Living To Your Mate! An Absolute?

By Michael Wells
Posted Monday, April 12, 2004

I Cor. 733, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, 34and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
Of course, Paul says that in this passage it is “I,” not the “Lord,” speaking. My experience indicates that there are just as many “divided” single Christians as there are married ones. However, his observation is interesting and, for him, a near absolute that is born out of his experience. In thousands of hours of marriage counseling I have seen the same thing, but not from the same root. First, it has appeared to me that conflict doesn’t come from trying to please one’s mate as much as it comes from trying to please oneself. Second, I have noticed that in mature couples, this principle that Paul expounds doesn’t play out. Every couple, as they move forward in the expansion of the Christ within, will become less and less as He becomes more and more. I just don’t see it as an absolute, for I know married couples that are more concerned about pleasing the Lord than pleasing one another. I know couples that are one and do not have divided interests. When you are in marriage for the revelation of Jesus and not fleshly happiness, the couple is not divided. On the path to this discovery there is division, but I believe that one thing God does in marriage is free a couple from each other and then give them back to one another as different people. We need to be freed from the self-life of the other, just as, in fact, we need to be freed from ourselves. In this freeing process, He will make us sick of trying to feed our flesh or the flesh of our mate. In the end, the only place to go is Jesus, where the spirit can be fed. Once the spirit’s nourishing is the goal, there will be oneness of interests, all of which are rooted in undivided attention to the things of God. Seeing that there is no marriage in heaven, we can assume that marriage on earth is to have something more than a temporal impact on us. What is it teaching us that will have eternal value? There is so much to learn. We love but cannot live for another. We cannot get spiritual needs met from any human. We are selfish. Our peace is so easily surrendered to another, and it reveals the things of self hidden deep within. What a wonderful thing to be able to learn that right along with someone with whom we are one!