The Root of All Good Marriages: Knowing and Loving God

“If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.” (1 John 4:20, 21)

We are perhaps getting tired of hearing the same old statistics concerning marriage and divorce, but it is sobering to think that every other marriage doesn’t make it. This is not only true “out there” in the bad and wooly wildlands of general society but also right in the very living room of the church. I am a member of a fairly (if we have to use labels) theologically conservative, evangelical church, and I can throw a rock into a typical congregation like ours on any given Sunday morning (I wouldn’t do this, of course) and have an excellent chance of hitting someone whose family has been touched somewhere by divorce. That’s bad enough. Sad thing is, however, I could throw another rock and have a fairly good chance of hitting someone whose marriage is currently “challenged” at best and careening at worst, possibly someone who needs to do some quick U-turning and make some rather drastic life-changes, to avoid the rocks upon which so many around them have been wrecking their marriages.

Maybe things are better where you are sitting, but I don’t think that scenario is so atypical. If things are that bad—and I think both the statistics and experience indicate that they are—then we need to be asking why: Why can’t married people these days have a better expectation of getting it “right”? I am fully convinced the answer is found in our general lack of knowing and loving. But I don’t mean our lack of knowing and loving our spouses—that is obvious enough. I mean instead that our primary deficiency is in knowing and loving God.

The fact that we don’t love our spouses like we should is actually the main clue here. The apostle John put it this way (1 John 4:20): if you can’t love the brother (read “husband/wife” in this context) sitting in the pew, lying in the bed, sitting at the table right next to you, however in the world do you make it out that you are doing a fair to excellent job of loving the “invisible” God? I hear someone saying, “But I never claimed to be good at loving God.” To the which I say, again, That is precisely the root to your every problem, and, in particular, it is the root to your marriage problem. The degree to which you know and love God determines without exception the degree to which you will have success in knowing and loving your spouse.

“Dear heavenly Father, teach us to love our spouses by teaching us to love You supremely and well. Grant that we would love You with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and grant that we would therefore love our closest neighbor—our husband or wife—as ourselves. Grant healing to our marriages, to the marriages in the Church and in our society, building the only solid foundation for them on a thriving, never-dying, ever-growing-and-deepening love for You, dear God, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”