Were you taught the key aspects of God’s design of love and marriage before you got married? I didn’t receive any teaching, and I know from talking with hundreds of women they didn’t either. Without knowing God’s truth, I was left with what I had seen and the world’s destructive design. The enemy used my unawareness, the brokenness in my life, the lack of knowing God’s word and role models, and the world’s perspective to keep me from understanding God’s true design of marriage. My lack of knowledge also kept me mentally deceived into believing I couldn’t get a divorce from my abusive husband without losing my relationship with Jesus. The confusion I had in my mind, heart, and spirit is the same confusion many women are trapped in today who have married abusive Christian men.
Choosing to be a Christian doesn’t make you immune to the world’s beliefs about love and marriage. Nor does your salvation immediately download all of Christ’s mindset, characteristics, and behavior in you. After you choose to follow Jesus, it’s your responsibility to find out how to partner with Jesus to be transformed into his likeness by studying God’s word. Without knowing God’s design and truth about love and marriage, you’re vulnerable to fall into the trap of becoming a victim of abuse or an abuser.
Many Christians are unaware that they’re abusive to their spouse because, we all do what we know and have come to accept as okay in our past by default. However, when we change our default words, attitude, and actions to mirror Christ’s likeness, we can live in healthy loving marriages. Let’s look at the difference between God’s definition of marriage and the world’s.
God’s Design for Marriage
- The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 NIV
- Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. Genesis 2:22 NIV
- The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” Genesis 2:23 NIV
- “Haven’t you read,”he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:4-6 NIV
God created woman from the rib of a man. It’s comforting and empowering to see God’s choice to use a man’s rib from his center and one of the bones protecting his heart and breath. God designed woman as “a helper suitable for him.” He didn’t make her as a man’s object to own, use, or abuse. God designed marriage as the union one woman and one man under a covenant set up before Him to last until death.
The World’s Definition of Marriage
The world defines marriage as a try-out relationship between any combination of male and female. The world’s idea of marriage is based on self-gratification, personal preference, and it can be terminated for any reason. Starting any relationship with these elements as its foundation sets the relationship up for failure automatically. In fact, God tells us specifically how we are to treat each other in Christ’s love within our marriage. He also talks about divorce in the Bible. As our creator, God knows we will twist His definition of marriage to meet our selfish, sinful desires. However, this doesn’t change His design for marriage and the characteristics we should reveal as a Christ-follower in our marriage.
How Christians are Deceived About Marriage
Many troubled Christian marriages don’t have to blindly follow hurtful practices they’ve learned for years or end in divorce. The divorce rate can change when churches step up and provide Godly teaching, mentorship, and accountability. Churches can teach men and women the definition, types, and signs of abuse. They can show them what God says about each facet of abuse and how they can change their minds, hearts, attitudes, words, and actions. When the husband and wife both understand that Christ lives in their spouse and he also lives in them, how could they treat one another in any way but with gentle, selfless love?
Both parties in a Christian marriage must seek God’s truth and individually foster a progressive intimate relationship with Jesus. They must be willing to partner with Jesus and change any part of them that doesn’t love like Christ. It’s possible for Christians to find individual healing through God’s transforming grace. However, many of you, like me, may discover that your spouse may not want to walk God’s path and you will have to make some hard decisions to separate or divorce. The only one you can change is yourself. For a marriage to be healed, it takes both parties. Abuse is never His will. God will lead you so trust Him. He designed you in His pure love and to be loved. He will give you the strength you need to overcome all your challenges in life.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV
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