What Is The Key?

Introduction

Have you ever had days when you simply could not win? One fellow was driving home from work one evening and heard a radio announcer suggest to his listeners that they surprise their mates when they got home. "When you arrive for dinner," he said, "instead of growling something like 'When will dinner be ready?', why not surprise your wife with a little gift?" The man thought to himself that that sounded like a good idea, so he stopped along the way for a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy. Instead of driving into the garage, he went up to the front door and rang the bell. His wife opened the door, saw him standing there with a radiant smile, holding out his gifts to her and declared crankily to him, "Well, if this doesn't beat all. Listen, Buster, the baby has colic. The washing machine is    broken again. Junior and another boy got into a fight at school today and got expelled. Now, as I  might have expected, you make my day perfect by coming home drunk!"

Humorous, yet the story comes too close to home doesn't it? "When home is ruled according to God's Word," said Charles Haddon Spurgeon, "angels might be asked to stay with us, and they would not find themselves out of their element."

The trouble is that many homes are not governed by God's Word-even homes where the members are professing Christians-and the consequences are tragic. Instead of angels being guests in some homes, it seems that demons are the masters. Too many marriages end in the divorce court, and nobody knows how many husbands and wives are emotionally divorced even though they share the same address.

Turn to Ephesians 5:21-33.

If you were asked to reduce all the qualifications of a lasting marriage down to one irreducible minimum, one factor that is more important than any other, what would it be? Romance? Sex? Communication? Love? That one irreducible ingredient is commitment. This seems to no longer be the norm in our society today. There was a time when the family was buttressed by most of the forces of society. Everybody cooperated to keep the family strong. Society, laws, morality, schools all tended to make divorce and infidelity difficult and to encourage a healthy family. But times have changed. Family breakdown is fast reaching epidemic proportions in this country. I could give you many statistics, but it wouldn't help. We are all aware of the situation. It has touched you, your family. It has touched mine. Huge numbers of divorces occur annually, but many more are emotionally divorced and separated while legally married.

That makes commitment, which we identified as the single most important quality in marriage, even more important.

Commitment is that firm act of will on the part of husband and a wife who decide without any conditions or wavering that they are committed to each other for life.

In Mark 10:9 Jesus answered by reminding us, "Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." God's ideal is one man for one woman for life.

Husband and wife are to be unconditionally committed to each other for life. This is God's plan.

Persons can, with God's help, build a better marriage and a happier family based on genuine commitment. Commitment gives security and endurance to the relationship of marriage.

A happy and lasting marriage and family must be built by two people who through their commitment to each other have once and for all settled the questions of identity, loyalty, and fidelity and who are prepared, on the basis of their promises to each other, to provide a home in which both they and their children may enjoy stability, fulfillment, and love.

This commitment-based concept of marriage leads to several truths.

I. We Must Possess A Proper Understanding Of The Exact Nature Of Commitment

God has promised to lead us in important choices such as marriage, but finding the "perfect" mate doesn't in itself guarantee the marriage will be happy. There still must be deep, unconditional commitment of one to the other.

What is commitment...really? I believe it is love-God's kind. Some of you may have felt at the beginning that love is the most important element in marriage. I agree. The love of which I speak is commitment love.

Understanding love in this way explains why love and commitment are almost synonymous. That's how one can say that the one irreducible factor in a lasting marriage is commitment and at the same time love.

Agape is an attitude of unselfish concern for another person's welfare that can be deliberately and intentionally adopted. Agape is an act of will, whereby one person commits himself to another through thick or thin, regardless of how unlovable that person may be. Agape love is totally outward in its direction. It does not say, "I love you because I need you to gratify my needs." It says, "I love you and want the best for you whatever it costs me."

Agape means to submit one's own selfish desires to the needs and desires of the other. That's the kind of love that guarantees a lasting relationship. Turn to Ephesians 5:21. He began with the admonition that each submits to the other (Ephesians 5:21).

Does this suggest that the children tell the parents what to do, or that the masters obey the servants? Of course not. Submission has nothing to do with the order of authority, but rather governs the operation of authority, how it is given and how it is received. Often Jesus tried to teach His disciples not to throw their weight around, or seek to become great at somebody else's expense.

Unfortunately, they failed to learn the lesson, and even at the Last Supper they were arguing over who was the greatest. We are to esteem others "more important than ourselves". By nature, we want to promote ourselves, but the Holy Spirit enables us to submit ourselves.

As you study Paul's words to husbands and wives, remember that he was writing to believers. He was nowhere suggesting that women are inferior to men, or that all women must be in subjection to all men in every situation. The fact that he uses Christ and the church as his illustration is evidence that he has the Christian home in mind.

There is no guarantee that automatically comes with a choice of mates. Yes, it is true that many who are married probably shouldn't have married. There is no guarantee that comes with a choice of mates, but two people with faith in Christ and faith in each other, confident of God's leadership and committing themselves to each other, are able to face whatever is before them in their marriage.

II. True Commitment Is Strengthened By A Proper Understanding Of Marriage

God's reason for the family is to provide a place of warmth in a cold world, a place of love in a world of hatred, a place of stability...instruction...growth. Yet confusion reigns. This is because of our world's success in defining family.

Even extremists in the churches have distorted God's plan. The truth is that the Bible clearly distinguishes between masculinity and femininity and affirms those differences as good. "Male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27). The movement to insure a woman's right to full dignity and to the full use of her gifts and abilities is a proper movement. But the effort to erase the distinctions between the sexes is wrong. If we are going to be committed, we need to better understand God's wish.

The role of the woman in marriage is defined in Ephesians 5:22-24. It says, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord." When the Christian wife submits herself to Christ and lets Him be the  Lord of her life, she will have no difficulty submitting to her husband. This does not mean that she becomes a slave, for the husband is also to submit to Christ. And if both are living under the lordship of Christ, there can be only harmony. Headship is not dictatorship. "Each for the other, both for the Lord." The Christian husband and wife should pray together and spend time in the Word, so that they might know God's will for their individual lives and for their home. Most of the marital conflicts I have dealt with as a pastor have stemmed from failure of the husband and/or wife to submit to Christ, spend time in His Word, and seek to do His will each day.

This explains why a Christian should marry a Christian and not become "unequally yoked together" with an unbeliever (II Corinthians 6:14-18). If the Christian is submitted to Christ, he will not try to establish a home that disobeys the Word of God. Such a home invites civil war from the beginning. But something else is important. The Christian couple must be careful to submit to Christ's lordship even before they are married.

The role of the husband in marriage is also described in this passage from Ephesians 5:25-33. Paul had much more to say to the Christian husbands than to the wives. He set for them a very high standard: Love your wives "even as Christ also loved the church." Paul was lifting married love to the highest level possible, for he saw in the Christian home an illustration of the relationship between Christ and the church. God established marriage for many reasons. But in Ephesians 5, Paul indicated also a spiritual purpose in marriage, as the husband and wife experience with each other the submission and the love of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33).

If the husband makes Christ's love for the church the pattern for loving his wife, then he will love her sacrificially (Ephesians 5:25). Christ gave Himself for the church. So the husband, in love, gives himself for his wife. If a husband is submitted to Christ and filled with the Spirit, his sacrificial love will willingly pay a price that she might be able to serve Christ in the home and glorify Him.

The husband's love will also be a sanctifying love (Ephesians 5:26-27). The word sanctify means "to set apart." In the marriage ceremony, the husband is set apart to belong to the wife, and the wife is set apart to belong to the husband. Any interference with this God-given arrangement is sin. The marriage experience is one of constant growth when Christ is the Lord of the home. Love always enlarges and enriches, while selfishness does just the opposite.

The husband's love for his wife should be sacrificial and sanctifying, but it should also be satisfying (Ephesians 5:28-30). In the marriage relationship, the husband and wife become "one flesh." Therefore, whatever each does to the other, he does to himself of herself. It is a mutually satisfying experience. The man who loves his wife is actually loving his own body, since he and his wife are one flesh. As he loves her, he is nourishing her. How many people have confessed, "I am starved for love." There should be no starvation for love in the Christian home, for the husband and wife should so love each other that their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are met. If both are submitted to the Lord, and to each other, they will be so satisfied that they will not be tempted to look anywhere else for fulfillment.

Our Christian homes are to be pictures of Christ's relationship to His church. Each believer is a member of Christ's body, and each believer is to help nourish the body in love. We are one with

Christ. The church is His body and His bride, and the Christian home is a divinely ordained illustration of this relationship. This certainly makes marriage a serious matter.

Conclusion

In conclusion, let me stress the importance of this time we are spending on the family.

First of all it's more important than you've ever thought it was. To our society it's important because  the family precedes all other institutions of society in time, including the church. Before there was a church, a holy man or a holy book, there was marriage. The family outranks all other institutions in society in importance without any little exceptions. I think that the family's effectiveness, how well the family does its job ultimately, will be the key to the ability of the other institutions of society to function, including the church, because this basic unit of society which God has created is the place where   the people are developed that will either assure a continuation of society or the destruction of society. This is why commitment must be stressed. Young people who are looking forward to the experience of marriage need to understand that God created romantic love and sexual attraction, and both are good. But they need to know that the only basis for a lasting relationship is true commitment.

Couples who are already married and whose relationship is strained or broken need to understand that the basic ingredient in marriage is not romance or emotion but commitment. God can help you reestablish that foundation in your home if you will let Him.