Scripture: Genesis 2:18, Ephesians 5:21
Making a commitment builds trust between us, enabling us to be vulnerable with each other and to dare to tell each other our deepest thoughts and feelings; commitment permits us to plan our future together; it allows us to try things out, to get things wrong, to forgive, to have the confidence to raise issues that need to be discussed -- commitment is ‘the essence of marriage’, its very heart.
Two Consequences of Commitment:
- Friendship
The commitment of marriage meets our longing for deep connection, for emotional and physical intimacy. Marriage isn’t the only way to counter aloneness, but it is the closest possible human relationship. - Family life
The committed love between parents means their children grow up seeing a positive example of an intimate, committed, long-term relationship at close hand. One of the best ways parents can love their children is by loving each other. A strong marriage can break a cycle of failed relationships in a family.
Create an Equal Partnership Between You
Every couple has to work out:
- who does what
- who decides what
- who takes the lead on those things that need to be done
We may hold assumptions from our parents’ (or main role models’) marriage of what responsibilities we should each take on, but these may conflict with our partner’s ideas.
Talk about your expectations for who will do what in your relationship and how this may differ from your own experiences in your family background.
Submit to each other (Ephesians 5:21)
The New Testament model of mutual submission
- gave Christians a radical new way of living together
- required mutual giving to each other
- undermined male dominance and control
Christian teaching has led to the marriage relationship coming to be seen as an equal partnership of mutual giving.
‘Submitting’ doesn’t mean being passive
- submitting is the opposite of demanding or controlling
- it means seeking to put each other first
- it is a form of loving that puts each other’s needs before our own
Work out which responsibilities you are each best suited to take on
- use your differences to serve each other
- in some areas of your mutual life, take the lead and initiate
- in others, support your partner
Loving like this is very active and involves making sacrifices for the sake of the other.
Submitting to one another is the key to a loving marriage.
The Marriage Covenant
The covenant we make when we get married is a decision to give ourselves completely to each other in love, and is then a decision we reinforce everyday of our marriage.
The marriage covenant holds a couple together when they go through tough times, as every couple will.
The vows we each make that establish our marriage bring deep security and provide us with a safe space within which we are able to be open and vulnerable with each other
- they give us the confidence to allow our partner to know us as we are (including revealing those parts we keep well hidden) and that builds intimacy
- the vows focus not on what our partner can do for us but on what we can do for them
