Marriage is not romance garnished with friendship. It is deep friendship garnished with romance, a covenant where two flawed people help each other become who God made them to be.
We began this series by laying a foundation: God invented marriage, so we should look to God alone — not to our friends, our culture, or our background — to learn how to live it well. Marriage means commitment, and that commitment points to something deeper, the commitment God Himself has made to us. Paul says of husband and wife becoming one flesh, 'This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.' Many people come to marriage looking for something that can only be found in a deep, growing relationship with Christ. Until you learn to enjoy the mystery of being one with Him, you cannot enjoy marriage to the full.
Everything in a marriage turns on one thing: a Spirit-led, gospel-inspired selflessness. 'Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,' Paul writes — out of awe at what Christ has done. The Holy Spirit's work is to glorify Jesus, and as He opens your eyes to how much Jesus has loved you and given up for you, your heart is captured. Only then can you begin to treat your own selfishness, rather than your spouse's, as the primary problem in your marriage. Imagine going home and saying, 'The real issue here is not my spouse's self-centeredness but my own, and I will give my attention to that.' No human heart, unless it has been hardened past feeling, can forever resist unconditional love. That is exactly how God got through to us.
Radical Grace Produces Radical Living
Let me be personal about this. When I began to understand the message of God's grace, I told my wife that no matter what she does — even before she does it — she is fully forgiven, and she will always be my wife no matter how she behaves. Now, does anyone imagine that hearing those words sent her off to find another man, or to stop caring for our home? Of course not. If a person is even half decent, that kind of love stirs them to do more, not less. It frees them from the tyranny of failing. It makes them more honest about their weaknesses, and if they do fall, it makes them run toward you, not away — not out of fear, but because they feel they have wounded love.
So let us not be afraid to preach God's radical grace, worrying that it will give people license to sin. People do not need a license to sin; they are sinning already. The message of radical grace is the only message that produces radical living. Tell people that in Christ nothing can separate them from the love of God — not heights nor depths, not things present nor things to come. No half-decent person collapses under a love like that and concludes, 'Wonderful, now I can sin freely.' Instead they cry, 'Who am I, that You are mindful of me?'
Made for Covenant Friendship
From our side, marriage has a purpose too. In Genesis, God said it was not good for the man to be alone, and He made a companion so that Adam could say, 'At last — bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.' God gave marriage to destroy aloneness, to create covenant relationship — a deep, deep friendship. God Himself is not alone; He is three in one. We were made in His image, and unless He has gifted you with singleness, your soul will crave that kind of companionship.
This is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest form of imprisonment. Robert Hilary King, who spent twenty-nine years in solitary confinement, once tried to describe it to a reporter: he said the soul itself cries — not a literal tear, but a deep, wordless agony. We were simply not made to be alone. Your spouse is meant to be your covenant partner, your best friend, and you theirs. Marriage is fundamentally friendship, garnished with romantic love — not romance with a little friendship sprinkled on top. Ecclesiastes puts it well: two are better than one, for if one falls, the other can lift him up, and a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
When I was deciding whom to marry, a wise sister told me that marriage is not two people gazing at each other and romanticizing; it is two people looking forward in the same direction. Covenant friendship is that shared oneness that comes from facing the same horizon, the same future together.
The Furnace Where Dross Is Removed
Ephesians says Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her, to present her radiant, without spot or wrinkle. When Jesus married us, He married people who needed cleansing — flawed, broken, damaged — yet He saw the image of God in us, marred by sin but still salvageable, and He committed Himself to transform us over time. Marriage works the same way. Husband and wife are meant to labor together toward the vision of who each of them can become in Christ.
You catch glimpses of it — moments when you see how glorious this person really is, the image of God shining through. But you also see the flaws, the bad habits, the struggles, the dross that dulls the fine gold. God has brought you into this person's life to help them break free of it, and brought them into yours to do the same for you. For that to happen, though, you need a certain kind of relationship — not a consumer relationship, where the other person must keep performing to be accepted, but a covenant relationship, where they are accepted first, and so are free to be transformed within the safety of that love.
This carries two practical implications. First, if you are choosing whom to marry, start by looking for the person with the best chance of being your best friend — a kindred spirit, someone you can talk with deeply about life — not merely the person you find most attractive. Second, understand that you will fall in and out of like with your spouse many times, but never in and out of love. Love is the commitment; like is the feeling. When the annoying dross surfaces, you do not stand there fantasizing about a better spouse. You imagine this spouse as better. You hold to your faith that God will draw the glorious person out of the one you actually have. The flesh, the sin nature, is the enemy — not your spouse. You say to them, 'I am in partnership with you to give you victory over your dross, and though the mountains be removed, I will be here with you.'
Nourish and Cherish
How do you become your spouse's best friend? Paul gives two pictures. The first is cleansing. Washing your own body is the most private thing you do, and Scripture says your spouse now takes part in cleansing the hidden dirt of your life. That means letting your spouse into your most private struggles, and being the kind of person your spouse can trust to help without shaming — remember Genesis, 'they were naked and not ashamed.' One of the simplest ways to help in that cleansing is just to be there, and to learn to criticize without crushing, gently, the way you are gentle with yourself.
The second picture is nourishing and cherishing, for no one ever hated his own body but feeds and cares for it. I was listening to Tim Keller teach on this, and he pointed out something an author had written — that marriage can be re-creational, meaning a spouse has the power to re-create the entire self-image of their partner. Your self-image is a compilation of verdicts passed on you over a lifetime — what your parents said, how your siblings and classmates treated you. Your spouse holds the power to overturn those old verdicts, sometimes with a single word, for better or for worse. So speak carefully. Learn to build up the image of God in your spouse: speak to the king in him, call out the queen in her, nourish and cherish the good you see. That is how two people become one as they journey toward the same destination — and how a marriage finally fulfills the purpose God gave it.