Don’t you love the simplicity of the Scriptures?
I love how straightforward God’s commands are.

Alf[1] sat before me, looking forlorn. This was not the first time I had sat with him; his marriage had not been going well for a while.

“So, where are we at?” I asked.
“Ken,” he began, “I just don’t love my wife any more.”
He then proceeded to suggest that, because of this, the marriage was over. It was time to leave (and look for someone else?)

“But Alf,” I tried to say, “you must have loved her when you married her all those years ago. You have had a number of children with her.”
But he contradicted me, suggesting: “No, even when I married her, it was more because I was in my 20’s, and thought I should get married before it is too late.”
I suspected he was rewriting his own story.

“O.K. Well here’s the thing, Alf. The Bible says, ‘Husbands, love your wives’ (Eph 5:25). It really is that simple; it is straightforward. And I would be fairly sure that some of those the Bible addresses there had not married for love; some, at least, were probably in arranged marriages.”

[I am not referring to ‘forced’ marriages here, that the parties are made to enter against their will – that is always wrong.  Only those should marry “who are able with judgment to give their consent” (Westminster Confession 24.3). But it is possible to give one’s consent to an arranged marriage and to enter into it willingly.]

But I continued with Alf and said, “However you marry, in the end, the Bible doesn’t say, ‘Marry the one you love’, though that would normally be the case in our culture. But whether for love or not, the Bible does command, ‘Love the one you marry.’ It really is that simple.”

Though I hoped we had got somewhere that afternoon, months later I learned that, all the while for some years Alf had already been pursuing immoral relationships with other women. When that came to light it was all over.
Had I known what was going on at the time, I would have said a lot more that afternoon.

But for me, personally, it is wonderful in marriage to have something as simple as, “Husbands, love your wives.” I love not having to think about whether to stick at my marriage, or to look elsewhere. I love the fact that it is non-negotiable.

I feel genuinely sorry for those who are trying to negotiate marriage today without believing this clear word from God. When the going gets tough in the marriage (as it inevitably does from time to time) what do they have to guide them? Where is wisdom?
Cultural norms? Yes, that was a stabilizing influence in our grandparents’ day, maybe (though to a lesser extent) in our parents’ day. But since individualism has run rampant in the West, that is no longer the case.
Now, bombarded by slogans like: “Be true to yourself”; “You are the most important person”; “Life is all about self-fulfilment” etc. etc. etc. cultural norms mean less and less. And even those cultural norms have become so emaciated as to have lost all transforming power.

So, when a man, or a woman, finds themselves struggling with disappearing romantic feelings for their spouse nowadays, it is inevitable they begin to wonder if they should move on. The result is the ever increasing divorce rate.

In the case of Alf and his poor, long-suffering wife, the marriage had broken down beyond repair. His wife divorced him, and was in her rights to do so.
Again, the Westminster Confession (24.6), summarising the Bible’s teaching on this, states it well: “Adultery, or such wilful desertion as can no way be remedied by the Church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage.”
(This would also include a case where there is abuse that threatens the other spouse’s safety since: “The sixth commandment requires all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life, and the life of others.” The abused in this case needs to remove herself; but it is the abuser who first “wilfully deserted” his spouse.)
The innocent party is then free “to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.”

But to break up a marriage for reasons of “personal growth”, “self-fulfilment” or simply because you think you have found “someone better” is always wrong.
And then there are those who (following a suggestion, I think, by the anthropologist Margaret Mead) tell us that ideally we should have three marriages as we go through different stages in life: the first to meet the need for youthful passion and romance, the second for parenting, the third to use what we have learnt from past mistakes to focus on shared interests and companionship.
To compartmentalise stages in life like this to justify multiple marriages strikes me as stereotyping at its worst. Our own experience is that the characteristics all these stages are not confined to one stage in marriage, but normally overlap in every stage.

But apart from that, change is no excuse to seek a new marriage partner. Of course we change and (hopefully, for some at least) we grow and mature. But change (whether in myself or my spouse) is no excuse for divorce – which I heard one person once tell me, saying: “He is no longer the person I married; he has changed.”
None of us is the person we were when we married. When Eileen and I entered into a marriage covenant it was with the understanding that things (including ourselves) would change: “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health”. Yet through all the changes in life we promised “to have and to hold, and to love and to cherish each other, till death us do part”.

So, back to Alf.
There was nothing in his wife to justify him leaving her, let alone to be carrying on with other women. But what if there had been no extra-marital infidelity? What can you say to a person who says, “I just don’t love my spouse any more; I just don’t feel like I am still in love with her”?

By all means, start with the clear command, “Husbands, love your wives” (Eph 5:25). Or for wives, that they are commanded “to love their husbands” (Tit 2:4). It is important to begin there.

But how? How to “love” when love has died?
“Husbands, love your wives… just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” Suddenly it got a whole lot harder!
“Just as Christ loved…”! Really?

I still find this helpful (even if it seems it has got a whole lot harder). Because this tells me that love is about thinking of the other person. Being prepared to sacrifice for the other person.
“I just don’t feel like I am still in love with her” focusses on you. It is self-centred. But “just as Christ loved…” takes the focus off you and what you feel, to focus instead on what you can do for your spouse.

Nothing kills love (including feelings of love) more quickly than selfishness. You cannot really love someone else, anyone else, when you are focussed solely on yourself. But to focus on your spouse and her needs will lead to acting in her interests.
Love in action means “nourishing and cherishing” your wife.

“Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.” (Eph 5:28-29)

Of course, love should never be reduced to  action and nothing more. Feelings are important. The husband who simply “does things” for his wife without feeling for her and with her does not really love her. Love is doing; but it is more than just “doing”. “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Cor 13:4)

But where love takes the initiative to act, not to be a “martyr”, but with a genuine desire to “nourish and cherish”, this will normally lead to revived feelings.

“Husbands, love your wives.”
I love it. Not because I do it as I should; I know that every day I come short of loving Eileen “just as Christ loved the church.” But it continually rebukes my selfishness and brings me back from where I have been focussed on me, to refocus me on what I am to be aiming for.

I am so thankful for the simplicity and clarity of Scripture at this point. No one who believes the Bible can go astray here.

“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
.                                                                                                            – Westminster Confession 1.7

[1] Not his real name