God Told Me to Notice...
Marriage Was Never Meant to Be Done
Without God
One of the things I have come to love
about studying Scripture is how familiar passages can suddenly look different.
You can read the same verses for years, understand what they say, and then one
day, while studying them again, something catches your attention. Not
necessarily something new. It was there all along.
You just hadn't noticed it that way before.
That
happened to me before getting married.
"Thank
God I'm a woman!"
During
premarital counselling classes at church, we often discuss the biblical roles
and responsibilities of husbands and wives with counselees. One of the key
passages is Ephesians 5, where
wives are instructed to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, while husbands
are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the Church.
The first time I studied those verses
before getting married, I remember thanking God that I was a woman. In my mind,
my assignment seemed easier. Submission, although certainly not always easy,
appeared far less demanding than what God had asked of husbands.
Because think about it. A husband is told
to love his wife as Christ loved the Church. That
is no joke. Christ remains faithful even when we are unfaithful. He loves us
despite our flaws, failures, weaknesses and inconsistencies. His love is
sacrificial, patient, forgiving and unwavering. He loved us so completely that
He laid down His life for us. And that is the standard given to husbands.
So,
naturally, I thought: "Lord, thank You for making me a woman!" I genuinely thought I had received the easier
assignment.
But during one of
our premarital counselling sessions last year, as we were discussing these
roles again, God told me to notice
something. And suddenly, I began to see those verses differently.
What if the roles weren't
designed to be easy?
I realized that the
responsibilities God gives husbands and wives in marriage are not necessarily
things that will always come naturally to us. And perhaps that is the point.
God did not simply assign us roles according to what would be easiest for our
personalities or natural tendencies. He gave us responsibilities that would
require His grace.
The
more I thought about it, the more fascinated I became.
Take the husband's responsibility to love his wife as Christ
loves the Church. Many women have an incredible capacity to nurture, forgive,
and continue loving even after experiencing deep hurt. We see women who choose
to rebuild marriages after betrayal, who stand by their husbands through failure,
and who extend grace in circumstances that are incredibly painful. This doesn’t
mean unconditional love is easy for
women—it isn't—but for many, the posture of nurturing and extending grace can
feel more instinctive.
For many men, however, loving with Christ-like, sacrificial
consistency—particularly through disappointment, disrespect, or
betrayal—requires a level of grace that runs against the grain of their natural
instincts. Loving as Christ loves is not simply about feeling affection. It is
a repeated choice of selflessness. It is laying down your life. It is choosing
to love even when it costs you something. That
requires grace.
Then there is the wife's
responsibility: submission.
This
is where I began thinking about what Scripture says about the Fall. In Genesis
3:16, after Adam and Eve sinned, God told the woman: "Your desire shall be for your
husband, and he shall rule over you."
There are different interpretations of exactly what that phrase
means. Some scholars see it as a longing for intimacy. Others—and this is the
interpretation that struck me—understand it as describing a struggle for
control within the marriage relationship (…And you will desire to control your husband Gen 3:16b NLT). It is the same Hebrew
word (teshuqah) used in Genesis
4:7, where sin "desires" to have Cain. It implies an ongoing tension,
a pull toward mastery and dominance.
When I thought about that, I found it deeply revealing. Many women are
strong-minded, independent thinkers. We have opinions. We have ideas. We have
plans. And if we are being completely honest, sometimes we don't just want to
have an opinion—we want our opinion to win. 😂 We can have a natural desire to
take charge, influence the outcome, and sometimes lead rather than submit.
So when Scripture calls the wife to submit to her husband as unto the
Lord, I began to see that command differently. God wasn't asking women to do something because they were
weak. He was asking them to surrender something that, especially after the
Fall, can become a profound struggle.
Biblical
submission is not weakness. It is not inferiority. It is not the surrender of
your intelligence, voice, or dignity. It is an act of humility and trust in
God. It is saying: "Lord, I trust
Your design even when my natural inclination is to take control." And
that requires grace too.
Men
are not exempt from this dynamic. Every human being has an instinct to protect
their interests, defend their position, and resist surrendering control. So
while the particular struggle may look different from person to person, neither
husband nor wife gets to rely entirely on their natural ability. The husband is called to love
beyond his natural instincts; the wife is called to surrender beyond her
natural instincts. Both are stretched.
And that was when the bigger picture
began to make sense to me. God wasn't
simply giving us roles. He was giving us roles that would keep us dependent on
Him.
Then I remembered the triangle.
During premarital counselling, we were also taught a simple
illustration of marriage: a triangle. God is at the top. The husband and wife
are at opposite ends of the base. The lesson was that the closer each person
moves towards God individually, the closer they ultimately become to one
another.
I understood that. I have always believed that marriage was
never meant to be done without God. But as I sat there thinking about Ephesians
5, God told me to notice something else about
that triangle.
God is not only at the top because marriage needs Him. The roles He has
given us are themselves designed to drive us towards Him.
Think about it. The husband is told: Love your wife as Christ loves the Church. The wife is told: Submit
to your husband as unto the Lord. Neither command can be lived out
consistently and perfectly through human strength alone. The husband needs
grace. The wife needs grace.
Suddenly,
the triangle made even more sense to me. When a husband realizes, "I cannot
love my wife the way Christ loves the Church in my own strength," he has a reason to move closer to God. When a wife
realizes, "I cannot consistently
submit with the right heart in my own strength," she too has a reason to move closer to God. And as they
both move towards God... they move
towards each other.
Maybe that was the point all along.
The more I thought about it, the more beautiful God's wisdom
became. He gave us responsibilities that would continually remind us: "You need Me." The husband
cannot truly love like Christ without God's grace. The wife cannot truly submit
in a Christ-honouring way without God's grace. Neither spouse gets to say, "I've got this." Both are
continually invited back to God.
Marriage is not a place where we get to showcase how capable we
are. It is one of the places where God reveals how much we need Him.
The goal is not simply to become better
spouses.
Sometimes we think the goal of marriage is simply to learn how
to communicate better, manage conflict, raise children well, build a home, and
make each other happy. Those things matter. But there is something deeper
happening.
Marriage exposes our selfishness. It exposes our pride. It
exposes our impatience. It exposes our desire to be right. It exposes the
places where we struggle to surrender. And all of that can become an invitation
to move closer to God. Because the closer we move towards Him, the more He
changes us. The more He changes us, the better we are able to love, forgive,
submit, serve, sacrifice, and extend grace. And as both husband and wife move
towards Him, they find themselves moving closer to each other.
So, when I think about that triangle now, I don't just see God at the centre of a marriage. I see
something more. I see two imperfect people who have each been given
responsibilities that are bigger than their natural strength. And I see a
loving God who has positioned Himself at the top, continually inviting both of
them: "Come closer to Me."
I think of this now when I look at couples who have been married
for decades. They didn't arrive at that place of unity because they were
naturally good at marriage. They arrived there because, year after year, they
kept looking upward. They kept admitting they couldn't do it alone. They kept
reaching for grace.
And perhaps that is the
most beautiful thing about marriage—not two people who have it all figured out,
but two people who keep realizing they need the One who does. Because the
closer we both get to Him, the closer we ultimately become
to each other.
That
is what God told me to notice.
Marriage roles were never meant
to be easy. They were designed to draw us closer to God—and, in doing so,
closer to each other.
