Beyond the Battle, Finding Identity in Christ in an Oversexualized WorldExemplo

Most people would define love as sacrificing yourself for another, putting someone else above yourself. The Bible tells us repeatedly to do this. It even tells us that the very definition of love is that it is not self-seeking (1 Corinthians 13:5). We wax eloquent about this in our marriage vows, yet we are often taught the opposite when we look for help on having a happy and fulfilling marriage.

We give lip service to loving selflessness and sacrifice as the foundation of marriage, but in practice we try to coerce our spouses to do what we want. The premise of some of the popular marriage books, seminars, and counseling sessions available today is the idea of reciprocation. Your marriage doesn’t feel good, and you want it to be better, so the way to make your marriage feel better is to get your spouse to do what you want. And the best way to get your spouse to do what you want is to learn how to do what they want. I-will-scratch-your-back-if-you-will-scratch-mine. 

It’s rarely put this explicitly, but that’s the message I embraced while working through the difficult years of my marriage. Sadly, it encouraged my selfish mindset instead of helping to reverse it.

I’m easily motivated to have my desires met, and let’s face it, marriage can be frustrating when your desires aren’t met. We all act from mixed motives, and it is a relatively short step from showing your spouse love for their own sake to manipulating them into doing what you want.

Can you see how easy it is for our sin natures to hijack the back-scratching strategy? If a strategy creates or is fueled by entitlement, it’s only going to set us up for failure. It’s the wrong foundation. Entitlement is a predator we cannot escape if we continue to feed it and negotiate with it.

The essential flaw of the reciprocation strategy is that it caters to our sinful, selfish nature instead of working against it. It starts with the premise, “I deserve to have my spouse love me in the way I desire.” So every act of love we show them is not actually an act of love but an act of selfishness. Like depositing quarters into an arcade game or a vending machine, our love investments toward them are merely transactional means to an end: our satisfaction.

We believe we deserve to feel good at any cost, and this becomes the primary motivation for everything we do.

When we are counseled to show love to our spouses in the hope that they will reciprocate, our sin nature immediately builds a scoreboard. And this scoreboard eventually spawns self-righteousness. I’ve done my part, why isn’t my spouse doing theirs? I’m filling them up, but I still feel empty. Why are my needs still unmet?

Judging our marriages by the reciprocation scoreboard will leave us empty, frustrated, and wanting. It starts up a treadmill we can never climb off. By contrast, the gospel Jesus offers us turns this strategy upside-down and reveals where we will find lasting freedom and joy.

Questions for Married People:

1. Have you ever built a scoreboard in your marriage after reading a marriage book or attending marriage counseling? In what areas were you keeping score?

2. Today’s Bible readings allude to self-righteousness. How would you define self-righteousness? Have you ever been self-righteous in your marriage? (Be careful. Answering no is more than likely a self-righteous answer!)

3. God’s desire is not for either spouse to be abused or cheated on. Where is the line between being abused and simply not getting our desires and expectations met?

Questions for Singles:

1. In what ways are you allowing your dating relationships to condition you to believe that love is all about getting your desires met?

2. How does today’s reading give you pause about possibly getting married someday? Ask a married person you’re close with to help you brainstorm how your boyfriend or girlfriend (or fiancée) might change in the way he or she treats you once you are married. Are you prepared to handle these changes and still love him or her selflessly?

3. What scoreboard do you keep track of with God? What do you feel he owes you? 

Prayer for the Day: God, break down the scoreboards I’ve built in my marriage and the scoreboard I’ve built with you in my singleness. Break down the scoreboards I use to compare myself with others. Break down my self-righteousness. Let me see that only you are righteous and that in my sin, I deserve nothing other than judgment. Thank you for all of the gifts of mercy you have given me.