What does the Bible say about an unhappy marriage?

Now I say as a husband, have I failed? What do I do if I have failed as a husband? Obviously the first thing to do is to get on my knees and confess my failure to the Lord in exactly the same way as I would confess any other failure. There is no difference. Let us be preserved from thinking that any failure in the home can be glossed over lightly because it does not reach the public eye. God sees us. We are under the eye of God. Any failure in the home must be confessed in exactly the same way as any public failure. And if the wife fails in any of her responsibilities she has exactly the same recourse for help and for blessing, to confess it. Then we must do something that we are not always prone to do, to confess it to each other that we might not fall into the same snare again and so avoid anything that would hinder the interests of the Lord. I believe with all my heart that Aquila and Priscilla would be such a couple, so concerned about doing what was right for the Lord that they would be harmoniously knitted together, united in the interests of the Lord. This is the attitude that governed their lives. What a delightful couple indeed.

Satan is very active today in the homes of the saints. I want to address myself to those who are husbands and wives because we cannot expect a true functioning of the assembly, either in worship or in testimony, if there are not proper conditions in the home, with both husband and wife fully committed to the interests of the Lord. Much of the weakness and declension that exists in the Christian testimony begins at home. Many of the problems that are in the homes are carried into the assembly and the conditions are sadly affected. Paul is saying ‘Husbands, wives, settle all your difficulties, get right with the Lord, get right with one another and find your true place in the assembly for the glory of Christ and for the glory of God'. Dear brethren, Satan is attacking the homes of the saints in perhaps a way he has never done before. In our part of the world in recent years we know of six Christian homes that have been affected by Satan, divorce has come in and how sad that is. Dear brethren, let us hear the warning, the enemy is attacking the homes of the saints. Divorce and breakdown in the family is a dishonour to the Lord. I cannot state it in stronger terms. Husbands and wives need to be devoted to the Lord and sink their differences, whatever they may be, forgive each other and live together in a way that is becoming to the Lord Jesus Christ and to God. What was happening at Corinth was a disgrace to the position that God had brought them into. Young men, young women, if you are looking to get married do not enter into it casually, do not trifle with each other's affections. Marriage is a matter of the greatest importance. Think about it, pray about it, and enter into it with all the solemnity that it requires because if this breaks down, again I say, it is a positive dishonour to the Lord's name. Do not think that because this kind of thing characterises the world that it can be allowed in the Christian circle; it must be refused.

The two principles, "seek the things above" and "put to death your members which are upon the earth" should also be displayed in the Christian family. God gave marriage before sin occurred but it has been affected by sin. Scripture shows us here the two divine principles for marriage, firstly the wives should take the place of subjection to their husbands, and the husbands should love their wives. To make clear what Paul says here I will tell you what the opposites are. The opposite of subjection to the husband is rebellion again him, and the opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. Unfortunately, I sometimes have to deal with difficulties in the marriages of believers, and I have witnessed that these two things, when wives are in rebellion in their own houses against their husbands and when husbands are indifferent to the needs of their wives, are destructive in Christian marriages. I know that the philosophies of this world differ but we do not want to be governed by these but by the thoughts of Christ.

Suppose the case of a husband and wife, who are not compatible in temperament. The husband sees clearly the duties that ought to mark a husband. The wife, on her part, sees clearly the duties that ought to mark a wife. They both set out to perform these duties. Outward acts are done with punctiliousness, but they lack warmth, life, reality, satisfaction. They are like synthetic foods that have all the ingredients and proportions of natural food, but lack the mysterious vitamins that carry with them life and vigour. Scientists have manufactured synthetic milk, and babies fed on it fade and wither, and would die, if the food were persisted in.

But if heart, love, affection that should mark the relationship of husband and wife, are present, then duties become pleasures, and punctiliousness vanishes in the warmth of responsive affection.

Ephesians 5 has told us, "Husbands, love your wives." Colossians 3:19 ads: "and be not bitter against them." Love ought only to increase as the years pass, not because of the worthiness of the object, but because of communion with God. The tenderness of proper care, forbearance, understanding, concern for the purest blessing of the wife, should characterize the husband consistently. Let each Christian husband challenge himself whether this is so, and if not, make no excuse, but obey the Word of God.

Next comes the word to the husbands. "Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them." v. 19. The wife needs not to be exhorted to love her husband; it is assumed that therein her affections are all right. But it is very possible the husband might allow anxiety and outward pressure of life so to occupy him that he might not take sufficient care of his wife or interest in her anxieties; accordingly, this is the exhortation for him. The wife is necessarily thrown upon her husband; she leaves father, mother, and all, and is cast peculiarly upon her husband; and if he be not watchful, he may fail in thoughtful love, in the attention of every day, not sufficiently guarding his temper, which seems to be what is meant by being "bitter." There should be this affection for the wife, this vigilance against the influence of circumstances; the outward world might often occasion irritation, and then the husband is liable to vent his spleen at home, especially on his wife. This is human nature and what we know too often happens; but it is not Christ; and here it is guarded against. "Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them." Let none presume to think it needless.

(4.) There is one thing the husband is taught to avoid: "Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them." (Col. 3:19.) It might be thought that if the 'love' were secured there would be no place left for the 'bitterness.' But is it so in the actual experience of life? Many a husband who truly loves his wife drops, in moments of unwatchfulness, when out of the presence of God, hasty words, which are as bitter as gall to a tender heart. The object of the warning seems thus to be to secure the constant exercise of a spirit of self-judgment, so that the husband may avoid everything that might fret or irritate the spirit of his wife. Bitterness-whatever the provocation-is to be carefully eschewed; and it will be done the more easily if he but remember his responsibility to love his wife, even as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it.

Such, then, are the divine requirements from the husband. We might perhaps shrink from them, if we did not remember that He who enjoins them is ever at hand to supply the needed grace, and to enable us to walk according to His word. The power for such a walk is found in the Holy Spirit who dwells within us; and inasmuch as He ever leads us to Christ, we shall find that the path thus indicated is one of peace and blessing, leading us into the enjoyment of a fellowship which adumbrates, by no means dimly, that between Christ and the church. As Christ to the church, so is the husband to the wife. To fulfil therefore the duties of a husband needs that Christ in His love to the church should ever be before the soul; and then, if the eye be but upon Christ, there will be transformation into His likeness (2 Cor. 3:18), and the consequent expression of Christ in the relationship which the husband sustains towards his wife.

Husbands are no less responsible. They are to love their wives. Let them make no excuse for not doing so! They are not told to enforce their wives' submission, but real love for the wife would encourage her submission. It is a sad necessity that requires the added words, "do not be bitter toward them" (v.19). Often a husband expects his wife to measure up to a certain standard, and if she does not, he may disobey Scripture by being bitter toward her. He may well ask himself, what standard does he himself measure up to? -- for it is not the standard of Scripture. His bitterness will certainly not encourage either her love or her submission to him. If he obeys Scripture by truly loving his wife and not being bitter toward her, this is the only way he will influence her attitude ;and actions for good. On the other hand, the obedience of the wife to Scripture in practicing a gracious submission of faith will go far in properly influencing her husband.

Favoured as the Jew of old was, compared with the heathen (no matter how civilized or refined as in Greece and Rome), Christianity gave an immense advance. But as one apostle, who had inwardly all knowledge beyond such as boasted, insisted that if he had not love, he was nothing, so here our apostle implies its necessity for the husband's "dwelling together" with his wife. Hence to love their wives has the first and great place in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. To fail in such love is a breach of the relationship, and unworthy of a Christian. Alienation is a practical denial of the husband's place. Faults there may be, haste, forgetfulness, shortcomings; but love as elsewhere, so here in a position so near and tender and peculiar, should have long patience and be kind; be not emulous any more than insolent and rash, nor be puffed up, nor behave in an unseemly way, neither quickly provoked nor imputing evil, and rejoice not at iniquity but rather with the truth. Love does not change nor weary; but we need not here say more. Only we must bear in mind, in thus "dwelling together," the need that it be "according to knowledge." The vanity of our knowing, which puffs up, is contrasted with love which builds up. And what a source of instruction is scripture for the difficulties of the home as well as of the way! Christ Himself, as the other apostle pointed out, is the standard.

But a few words follow which deserve every attention. The husband, as having the place of authority, is exposed to the danger of presumption and lack of consideration. Hence the force here of "awarding honour as to a weaker vessel — the female." The very fact that such is her nature as compared with his own is the ground of the Spirit's appeal to him who is given to be her protector. Has he never learnt his own weakness before God, and proved that in the sense of it by faith is his power through the grace of Christ? His therefore it is, never to despise, but to guide and cherish her and this in no suspicious spirit but the watchfulness of love, and the grace that pays her honour. But to apply this definitely to "allotting an honourable subsistence" to the wife, as Dr. Doddridge contended, has no more claim to be God's mind than his similar use of 1 Tim. 5:17 for the elders.

Because the human husband, even the believing one, is frequently very imperfect, and always somewhat imperfect, an even lengthier exhortation is addressed to him. In one word his duty is love. It is easy to see that if the husband yields to his wife the love which is her due, she will not have much difficulty in yielding to him the submission which is his due. Obviously the greater responsibility is placed upon the shoulders of the husband. He is to love, and she is to submit; but the initiative rests with him.