The Joy of Marriage by Matt Harrison

After finishing college at Seward, my wife Kathy and I served as lay missionaries in a remote Cree Indian village in Ontario. One day we decided we’d go for a snowmobile ride. I pulled the machine in front of our little shack. I glanced behind me to see Kathy hopping aboard, and I took off. I headed down the skidoo trail on the frozen lake, on a bright clear, frigid day, chatting happily with my dear wife (or so I thought). I had made it nearly a half-mile before I realized that no one was talking back. Suddenly I did a hard double take, when I turned to see the empty seat right behind me. Looking back at the distant village, she was nowhere to be seen. Turns out I had taken off just as she strattled the seat, but before she’d sat down. Kathy stood there watching for several minutes, as I became an ever-smaller dot in the distance. Laughing in comic disbelief, wondering just how long it would take me to notice something amiss, she finally turned around and went in the cabin to wait. We laughed then, and about it to this very day.

So it is with marriage. You won’t get far trying to travel alone in a relationship, talking to  yourself, or at someone else. Luther noted that he would see young couples utterly infatuated with each other. They’d get married and in a year want to end it all. But like Jesus turning the water into wine at Cana, so the trials, difficulties and time turn the water into wine and only those know how sweet it is who have tasted it (House Postil 1.237). “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth… be intoxicated always in her love.” (Proverbs 5:18-19)

But the joy of marriage is ever more elusive. Shockingly, the divorce rate for members of the Missouri Synod is about as high as that of the general population! All too often, even among Christians, the joy of marriage fades. The “intoxication” of falling in love ends in a hangover

of loneliness and pain. “Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.” (Amy Bloom)

There are three simple facts that are the secret to a joyous marriage, the secret to living a good news life in a bad news world. 

The first secret of joy in marriage is that it is God’s own act. “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him.’” (Genesis 2:18) The ultimate crown of God’s creation, woman, is made after all the animals. The Lord wanted to impress upon Adam the incomparable wonder of what he was about to do for the man. Adam named all the animals, “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” (Genesis 2:20) Some would balk right away, alleging that the woman as a “helper fit for him” is demeaning. But the Lord God himself is pleased to be called a “helper.” “Ezer” is the Hebrew word, and the name “Eli-ezer” means “God is my helper” (Numbers 3:32). “Fit for him” simply means the woman would be in the same glorious image of God, righteous, intelligent, a delightful living, eternal soul to be a “soul mate” for life. When Adam awoke from his divinely induced slumber, he discovered a rib gone and a miracle before his eyes. Genesis records the first human words. They were an expression of boundless joy over the gift he beheld: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:24) A dynamic rendering of the text might well read, “Wow! She’s the one!” Says Luther, “This little word ['at last'] indicates an overwhelmingly passionate love." (AE 1.136) So it is that when a man fails to love his wife, he is also deeply confused about himself, and vice versa. “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” (Ephesians 5:31)  

Why is this a key to joy in marriage? “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). It all teaches the profound divine intent of joy between husband and wife. It explains, very simply, the natural male-female attraction. But much more than this, it teaches that marriage is God’s. Just as he brought Adam to Eve and Eve to Adam, he brings one spouse to the other, to this very day. Marriage is a divinely rendered contract. God’s action is primary. That’s why the marriage vows quote Jesus, “What God has joined, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:6)

This is a life-saving, joy-saving truth. Inevitably, relationships go through highs and lows. Infatuation and emotions ebb and flow. It is crucial, crucial for a couple to recognize from the start, no matter how I feel, no matter how we struggle, no matter how we fail each other, God put us together, and wants us together. And the same God desires that we rejoice in each other. Without this mutual conviction, a marriage is doomed, and even if it endures, it’s doomed to joylessness. But with it, the door is open to an enduring, growing, blossoming joy. “I perceived that what God does endures forever” (Proverbs 3:14).

“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.” (Tom Mullin) The second secret of a joyful marriage is that marriage is an act of the will. In the vows we state, “for better, for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health,” “I will.” Virtually every marriage goes through times when we simply don’t “feel” love. I always ask couples preparing for marriage a simple question: What is love? The response is almost invariably, “It’s what you feel for another person.” Well, what happens when the feeling is not there? What happens when, after an argument, or a period of poor communication, or a short night because of a sick child, or troubles with relatives, the “feeling” of love just isn’t there any more? The flesh immediately looks for a different path to joy.

But love, in its most fundamental form, is not in fact emotion. It is the will to act for the benefit of another, no matter how it feels. Paul bids husbands “love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25) The truth holds good for wives too.

Christ acted for the benefit of all of us, quite without a continual warm fuzzy feeling of love and joy. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) He willed to do it. He submitted to the will of his father as an act of love, and the result is endless joy for the world. Marriages go through emotional ups and downs. I love Joyce Brothers quip, “My husband and I have never considered divorce... murder sometimes, but never divorce.” Willingness to love through the troubled waters is an invaluable building block for joy in a marriage. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.” (Proverbs 4:9)

The third secret to joy in marriage is that with the deep conviction that God has put a couple together, and that couple wills to be together– come hell or high water – the feelings of love and joy, over time, will emerge in a way more powerful and surprising than any words can

possibly express. Jesus loves marriage. He provided an additional one hundred and fifty gallons of fine wine as his inaugural miracle, after the people had “drunk freely” (John 2:10). Jesus loves YOUR marriage, and promises everything you need to sustain you, even through dire times of difficulty and joylessness.

It’s nice to hear from time to time that a couple has never had a disagreement. But I’m always suspect when I hear it. Conflict between sinners is inevitable. And there is no more intimate look at another sinner, or at our own sins, than from the vantage of marriage. And conflict, while caused by sin, is not all bad. “By sadness of face, the heart is made glad.” (Ecclesiastes 7:3) Conflict drives us toward solutions. When married couples work through conflict, their children learn that life’s bumps can be endured and conquered. Conflict “clears the air” of irrationality and emotion, and provides the opportunity to come together again and work toward resolution. It can erode our pride and stubbornness just enough for us to seek ways to find greater joy in each other. Gary Chapman’s “The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate” (1996), was a profound help to Kathy and me in finding greater joy in our marriage.

“A threefold cord [husband, wife and Christ] - is not quickly broken” (Proverbs 4:12). Did you know that while one in two couples who marry today will divorce, but only one in a hundred couples who are regularly in church together will split? Years ago, as a young married couple, Kathy and I would have a spat about something or other. In the course of an argument our sinful defense mechanism goes into automatic. “But if YOU only did so and so, we wouldn’t have this problem.” I remember times when we would drive to church together, not speaking because of a conflict unresolved. Right at the front of the service we’d be reminded that we are each baptized. And then came the magic moment, the breakthrough to joy again. “I a poor miserable sinner, confess unto you, that I am sinful and unclean.” I knew what I was confessing. I knew she knew what she was confessing. Inevitably, our hands would find that of the other, and we’d be absolved by our pastor, together. “Weeping may remain for a night but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)

Luther commented on Psalm 45:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of the Lord Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” So the bridesmaids [pastors] lead the church and strengthen her with the words of faith and the consolation of the Holy Spirit and encourage her: “Hold on and trust.” But it is a great art to know that this is the Christians’ dance, when the heart throbs because of the bitter hatred of the world, the trial of the devil and sin, as Paul complains of the “thorn and messenger of Satan” (2 Cor. 12:7). It is a hard dance and impossible for the flesh. Yet it must be done, so that we must admonish ourselves and say what someone else said: “Here do your dance.” [Aesop] The promises are the flutes, the ministers of the Word are the dancers who lead the maidens. These two can sweeten the bitter dance. For the church has no other joy than the Word. (AE 12.296)

Marriage is “a hard dance,” but the forgiving word of God “sweetens” it. “Our dear Lord, you see, today still changes water into wine, in my home and yours.” (Luther, House Postil 1.237) “For your love is better than wine.” (Proverbs 1:2) Words fail me to describe my love for my wife. She knows me intimately. She knows my deepest failings and disappointments. She knows me like no one else ever can or will. She hurts when I hurt. She rejoices when I rejoice. She wills to love me still. “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Proverbs 31:29) I know her and appreciate her in ways now that are only possible because we’ve continued to “dance,” and Jesus is still at the party turning water into wine.  The Lord has made good on his promises. I look forward with a love so profound, so emotional, and so total that I am at whit’s end merely to describe it. Paul compares our life in Christ to marriage, or rather marriage to our life in Christ (Ephesians 5). Our mutual forgiveness has opened to us a panorama of God’s grace that would have been impossible otherwise. It’s a view of grace, which has only expanded exponentially with our family. I’m loved, and I love. Joy. Irrepressible, incomparable, unparalleled joy. “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love” (Proverbs 9:9).

“Behold you are beautiful my love.” (Song of Solomon 4:1)

Matt Harrison