February 1st

God’s Road to a Happy Marriage

Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 1 Corinthians 7:3

It’s no secret that, as a nation, we are up to our eyeballs in debt.

Yet here in our verse today, Paul would show us a debt we owe that perhaps we never knew we had. This debt is a debt of love that we owe to our spouse, and it’s what the word af-

fection from our verse really means. This isn’t some smoochie kiss; it is D-E-B-T debt!

So Paul has the audacity to talk to us about debt. Husbands, give your wives the debt you owe them. Wives, give your husbands the debt you owe them. No one is left out of this arrangement. But so often it seems we get into our marriages with a you-owe-me attitude when what we really need is to get into marriage with an I-owe-you attitude.

Maybe this sounds crazy to some of you, but I really think this is an awesome thing. And Paul would write something in Romans 13 that helps us understand even more. He says, Owe no one anything except to love one another. You know, right now as a nation and many of us as individuals, we owe people everything except love. We owe our house, our car, our education, our entertainment systems, our computers, and thousands of dollars worth of little stuff put on credit cards. We have a list of creditors a mile long, but in all that debt, do we see our debt of love?

And if we owe a debt of love to everyone, then how much more do we owe our spouse? The point here is that love is a debt that is worth having. This should be your biggest fight in marriage, the fight of who can out-give the other in this debt of love.

I mean, listen, what is the proof of your love? Is it what you get? No, of course not. The proof of your love is what you give. For God so loved the world that He gave, right?

This means selfless service, laying our lives down for one another just as Christ came and redeemed His bride by laying His life down for us.

This is God’s road to a happy marriage, and there is nothing greater in the whole world.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You for loving me so much that You gave! If that’s what Your love is like, then that’s what my love should be like, too. Please fill me with Your love so that I can love my spouse as You have loved me!

Amen