If I showed you a silhouette of Buzz Lightyear I have no doubt you would instantly recognize him as Buzz. Same goes for a silhouette of either Gandalf, Legolas and the Fellowship of the Ring or of Martin Luther King, Jr.. A silhouette is a representation of an object, a person or a scene which has a featureless interior, yet a detailed exterior.
Paul, writing in Ephesians 5:31 begins by quoting Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Paul next says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Marriage, then, is a representation – the silhouette – of Christ’s love for His church and His church’s love for Him. Marriage should look like Jesus Christ laying down His life on the cross out of love. But to represent we must resemble.
DYING TO SELF
In reality, 50% of all marriages, christian or not, divorce before year 7. Writer Gary Thomas suggests that it takes 9 to 14 years for a husband and a wife to move from Me to We, that is, to go from being selfish to being unselfed. But since the pain of dying to self and living for another is too great, many husbands and wives choose the comfort of living for self. Had some waited another 2 years, they may have entered into a season and life of marriage that would have made the cost pale in comparison to the reward.
The bottom line is that it takes a long time to die to self...
Into my college years I was pretty confident I was a dream husband-to-be! But of course nothing would be further from the truth! Upon getting married to Alissa I soon came to recognize that I was more selfish than I knew. But this recognition came as a result of the realization that Jesus was more humble than I imagined. It remains eternally impossible to live before His face and remain unchanged. You don’t learn humility in a vacuum. You learn it face to face in relationship with other people, beginning with Jesus.
The greatest convictions of sin in my life have come within the context of my marriage. Why? Because marriage is about holiness before happiness – a shadow of a greater reality, a thread of a greater tapestry, a note of a greater composition. Yet, for the christian holiness is happiness. It’s in becoming more like Jesus that we walk into a greater depth of joy and love flowing from the life we have in Him. This is because we were not created to live for ourselves, to count ourselves as more significant than others, to put ourselves first. But that’s exactly what we too often do: we put ourselves first.
FIRST RESPONSES
When you’re getting ice cream for yourself, do you even remember there are other people in the room? Do you even think to ask if someone else wants any? Better yet, if there’s only enough for one bowl, do you give it to your wife? Or imagine you’re grilling on a perfectly beautiful summer day. The breeze is blowing, the drink is cold and your hunger is kicking. The burger at the center of the grill is the biggest, juiciest one there. Do you think to yourself, “This one is mine” or “This one is for my wife.”? What are your first thoughts, your first responses? Are they centered around others first or around yourself first?
A marriage can only and truly be satisfying and enduring if it’s between two unselfed people, each one moving away from his or her own selfish interests towards Jesus and the other. A marriage could potentially survive if a husband and/or wife feel they’re getting what they want, but it can only thrive when a husband and a wife are learning to give what the other needs. Giving requires serving which requires sacrifice, patience, time, care, attention and focus on a daily basis.
LITTLE BY LITTLE
Little by little self-seeking spoils and rots a relationship. It’s the small things that sneak in because it’s the big things we’re looking for. Big words like divorce and unfaithfulness get all the attention, leaving wide open spaces for busyness, criticism, distraction, hurt, offense, etc. to creep in and reek havoc (Song of Solomon 2:15). Just because you’re not on the precipice of disaster doesn’t mean you’re not inching closer. Personally, as a pastor, I believe that no amount of ministerial success (or any success) will outweigh any amount of marital failure before the eyes of Jesus. Paul never said, “Love your ministry (or job or career or hobby or anything) as yourself.” He said to love your wife as yourself (Ephesians 5:28).
Little by little self-giving nourishes and sustains a relationship. Think of a valve that either opens or closes the flow of water. The more you serve your husband or wife, the more you open up the flow of life into your marriage. Every little thing is an adjustment of the valve and an increase in flow. But the opposite is also true. The less you serve each other, the more you close off the flow.
But where does the flow go?
LIFE FLOW
Recently my wife and I replaced the plumbing in our house. We went from galvanized pipe to copper. The galvanized pipe was so full of an accumulation of corrosion that I could hold the pipe vertical, take a pen and stand it straight up. In many marriages there’s a dirty, old accumulation of selfishness and offense. All the serving in the world isn’t going to make a difference in the flow. At this point many try to buy back what they have lost: the bigger and more expensive the gift, the reasoning goes, the more certain they are things will get better. Unfortunately, one can turn the valve of serving till blue in the face, but the problem is not the valve. The problem is in the pipes.
The copper pipe was new, clean and free of any accumulation. I could hold the pipe, take the same pen and it would fall straight through! When Jesus died on the cross He opened the floodgates of heaven and cleansed our hearts by forgiving us, so that the flow secured by His obedience could reach and flood our hearts. In the same way, He designed and desires a marriage to have a new, clean and open flow of unselfishness and forgiveness. Nothing little or big can stop this kind of flow!
MARRIAGE IS NOT COMPLICATED
Beginning on the wedding day through the first 7 years of discovery and difficulty, continuing on through the 9 to 14 years of dying to self and living for another, and enduring through a lifetime of satisfaction and joy, marriage is not more complicated than walking with Jesus: repenting of your sin and forgiving one another.
There are only two people in the world who think they’re never wrong: the arrogant and Jesus, and only Jesus is right. When as a christian I consider the cost of the forgiveness of my sins, I truly have no right NOT to forgive (or not to ask forgiveness), since God had every right NOT to forgive me, but did. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32)
Accidents happen: words slip from our mouths. Clean them up quickly! Otherwise, we move from accidents to decisions. We begin to decide we’re going to say something hurtful anyway. Then, if we don’t repent of our wrong decisions, we move from decision to attitude. We’ve determined this is how things are and this is how we’re going to respond. And finally we move from attitude to habits. At this point we’ve established patterns of behavior and paths of thinking, feeling and reacting that apart from the grace of God, will never be removed from our heart.
But His grace is like a gentle hand, a skilled hand, a steady hand, a mighty hand that can always come to unself, undo and unstop.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:3-7)
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