Marriage

The Bible contains very few examples of good marriages. Go ahead: try to come up with a list of five. With Adam’s blaming, Sarah’s jealousy, Rebekah’s scheming, Jacob’s favoritism, and so on, we don’t find many pairings worth emulating. Okay, Priscilla and Aquila show up, but we have precious little information about them—other than the fact that they were together. Whether hosting a church, working with Paul, or tutoring Apollos, they were a team. But the data on other biblical marriages is either negative or nonexistent.

We find more of the same as we scan church history. Many prominent Christians were unmarried, and many others had spouses who were anonymous or nearly so. Yet here and there we find marriages where both partners are known to history. What can we learn from them?

These marriages seem to come in two varieties. Some follow the teamwork model, as presented by Priscilla and Aquila. Consider Ann and Adoniram Judson, among the first American missionaries sent overseas. They pioneered mission work in Burma and inspired many missionary couples to follow. A generation later, Catherine Booth was clearly a teammate of her husband, William, in founding the Salvation Army. Both of the Booths preached and led meetings. They also worked together in organizing the sort of relief efforts that the organization is still known for.

Other wives have attained fame for their strong and unique support of their famous husbands. Katharina von Bora, a former nun, married the reformer Martin Luther. Their marriage itself was a Protestant strike against Catholic tradition, but Katie was no trophy wife. Matching Martin’s fiery temperament, she brought some order to his chaotic life. In a different way, Sarah Edwards provided support for her husband, the brilliant scholar-preacher Jonathan Edwards. He drew from her deep faith and wisdom as well as her organizational ability. There are many other wives who surely deserve half the credit for the achievements of their well-known husbands, and yet they remain rather invisible to history.

Shouldn’t we consider both of these models “teamwork”? Whether the husband and wife step side by side into ministry, or whether one uses supportive gifts to bolster the other, they are serving God together. In our marriages, then, it’s not so important who gets the most attention, but how well God is served.

Again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 5:33