Dear readers,
Today I’m excited to introduce you to Dr. Lee Young, who is a guest blogger this week. Pastor Lee recently released his book, The Sacred Union, which in my opinion is one of the best books on marriage I have ever read. That’s because it’s rooted in the real purpose of marriage—genuine agape love, the sort of perfect love God has for us. Pastor Lee’s real-world teaching on how to love our spouse with agape is transformative and authentic. Here, he reflects honestly on his own journey to get to where he is today as a pastor and a husband. I hope you’ll enjoy the blog and also consider buying his book, whether as a gift for a new couple or for you and your spouse, no matter how long you have been married. His book can be found here.
—Jessica Brodie
By Dr. Lee Young
“I want a divorce.”
She said this to me after yet another demonstration of my explosive anger. It was not the first time I had lost it with her, but this was the first time I’d heard these words.
Strangely, I was not devastated that she’d expressed a desire to end our marriage. Instead, my rage intensified all the more, outraged that she could say such a hurtful thing to me. Marriage embeds us in a strange world of swirling emotions that override logic intended to self-protect and inflict pain on those hurting us.
I went to our pastor to let him know that one of his parishioners was so wicked as to ask for a divorce. I somehow managed to blind myself to my part in the problem.
Thankfully, he saw through my words and called me out as the hypocrite I was, challenging me to get serious about the Word of God.
Thank God for pastors who are unafraid to tell the truth.
My deep dive into the Word of God revealed the nature of marriage and God’s purpose. My understanding of marriage, based on what I discovered in Scripture, revealed its culminating value and showed me why every marriage is worth fighting for.
There are different Greek words that English translators relegate to the word “love.” Philia is the love of friends. Storge is the love of family. Eros is the love of lovers. Agape is the love of God. The first three are part of the human nature, the sinful nature. Jesus taught that even pagans can love those who love them. Philia, storge, and eros are all conditional. This is evident in those relationships where God does not remain at the center. When a friend betrays us, we feel justified to pound them with ire. Yet, when Judas betrayed Jesus, Jesus called him “friend.”
We find the same dynamic in storge. Just because someone is family doesn’t mean the love between us will remain steadfast. We operate in a quid pro quo way. We treat them with love so long as they do the same. The Lord, however, is the Good Father who watches for the prodigal to return, and when he sees him coming, he runs to him, embraces him, and celebrates the return of the son who has been lost and is now found.
Perhaps the messiest of these three is eros. Love and relationships are characterized so well in the Real Wives reality shows, among many others. We fall in love and also out of love. Human romance is fickle, and divorce has become easy. Yet the husband of the church, Jesus—when his bride rejected him in adulterous sin—purchased the right to redeem her with his own blood. This is passion and the cross is the passion of Christ for his wayward wife, you and me.
Without Christ at the center, these three never measure up to God’s hope for our life. It is the love of God, agape, that sets a foundation that endures when these fail. Agape keeps marriages together through the crisis. Agape holds families together even when there is betrayal. Agape makes us friends that stick closer than a brother. The full measure of God’s love for us is set in agape but continues in all forms of love. And the marriage relationship is the only human relationship embodied with the power for us to grasp the full measure of God’s love.
God does allow for divorce when there is adultery. He also allows for a season of separation for the purpose of reconciliation. But God always presses us toward the highest potential of good. This is why he hates divorce. It facilitates two people settling for less than what he desires to give them.
God looked at the first man, Adam, and said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” God had made Adam for communion with himself. To say it was “not good” for Adam to be alone was not a statement of man’s loneliness but the impediment to communion presented by an isolated existence. Marriage was God’s answer to help the human race overcome the struggle to reunite with God after the fall of humankind. Marriage reveals the fullness of God.
Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus that they might have power through the Holy Spirit to grasp the full measure of God’s love because our understanding of his love draws us to him and all that comes with a relationship with Jesus Christ. Marriage is the revealing instrument of his love for mankind so long as we approach it with the understanding of God’s purpose in the institution of marriage.
The Bible tells us that without love we are nothing. And without the love of God, we are lost forever. There is no other relationship or institution so worthy of fighting for. It forces us to love beyond human capacity by seeking his love for us and letting it flow out of us.
And as we are drawn to God because he loved us first, the potential of love in marriage increases exponentially as we choose to love our spouse as God has loved us—the potential of a life with our spouse and God reaches far beyond anything we could ever imagine. Whatever state your marriage may exist today, it’s worth fighting for.
My pastor’s loving rebuke drove me to the Lord in a fresh way. The transformation was such that I left my career and entered the ministry to help other couples.
Next month, my wife and I will celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary, and we have never been more connected. Our love for one another continues to increase, as does our grasp of God’s love for us and our passion for him.
I can say with complete conviction that staying together has been well worth the fight.
The author of The Sacred Union, Dr. Lee Young is the lead pastor at CrossRoads Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. He loves his Lord, his wife, his kids, his church, and Bluebell Ice Cream. Before going into the ministry, he was a football coach, a Spanish teacher, and a horrible golfer. Now, he serves his church, rarely uses his Spanish, and still can’t play golf. Find his book here.
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