Marriage books will give you dozens of practical techniques. But is that the way the Bible teaches us? What are the most important matters? What are the fundamental indispensable things that make for a good marriage?

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. We're here today to talk about marriage, a happy marriage, and what it means to have a happy marriage, what it takes to have a happy marriage. And we're here to say if you don't have these, then you probably won't have a happy marriage. All of us, I think, want happy marriages.

So, Jason, here we go. We're talking about marriage again. Wonderful. So, here's an opening shot. Happiness is a fruit, not the root.

Meaning, if you prioritize your happiness in marriage, it really is a recipe for misery. A lot of people prioritize happiness and end up miserable. Why is that? Well, happiness is supposed to be an output of seeking the Lord. So we don't seek happiness in marriage, even though we want happiness in marriage, we seek the Lord and we seek to grow together in the Lord and happiness is a fruit of that.

So I think we're going to talk about some of those roots that produce happiness and marriage. But you just have to know if happiness is the end game to you, you're likely to end up at misery. Right. You're chasing the wrong thing. So Let's talk about these.

The first should be obvious, Christ. A good marriage has Christ at home in the heart. And that really is the root, the critical root. And we're going to talk about more roots, but this is so critical. And I'm reminded of J.R.

Miller's writing on the secrets of a happy home. And he writes this, What are the secrets? What are some of the secrets of a happy home life? The answer might be given in one word, Christ. Christ at the marriage altar, Christ on the bridal journey, Christ when the new home is set up, Christ when the baby is born, Christ when a child dies, Christ in the pinching times, Christ in the days aplenty, Christ in the nursery, in the kitchen, in the parlor, Christ in the toil and in the rest, Christ all along the years, Christ when the wedded pair walk toward the sunset gates, Christ in the sad hour when farewells are spoken, and one goes before the other, stays bearing the unshared grief.

Christ is the secret of a happy home. So there's the root, Christ, the root that produces health and happiness in marriage. There is no bypassing that to get to the fruit. Yeah, Becoming like Christ is the secret of a happy marriage. Walk in a manner worthy of the one who saved you, says Ephesians 4, verse 1.

Walking after Christ, following Him, becoming like Him. It's the silver bullet for everything in a marriage. Right. You have Ephesians 5 as the really famous marriage passage where we think about the husband representing, reflecting the Lord Jesus Christ and the wife reflecting the church and the church's love and honor for Christ. But you could back up into Ephesians 4, 2, which describes mature Christian character, some things like not letting the anger, not letting the sun go down on your anger, being careful in your speech.

Those things are the calling of every Christian, not just marriage partners, but I think that the point is that marriage partners ought to act like Christians. Becoming like Christ takes care of everything in a marriage relationship. Husbands love your wives as also Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. If a husband understands who he is, he can handle everything. He responds to his wife like Christ would respond to her.

And that's one of the most important things. Christ at the center of the heart is everything for the happiness of a marriage. It lifts us out of selfish self-interest into something larger than that, and it actually serves your interests the best. It's ironic. Yeah.

When Christ is the center of everything, you are not. And so your greatest interest is glorifying Him. So in some ways, it doesn't really matter what happens to you or what people say to you. What matters to you is that you respond like the Lord Jesus. Yeah.

You know, when you have two marriage partners both pursuing Christ, They're actually growing together even without that being the explicit pursuit. They are growing together as they grow in Christ-likeness. And let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you. When the Word of Christ dwells richly, you'll know what to say because you have something good in your mind to share. You know, communication problems are legendary in marriages, But if your mind is filled up with the knowledge of Christ, then you'll know how to talk.

He is full of grace and truth. He says, come to me. I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. That's the life of Christ in a marriage. Amen to that.

So the secret of a happy marriage is Christ in the heart. You can talk about all the techniques that the Bible gives you for marriage, but this one thing is the thing. You can get submission and authority right in marriage, but all those things pale in significance to this one thing, because this one thing makes all the other things happen. And that's why you began this by saying we're talking about the root and the fruit that comes from it. So a second thing that's really critical that the Bible makes very clear is that the secret of a happy marriage is the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Christ is a person and the Holy Spirit is a person. The Holy Spirit is not a force acting upon you. The Holy Spirit is a person who speaks, and the Holy Spirit is a person who leads. The Holy Spirit is a person who teaches you. So the filling of the Holy Spirit is critical in a marriage.

And we understand this particularly from Ephesians 5 18 where the Apostle says, do not be drunk with wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit." And then he begins to enumerate the fruit of the Spirit. You begin speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. You start talking differently. And you also submit to one another in the way that we all submit to one another, but then a husband, a wife submits to her husband specifically, and then a husband loves his wife in Ephesians 5, And then in Ephesians 6, children honor and obey their parents, and fathers don't exasperate their children. These are manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

So this section in Ephesians is called the family life codes. And the heart of the family life codes isn't get your act together and submit. The heart of the family life code is be filled with the Holy Spirit, and you'll have a spirit of submission. Be filled with the Holy Spirit and you'll love your wife. So the filling of the Holy Spirit is the heart of the matter.

Pete The Holy Spirit is anything but passive in the life of a believer. The exact opposite of passive has been commissioned as undertaking the work to help the believer make progress in Christlikeness. What does that look like? It looks like the fruits of the Spirit, the products of the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Okay, which marriage doesn't need those things? Which marriage isn't healthy and happy when it's filled with those things? You just look at those one by one and say, how does a marriage benefit from that? And the answers are so obvious. Yeah.

And the apostle Paul says, don't grieve that spirit, don't quench that spirit, don't quench love and joy and peace and patience. Don't quench it. You know, fulfill it. And you know, the language that the apostle uses when he says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit, he's actually talking about disappointing. He's talking about pushing something away that's so valuable.

The Holy Spirit is the sweetest thing for a marriage. And if we can be filled with the Holy Spirit, we can have a happy marriage, so far as it depends on us. And just that admonition, do not quench the spirit. The implication of that is, you can quench the spirit. You can do things that offend the spirit and cause him to back away from the work and producing those good fruits that your marriage needs.

So don't do that. Let the Spirit run uninhibited. Don't offend Him to cause Him to withdraw from His work. Yeah, and also that list of the fruit of the Spirit, it's like a litmus test. It helps you to understand how you're doing.

Right. You know, in any situation you can ask, is this love? Is this joy? Is this peace? Is this patience?

Is it kindness? Is it goodness? Is it faithfulness? Is it gentleness? Is it self-control?

And you can look at each one of those things on the list and ask, am I growing in this? And if the answer across a number of those is no, I really don't see any growth in those. You can know that you are grieving and quenching the spirit, and then that puts you on the hunt down to find the culprit. Yeah. Those things help you understand what's going on in your marriage, and it's so critical.

The filling of the Holy Spirit along with the centrality of the likeness of Christ are the most important things in a marriage. And they're very similar, actually, because the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ. So, Scott, you've named two things that lead to health and happiness in marriage. One was Christ, two was the Holy Spirit. You haven't given us any life hacks yet.

Any life hacks? Life hacks. So you walk into the Christian bookstore and there's a wall of marriage counseling books. And there's some good, bad, and ugly among those, but They're often filled with techniques to help you get out of hot water, etc. Techniques for problems in communication and things like that.

Those all have their place, those can all be helpful, but if you skip past these fundamental things, like having Christ as the center of your marriage, like fueling and fanning the work of the Holy Spirit in your life and settle for life hacks, techniques to sort of get you out of trouble when you're in conflict. I mean, what a poor replacement. Yeah, you don't wanna be learning your spouse's love language. You wanna be learning God's love language. There are all these alternative things that the marriage books present.

God tells us everything we need, becoming like Christ, being filled with the Holy Spirit. And the apostle says that we are a fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved. Yeah. So I think we would say to the extent that this technique or that technique helps with something that's going on in your marriage, more power to you, but don't skip past these more fundamental things because they're actually what leads to health and happiness in your marriage. Yeah.

Aromas are wonderful things. They make you say, ah. You know, God really does desire happy marriages. And you have these critical principles. Now, here's another one.

And This next one really is an extension. It's an implication of the first two. And that is that a happy marriage happens when you realize that you are not your own. In other words, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and you are not your own. You are bought with a price.

But when it comes to marriage, you enter into an institution. Like you escape singleness, you escape your home, and you enter into an institution called marriage, and it's a holy institution, it's the institution that he loves. But you're entering into somebody else's institution. It's God's institution, and He let you in there, and you just can't do whatever you want in His institution. It's kind of like when you go over to somebody's house.

Your kids, they cannot be free to run through all the bedrooms, climb on the furniture, open up the drawers, and yell and run through the house. They're not in their house. They're in somebody else's house. They're in somebody else's jurisdiction, and they have to behave themselves. And it's the same way in a marriage.

You have to behave yourself in a marriage. So Scott, here's a text that I think fits with that. It's Peter's counsel on marriage out of 1 Peter 3, verse 7, and it's counsel to husbands. Peter says, husbands likewise dwell with them, dwell with wives, with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers may not be hindered." So wow, there's a lot to say about that. But let's just start with the phrase, heirs together of the grace of life.

You didn't give yourself that life and she didn't give herself that life. You're heirs together, you're both recipients of a life by God and then God gave you a life together. And you ought to live that way, that you're living out a gift and He's given you a life together. That's such a wonderful thing. I'm reminded of the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism, of what is your only comfort in life and death?

And The answer is that I am not my own but belong body and soul and life and death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. You just, you have to know that your only comfort in this world is that you're not your own. We are deceived, we think that living our own way is what makes us happy, and it's not true. That we are not our own, that we have a walking agenda that comes from God, that's really the source of happiness. You know what you're supposed to do because God told you how to function in that institution that He loves, that's actually designed to proclaim how good He is, how great His love is.

Everything in marriage is designed to proclaim how wonderful His love is. Yeah. Just to return to 1 Peter 3, 7 for a minute, it fixes a husband's attentions on the blessing and benefit of his wife. He is to live with her with understanding. He's to think about how she thinks about things and to consider how she thinks about things, her perspective on things, and actually to give her honor.

So you think, well, the head is the honored member of the house. That's not what Peter says. Peter says the head actually honors the wife as the weaker vessel. He's to give her honor. Yeah, and actually, you know, husbands are commanded to honor their wives.

You know what that means? That there are many times that husbands should submit to their wives. Because when you honor someone, you put yourself in a second place. You do what they want you to do. That's what love does.

And the whole idea of submission and authority of marriage is often so misconstrued and misunderstood, authority in marriage doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want to do. True. Authority in marriage is that you get to do what Jesus Christ wants to do toward that woman, And you're going to honor her. In Ephesians 5, the husband gives his life away for his wife. So where's the authority in that?

Well, that's the kind of authority that Jesus Christ exercised. He gave Himself up for us. And so, you know, the heart of a happy marriage, it is Christ, it is the filling of the Holy Spirit, and it is recognizing that you're not your own, and that you're living in an institution that He created, and you ought to behave in his institution. Yeah, wonderful. I've got a verse here from Genesis chapter 2, verse 18, and a very familiar verse, and the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

I will make him a helper comparable to him." So God gives us marriage for companionship. It's not good to be alone. Most people aren't built and made to be alone. There's a minority of people who have the gift of singleness, but most don't. Most people, it's not good for them to be alone, and so God gives them a lifetime companion.

Companionship should be a rigorous, vigorous, wonderful part of marriage. It goes beyond just laughing together and having fun together, but surely it includes laughing together and having fun together. I think we want a heaping dose of both of those. God gave you a person to laugh with and have fun with. It's part of having this thing that wasn't good, you being alone, removed from you, it gives you somebody to share life with.

And then you're given a helper. So there's a co-laboring. God wants marriages to have objectives, things to be accomplished, things to be done, ground to be taken. And I think of that sort of like a canoe, if you've ever spent any time in a canoe. When there's forward motion, there's a level of stability.

When that canoe stops, you are seconds away from being very wet. Your marriage canoe ought to be moving forward to have the stability that comes along with that forward progress. Amen. That is so good. It's possible to have a happy marriage in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's possible to respond like Christ. We don't always do that, but it is possible. And so the Lord gives us really a beautiful vision for what could be, but it's all found in Him and in our submission to Him. So Let's go have a happy marriage. Amen.

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