Commitment to making a marriage work is an important key to happiness and longevity in marriage. About half of all marriages end in divorce. No wonder many opt simply to live together, in the likely case things don’t work out. However, choosing against marriage also carries a heavy price tag, which I covered in my first article in this series entitled, Why Do People Hate Marriage.” A good marriage is something to be desired, and it is attainable. God created marriage to provide companionship, children, societal stability, and many other blessings. Maintaining a good marriage is not always easy, but what worth having comes easily?
Marriage Is a Covenant
It’s hard to build something as complex as a good marriage, if no plans or instructions are available. Those of us who come from broken families have a more difficult time because we have not seen or experienced a good marriage in action. What is portrayed on television and in the movies is not always conducive to building a strong marriage either. Where can we find a good model or trustworthy instructions? The Bible is a great place to start.
The Bible says that marriage is first of all a covenant of companionship.
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 (NASB95)
The marriage covenant is a vow made before God and human witnesses that we will be faithful until death to our spouses, forsaking all other competitors for our love. In our culture, rings are usually exchanged to remind us of our vow and to provide visible evidence to everyone else of our having made this commitment. Breaking the vow through adultery, abandonment, abuse, or divorce carries a serious consequence, which is spiritual, psychological, social, and financial.
Divorce ought to be costly, because it tears apart something God put together.
Jesus taught the following:
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” Matthew 19:3-9 (ESV)
Marriage is not a simple agreement, which can be easily amended or canceled. It is not a business contract; even though some approach it that way with “pre-nup” agreements. It is a covenant before God and witnesses that we will be faithful until death to our promises.
In the Old Testament a covenant was a solemn promise in which blood was usually shed. It also usually had some sort of seal or token of commitment. Violation of the covenant carried a stiff penalty. A good example is the covenant God made with Abraham. The Lord instructed him to kill animals and split them in half, placing the divided halves on the ground with a space between them. Normally both covenant parties would walk between these portions with the understanding that violating the covenant invited punishment equivalent to what happened to the animals. In Abraham’s case, God alone walked through the carcasses, taking upon himself unilateral responsibility to keep his covenant promises to Abraham. The sign of the covenant was circumcision. Abraham had a permanent reminder in his body of the covenant between him and God.
Marriage is a bilateral covenant. Both parties take on the responsibility to be faithful. The sign of the covenant is the ring.
Since marriage is a covenant made before God, we will answer to him for how well we uphold our end of the deal. We will also be rewarded by him for keeping our vows.
The Importance of Keeping Our Word
In today’s world, many people have little or no fear of God or of being judged by him at the end of time. Nevertheless, every one of us will give our Lord Jesus Christ an account for our lives and whether or not we have been faithful to him and to our word. Keeping promises is very big on God’s list of priorities. He is a promise keeper and expects us to do the same.
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Numbers 23:19 (ESV)
Faithfulness means we maintain our allegiance to God, first of all, and to our promises secondly. Those who maintain faithfulness will be rewarded by God.
Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is truly reliable? 7 The godly walk with integrity; blessed are their children who follow them. Proverbs 20:6–7 (NLT)
Many in our culture place personal happiness at the very top of their list of values. I have known people who justified divorcing their spouses because they insisted that God wanted them to be happy, which was not possible while they remained married to their then current spouses.
God does care about our happiness, but he values our faithfulness to our promises even more. Happiness is a temporary thing, but faithfulness carries an eternal reward.
When we make a covenant promise to our spouse at marriage, keeping it becomes one of the most important issues in our lives, even more important than having a spouse who fulfills our desire for personal happiness.
I am sure I just lost some of you, but consider that being faithful carries its own brand of happiness, which will never fade and which we will carry with us to judgment, where we will hear our Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21) In other words, if we put being faithful above the pursuit our own pleasure, I believe that God will make sure that we experience happiness, but maybe not the superficial kind. We will know the deep satisfaction of loving someone unconditionally, just as God loves us. We will find the joy of loving someone despite his or her faults, shortcomings, and sins, just as God shows us. I am sure it was absolutely no fun whatsoever for Jesus to be nailed to a cross, but his faithfulness to God and us enabled him to endure the shame and pain because he understood that on the other side of that suffering was something indescribably valuable.
Understanding the importance of being faithful until death will help us enter marriage with a proper sense of soberness and give us a reason to persevere if things get tough.
Remember: at the altar, we vow to be faithful until death, not until something or someone better comes along.
In summary, knowing that marriage is a covenant before God and embracing the commitment to remain faithful for life to our spouse are important keys to building a strong marriage. Making this commitment up front will preserve us from ever considering that divorce is an option, barring adultery, abandonment, or abuse, and even then there may be hope for reconciliation.
Making the commitment to keep our covenant promises is a huge key to the happiness that comes from building a strong and lasting marriage.
