This article shows that the ideal marriage is one that values the lifestyle prescribed by God, honours the male leadership principle, and lives under the fear of God. 

Source: The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, 2005. 3 pages.

Marriage To The Glory Of God: What Does an Ideal Marriage Look Like?

Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways.

Psalm 128:1

Marriage is a “fellowship of the ring.” It is a holy alliance of two people, one male and one female, in a life-long partnership of love and trust and sharing. But what does an ideal marriage look like? Paul’s view of marriage is that the church exists as the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:22-33). The fellowship between Christ and His church is architectonic of what marriage looks like. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). Wives are to be subject to their husbands as the church is subject to the headship of Christ (Eph. 5:23-24).

There is a redemptive structure to marriage as the grace of God shapes two people and brings them together in union. In this union, something of the divine mystery of the Trinity is revealed, as three exist as one and one as three. The Godhead’s fellowship is reflected in our communion with each other as husband and wife. Nowhere is the fellowship of God (within God) reflected more intimately than in Christian marriage. In this creation ordinance, the nature of God is disclosed. Nothing signals to greater effect the dignity of the marriage relationship.

Psalm 128 teaches us several important things about biblical marriage as God intends it to be.

1.  The Pattern of Marriage and Family as the Ideal Lifestyle🔗

Of course, everything that is said here needs to be done with sensitivity to those whom God has either called to life-long singleness (and the struggle of coming to terms with that calling is hardly ever easy), and to those whose marriages have faltered (by divorce whether innocent or guilty), as well as those who have lost their partners (through death). On another occasion, something needs saying to all three of these circumstances. There are things that need to be said to balance what I’m about to say for both pastoral as well as theological reasons, but this must needs wait for another occasion.

This psalm is about marriage, family, and work. It’s a portrait of what the “blessed” life looks like. We spend our time longing to be free from the routine, the humdrum. We are drawn by what seems to be the elegant, exciting lifestyles of the rich and famous. Possibly we wonder what it would be like to be like that because that is of what happiness is said to consist. We are fools, of course, if we really think like that.

This psalm is unafraid to say: it is in this kind of life – marriage, children, and work – that true happiness can be found. What this psalm does is give a cameo portrait of an idyllic existence, of what happiness, true happiness, looks like. In our morally relativistic and hedonistic age, this psalm stands at the center of the Bible (literally!) and gives us a “focus on the family” segment. It is saying – unless God gives us the gift of singleness or providentially puts us in special circumstances (and when He does that, He always enables us to come to a point of contentment with it) – this is the “ideal” life!

The good life is about the routine of employment: “six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.” It is about taking delight in the wife (husband) of your youth (Prov. 5:18). It is about having children and raising them, with all the stresses and strains which that brings.

This was God’s plan from the beginning. In the opening pages of Genesis, this is what God’s plan for the world looked like. Gay and lesbian relationships are not part of God’s plan. Same sex parenting is not part of God’s plan. Divorce is not part of God’s plan. He allows it. It may become necessary, but it can never be thought of as simply an “option.”

2.  The Principle of Male Leadership in the Home🔗

It is almost impossible today to refer to leadership as male without sounding chauvinistic and controlling. There are bad models of this principle in the Christian church where leadership becomes about dominance and control to the point of possessiveness and tyranny. But whatever the prevailing culture may say (and it is not that different from some cultures in biblical times), leadership in the home ought to be masculine and paternal.

I sometimes think if I were to conduct a poll, just of the women, and ask: do you want your husband to take more leadership in the home? I think I would get an overwhelming answer in the affirmative.

Christian families today generally need a good dose of male leadership! I know that sensitivity, and gentleness, and vulnerability are popular words, but what we need in our homes and marriages is strength, and courage, and determination.

What we have here is paralleled in two statements made by Peter: first, when he refers to women (“wives” in Greek) as “the weaker vessel” (1 Pet. 3:7). This has got Peter into a lot of trouble. What was he saying? There have been two suggestions. Either Peter is making a comment about physical strength, or, Peter is saying that by marrying, she has placed herself in a position of submission and vulnerability. And husbands are to respect that, not take advantage of it and play the heavy-handed bully!

Secondly is the remark he makes in the same verse (1 Pet. 3:7), that husbands should treasure their wives “that your prayers be not hindered.” It hardly needs saying that there is something terrifying about this verse. Our marriages and the relationships we have in our marriage have a profound impact upon our spiritual fellowship with God. Our relationship with God can never be ideal if our relationship with our wives or our children is wrong.

The church today has its women’s meetings and men’s prayer groups and so on, but what we need are more husband and wives groups! The devil is saying, “Give me your home and you can have the church! And your prayer breakfasts!”

Do you notice in this psalm how the husband is exhorted to ensure the fruitfulness of his bride and children (v. 3)? I’m saying, Men, it’s up to you! Problems arise when husbands, wives, and children chafe at this paradigm: when husbands and wives meet someone who may be more attractive, more intelligent, more understanding, or more compassionate; when he loses his job, when she loses her youthful beauty, when he loses his hair, when she loses her grip on reality.

What this psalm is saying is that marriage and the bond of love and companionship that holds it together is one of the greatest gifts God has given to us. This series of articles has been designed to call us back again to a renewed appreciation of it.

3.  The Primacy in Marriage and Family Life of the Fear of God🔗

There is what Bible commentators call an inclusio in this Psalm (vv. 1, 4; that is, something that repeats itself at the beginning and end of the psalm). It emphasizes vocation and marriage. The work place and the home will only become the treasure that it is meant to be when God is placed in the right place – only when there exists a healthy and observable fear of God. “Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways” (Ps. 128:1). As John Bunyan put it, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and they that lack the beginning have neither middle nor end.”

Marriage, children, and vocation is not the ultimate thing in this world – God is! Why does anything exist? For what purpose? Marriage, sex, family life, the routine of a six-day working week, or recreation are all meant to be for God’s glory! They exist to magnify God. “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). We need to let that sink in. This is where all the trouble starts. When couples don’t bring God into their courtship, trouble ensues. When couples set out on their dreams and God is breathtakingly absent from their plans, or if He is there at all He is so small it would take a forensic scientist to find it, trouble ensues.

What would “the fear of God” – putting the glory of God first – look like in our marriages and homes?

It is to revere His:

  • Eternality – makes our minds stagger with the infinite thought that God never had a beginning.
  • Knowledge – that makes the Library of Congress look like a little paperback.
  • Authority – that means that the devil cannot move an inch without His permission.
  • Providence – not a single hair turns gray without it.
  • Power – He can walk on water, turn water into wine, calm a storm at sea.
  • Purity – He has never had a bad thought.
  • Trustworthiness – not a single promise will fail.
  • Justice – that renders all moral accounts either on the cross or in hell.
  • Obedience – that He would embrace the cross and take its white-heat and bear it Himself.
  • Wrath – that will one day drive men to call out for the rocks and mountains to embrace them.
  • Grace – that forgives the penitent, that hears the cry of the lost, that wipes away the tears of the distressed and troubled, and never gives up on us, never!
  • Love – that says to foul-smelling sinners that we are, “I love you and I am going to give Myself to you, unconditionally.”

Do you see what that would do to your marriage? To your home?

As for me and my house … we will serve the LORD.Joshua 24:15

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