Now that we have identified some common unhealthy reasons for marriage, we need to examine some healthy reasons.
The ten that follow should not be regarded as separate entities, but as part of a greater whole.
While each of these is a good reason for getting married, none of them alone are sufficient.
A healthy, successful, and godly marriage will embrace most, but not necessarily all, of these reasons.
1. Because it is God’s will.
This is perhaps the most important reason of all. God designed marriage, and no one knows it better than He does. As believers, our top priority should be to discern and obey God’s will in all things.
This includes our choice of a mate. For some reason, whether it is due to lack of knowledge or lack of faith, many believers have difficulty trusting God with this area of their lives.
A couple who is considering marriage needs to take plenty of time to pray together, seeking God’s will in the matter. Just because you are both believers doesn’t automatically mean that you are right for each other for marriage.
Be patient. Trust God and honestly and humbly seek His will and wisdom. If He is calling you to marry, He wants to join you to someone with whom you can build a strong, godly home filled with love and grace—a home that exalts Jesus Christ as Lord and a harmony in vision and purpose.
If you seek His counsel, He will bring the right person into your life, and you will know it when He does.
If God is calling you to marry, He wants to join you to someone with whom you can build a strong, godly home filled with love and grace—a home that exalts Jesus Christ as Lord.
2. Expressing God’s love to the other person.
Marriage is a physical picture of the spiritual union and love that exist among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It also depicts the love of God for His people and Christ’s love for His Church.
Divine love, or agape, is primal love, the original and highest love from which all other forms of love derive. Agape is a choice, an act of the will.
By His very nature, God chooses to love us even though we have nothing within ourselves to commend us in that love. Paul, the great early church leader and missionary, wrote, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). God’s love is unconditional love.
Properly expressed, human love in all its forms takes its pattern from the divine agape that issues forth from the Father. Since agape is the love that God displays toward all people, a person does not have to be married to experience it.
However, marriage does provide a wonderful avenue through which a man and a woman can express this godly love to each other in a uniquely personal way. Agape is one of the catalysts for the “fusion” that characterizes true marriage.
When a husband and wife choose to love each other unconditionally, that choice will carry them through the times when they are unlovable.
A successful and healthy marriage always begins with agape. Other forms of love grow out of and build upon the firm foundation of God’s love.
Properly expressed, human love in all its forms takes its pattern from the divine agape that issues forth from the Father.
3. Expressing personal love for the other person.
Healthy marital love involves the proper blending of the various types and degrees of love. First is agape, the unconditional love of God that gives birth to all other forms.
Marriage should also be an expression of personal love between the husband and wife, a desire to show a level of esteem and regard toward each other that they show toward no one else.
Marital love includes the element of phileo, a Greek concept of love best understood as “tender affection.” Husbands and wives should be tender and affectionate toward each other.
A marriage relationship is also characterized by eros, which is physical, or sexual love. These expressions of personal love are healthy reasons for marriage, but they need to be properly founded on the unconditional agape love that comes from God.
4. To fulfill sexual needs and desires in a godly way.
Sexual desire is God-given and, in its proper place, healthy and good. By itself, the desire for sex is a poor and shallow reason for getting married.
In conjunction with other reasons, however, such as love and the desire for companionship, the desire for sexual fulfillment is a strong and natural motivation.
Love that produces in a man and a woman the desire to commit themselves to a lifelong relationship also generates the desire to express that love sexually.
Believers who are serious about their commitment to Christ will seek to fulfill their sexual needs and desires in a godly way. Marriage is the God-ordained vehicle for fulfilling God-given sexual desire.
Paul’s words to the believers in Corinth provide wise and practical counsel on the matter: Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to many.
But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.
The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
Do not deprive each other except by mutual consentand for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. ..
. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion (1 Corinthians 7:1-5, 8-9, emphasis added).
Marriage is the God-ordained vehicle for fulfilling God-given sexual desire.
5. The desire to begin a family.
The desire to have children is a godly desire, but it is neither a primary nor even a necessary reason for marriage.
There are many happily married couples who have no children, either by choice or otherwise.
Marital happiness and success do not depend on the presence of children. Children are a wonderful blessing and enhance a marriage, and those couples who desire children desire a good thing.
Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.” There is no better environment in which to raise children than in a Christian home anchored by a strong Christian marriage.
6. Companionship.
The desire for companionship is a worthy reason for getting married. Everyone has a built-in need for a “bosom buddy,” an intimate friend or companion.
Although such companionship and friendship can be found outside of marriage, the companionship forged between a husband and wife is particularly rich and rewarding.
Humans are social beings, created to enjoy and thrive on each other’s company. When God created the first man, He found no “suitable helper” for him among all the other creatures.
A husband should be his wife’s best friend and companion, and a wife, her husband’s. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh (Genesis 2:21-24).
A husband should be his wife’s best friend and companion, and a wife, her husband’s. Marriage is designed for companionship.
7. To share all things together with the other person.
There is a lot of truth in the old saying that when we share our sorrow, our sorrow is halved, and when we share our joy, our joy is doubled.
Sorrow and difficult times in our lives are easier to bear when we have a soul mate to share them with.
Our joy and laughter multiply when we have a bosom companion who joins in. Godly love that draws a man and a woman together creates in them a desire to share all things with each other, especially the ongoing daily adventure of life itself.
Marriage is designed for the man and woman who have decided that they wish to spend the rest of their lives together in a relationship of mutual love, respect, and sharing.
8. To work together to fulfill each other’s needs.
Marital love also stirs up in a husband and wife the desire to meet each other’s needs.
This is a give-and-take process that requires much sensitivity on the part of both. Every person is born with ongoing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
There is the need for food, water, clothing, and shelter; the need for security and peace of mind; the need to be free from fear; the need for aesthetic enrichment; the need for peace with God and intimate fellowship with Him.
Marriage is a tailor-made opportunity for a man and woman to work together to fulfill their legitimate needs. Together, and with steadfast trust in the Lord, they can meet any challenge and overcome any obstacle.
“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Eccles. 4:12).
9. To maximize each person’s potential.
The key to a successful life is to die empty—to maximize your potential by learning to think and act beyond your self-imposed limitations. In a successful marriage, both partners are committed to helping each other reach their full potential.
The desire to help the person you love the most to become all he or she can be is a healthy motivation for marriage.
The bounds of the marital union provide an ideal environment in which husbands and wives can strive to express their fullest personal, spiritual, and professional potential. In partnership together they can encourage one another, lift up one another, pray for one another, defend one another, challenge one another, comfort one another, and affirm one another.
The bounds of the marital union provide an ideal environment in which husbands and wives can strive to express their fullest personal, spiritual, and professional potential.
10. Enhancement of spiritual growth.
Because it comes from God, marriage is designed for believers: men and women who walk by faith and not by sight and live in a daily and growing personal love relationship with Jesus Christ.
Both husband and wife together should continually encourage each other to grow in the Lord.
They should worship together, pray together, read and discuss the Scriptures together, and hold each other accountable for their spiritual walk with Christ. Structurally, “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:23a).
By his leadership and submission to Christ, the husband is to set the tone and direction for the spiritual growth of the family, but both husband and wife bear a mutual responsibility for the spiritual health of their marriage.
Any couple who is serious about building a godly marriage will make enhancing each other’s spiritual growth a very high priority.
