What is one way that our marriages can be strengthened?

Joel Beeke explains in this video that a husband is commanded to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The wife is commanded to respect her husband. One of the key things that we have lost today is that both a husband and a wife must give each other space by adhering to their own principles.

The husband should not be looking at the wife and say that she's not respecting him. Instead, he is to continue to love his wife, regardless of how the wife acts towards him. The same should be the case for the wife.

Ephesians 5:25-26 (NKJV) - "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word,"

The husband is particularly commanded to love his wife as Christ loves the church and the wife is commanded to respect and show submission to her husband the way the church does to Jesus Christ. One of the key things we've lost today that the Puritans believed in very strongly is that both husband and wife must give each other space by adhering to their own principles here. Their own principle. So the husband should not be looking at the wife and saying, ah you're not respecting me, you're not being submissive to me. He should mind his own business, the Puritans would say, and keep loving his wife.

That's his calling. So his calling isn't I'll love my wife as long as she's showing respect and submission, and vice versa with the wife as well. She shouldn't be looking at how her husband's treating her unless there's a case of severe abuse or something. But he should, she should be looking at her own duty no matter how her husband is treating her. And that principle that the Puritans had, if implemented in our day, I think in my 40 years of ministry, probably 98% of my counseling cases, if both people were following that principle, never even would have bothered to come to me.