A Seasoned Marriage Sweetened by the Gospel

Now I wonder if I had any idea of what I was promising. I was a starry-eyed 21-year-old gazing into the mesmerizingly blue eyes of my beautiful 19-year-old bride. We were young. We were in love. After several years of being high school and college sweethearts, we were convinced that we were ready to get married.

And on that warm first day of summer long ago, standing before 200 of our friends and family, I promised, “I, Larry, take you, Gladine, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”

The years have come and gone. Now we are in our “seasoned” years. Life is different than it was years ago. I’ve changed. My wife has changed. And so has our marriage.

We face different issues from the ones we faced as a young married couple, issues that we didn’t really think about much—if at all—in the early years of our journey together: How do we build healthy relationships with our adult kids? Have we saved enough money for our later years? And as we approach those later years, we come face-to-face with still other questions: How does the Lord want us to think about retirement? What would be a God-honoring response to the many losses that come with aging, such as the loss of physical health, the gradual depletion of our savings, and the loss of our ability to live independently? How do we prepare for the end of our life—or that of our spouse?

We want to face all these challenges together, but often we find ourselves facing challenges within our marriage itself. We may find ourselves asking, Where is the “fire” that characterized the first months and years of our marriage? The red-hot passion of the honeymoon era is now a nostalgic memory. How do we resist the marital monotony that seems to characterize the relationships of many couples in this season of life? And what about those less-than-desirable ruts we feel stuck in? This far into our marriage, is there any hope of positive change?

Sometimes the path ahead doesn’t look all that inviting. But the good news is that we don’t have to stay stuck. By God’s empowering grace, we can change. Our marriages can change. We can climb out of our marital ruts and face our challenges with grace-fueled hope. Strengthened by gospel hope, we can embrace God’s ultimate purpose for our marriages. God wants our marriages not only to survive, but to thrive as together we embrace the glorious mission of reflecting the greatest love story ever: the love that Christ has for his bride (Ephesians 5:32). God is for us. God is for our marriages. With the indwelling Holy Spirit’s help, we can commit to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18 esv). And as we continue to be transformed into the image of Christ as individual Christians and as a married couple, our reflection of Christ and his love for his bride should increasingly brighten, drawing people’s attention to our glorious Savior.

So, how does that work? How does the gospel give our seasoned marriages not only hope but also help—practical, life-changing, marriage-sweetening help? All too often our marriages seem stalemated as each partner lives with the disappointment that our spouse isn’t loving us sufficiently. “If my spouse just loved me as they ought,” we think, “then I would have sufficient love to give back to them.” And each spouse waits for the other to make the first move. But the gospel breaks the stalemate by reminding each of us that our love for our spouse is not dependent on our spouse’s love for us. The simple yet profound truth of the gospel is, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Even if our marriages don’t dramatically change overnight, most will experience notable progress as husbands and wives realize the centrality of the gospel in their marriage. We can always have more than enough love for our spouses, not because their love for us is perfect, but because God’s love for us is perfect.

The gospel truth is that God loves us not because we deserve his love, but because Jesus Christ stands in our place through his perfect life and sacrificial death. That gospel truth provides the power we need to love our spouses. We can find daily help in our seasoned marriages when we apply God’s generous grace in these ways:

• Because of the gospel, we love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
• Because of the gospel, we can accept our spouse as Christ has accepted us, not demanding certain changes to earn our acceptance (Romans 15:7).
• Because of the gospel, we can forgive our spouse’s sins against us as God in Christ forgave us (Ephesians 4:32). Forgiven sinners forgive sinners.
• Because of the gospel, we have experienced the “perfect patience” of Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 1:16) and can, in turn, live with our spouse “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with [our wife/husband] in love” (Ephesians 4:2).
• Because of the gospel, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no need for us to be defensive every time we detect imagined or even real criticism from our spouse. We are safe, not because of our own perceived goodness, but because of the grace found in Jesus Christ on our behalf.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is rich in life-giving hope and life-changing help as together we face the challenges that come in our seasoned marriages. Rather than feeling hopeless and helpless in seeing our spouse’s failures and our own failures, our eyes are drawn to the limitless, unfailing love that God has for us through Jesus Christ. We are generously loved by God and, therefore, even amid myriad changes, our marriages can experience the sweetness of the gospel. And that is good news indeed!

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