Marriage… Committment is Essential (Part 6)
A marriage covenant is characterized by total, exclusive, continuing and growing commitment. We have looked at Total, Exclusive and Continuing commitment and in this newsletter we shall briefly touch on Growing commitment.
Growing Commitment. To accept marriage as a sacred covenant means also to experience a growing commitment which deepens and matures through life’s experiences. The Christian life is a call to grow “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13), until we love with the fullness of His love. The same call applies to our marriage relationships. There must be a maturing and deepening of our commitment to each other. When marriage commitment stops growing, it begins to wither away.
Growth in commitment to marriage is not achieved overnight. It is a continuous daily process lasting through the whole course of our married lives. It involves, among other things, following the model of Christ’s love for His church by being willing to sacrifice selfish wants for the good of the other, being willing to love even when love is not reciprocated. It involves also accepting unsuspected flaws in the character of our partners and working together to resolve misunderstandings, tensions, or hostilities.
Growth in our marital commitment often takes place through deaths and resurrections. There are times in our marital relationship when communication becomes very difficult, if not impossible. Hurt, hostility, and resentment seem to prevail. Yet, as we learn by God’s grace to put to death and to bury all such ill-feeling, out of that dying, new life comes in our relationship. “If a marriage is growing,” writes Thomas N. Hart, “it is growing through deaths and resurrections. If it is not growing, it might be because there is a refusal to die the deaths that have to be died and seek in them the direction in which new life is breaking. If Jesus for fear, had refused to die, he would not know the kind of life he now knows as risen Lord, nor would we have the gift of his Spirit.”11 Wow! Isn’t that powerful and insightful?
The sad reality is that many marriages do not grow in maturity and love. Rather than expending energies to keep their relationships improving, some marriage partners settle down into a dull drum routine. To find a way out of such dullness, some partners seek for excitement and growth in extramarital relationships. In so doing, however, they only add misery to their lives by violating their marriage covenant and by putting asunder the marital unity formed by God.
The solution to a dull marriage is to be found not by seeking excitement outside marriage, but by working together to enrich the relationship. This involves improving our communication skills by learning to express inner feelings, by listening to the thoughts, desires and wishes of our partner, by leaving the cares and concerns of our work behind when we go home, and by watching for opportunities to manifest tenderness and affection.
Conclusion. To live out marriage as a sacred covenant means to be willing to make a total, exclusive, continuing and growing commitment to our marriage partner. Such a committed Christian marriage is not easy or trouble free. Commitment to a marriage covenant, like our commitment to the Lord, may result in some forms of crucifixion. But there is no other way to enter into the joys of Christian marriage. When we commit ourselves to honor by God’s grace our marriage covenant of mutual faithfulness until death, then we will experience how God is able mysteriously to unite two lives into “one flesh.” Next article we will begin to look at the Ten Commandments of a marriage covenant.
by Don Callander
