I was working on my previous book, and one of my proofreaders found this error in my wedding vows… Until death do your part. Her comment, “Well, you have a typo, but I like it is actually a better vow.” Isn’t that the truth?
Marriage is one of the greatest places to learn how to become more like Jesus.
Instead of staying on His Heavenly throne, Jesus humbled Himself and came to earth as a servant/teacher. He could have demanded His rightly place as King, but instead he ministered to us, healing and preaching and ultimately dying for us. This was not because we deserve it, but because He loves us.
Unfortunately, when we get married, instead of remembering that we are promising TO LOVE our spouses, we begin to believe that they owe us something. They should take out the trash, fix dinner, take care of the kids, make the bed, pick up the clothes, do the laundry … and if they don’t, we either nag or we shut down … because they are not doing “their part.”
This is when we can begin to “grow apart.”
Until Death Do Your Part
You cannot change anyone. You might see some behavioral changes, but the underlying person is still who they were long before you met them. Only the Holy Spirit can convict a person to real change. Your attempts to change your spouse may be what drives them away.
How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? (Matthew 7:4, NIV)
The truth is that by becoming the best spouse you can be and focusing on confessing and repenting from your sins are the keys to a happy marriage.
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2:1-4 NIV)
And until death do your part.
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