Fully Alive MarriageSample

The Union of Two Sinners

Every marriage is the union of two sinners. It’s a wonder any marriage survives. When their marriage faces problems, most people think, “If only my spouse would change, we might be OK.”

Yes, you married a sinner. You married someone who doesn’t follow through on their promises, doesn’t understand you, says and does things that hurt you, and regularly fails to be the kind of spouse you need, want, and thought you were marrying. You married someone who misbehaves, is stubborn and irresponsible, doesn’t listen, or gets angry or emotional. Or perhaps you married someone with all those traits.

But there’s another inconvenient truth. Your spouse married a sinner too! You, too, don’t meet their needs, fail to understand, act out of selfishness, and are a downright failure at being the spouse God needs you to be.

Romans 8:29 indicates God’s grand purpose for you is that you “be conformed to the image of his Son.” He designed that you become someone who looks like, thinks like, acts like, and loves like Jesus.

God is love. Being transformed into Christ’s likeness means you learn to love as Jesus loves. That kind of love is not weak or sentimental. It’s both tough and tender, understanding and fierce.

You can’t become like Jesus by trying harder. So God created ways for you to enter His laboratory to experience the transformation your heart needs. And marriage is one of His best laboratories.

Marriage is a laboratory in which you learn to love well.

Living with another sinner shows your own “stuff” in unpleasant and frustrating ways. Trying to come closer to your spouse, you discover how your prickliness drives them away. If you’re paying attention, you see the lies you’ve come to believe, the wounds you’ve accumulated, and the empty places in your soul.

What’s it like to be married to you? This is not an exercise in self-contempt; it’s looking at yourself with honesty and compassion, the way Jesus does.

You can only change yourself anyway, or more accurately, you and God working together can address the places in your heart that marriage exposes and that He wants to transform so you can become like Jesus.

How might God be using the laboratory of your marriage to transform you?