is the One orchestrating it. He’s at the core of it. In loving her I honor Him because of the gospel. So to love her properly, I must look to God’s consistent and all powerful love that He gives me in and through Christ. Apart from that I will become bitter in “trying” to love my wife, and she will become my idol. God isn’t pleased with that kind of love. Husbands, let us love God in loving our wives the way He calls us to love. Amen.