In my last article, I wrote to you about covenant and specifically about the covenant of marriage. Having a better understanding of the meaning of covenant and seeing how unalterable and unbreakable the marriage covenant was created to be, it’s not hard to spot the departure from God’s true intent that plagues marriages today. If you think about the way people view covenant today, one word comes to mind. Selfish. Most people are extremely concerned with their own personal profit or pleasure and they lack consideration for others. No doubt, there are a lot of people out there that sound like this verse:
Proverbs 30:15 The leech has two daughters — Give and Give! There are three things that are never satisfied, Four never say, “Enough!”:
The author of this proverb is speaking figuratively about people who are never satisfied. They just say “gimme, gimme, gimme!” And the common thread there is the ME.
Selfishness has distorted the way that society views covenant today. People think about how everything is affecting “me.” How can “I” gain from this relationship? How can this benefit “me?” What is it that “I” need that “I” am not getting? Look how “I” am having to live with this. Look at what “I” am going through. Look how everything is affecting “me” and you don’t understand what “I” am feeling and needing and not getting.
Now it’s pretty natural for any of us to be selfish. Come on…we’ve all done it. People do this without even realizing it. It’s just our nature. In fact, just wake up tomorrow morning and see how long it takes you to think one of those thoughts. But if we would just work on getting our thoughts off of ourselves, most of our relationship problems would go away. If we rally consider what we committed to in our marriage covenant it might help us in this regard.
Remember, we said in the “Enduring Commitment” article that if you listen to most marriage vows, you’ll probably hear something like this:
“Do you promise to love, comfort, honor and keep her? For better or for worse? Richer or poorer? In sickness and in health? Forsaking all others, do you promise to be faithful to her so long as you both may live?”
So, we see that there are two main ways husbands and wives vow to keep the covenant.
1. By making a commitment to love.
2. By making a commitment to be faithful.
When the Bible describes love in 1 Corinthians 13, it tells us in verses 4-5, Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
In Philippians 2:3 it says, Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.
A commitment to love is actually an act of unselfishness. Because love doesn’t seek it’s own and there is no selfish ambition in love, when we commit to love we are actually committing to be unselfish. The Bible even says there is a “lowliness of mind.” There can be a humility and a modest view that we have of our own importance and when we get to that place where we are getting our minds off of ourselves, we esteem others better than we are.
Now what about the commitment to be faithful? How does that relate to selfishness? Just like our commitment to love, our commitment to be faithful is an act of unselfishness. Notice how the vow asks, “Forsaking ALL others, do you promise to be faithful???” ALL others includes ourselves.
Proverbs 20:6 Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, But who can find a faithful man?
The author of this proverb suggests that someone who proclaims his own goodness, or has his mind on himself, would be opposite of a faithful man; that being selfish is being unfaithful. And conversely, that being unselfish is an act of being faithful. Remember, one reason that God puts such high importance on covenant is that it is an illustration of His faithfulness. And I can’t think of anyone more unselfish and faithful than our God! What Jesus did for us was THE ULTIMATE ACT OF UNSELFISHNESS! He sacrificed Himself for you and me!
And if we just receive His amazing, unselfish gift, we can position ourselves to be a great blessing to our spouse. We can be a blessing to our spouse with unselfish acts of giving. But you can’t give away something that you don’t have. If we allow our Lord to minister His love and faithfulness to us, we can give those same things away to our spouse. So it has to start with our relationship with the Lord Jesus. Then, instead of being a liability to our marriage we can be an asset. Instead of saying “what can I get out of this marriage”, we can say, “what can I give to this marriage?”
