Sometimes marriage can be hard. Sometimes marriage can be painful. Sometimes that pain and hardship can lead you to entertain thoughts of escape—to distance yourself from your spouse (physically, mentally, and/or emotionally) and the hard work necessary to maintain a marriage of love, unity, and understanding.

When I’m in this place, it’s a red flag for me to realign my focus. My eyes, energy, attention, and affections have been focused on the wrong thing. I need to refocus them on the right thing—and I’m not talking about my spouse. There are two truths that I have neglected. When I forget these truths, my marriage gets out of alignment because it strays from God’s intended design for marriage. The first truth is that your marriage is about much more than your relationship with your spouse. And the second truth is if you’re struggling in your marriage relationship, the relationship you should be examining is not primarily between you and your spouse, but rather the relationship between you and Jesus.

The marriage mirror

God’s primary design for marriage is to have a living, breathing model of the Gospel in action. Our marriages are intended to be so loving and exceptional that it displays to everyone who sees us the Gospel message of love, grace, and forgiveness. Our marriages should be like mirrors that reflect the character and love of Jesus, so that when others witness our marriage relationship, they see that just as Jesus loved his bride (the church) so much that he gave up his life for her, us husbands also love our wives as we love ourselves. And as the church submits to Christ, the wife submits to, and respects her husband. (Ephesians 5: 21-33) When people look at our marriage what will they see? Will they see the Christ-like love Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13? Are you envious of your spouse? Are you boastful? Do you think you are better than your spouse? Are you rude? Are you selfish? Do you get angry easily? Do you keep track of your spouse’s offenses? Are you happy when she “gets what she deserves”, or are you happy when when good things happen to her and she grows closer to God? Do you always protect her (physically, spiritually, emotionally), trust her, and think the best of her?

You see, there is much more at stake here than our happiness. How well our marriages represent God’s character, love, and grace form impressions of God and his Kingdom on those around us. I want to reflect the true nature of God in my marriage, and to do that I need to daily embrace the second truth.

Who sits on the throne?

If you are struggling in some area of your marriage, it seems reasonable to identify the problem and work out a solution. If your having communication problems, you need to learn better communication techniques. If you’re having financial problems, you go to a course teaching biblical principles on how to handle money. Seems reasonable. While these solutions are good and probably helpful, they may be out of sequence. Before you do anything, you need to examine your relationship with Jesus.

Who is sitting on the throne, you or Jesus? There is a constant war being fought in all our hearts between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God. Every battle you have with your spouse is the result of that deeper war. God didn’t give us his grace to make our kingdoms work; he gave us his grace to invite us to a much, much better kingdom. When you are hurt, angry, or disappointed with your spouse, it is not because they have broken the laws of God’s kingdom. You are most often angry because your spouse has broken the laws of your kingdom. Your spouse is in the way of what you want, and that makes you mad, and it prompts you to do or say something that will enlist your spouse back into the service of your wants, needs, and feelings.

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who
died for them and was raised again.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15 NIV)

When I find myself in a place where I am super-sensitive to the things my spouse is saying or doing that cause me pain, more often than not, my focus is not on Jesus, but on myself. The solution for me is to move from being self-focused to God-focused. Once my focus is realigned I can see more clearly and discuss the issues with my spouse having Jesus at the center of the conversation.

Just like building a good marriage, sanctification is a process. As I daily determine to keep Jesus on the throne and focus my energy, attention, and affections on him, I know my relationship to my spouse will improve, because God wants me to have a great, God-honoring marriage even more than I do, and he will give me the grace, guidance and love to accomplish his will. And when I do that, he throws the whole happiness thing in for free.