If you attend marriage getaways, you’ll hear verses like the following applied in diverse ways:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them” (Colossians 3:18-19).
Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband (Ephesians 5:22-32).
Saved into Being
Marriage getaway speakers typically concentrate on the benefits of changing behaviors and breaking habits and tell you how God will do good to your marriage if you follow their advice. Though learning to do good things – learning love languages, filling love banks, etc. – is useful, it falls short of the abundant life Jesus promises us in John 10:10. Abundant life goes beyond doing and behaviors. Doing alone leaves a person empty and desiring something deeper. God didn’t design mankind to live our lives trying to do or produce beneficial behaviors. You and I are designed to live being and resting in who we are. The source of God’s life comes from a place deeper than the soul – the mind, will, and emotions. It comes from the very fiber of who we are – from our being. When you realize who God has made you to be in Christ Jesus it releases you to do what you do because it is who you are – not who you are trying to prove you are by doing or having. I pray this isn’t too abstract a concept.You and I are designed to live being and resting in who we are in Christ. Click To Tweet
The Fuel-less Fire
You see, God is a being. He was asked by Moses His name and told him “I Am That I Am” (Exodus 3:14_. We are made in God’s image as such we are designed to be who we are. God is not only our “raison d’etre” – our reason to be. He is our etre – our being. Christians are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) and that new being in us is the source of all virtuous Christian doing. In other words, a husband loves his wife because that is who he is in Christ – the loving head. God’s purpose, to love us with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength, becomes my purpose to love others with that same love. Christ’s life in us, His being in our being, takes us beyond natural energy into the fuel-less fire of the Holy Spirit. We are designed to be filled with God’s being (Ephesians 5:18) and to have that life flow out of us (John 7:38). He is a consuming fire who takes the natural life of doing and having and transforms it into a life of being.
Yet Not I
Paul’s declaration of this new being in us rings true and clear in Galatians 2:20 where he writes, “I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet no I but Christ lives in me!” The key to a healthy Christian marriage is husbands and wives learning who they are in Christ. Then and only then can they understand what to do as the two people united into one married being.