Marriage Is Not About Compromise

On your wedding day, a well-meaning uncle probably gave you this terrible advice: “Marriage is all about compromise.”

Marriage is not about compromise. It’s about God.

The apostle Paul made clear that marriage is a picture of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). This idea is more radical than we often realize. Christ and the church are not merely examples for a thriving marriage, they are the purpose of marriage. Christ is the starting point, and marriage was designed as a picture of his love.

Jesus’s love is completely generous and unselfish. Compromise is about everyone giving and everyone getting equally. If marriage is about compromise, you’re going to spend your days wondering when it’s your turn to get everything you want. A mindset like this in marriage easily leads to spouses trying to figure out how to “get theirs.” Instead of fostering warmth and connection, compromise fosters cold calculation and scorekeeping.

But if marriage is about God, then we should have a totally different approach. Instead of looking for our turn to receive, we should reflect the heart of Jesus, denying ourselves for the good of our spouse.

Paul encouraged all Christians to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit” (Philippians 2:3). Nothing. We never seek our own way. Instead, just like Jesus, we are to “in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3–4). In every area of our lives, including marriage, we as people of the cross are on constant lookout for opportunities to give of ourselves.

As we reflect on the self-sacrificial love of Jesus on our behalf, we realize that the gospel enables us to totally reorient our thinking. Our lives are not about what we can get from others; rather, they are about knowing God and reflecting him to everyone in our lives—especially our spouses. As we walk in the ways of Christ, who “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8), we see that way of Christ is oriented toward self-sacrificial service. Marriage is a great opportunity to walk the narrow road of Christ as we die to ourselves.

A Christ-Centered Approach Changes Everything

Instead of living with a scorekeeping mentality about our spouse, running a tally of everything we’ve invested or contributed to our home or family relationships, humble, Christlike service in marriage will show up in the following ways:

• If we’re keeping score, we will want to ensure that our spouse does their share of the dishes. If we’re loving them like Jesus, we will joyfully bear the load.
• If we’re keeping score, we will measure the hours we’ve invested into home improvements or helping with homework against the time and attention our spouse has given to similar matters. This can lead to self-righteously believing that we’re being unfairly overburdened. The servant heart of Jesus, however, leads us to view our contributions to our home and family as a privilege and a way to care for what God has entrusted to us.
• If we’re keeping score, we will tend to justify our sin (for example, angry outbursts against our kids), by thinking about how much more than our spouse we’ve done that day and how we are justified to be at our wit’s end. If we instead consider how much Jesus has done for us, it will reshape our responses and help us rely on God for strength to be kind and patient even when we are tired and ready for rest.

If we’re keeping score, we will rush to “our part” of sex, or (if sex isn’t great for us right now), we’ll aim get it over with as quickly as possible. As we learn the joy of mutually blessing our spouse, however, we will remember that sexual intimacy is not about giving to get, but is instead an opportunity to display the self-forgetful love of Jesus to our spouse. In godly sex, we give of ourselves for the good and flourishing of our spouse and our marriage.

Marriage is a picture of Christ’s love for the church. Who gets to see this picture? Certainly our kids and neighbors will be impacted by the testimony of our relationship, but ultimately, the picture of Christlike love in our marriage is most clearly seen and experienced between spouses. In the private and intimate moments of your marriage, your spouse gets to catch glorious glimpses of grace that the rest of the world will never get to see. When you give of yourself in sex, your lovemaking proclaims the love of the Maker to your spouse. And that display—like the love of God itself—is beautiful.

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