The Motives for Marriage (2)

Last time we began a look at the first motive for marriage: companionship.

Did you know that married people live longer? According to insurance statistics, the death rate for married men aged 25 to 34 is 1.5 per thousand; for single men it is twice as high—more than 3.5 per thousand. The difference is even greater as men grow older: in the 35 to 44 group, the death rate for married men is 3.1 per thousand; for unmarried it is 8.3. Among all women, the mortality rate for single females is almost twice that of women who are or have been married. All this could mean that, as one writer puts it, “The moral is: better wed than dead.” That certainly stands to reasons, for a whole person will live longer than only half a person.

Further, have you ever pondered that every good marriage is a miracle of God? To think that two people who are so diverse, so different in their way of thinking, so different in how they approach a problem, so different in their emotional, physiological, and emotion structure, can “make it work,” is nothing short of a miracle. Only God’s creation of marriage can accomplish such a feat.

At this point, it is appropriate to deal with an essential aspect of such companionship, namely, communication, without which a marriage is destined to disintegrate. In Ephesians 1-3 Paul presents doctrine, the grand themes of our salvation and wealth in Christ. Beginning in chapter 4, he then deals with our walk in Christ. One aspect of that walk is unity (4:1-16) and another is purity (v. 17-32). Those two sections actually lay an essential foundation for marriage. Obviously we want both unity and purity in a marriage. Further, and most appropriate, is that feature of the “new man” spoken of in verse 25: “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.” While truth, openness, and honesty are essential in any relationship, nowhere are these more crucial than in a marriage. Again, without them, the marriage is doomed.

Tom and Jill sat across the desk from a Christian counselor. In the bitterest terms she could use, Jill said, “I am absolutely certain that this husband of mine is cheating on me; he’s been stealing from his overtime pay. I know he’s been stealing money. And I want to know what he’s been doing with it.” She’d been holding this in for several months, ever since she first noticed the missing money. The result was her increasing anger and bitterness. Turning to the husband, the counselor asked, “Tom, where did the money go? Did you really take it?” He slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, dug into a hidden compartment, and pulled out a wad of money. “It’s all here,” he said, as he threw it on the desk. “I’ve been saving for our anniversary for a special treat for Jill.” What a sad scene! Because of a lack of simple communication, that wife threatened to break up that marriage.

It’s also significant that in very next verse Paul declares, “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Here is a Biblical truth that has several times in my own marriage kept me up to 3:00 AM working out a conflict. Paul knew that even righteous anger (4:26) can degenerate, so he added this admonition. Kept too long, even righteous anger can turn into a personal resentment. Yes, conflicts will come, and we might get justifiably upset with our spouse, but it must be dealt with before “the sun [goes] down;” that is, we must not take it to bed; we deal with it and get it resolved. If we don’t we are “[giving] place to the devil” (v. 27), giving him a foothold in the relationship and inviting him in to destroy it, and nothing would please him more. While a successful marriage is a testimony to the world, so is an unsuccessful one.

This “communicative companionship” is further seen as we read through the remainder of Ephesians 4: “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (vs. 28-32). If all those are to be true of our relationship with every believer, how much more appropriate they are in our marriages?