Christ Saving Power… tapped in every aspect of life, even marriage!

Genesis 3:16 (Part of the curse Adam and Eve bear for eating the deadly fruit)
…
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

The fruit Adam and Eve ate, was the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Now that doesn’t seem too bad by itself but if you were to dig any deeper, you would learn that before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, their standard of good and evil was the same as God’s but by eating that particular fruit, Adam and Eve brought discord to what righteousness really is because from that point, they received their own perspective concerning what is right and wrong, separate from God and this sin they passed to all their posterity (Original Sin). For this reason all people naturally come from a self-righteous mind-set that reflects a broken communion with God.

If you were to analyse Gen3:16 in Hebrew, you would notice that the curse the woman bears from Original Sin, is that she has an inherent desire to sinfully control her husband, while the cursed husband bears also from Original Sin, the inclination to sinfully respond to her by being absolutely savage and ruling over the woman, so as to silence that sinful desire in the woman to control him.

This is noticed to greater extent in cultures such as Islam that resist the Gospel. However the cure is found in Christ. For in a Christ centred marriage, this unholy consuming fire of distraught that is unhealthy for any marriage; this fire is doused with the living waters that flows out of the believer who taps into the power of Christ.

Romans 5
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
…
17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

1 Corinthians7
12 But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. 15 Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. 16 For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?

Theologically it is perceived that the burning bush Moses encountered, in which the Angel of the Lord appeared, a fire which did not consume the bush, was the Old Testament Jesus Christ. Also the Angel of the Lord which Jacob wrestled and lived, was also the Old Testament Jesus Christ. For as John1:18/1Tim2:5 says, He is as He ever was, the only eternal mediator between God and men, who sustains, that which would otherwise be destroyed by God’s holiness on account of sin. Adam was given stewardship over all the earth (Gen1:28), so when Adam fell, creation over which he was steward, turned corrupt with sin. So man from the fall, who was purposed to be a vegetarian began to eat meat for, in his spiritual death, he needed to consume another life to live. From here figuratively comes and individuals need to live of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ (Jn6:51-56&15:1-6), which actually is an allusion to abiding in the life of Christ.

In the Old Testament the nature of Christ was symbolised by the bush burning and still not being consumed (Ex3:2) and from Jacob wrestling the Angel of the Lord and living to tell about it (Gen32:30) because by definition Israel, is one who strives against God and men, and prevails (by the power of Christ). Salvation therefore is God saving man from Himself because the holiness of His Majesty would destroy the sinner had it not been for Christ who saves people from their sins (Mt1:21).

1Corinthians 7
54 But when this [perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; 57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The same saving power of Christ is available in a marriage that is Christ centred as it neutralizes the inherent curse from both the man and woman. By this I do not mean that there is no love which lasts in non-Christian marriages because as Mt25:24 states, God gathers (His righteousness) where He did not even sow (from the perspective of (Jn3:3/Joel2:29) because Christ is Lord over all (Rom3:29/Phil2:9-11). In doing this God draws all creation to Himself reigning in His righteousness over all the world through His only begotten Son Jesus Christ.

To conclude, if you can’t figure where your marriage is going wrong, more than you would care to admit, the solution for your marriage would be that you be PUT RIGHT WITH GOD, which is only possible by the power of Jesus Christ (Jn3:16-17/Phil4:13).