Gospel-Shaped Marriage › Lesson 9
Chapter 9 of 9Growing in Marriage
Growing in usefulness, in grace, and in years.
No study of marriage is complete without asking how a couple can grow in usefulness, not only in the home but in the wider community, especially the household of God. Between these covers we have worked through a biblical definition of marriage, a history of marriage, and a perspective that emphasizes the grace of helping your spouse in his or her calling. We end by thinking about how a couple can grow together.
The Van Dixhoorns focus on three kinds of growth: in usefulness, in grace, and in years. Each one matters. Each one is more possible inside a marriage than outside it, and each one is a gift to be stewarded.
Growing in usefulness
Married people often spot ways they can bless those around them. They can coach a team, contribute to a neighborhood association, or support a cause. They can reach out together, like Priscilla and Aquila, to teach new Christians how to read the Bible (Acts 18:26). They can together contribute to the needs of the saints (Rom 12:13). They can open their home, like Philemon and Apphia (Philem 1:1–2). They can help younger couples approaching marriage. Just as we do not want to be self-focused as individuals, we do not want to be self-focused as couples.
One example of how spouses help each other serve is hospitality. Married couples can make their home a haven for people who are traveling, new to the area, or in need of some Christian family time. Paul calls everyone to hospitality (Rom 12:13). Peter tells us to think about our attitude toward it (1 Pet 4:9). Hebrews highlights using hospitality to care for strangers (Heb 13:2). In a mobile and lonely culture, the need has rarely been greater.
Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
1 Peter 4:9 (ESV)
Hospitality is also a useful case study because it draws on different gifts. There is the hard work of cleaning, the courage to invite, the ability to cook, and the challenge of carrying a conversation. Every part is necessary. If one is a good cook but too shy to invite, gifts go unused. The Van Dixhoorns are candid about their own division of labor: Emily can cook for twenty without strain but finds it hard to invite two; Chad can invite anyone but cooks so badly that, as a single man, dinner guests started issuing counterproposals. In their home now, Chad leads the tidying team and greets guests at the door; Emily feeds them.
Hospitality is not entertainment
Entertainment says: use the good dishes, be fresh and attentive, present a polished home for the pleasure of the hosts. Hospitality says: serve leftovers or hot dogs, bring people into an unready house, extend fellowship because someone needs it. Entertainment can be wonderful. It is just not the same thing as hospitality. Peter's command to show hospitality without grumbling reminds us that we set spouses up to grumble when we surprise them with visitors. Plan ahead. Stock the freezer with easy meals. Remember that service is for others.
The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7:32–35, highlights the unique usefulness of singleness: the unmarried can offer undivided devotion to the Lord. Singleness is a worthy calling, and in some contexts a preferred one. Some of the most useful Christians of the past century have been single. But the Van Dixhoorns' point here is that married couples must consider how to leverage their marriage through opportunities specially suited for twosomes, and how to make it easier for a spouse to use gifts in service to Christ.
Growing in grace
This focus on usefulness in marriage turns out to be useful for marriage. When a marriage is weak or struggling, couples can sometimes help each other not by focusing more on their own marriage but by focusing on others. In their early years, Chad ran the risk of analyzing the relationship to death: too many sit-down-and-think-it-through discussions, too many state-of-the-union addresses. Over time it occurred to them that a shared purpose in serving others would not only honor Christ but would prove one of the best ways to find greater harmony at home.
We are not saying busyness can replace thoughtfulness. We are saying that without a shared purpose in serving, a relationship can turn inward in unhelpful ways. And the main purpose of serving others is serving others; the benefit to ourselves is a probable side effect, a bonus.
The best way for married people to grow, though, is by making full use of the means of grace: prayer, the sacraments, and the word of God. These gifts are designed to help all people, married people included, learn wisdom, live out their identity in Christ, and find the freedom of forgiveness. This matters, because married life can magnify three things in particular.
Three things marriage magnifies
Foolishness. In marriage it is easy to drift into foolish patterns: building walls to keep the other out, or stockpiling grievances to fire at our "enemy." None of this helps. All of it calls for wisdom. If we live coram Deo, before the face of God, we will relate to others first by relating to him. In any conflict, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10).
Shame. No one in this world knows us better than a spouse. That knowledge can do great good, but a spouse also sees our worst faults. We often care about a spouse's opinion more than anyone else's, and so a spouse's word can encourage more than anyone's, or wound more deeply. A husband or wife's real dignity and identity must never be found in the spouse's opinion, but in Christ, who was humbled for our sakes and bore our shame.
Sin. Marriage is a context in which we learn more about sin. The long-term, close proximity of one person to another does this wonderfully: first we see the sin of others, then our own. It is only when we look at God that we learn to see ourselves rightly. And when we see ourselves as sinners trusting in Christ, as rich beneficiaries of grace, we learn to dole out mercy too.
Taking 100% of the responsibility
If we have a Godward focus, we will take 100% of the responsibility for our part in any conflict, no matter what percentage our share really is. We will confess it before God and before our spouse. We can do this because the sting and penalty of our sin are taken away. This is how a Christian spouse can thrive even in a marriage that has not thrived: by seeing ourselves as God sees his children in Christ.
The key in all of this is what Christ demonstrated: do not treat others as they deserve to be treated. Treat others as God has treated us. The gospel contains a logic for relationships. If God promises to forgive a husband in Christ Jesus, that man must promise to forgive his wife. If God does not dwell on her foolishness, she should not dwell on her husband's. If God does not bring up incidents again to shame us, neither should we. If God covers our sins, we should cover the sins of our spouse. And when we show that kind of grace toward a spouse, it makes it easier for the spouse to show it back.
Growing in years
Christian couples long to grow in grace together. But there is one more kind of growth we hope to share: growing old. Not many people actually want to be old. But we want to be together, even when we are old. Growing old is not for the faint of heart. Bodies hurt. Things stop working. We are more tired after doing less, we recognize more names in the obituary column, and our memories begin to fade. Long before all that, there comes a day when most of us realize some of our dreams will never be fulfilled.
One thing we can help each other do is to stop idealizing what we were when we were younger. Emily's father offered Chad a wry service along these lines: "When you are older and forgetful, you will think it is because of your age. When that happens, try to remember that you were always forgetful!"
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4:16 (ESV)
Growing in years has one great consolation for a Christian: if we are joined to Jesus by faith, his strength is on display in our weakness. Older Christian couples can encourage each other. We can remind each other how, in our lifetime, we learned to see the gospel not simply as information but as power. God has been generous beyond all imagining: he has united us to his Son, justified us freely, adopted us into his family, and begun his sanctifying work in us by his Spirit. One reason we are to respect the elderly is that some elements of growing in grace only happen as we grow in years.
And it is this growth in grace, not simply a growth in love, that makes so many white-haired marriages wonderful. Having been forgiven, they repent and ask forgiveness with a new thoroughness. Clothed in the righteousness of Christ, they no longer need to hide behind imagined holiness. They no longer need to escape those who point out their wrongs by denying or attacking, because they are secure in their Savior.
Conclusion
It is the Van Dixhoorns' prayer, and ours, that the saved sinners who walk through this course will grow to love like the saints Christ has redeemed them to be. As our gracious God answers our prayers, we will find in his church marriages that mirror the gospel and offer a foretaste of heaven even in this fallen world. Husbands and wives who seek their spouse's joy will find joy in their callings. They will be increasingly content, in easy times and hard, with family and in private. And all the while they will be growing in usefulness, and growing in grace, as they grow in years. All to the glory of God.
Looking back over the course
We began in the garden, with what marriage is. We traced its fall and its redemption, locating our own marriages in stage three, on the way. We heard Paul's call to mutual submission and learned the Gouge principle. We took up the wife's calling and the husband's, the harder cases of a strained marriage, the crowded rooms of parents and children, the gift of intimacy, and now the long road of growth. Every thread has run back to the same place: Christ and his church. Your small marriage is allowed to picture that great gospel. That is the whole secret.
Check your understanding
According to the chapter, what is the difference between hospitality and entertainment?
Entertainment presents a polished home for the pleasure of the hosts; hospitality opens a real home to meet a real need, even with leftovers or hot dogs. Both can be good, but only the first is a Christian duty.
What does the chapter say is "100% of the responsibility" in a conflict?
A Godward spouse takes 100% of the responsibility for their own part, regardless of the percentage of the whole, because the sting and penalty of sin have been taken away in Christ.
Which three kinds of growth does the chapter focus on as the closing topics of the book?
The final chapter gathers the course under three headings: growing in usefulness (serving others, hospitality), growing in grace (the means of grace, forgiveness), and growing in years (growing old together).
Why, according to the chapter, do many white-haired marriages become so wonderful?
Some elements of growing in grace only come as we grow in years. Forgiven deeply, older couples repent more thoroughly; secure in Christ's righteousness, they no longer need to hide or attack.
For the two of you to work through
Take these one at a time, slowly. There are no right answers to write down; the value is in the conversation. This is the last lesson; let the questions be wide.
- Usefulness together. Where is your marriage already serving others as a couple (a small group, a meal, a younger couple, a neighbor)? Where is there an open door you have not yet walked through together?
- Hospitality versus entertainment. Be honest: when you have people over, are you mostly hosting them or mostly performing for them? What is one way you could offer real hospitality, perhaps even to someone who could never repay it, in the next month?
- The inward drift. The Van Dixhoorns warn that a marriage without a shared outward purpose turns inward. Are you analyzing your relationship to death, or serving together? Name one shared service you could begin or restart.
- 100% responsibility. Think of your most recent conflict. What does it look like to take 100% of your share, without measuring the other's percentage? Try saying it out loud, in Scripture's labels, not the culture's.
- The long road. Picture your marriage in twenty or forty years. What kind of white-haired couple do you want to be? What one habit you start this year, by God's grace, would move you toward that?
- Looking back. Look back over the nine lessons. What is the single most important thing God has taught the two of you through this course? Tell each other, then tell your mentor.
For your mentor session
Two questions to bring to your meeting with the mentor, for the three of you to work through together. The mentor leads; the couple does the talking.
- On usefulness together The chapter closes the course by calling couples out of self-focus and into shared service, especially hospitality. Tell the mentor about one concrete way the two of you could begin serving together in the next month, using the different gifts each of you has. Let the mentor press you past "we should be more hospitable someday" into a name, a date, and a plan that you could actually keep.
- On the whole course This is the final lesson. Walk the mentor back through the nine chapters and tell him or her the one lesson that most changed your marriage, and the one lesson you most need to keep working on. End by praying together for the white-haired couple you hope to become, and ask the mentor to keep holding you accountable to the gospel that has carried you this far.
One practice for this week
Memorize 1 Peter 4:9 together: "Show hospitality to one another without grumbling." Then take on the shared-service project: together, choose one act of hospitality or service you will offer in the next month, decide who does what, put it on the calendar, and invite someone who could not pay you back. The marriage that grows in usefulness is the marriage that keeps looking outward, together, for the sake of Christ.
A question for your mentor. The course is ending, but the marriage is not. Talk with your mentor about what comes next: another pass through the book in a year, a regular check-in, or joining another couple just starting out. The gospel that shaped your marriage is the same gospel that will keep shaping it, all the way to the wedding supper of the Lamb.