What Is The Secret To A Good Marriage?

Happy Anniversary to the Halls

Introduction

Alt - What is the secret to a good marriage? Shout some answers back to me.

We live in a world of opposites. We call bad things good and good things bad. It really makes no sense. Think about it.

I grew up in the 80s and you had Michael Jackson telling everyone that he’s “bad” and that meant he was cool. And you may not remember the name George Thorogood, but I’m here to tell you he was b-b-b-bbad, bad to the bone!

On a more serious note though, we live in a time where we call good evil and evil, good. Parents were and are being monitored by the FBI because they showed up to confront their school board. Pastors from churches were thrown in jail because they dared to worship God on the Lord’s Day during Covid (evidently they are evil), while looters and rioters were applauded for their courage.

So when I ask what is the secret to a good marriage? Some of you may be thinking, there’s no such thing as a good marriage.

Here’s my big thought today, pretty simple, but in today’s society, incredibly radical.

All Good Marriages Flow Toward Jesus

Welcome to Cornerstone Church. Today we are continuing our series on Fruitful marriages and today, we are going to look at what makes a good marriage? If marriage is meant to be good, what are some of the hallmarks of a good marriage.

We’ve been looking in particular at the fruits of the Spirit and we have already talked about love, joy, peace, patience and kindness. Today we want to look at the idea of goodness.

I know for me personally, my parents divorced when I was a young teen. Autumn’s parents divorced when she was a teenager as well, so we didn’t grow up in homes that modeled a good marriage. The home I grew up in was full of issues and I do not want those to define my marriage, so I have be intentional in allowing God to define our marriage and that’s what we are going to look at today, the first marriage and let’s see what God says about what a good marriage looks like.

Join with me today as we read together from the book of beginnings, Genesis Chapter 2:18-25. Feel free to pull out your bible and follow along. The notes are also loaded into your app.

Genesis 2:18–25 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “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.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

We are picking up this story in the context of creation. God has created all things. The world, the sky, the trees, the animals and the pinnacle of his creation is mankind. God creates Adam and he has him name all of the animals. Now this is important, because as he is naming them, he is looking for something in particular. He’s looking for a helper or helpmate.

Imagine how long that took for him to name all of those animals. They are all passing by and each one that God parades in front of him, Adam gets more and more dejected. He’s lonely. There was no helper to be found for him. And that’s where we pick up our text today. God has created all these animals and plants and everything and afterward, God declares that it was good. Everything in creation was good until we get to our text today.

It was NOT GOOD for man to be alone. Therefore God creates the first marriage. He creates a helpmate for Adam, Eve, and at the end of this chapter, we get this statement - God saw everything that he had made and behold it was VERY Good.

There was one not good and it was for Adam being alone. After Eve is created and the first marriage is introduced, behold it was VERY good. Marriage is a good thing.

But for many of us who have been married or part of a failed marriage, you have probably experienced some really bad things in marriage. While God intended for marriage to be good, we as broken human beings tend to mess things up and they can be the opposite of how they were designed. Marriage was designed to be good, but it takes some work.

With that in mind, today I want to look at some ways or hallmarks of a marriage that mirrors the original design. These are things that if you apply these principles to your marriage, you will see it improve, without a doubt.

Today, I’m going to give you…

3 Trademarks of a GOOD Marriage

If you want a good marriage, I’m telling you, three things that mark a good marriage. These are three attributes that every GOOD marriage has or aspires to have. There are certainly more characteristics than the ones I will list today, but these three, I think may be the most important.

1. God Is the Center

A. Marriage is created by God - As we read the text today, one thing is incredibly obvious, God is the one who creates marriage. Every marriage that happens in the world today, is a symbolic recreation of the first marriage. Adam and Eve were the first couple. They were the originals.

Marriage is created by God, therefore he defines it. So many people today want to redefine marriage to fit their culture or context. They call two men or two women married, yet that is not what we see in the Bible, we see a man and a woman. God created marriage and only he gets to define it.

B. If He created it, He is the center of it. God has created it, therefore he creates the rules over it and the first and most important rule of marriage is that God has to be the center of it. We say things in wedding ceremonies like this, “What God has joined together, let no man separate”, quoting Mark 10:9. God is the one who does the joining. He is meant to be the key component of all marriages. He joins us together. He takes two and forms them into one flesh. He forms the union. His Spirit binds us together in holy matrimony.

C. He designed it, so He defines it - This is why Marriage will always be defined as a man and a woman together for life. This is God’s definition. He designed marriage to be lifelong and he’s the one who gets to determine who can enter into this type of relationship. He describes one of the primary purposes of mankind is to be fruitful and multiply. You can only truly fulfill that command with traditional marriage between a man and a woman. You may be able to multiply with the help of modern science, but you can’t be fruitful without God. He’s the center. He defines it.

D. With God as the center, Good marriages understand priorities - God, Spouse, Kids. If the primary sin of marriage is self-centeredness, then it’s in our priorities where we will see this sin realized. Too often, our priorities get out of whack. The way this works is you putting your career/hobbies/aspirations ahead of your spouse. Another place you might see this is when children are put ahead of the spouse. Our priorities should be like this, God first, Spouse second, children third, family, work and so on. If your priorities get out of whack, you are on the road towards a bad marriage, if you aren’t already there. If you are wondering what your real priorities are ask your spouse!

Good marriages flow toward Jesus. That means we are centered on Him!

2. It is a Partnership

A. It is NOT GOOD for man to be alone - The whole purpose in creating woman was because it was NOT GOOD for man to be alone. He created marriage as a cure for loneliness. Remember God doesn’t get lonely because he exists as a Trinity. He has community within himself and we do not. So in order to create a true picture of who he is, to truly create man in his image, he had to create woman.

Today, we’d say that marriage is still a cure for that loneliness in the world. We yearn to be with another person. While singleness is a gift, the Scriptures attest to that, marriage is still the ideal for most people. Why? We represent the gospel most fully and our hearts are most changed through marriage. It’s because we are in a partnership that‘s goal is our sanctification that we should aspire to find a spouse in the first place. When it comes to partnerships take note…

B. Woman is taken from his side - Notice this in verse 21, that God takes woman from his side, from his ribs. He doesn’t take woman from his head signifying she is in charge of man, nor does he take woman from his feet signifying man is to domineer over her. Instead he takes her from the man’s side, signifying that she is equal to him. For those that have never heard this before or maybe you grew up in a tradition that distorted this idea, here’s what we believe, we believe that men and women are of equal value and worth.

And this isn’t a new thing for me or something that I made up, this idea has been around for a long time. Listen to how Matthew Henry puts it in his commentary.

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, not out of his feet to be trampled on by him; but out of his side to be equal to him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved.

Matthew Henry

I love how he ends with the woman under his arm to be protected and near his heart to be loved. Men, these are your responsibilities. It’s your duty to love your wife well. To protect her and care for her.

C. This isn’t a dictatorship or a master/slave relationship. While God says in Ephesians that man is the head of the wife, that does not mean he is the dictator, but that he is head in that he is to assume responsibility for her. He is her protector. We believe men and women and equal, but distinct. So, we would denounce any belief that puts men in a master type of role over the woman, but we also reject any view that eliminates the man’s headship. He is head in that he is protector and authority and the one who is held responsible by God for the woman. Authority does not mean I rule over her, but instead I practice what the Bible teaches in multiple places which is servant leadership.

Marriage is designed to be a partnership. Men, this means you don’t go around barking orders at your wife. This means if you see something that needs to be done, do it. When we talk about servant leadership as a man, that means we should be serving, literally doing things for the wife.

On the other side, women, it is your job to help your husband. I’ve seen too many women who whether consciously or subconsciously actually act as a detriment to their husbands. Rather than seeking to build him up and partner with him, they sabotage the relationship at every turn. One of the biggest ways I think this is done is by the tongue. I’ve heard and seen so many women talk down either to their husband or about their husband. Rather than building him up, they tear him down. This is not how partners treat one another, this destroys relationship. This is called grumbling. Grumbling is a sin.

Along the same lines, I’ve also seen women who are what the Bible calls contentious. They are fault finders. No matter what the husband does, it’s never good enough. They are quarrelsome.

Proverbs 21:9 ESV

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

Again, the point is that we would be partners. God created woman to be a “helper fit for him (v18).” This is an incredibly important idea. You were created to be the perfect helper for your husband. Help him. Build him up. Strive for peace in your home ladies.

Good marriages flow toward Jesus that means we partner with our spouse, not tear them down or rule over them. Jesus is our king and our encourager.

3. There is vulnerability without shame

A. They were naked - Verse 25 sums up the creation of marriage with this statement, they were both naked and were not ashamed. This may be one of my favorite bible verses. I love the idea of being naked in marriage. Both physically and metaphorically. What this is speaking to is the ideas of transparency and vulnerability. As broken people, we struggle with these thoughts. We seek to hide our true selves, even in marriage. We seek to put up a false image of ourselves, especially in dating, but many times it is carried over into marriage. Many times the couple themselves will present a false image of their marriage to others.

This is why when we see a couple with infidelity issues or some other major sin, we hear things like, I just can’t imagine that they would do that! They were putting up a false image. God calls us to be vulnerable to others, but especially to our spouse.

This tends to be really hard for both men and women. We want to hide our sins. We want to hide our past. We want to obfuscate the truth of who we are. Nakedness, vulnerability requires for us to tell our spouse everything. It’s not a form of protection to lie to your spouse. If you have committed a sin against the marriage, you need to confess it. Everything done in the darkness will be brought to the light. Nakedness in marriage looks like two people who are completely transparent and vulnerable with one another and its a beautiful thing.

B. They were not ashamed - Not only in the first marriage do we see that they were naked, but that they were without shame. This leads me to the question, how do we keep shame out of our marriages? Confession, forgiveness and short memories.

Secrecy’s cellmate is shame.

Sheila Walsh

If we truly believe this, this means there are no secrets in marriage. In order to walk this out, this means you are going to have to learn the habit of confession in your marriage and your are going to have to make your marriage a safe place for confession. I’m not going to feel confident in confessing my sins, faults or failures to my wife if I know she is going to shame me or if she is going to hold it against me for years to come. That’s why I say we need short memories. It’s not enough in marriage to simply forgive, you must also be willing to forget.

In order to create a shame free marriage, both people need to practice forgiveness and forgetfulness. A lot of times this comes down to power for people. When one person screws up the victim or offended party gains power over them. And when there is an argument, what happens is that we hold that over the other person’s head. “Do you remember when you did this?” We use it as a trump card in our arguments.

I have to work very hard to put the past behind us. My role as husband is to lead in this. I can’t hold my wife’s sins against her. If Jesus doesn’t hold them against her, who am I to continue to bring them up? Forgive and forget. Don’t hold onto that bitterness and unforgiveness. The only thing that produces in a marriage is divorce and hard times.

Conclusion

Let’s wrap this up. Three trademarks of a good marriage, it’s God-centered, It’s a partnership and there is vulnerability without shame. In other words all good marriages flow toward Jesus. If we work towards these things you will see your marriage grow and change and mature. It takes time. This isn’t a quick fix. Nothing good ever is. Good things take time. It takes time for fruit to grow.

To end, let’s look at our prayer and journaling prompts for today and really take this seriously. Where is your marriage succeeding (Praise God for it)? Where is your marriage failing in these areas (Lord strengthen us)? We all have room for improvement in these areas. Ask God to reveal those to you.

Prayer & Journaling Points

Lord, where can I better partner with my spouse?

Father, where do I need to be more vulnerable?

Jesus, how can I keep you in the center of our marriage?