Anonymous Asks (370)

“What’s the key to making marriage last?”

Almost anybody with a properly functioning arm and a working pair of eyeballs can hit a dartboard. It’s a lot harder to hit the bullseye. If you asked me “What’s a key to making marriage last?” or “What are some important ways to make a marriage last?”, well, that’s easy. When you ask, “What’s the key?”, that’s much tougher.

Do I really have to pick just one?

Lots of things will help a marriage last: submission to Christ, support from both families, guarding one’s heart, staying faithful, rejecting worldly propaganda about relationships, sacrificial love … I could go on all day.

A Bar Too Low

Lasting is also a bit of a low bar. Some marriages last because one or both parties are too afraid to leave. Some marriages last because of duty. Some marriages last because of favorable circumstances. Some marriages last because of failures of imagination: if you can’t picture anything better than what you’ve got, why would you ever stray? Some marriages last because of the children. That doesn’t mean any of these are happy, truly Christian marriages. It just means the relevant parties dragged their union across the finish line somehow.

Meh.

So then, let’s concede it’s not enough for a marriage to merely survive. Christian marriages should thrive and be the blessing the Lord always intended them to be. A blessing to the parties. A blessing to the world. A blessing to their children. We want to know what makes a marriage work.

Making Assumptions

I’m going to make assumptions here. I’m assuming the person who is asking the question is totally committed to their partner, has never strayed, understands their biblical role in marriage and is living it out, refuses to entertain the idea of divorce, is obedient to the Lord, is doing their very best to be attentive to their partner’s needs, is in the scripture and in prayer daily seeking help from heaven in doing their part … I know, I know, that’s a lot to assume, but work with me here: let’s start with the assumption that the person asking the question is an exceptionally Christian partner.

You know what? The marriage may still not work and it may not last.

Why? Because marriage involves the wills of two people, not one. Unless the determinist faction of evangelicalism is correct that all events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God — in short, that human agency is a lie, and that God answers every sincere prayer for somebody you love by conforming their will to yours — your partner gets a vote in whether your marriage will last or not. Actually, he or she gets much more than a vote. Your partner gets to decide that question, period. If we accept that freedom of choice is real, then any married person can unilaterally end their marriage simply by refusing to participate.

The ‘Right’ Person

If I absolutely have to pick a single key to making marriage work and last, it would be this: marry the right person. Marriages work when both parties are committed to the will and word of God, not just to each other on the day they say, “I do.” Marriages work when both parties decide that even if their partner wasn’t God’s optimal choice for them originally, he or she certainly is now that they have tied the knot. Marriages work when both his interests and her interests are perpetually in subordination to the Lord’s interests.

So pick the right partner. Don’t just pick another person who says they are a Christian. That one’s obvious. Pick someone from whom the life of Christ is pouring out on a daily basis. Pick someone whose submission to their Lord is so screamingly evident that nobody could mistake it for anything else.

Pick someone you are convinced loves Jesus even more than you do.