The Meaning of the Text: Marriage Is Honorable
What Saint Paul’s particular purpose was in weaving a solemn praise of marriage between the fourth and sixth verses of this chapter, verses of a different character from those around them, may seem questionable to a reader who does not attend to the circumstances of the times and the persons involved. Yet the Apostle’s plan is orderly and straightforward. Having in the previous chapter set out the doctrine of justification, both its matter and form, and having built on that foundation the great exhortation to believe and to live by faith, he goes on in the chapter before this one to urge obedience and holiness in general (Chapter 12). In this thirteenth chapter he moves to particulars, giving instances of specific and personal duties of Christian practice.
But why should the Apostle treat this subject of marriage as weighty as the rest, equal to the other doctrines handled here? I do not think it came merely from some notion floating in his mind alongside others and mentioned in passing, but rather from some real and pressing occasion. I will propose what seems to me the truth. At the time this Epistle was written, two kinds of practice were common, and they moved in opposite directions: one was heathenish profaneness, the other Jewish superstition. The heathen thought plain fornication no sin at all (as their common practice showed), and adultery itself none of the greatest sins. They dismissed every warning of God’s wrath and judgment against either, and slept securely in the practice of both. The Jew, at the opposite extreme, came in with his superstition, thinking there was no way to check this impiety except by maintaining a flat contrary to it, namely, that marriage itself is unlawful.
Paul himself rebukes such false teachers for “forbidding to marry,” that is, for opposing God’s own ordinance, given for the safeguard of chastity (1 Tim 4:3). This resembles the Papists of our own day, many of whose positions amount to nothing but opposing one error with a far worse one. Because they see that men’s lives bear little fruit of good works, they have no way to spur men toward well-doing except by the false doctrine that works are meritorious. Likewise, finding fault with men’s reluctance to mortify the flesh, they devise, as a matter of policy, penances God never ordained: whipping themselves with cords set with needles and sharp points, standing naked to the chin in cold water, fasting from all meat, going barefoot on pilgrimage, or renouncing the world, selling all, and living in a cloister.
This mystery of iniquity was already at work among the superstitious Jews and false teachers, who found no way to calm the flame except by smothering the fire entirely. So, to counter heathen contempt of marriage through whoredom, or its corruption through adultery, they claimed that no marriage or bodily union at all was permitted to Christians, a remedy far worse than the disease, as if the work of devils (adultery) could be overthrown by the doctrine of devils, which is the rejection of marriage (1 Tim 4:1–3). We have seen that damming up this stream has, in every age, only doubled the force of every kind of uncleanness.
Here, then, the Apostle sets himself against both extremes. First, against the superstition of the Jew, he says, “Marriage is honourable,” and therefore it is an ungodly thing to abolish this ordinance. “And the bed is undefiled”: there is no need to make ourselves eunuchs in order to avoid unchastity. And on the other side, against the heathen, or those newly converted from pagan profaneness, he adds, “But whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” That is: let no man excuse his own adultery or filthiness under the pretext that bodily union itself is lawful.
For whether men go to common harlots and defile virgins openly, as whoremongers, or work more secretly, hiding their sin under the cover of marriage, though for a time they may sin without fear or check, they must know that the God of marriage and purity will one day sit in judgment on them in person, and show his hatred of such ways by punishing them, whether great or small, high or low, princes or peasants. As once Latimer, that holy martyr, wrote this very text as a motto on a handkerchief wrapped around a book and presented to a king: “Fornicatores et Adulteros judicabit Dominus” (“Fornicators and adulterers God will judge”).
The words, then, contain a contrast that divides into two truths, an assertion and a warning. In both, something must be understood as implied to complete the sense. The assertion itself is twofold: one part concerns the ordinance itself, “Marriage is honourable”; the other concerns its use, “And the bed is undefiled” (reading the text this way fits both wording and sense). The second truth, the warning, also divides into two parts: the threat itself, and its object. The threat is against those who corrupt marriage: “God will judge them.” The object is twofold: first, fornicators, those who mix unlawfully with the unmarried, whether harlots or virgins, making them whores or supporting them in that trade; and second, adulterers, who, though either party to the marriage causes the adultery, nevertheless being married themselves, join with other men’s wives to conceal their wrongdoing and its consequence, bastardy. Both, the one open and manifest, the other subtle and hidden, will be judged by God himself.
The sense implied but not written out runs like this: “Marriage is honourable, the bed is undefiled, and blessing rests on all who preserve it so. But whoremongers and adulterers are dishonourable and corrupt, and God will curse and punish them.” I will go through both parts, God helping me, beginning with the first.
“Marriage is honourable,” and that for four reasons: first, in the persons who make it up; second, in its nature; third, in its use; fourth, in its sacred quality.
As for the persons who make it up, a marriage is best when both its parts are excellent, the wife and the husband alike, each a precious piece. Of the wife, Scripture gives many testimonies to her honor. She is called “the gift of God.” It is the Holy Spirit’s way to name excellent things after God, “the mountain of God,” “the city of God,” “the house of God,” “the garden of God,” because excellence cannot belong to anything base. God’s greatness gives no common gifts, so a wife is no common blessing. She is God’s own woman: not only made by God as his creature (though by sin she lost both her own honor and her husband’s as well), but remade by God’s grace into a better image than the one she lost, and so honorable by a second creation, restored to man even better than she was first given to him in paradise.
In this way she becomes a help instead of a snare, a true gift of God, an excellent creature, one for whom a man may bless God his whole life long (Prov 19:14).
This, I say, is the first and chief ground of her honor. But it is not all. She is called the crown of her husband, both by Solomon, who uses that very word, and by Saint Paul, who calls her his glory, though before she had been his utter shame. Crowns, as we know, are precious and honorable things, fit to adorn the highest, emperors, kings, and princes. Crowns are made of the purest gold, set with the costliest pearls, worked with the finest craftsmanship. So too her price is said to be far above rubies. Indeed, Wisdom herself and a good wife are described in strikingly similar terms: no jewel compares to her, she is worth more than silver, even more than the finest gold. Happy is the man on whose head such a crown is set, to whom heaven has given such a gift.
Marriage comes from God, even in humanity’s original innocence, and he still orders it today: “God setteth the solitary in families” (Ps 68:6; Prov 12:4; Prov 31:10).
The other party is the man. We know that man especially bears the image of God, and for that reason is the wife’s head. Though by her sin he too lost his honor, yet if he is a good man, he is a man of understanding and of an excellent spirit, better even than his neighbor. He is no longer a Reuben, whose dignity is forfeited, but like Nebuchadnezzar, restored to his former glory, indeed to a greater one, or like Job, whose latter life exceeded his former, in whom the majesty, authority, and wisdom of God shine forth. If, then, both members of this union are so honorable, what must the whole be? If each is so precious, what is their union together? If a ring alone is valuable, what is it set with a still richer pearl? As when a prince, heir to a crown, marries a dowager princess, how glorious is their union, how honorable their coming together?
This may serve for the first of the four reasons (1 Cor 11:7; Prov 17:27; Gen 49:3; Dan 4:34; Job 42:12).
But lest anyone should object that the text speaks not of those who make marriage honorable, but says that marriage itself, as an ordinance, is honorable, let us turn to the nature and kind of marriage itself. The Greek word used here is the same one used in 2 Peter 1:4, and could equally be translated precious, or of worth and value, a costly thing. This fits marriage well (2 Pet 1:2).
Why? Because it is precious in its very nature (2 Pet 1:1). A prince is a precious thing in himself. “You are worth ten thousand of us,” the people say to David, apart from any other consideration; he is the delight of his subjects, an object of natural esteem and contentment (2 Sam 18:3). The light of the sun, considered apart from its usefulness, a pearl, gold, or skill in the arts, all carry a peculiar splendor and nobility in their very nature, and plainly exceed other things. So marriage, in its nature, is a precious ordinance, whatever unjust slanders Popery has cast on it by comparing it unfavorably to virginity. How men corrupt it by their sin is not the question, for a crown can be thrown into the dirt without ceasing to be a crown. The question is what marriage is in itself.
I am not speaking now of how general consent and opinion have set its worth, graced it with privileges, disgraced single life (which I do not endorse), or granted marriage immunities far above it in both war and peace, as Roman law’s privilege for fathers of three sons shows. I am speaking of God’s own institution of it. True honor is honor conferred by a King, one who himself devised the thing honored, and marriage was not given merely as a relief for fallen man, but as an addition of perfection to his creation before sin ever entered (Gen 1:28; Gen 2:18). Consider its order: all the other creatures were made first, to welcome and grace their lord and lady, like a guard of heaven ushering them into paradise. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit consented together to make man, and did not cease creating until the woman too was made.
More than this, the Lord Jesus himself, though he had no need of it, chose to honor marriage by being born the son of a married virgin and being counted Joseph’s son. Not to mention the honor he showed it when he chose to perform his first miracle at a wedding (John 2:5). Now, what a God of purity ordains by an eternal decree of purity, in a state of purity, cannot help but bear an engraved mark of preciousness and honor. So much for the second point.
The third respect gives marriage even greater honor. We say something has both beauty and worth when it contains sweetness and goodness, price and use, together. Why? Because the pure luster of a pearl alone would make it precious, even if it had no useful quality at all. Marriage, then, is honorable also for its use. If the sun is excellent for its purity, how much more for its influence and life-giving power, the very warmth and growth of creatures? What would the world be but a dungeon without it? And what would marriage be but emptiness and vanity without its usefulness? If light is precious for its purity, how much more for the useful direction it gives to the world’s daily work? If a prince is honorable for his nobility, how much more for his use, being a father to his people, ruling them in godliness and honesty, and feeding them in Jacob and Israel?
Usefulness is the varnish and luster of honor, grounding and establishing it, like colors set in oil.
What, then, equals marriage for the being or well-being of life? I mean its being, its ornament, and its defense. It is the support of mutual contentment, the aid of nature, the perfection of health, wealth, beauty, learning, honor, and experience, at every stage of life, youth, manhood, and old age, none of which is sweet where marriage does not supply what is lacking. It serves not only the necessity of bearing children (for how can warmth come to one alone, when two lying together share warmth?), but also the relief of those past that age, providing for the safety of families and the comfort of life.
Marriage is the preservative of chastity, the seminary of the commonwealth, the seed-plot of the church, the pillar (under God) of the world, the right hand of providence, the supporter of laws, states, orders, offices, gifts and services: the glory of peace, the sinews of war, the maintenance of policy, the life of the dead, the solace of the living, the ambition of virginity, the foundation of countries, cities, universities, the succession of families, crowns and kingdoms; yes, besides giving these their being, it is also their well-being, and whatever is excellent in them, or in anything else, depends in some way on the very furniture of heaven itself.
Fourth, it is also honorable for its solemn sacredness. I do not mean spiritualness by this, for I know it is a civil ordinance. Though for the sake of better witness our marriages are completed in churches, marriage properly speaking is no sacrament. What I mean is that God has generally planted a reverent regard for it in mankind, and set a deep awe of it in our minds, as all the laws that have so strictly upheld its standing testify. But especially I mean the divine sanction by which pure marriage is blessed, and by which the Lord threatens to dishonor and destroy all who dare defile and dishonor it. Whoever defiles the temple of God by polluting this ordinance, God will also destroy (1 Cor 3:17).
The anointing of a king, though not properly a spiritual act, is sacred, and his consecration is an act of solemn and high reverence, binding the subject in conscience to all due service to his lord (Rom 13:5). “Touch not mine anointed,” God says, “and do my prophets no harm” (Ps 105:15). And so David, trembling at Abishai’s bloody proposal to kill Saul, though Saul was a tyrant, said, “God forbid that I should lay my hand upon the Lord’s anointed” (1 Sam 26:9), lest God should lay his hand on him in vengeance. Marriage is just as sacred a thing. Not only in the jealousy of a wronged husband, whose heart cannot be pacified with any gift where such violation has occurred, which shows how deeply men feel the injustice (Prov 6:34); nor only in the punishments human laws inflict for it, some of which make the wronged party judge, jury, and executioner all at once.
But especially in the just hand of the God of marriage, going out against all who offend against chastity, which ought to be kept safe in this sacred vessel, and against not only the offender himself but his name and his descendants. As the text itself adds, and as we shall pursue at the end of this discourse: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Sum up, then, all these respects together, and conclude: if marriage is so solemn and precious in its parts, its nature, its use, and its sacredness, then it is doubtless true, both in nature and in use, that marriage is honourable, and the bed undefiled. So much for the opening of this first point. Now I come to the application.
Application: First, then, is marriage so honorable? Then woe and terror to all who dare violate it, whether directly or indirectly, by doctrine or practice, openly or in secret, by thought, word, or deed. Whoever they are, Epicures, Papists, Protestants, unmarried or married, whoever defaces marriage, whether in substance or in occasion, casting dung upon it, all such are guilty.
First, let all Papists, Jesuits, priests, and others, with all their supporters and followers, tremble and be ashamed, who have so many times dared to dishonor marriage and defile it in so many ways. Their clergy, forsooth, are cut off from it entirely at a single stroke, even though they call it a sacrament. How fitting it is that such people should be left to a spirit of confusion, forced with the same mouth to praise as most holy the very thing from which they bar their most holy order of priesthood, or rather to confess secretly what a polluted order theirs must be, since it disdains the use of what they themselves, however wrongly, call a sacrament. Among these impure ones, the married state is treated as an estate of those who live according to the flesh. Better, says their champion Bellarmine, for a priest to defile himself with many harlots than to be married to one wife.
When the trumpet sounds so certain a note of defiance against marriage, who should dare venture upon it?
These children of the purple whore scorn to let their great revenues support the honorable offspring of marriage. So God leaves them to grow more filthy still, letting such corruption support nothing but the children of fornication. Marriage was honorable in the church, not only among laymen but, in the Old Testament, among the high priest and all his tribe (who prefigured the purity of Christ himself), and Moses himself, a man who spoke with God face to face, was married. After Christ, the apostles themselves were married, despite their travels. Saint Peter, their great patron (and Paul had the same right), and the evangelists, and many devout bishops and overseers of Christ’s flock, remained married for many generations following.
This continued until the mystery of iniquity, long before laid like leaven and already at work, grew at last into an open doctrine of devils, rejecting marriage, and into the practice of devils, playing the Sodomite and the whoremonger. For this taint has generally run through their whole order, from head to foot, if the histories can be believed (1 Tim 4:1). See our learned writers, the Centuries. And though I do not deny that many of their votaries abstain from uncleanness, some more, some less, still their doctrine eats like a canker, defiling and dishonoring this honorable ordinance (2 Tim 2:17).
Away, you hypocrites, and vanish before the light and luster of this truth! Your works in secret are such that it is shameful even to name them, the very sun blushing at them. Your cloisters, of both sexes, your vaults, privies, fishponds, and the like, have testified plainly enough, by the confession and admission of a great pope and proctor of your own, what hellish abominations swarm beneath the cover and veil of your defiance of marriage.
How justly has the Lord, by giving such people over to sins both unnatural and unlawful, stripped them of any credit to dishonor what they so abhor. Their words against marriage, which they mockingly call “living in the flesh,” carry no real slander against it. As the proverb says, Clodius accuses another of whoremongering, and Catiline calls Cethegus a traitor. This error of theirs has never gone unchallenged in the Church, from first to last, though their persistence has brought matters to this point. As Saint Paul said of the Jews, so I say of these: they have opposed God and disregarded man, hated and hateful to all (1 Thess 2:15; Rev 18:2). God has said, It is not good for man to be alone, for the sake of avoiding temptation (Gen 2:18).
They say it is not good to be married, for devotion’s sake, twisting the text, “It is not good for a man to touch a woman” (1 Cor 7:1). As Augustine said between himself and Donatus, “Which of the two do you believe?” so I ask the same between God and these men. And they defy man too, for here the text calls marriage honorable among all: poor and rich, simple and learned, noble and base, minister and people, all alike. What then are these people? Men, or beasts wearing human likeness, with women’s faces and lions’ natures, or rather devils in the flesh. What God has raised as high as a sacrament among men, they beat down and curse to hell among themselves.
I will leave them to what their own sect has sometimes discovered about them. Luther and others, from bitter experience, came to loathe them, and even though Satan foamed and raged at their departure, they left out of sheer horror of conscience. No wonder, for who could bear the company of such thieves, who have robbed the earth of men, men of their honesty, and heaven of its saints, as one learned writer put it.
As for their exalting virginity above marriage (which they partly dress up with Saint Jerome’s excessive zeal against Vigilantius), let me answer as the wise town clerk of Ephesus answered the unruly crowd: who does not know that virginity is precious (Acts 19:35)? But suppose it is so. Can it not be praised without disgracing marriage? Is one eye evil because the other is good? Must the honor of marriage be defiled, must married men’s heads be sacrificed, before virginity can be satisfied? Does virginity not cut down the very branch it stands on, does it not break its own neck, by destroying marriage? Surely none are less fit to praise or defend virginity than those who discredit marriage through the same uncleanness by which they defile virginity itself. Virgins, I confess, have their honor. Even those who have made themselves eunuchs, in a spiritual sense, for the kingdom of God, are praiseworthy (Matt 19:12).
And as the demon-possessed man said, Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are you? (Acts 19:15), so we say: marriage and true virginity we admire, but you, what are you, or where do you come from? If you wish to speak well of virginity, it would be fitting, as they used to do in the Senate at Athens, to take the words out of your unchaste, unseemly mouths and put them into the mouths of more honest people. Praise stinks in the mouths of those whose deeds reproach more than their words can commend. As the poet once said of the cold poetry of those who praised fasting with full bellies, so I say of you, who praise virginity while your own bodies are debauched with uncleanness: your breath is not sweet enough for this work, nor your words strong enough to be believed.
Only orators can rightly praise eloquence, and only chaste virgins, or those living faithfully single, whether married or unmarried. As it was once said of the Great Turk’s horse, that no grass ever grew again where he had trodden, so virginity has never flourished from your praises. As locusts devour everything before them, so does your unbridled lust, and all the worse for being veiled under a vow of chastity, which becomes for you the very snare of your own uncleanness. So much for the first branch.
Leaving these, I want to apply this truth to a second sort of men who also dishonor marriage. I mean those who, not through Popish error but through their own unclean lives and practices, defile and disgrace this institution. These are the most real and chief offenders of this kind, who by their conduct do not merely imply but actually infuse a kind of blot and shame into marriage, making it stink through their sin, though God has honored and blessed it. These are the successors of Hophni and Phinehas, whose open and shameless pollution through whoredom and adultery corrupts marriage (1 Sam 2:23). This is so common in our day that not only among the viler sort is it thought nothing (for there are, in fact, some ignorant and baser sort of people who are free of it), but even among people of better standing, where grace does not rule. I will say more of this later in this treatise.
But beyond these, consider how the conduct of some who live in the state of marriage drives other men to choose the grossest uncleanness rather than be married at all. As a certain heathen once said, “If this is the practice of Christians, to eat their God and kill their King, let my soul be with the philosophers instead.” So I say: the wretched, cursed lives of many who call themselves believers, who brawl, scold, fight, and live at odds with each other, cause many ungodly people to prefer a single life, even one steeped in every kind of lust, whether imagined, practiced, natural, or unnatural, with wives, harlots, or however they can, rather than marry. It is as if they said, “Let my soul be with the adulterers.”
To such married people, who are stumbling blocks and eyesores, I say: perhaps you are innocent of this sin yourselves, but truly, many are tempted to uncleanness by your example just as deeply as others are by the enticements of bawds and the companions of harlots. As odious as you are, marriage itself remains honorable. You do all you can, and will answer for it as fully as if it were in your power, to defile marriage, but you cannot stain what God has stamped with honor.
Consider how some married couples raise their brats in every kind of filthy behavior. Consider Ahabs and Jezebels combining together in wickedness (1 Kgs 21:25). Consider the miserable mismatches of bad wives with good husbands, or good wives yoked unequally to bad husbands: Nabals and Abigails, Moseses and Zipporahs (1 Sam 25; Exod 4:25). Would this not make men hold their noses at the stench surrounding marriage? Would such things happen if people guarded the honor of marriage carefully, if they were jealous to keep any eye from seeing their unseemly conduct, for fear that marriage would be dishonored? Consider the separations one sees everywhere in the countryside, couples parting from each other by law or by lawless divorces, forsaking bed, board, and affection through willful separation. Would this not make men weary of marriage?
Consider the open scoundrels and monsters who, in defiance of courts and laws, without penance or proper punishment, do as Zimri and Cozbi did (though meeting a different end), bringing their whores and the bastards they have begotten by them not only into their homes and under their wives’ noses but into their very beds, forcing their wives to raise them on equal terms with their own children (Num 25:6, 14). Would this not make even heathens spit us out in disgust? Consider great men who cast off their virtuous, deserving wives, women they once loved and pursued with the greatest devotion, in order to pursue vagrant and lustful lives. Would this not frighten men away from marriage, making them flee it and say, “If this is how things stand, it is not good to marry”?
Finally, consider the base marketplace that marriage has become, where men look only at the price and the greatest gain, bargaining their children in or out like cattle at market for the sake of wealth and dowry, however debauched, drunken, or light housewives they may be.
Would this not make anyone sick at the thought of such marriages? A worthy wife cannot be valued highly enough; no one can name a price for such a pearl. A bad one is worth nothing, being the poorest of goods. The one stands far above such reckoning, the other far below it, and neither should be bought or sold like merchandise. All these abuses, and others like them, such as the constant jealousies between some couples (not the worst people, yet troubled in marriage), their spiteful suspicions and gloomy tempers, cause this precious thing, marriage, and something even better, religion itself, which too many such people profess, to be spoken of with contempt. Meanwhile, through these disorders and divisions, the innocent institution of marriage gets a bad name, as though such evils were somehow its own fault (Prov 31:10).
I proceed to a second use of admonition, addressed to all who, upon self-examination, discover their errors, or else can show their genuine effort to keep this honor of marriage entire and unstained. I know of many fears and griefs among weak but sincere couples, when they look back on how they began. Some consider how carelessly they entered this condition at first, and since then have found God gracious enough to reclaim them, or to reclaim a husband or wife who was formerly cold toward them. Yet when they also consider how unthankfully they have repaid God for this, growing light, wanton, worldly, and loose, they cannot help feeling bitterness over it.
Others entered this state with real zeal, resolve, and heartfelt intention to honor God in it as fully as they could. Yet when they seriously weigh how many days, months, and years have passed over their heads to little profit, with gray hairs upon them and no mark of fruit or growth in goodness, they can say little for themselves. They have little to show in religion, in walking together, in praying for and with each other, in joint care for their children’s upbringing. Instead, they have indulged each other’s base faults, propped up each other’s worldliness (which has eaten away their resources), let grace decay rather than grow, and used each other merely for their own passing, self-serving purposes. They spent Sabbaths in a carnal way, taking little delight in them for God’s sake, and grew fruitless in hearing the word and in family duties. Such people have much cause for grief.
So be admonished: do not treat lightly the care of maintaining religion in your marriage. Watch carefully against anything that would weaken it, or weaken its honor and comfort. Crowns of honor are fragile things, and whatever carries much honor also carries much care, anxiety, and burden. Beware, then, of skimming off only the sweetness and comfort of marriage while shirking its burdens and duties, its call to seek God and worship him together, and to avoid occasions of ease, carnal amusement, and unchaste company. If you are unwilling to take that trouble, you will find in the end that repentance is the only fruit of such carelessness. It is strange how little this is believed at first, until experience teaches it.
People imagine marriage will shield them from every blow, thinking that so long as they love one another (as they tell themselves they truly do, though with a decayed love), that love will hold them together the way a cornerstone holds up the sides of a house. Others treat marriage as a state of loose liberty to live as they please, taking no precaution and fearing no danger, until at last they lament their folly when their reckless improvidence has trapped them in poverty. Others fall into a habit of pleasure and expense, until time, thrift, and heart are all lost beyond recall.
Still others, through peevish and quarrelsome behavior, have provoked each other to weariness, impatience, and discontent. Others have drowned themselves in lust and led each other by bad example, so that instead of restraining one another, they sink equally deep into sin, heaping disease and needless sorrow on their own heads. For lack of careful foresight and prevention, they have pierced themselves through with the fruit of their sin, and only then do they cry out too late, wishing they had been wiser and kept this crown free from stain and dishonor. Kings and emperors have neglected proper care of their crowns and brought ruin and misery on themselves through reckless excess, as we see in the example of Rehoboam. But once they saw the sad effects that followed their loose and reckless ways, they wished for their crowns back, on condition of governing with ten times more restraint and wisdom.
How much more, then, should married people abhor their own carelessness in this regard, and secure firmly what they hope to keep secure, upholding the honor of this ordinance through good conduct, if they wish to enjoy the quiet fruit of righteousness.
If a minister or magistrate, given more honor in their office than others, should therefore behave more disdainfully and act as though their position excused them from caring what anyone thinks or from avoiding bad conduct, would they expect their honor to protect them? Should not God say to them, Those who honour me, I will honour; but such as reproach me, I will make vile (1 Sam 2:30)? If private persons, excelling others in gifts, fail to attend to humility and the fear of God concerning themselves, will not their glory end in shame, their gifts in barrenness, their profession in falling away? So it is here.
Those who take no care for their conduct in marriage, toward God, themselves, and their families, who fail to avoid offenses, jealousies, and the loss or cooling of affection, but assume it will always be honeymoon and merriment for them, should they be surprised when their ruin, coming at the wrong season, teaches them repentance too late? Let all married people be warned by this, to be sober, careful, prudent, and moderate in their affections, loves, and liberties, staying well within bounds rather than pressing to the edge, always wary of change, and asking themselves: What if my own follies breed in my wife, by God’s secret judgment, a weariness of me, a fire of contention in my own household, a constant dripping that spoils both my comfort at home and my reputation abroad? God keep me within the bounds of marriage that I first vowed to keep when I entered it. So much for the admonition.
Next, I turn to comfort all godly couples who have labored to raise up and uphold the honor of this ordinance. Examine yourselves, and no doubt you will meet uncomfortable thoughts over your many failings. No doubt you will think few godly marriages have been so poorly managed as your own. The many breaches and flaws in your marriage will move you to mourn and say: If only I had trained myself and my wife in prayer and close worship of God; if I had had wisdom enough to be God’s voice to guide her; if I had kept clear of the snares and temptations Satan laid in my path to overthrow me and my peace; if I had preserved both body and soul in fitting chastity and honor, nourishing love and affection and abhorring anything to the contrary, then I might look on God’s face with comfort.
But now my burden is increased by my own errors in marriage, namely, that I have carried myself in a matter of such weight, one on which the well-being or ruin of my whole life depends, with a careless and heedless heart.
There is no doubt that in this part of our life’s course, marriage, as in every other part, we all sin in many ways, and our failings are countless. But now examine yourself more closely. Setting your outward faults aside, look at your intentions, at every wandering and swerving from your course. Can you say that in this area of your life, as in every other, you have sought to be better instructed in what the good and acceptable will of God is (Rom 12:2), and that accordingly, with sincerity of heart, you gave yourself to your companion, not for your own base ends and ease, but so that marriage might keep its honor, offenses might be prevented, and God might be worshipped within your home and honored outside it, in a peaceable life of godliness and honesty?
I am not asking whether there have been moments of hesitation, weariness of the yoke, or longing for more freedom, for who does not sin, as Solomon said (1 Kings 8)? But I ask this: have you denied yourself and curbed your selfish heart, submitting to God as you bore this yoke, rather than seeking your own ease and fleshly comfort while letting God’s honor sink or swim? Have you humbly bowed your neck to this ordinance, acknowledging how far it has changed since its first creation, and how sin has filled it with various sorrows, troubles, and bittersweet mixtures that are hard to avoid? Have you, under all this, humbled yourself before the Lord, seeking pardon for your stubborn heart and proud spirit, unwilling to yield, and for the weakness of your passions, wanting to show your obedience by bearing these troubles as justly deserved for sin?
Have you acknowledged that the Lord, in his great wisdom, has ordered these things for you, so that because your heart is haughty and headstrong, he has tamed you with this bridle, and by it exercised your faith and patience, and drawn you to the bend of his bow, so that to avoid far worse snares, and for the comforts and freedoms marriage brings, you can willingly obey its rules and duties, not separating its burdens from its privileges? And have you corrected all your self-indulgence in seeking only fleshly satisfaction in marriage?
If, with some degree of comfort, you can say these things before God, asking pardon for all your failings and release from all deserved penalties, then, in due measure and with all your remaining weakness, you have indeed sought the honor of marriage. By your watchfulness you have worked to prevent its rightful stain and reproach, and you have sought the honor of the one who ordained it, to your own great comfort, which you could ill afford to be without.
What remains, then, but that I comfort you from God, and encourage you by his promise, not only against the fear of dishonoring him, but toward a more heartfelt effort to honor him further? Surely you need no less. Your journey is long, and your obedience difficult. It is not for a day or a month, but for life. It is not a patching over of breaches for a while, only to break out worse afterward. It is no work of outward show, putting a good face on the matter abroad while nourishing the disease within. God is not mocked, and sins of this kind are like oil in the hand, which cannot be hidden. This obedience is a lasting, yet willing, humble, and holy subjection to the will of the one who requires it, who by it tests people and reveals all that is in the heart. So I dare say a truly obedient spouse in marriage is a good servant in everything.
Therefore, since you need encouragement from God, as who does not in difficult duties, take it to yourself as your own; chew on it and digest it. It is the Lord’s will that you should. I say to you, as the Lord has placed honor on this ordinance, so you have sought to uphold it, and whoever honors God will be honored by God. God can and will turn all the burdens and hindrances of this estate into blessings. You will find this estate made honorable to you. You yourself will find acceptance with God in all your requests, success in your undertakings, and honor and esteem among his people. He will crown you with old age and a good name in the way of righteousness. Your wife will be a blessing, not a snare.
Your freedoms will be pure to you, and you will visit your household without sin, as Job speaks (Job 5:24); you will drink of the floods of milk and butter and honey (Job 20:17). Your children will honor you in the gate and will be your crown in your old age. They will stand around your table like olive plants; and even if any of them should prove wayward, that will not condemn your innocence (Prov 17:6, Ps 128:3). In a word, God will bring upon you all the blessings promised to those who honor his ordinance, even love for your household for many generations. His word will never be taken from you and them. He will keep for you a name on earth, a nail in his temple, and peace upon Israel (Isa 59:21, Ezra 9:8; Ps 128:6).
I add further, that your very obedience in itself will be a blessing to you. Do you keep your body in holiness and honor? Then you will avoid the countless woes and miseries that befall the unchaste: poverty, disgrace, a ruined body, a worse soul, a wasted estate, both in this world and in the world to come. Do you nourish love and harmony between yourself and your wife, so that the peace of God may better rule your heart and mind? See how many troubles and miseries of wrath, strife, envy, quarreling, and discontent you thereby avoid, all of which a bad marriage brings.
But can you say that beyond these ordinary duties of married life, you and your wife have also joined with God in the special service of the time, and, like good Uriah and Mephibosheth, used the comforts of this life moderately during the sorrows of the Church, living as though not married, remembering the afflictions of Joseph, making them the regular and daily matter of your humbling and your prayers before God (2 Sam 19:24, Amos 6:6)? Have you often, like Joel’s bridegroom and bride, come out of your feasting chamber to hide your head in the chamber of fasting, as our Savior tells us that when the bridegroom is taken away, they will mourn in those days, the husband apart and the wife apart for sincerity, or both together for fervency (Joel 2:16, Isa 26:20, Luke 5:34, Zech 12:12–14)?
Or, with the psalmist, do you desire your tongue to cleave to the roof of your mouth unless the joy of Jerusalem rises above all your joy, even marriage joy itself, great as that is allowed to be (Ps 137:5)?
Surely then I say, you have honored marriage indeed, and as your share in the duty has been greater, so it will be in the blessing. The Lord will give you a hiding place in the day of evil, and because you have kept the word of his patience in hard times, he will also deliver you in that hour of temptation which will come as a trial upon all flesh (Isa 4:6, Rev 3:10). He will uphold you in six troubles, and the seventh will not come near you. The floods of great waters, with all the plagues God has pronounced against the wicked, will not come near you (Ps 32:6).
Be cheerful in the Lord, then, and still, you and your wife, cling to him. Deny your own wills and carnal reason, and trust his eternal strength. Take up the work of God faithfully, and walk in his ordinance humbly, until he comes. Then he will bring healing in his wings at last, and meanwhile he will cause a voice to sound behind you, saying, This is the way, walk in it (Isa 26:3, Mal 3, Isa 30:21). He will order your paths, resolve your doubts, prevent dangers, and so preserve the souls of his saints, that a thousand will fall at his right hand and ten thousand at your left, while you go safe in the middle (Ps 91:7), and so be brought safely through every extremity at last.
So much for comfort, and for this first chapter.
