Marriage: Consumer vs Covenant
We live in a consumer-driven society in which our lives are constantly consumed with the endless search for upgrades and the best deals that we can find in the marketplace. As soon as fall in love with the iPhone 13, the iPhone 14 comes out and we feel as if we are missing out on something that could make our lives better and bring us more personal satisfaction. So we trade-in our perfectly good iPhone 13 and pay $1,000 to get the iPhone 14 with the slightly better screen and camera features until, and now we are happy… until the iPhone 15 comes out.
Living our lives with this consumer mindset often makes it difficult for us to commit to anything because we have this ongoing fear that we are potentially missing out on something better — especially when our current commitments don’t seem to be meeting our desires or our expectations anymore. And tragically, this consumer mindset ends up going beyond how we view goods and services and ends up leaking into how we view our relationships as well.
A consumer-based relationship is one that operates out of a mindset that essentially says, “You must learn to adjust to my felt needs and the things that I desire, or I’ll seek out someone else who will.” In a consumer relationship, my feelings and desires are more important to me than the relationship itself.
However, there is another much deeper kind of relationship that God intended for us to experience and that is a covenant relationship. Covenant relationships operate out of the Biblical mindset that states, “I will adjust to what you need, and I’m not going anywhere.” In a covenant relationship, my feelings and desires are not as important to me as the overall good of the other person in the relationship.
And so, a consumer marriage will remain focused on what we are expecting to gain out of the relationship while a covenant marriage will remain focused on what we are willing to give to the relationship.
Consumer Marriage: What We Are Expecting to Gain
Consumer relationships are centered around our desires and expectations of what we can gain from the relationship. Think about the relationship between a professional athlete and his agent. As long as the agent is meeting the needs and expectations of the athlete at a cost that the athlete considers acceptable then the athlete will maintain that relationship with that particular agent.
However, if another agency approaches that athlete and offers them better services at a better cost then they might feel free to cancel their current relationship with their agent in exchange for a new agent that better satisfies what the athlete feels like they want and need. Again, in a consumer relationship, my feelings and desires are more important to me than the actual relationship itself.
Trust and transparency are crucial in order for any relationship to remain healthy. But within a consumer relationship, those two things won’t be able to fully develop because the relationship is based on performance and there is a always a fear of not measuring up to the other person’s expectations. This can create a relationship that is superficial and lacking any real depth.
If personal happiness is what remains central to our soul then we will never find ourselves fully content in this life nor will we ever come to fully understand who God intends for us to be. When it comes to our closest relationships — family, church, work, marriage — some of us may feel like we are holding a bad hand in life. But instead of looking to replace the hand that we have we must seek to understand how we might honor God with the hand that we are holding. We must stop focusing on what we are expecting to gain and start focusing on what we are willing to give.
Covenant Marriage: What We Are Willing to Give
In his book, The Meaning of Marriage, Timothy Keller writes:
“When the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give of yourself to someone. How much are you willing to lose for the sake of this person? How much of your freedom are you willing to forsake? How much of your precious time, emotion and resources are you willing to invest in this person?”
True love is a sacrificial commitment to the good of someone else. A covenant mindset views the sacrificial commitment to seek the good of another person as the anchor of the relationship. That is why wedding vows are not a celebration of how much you love someone at that moment but rather a declaration of how much you are willing to love someone in the future. It is a declaration that from this day forward — in good times and bad times, in wealth and need, in sickness and health, no matter what — you will love this other person sacrificially until death.
In a covenant relationship, my feelings and desires are not as important to me as the overall good of the relationship. And the standard of love for a covenant relationship is one that requires a sacrificial faithfulness to the other person no matter what. It’s a higher standard than the cultural norm, but it’s a standard empowered by the way that God loves us. We have to remain focused on what we are willing to give out of a heart that’s been transformed by what we’ve already been given.
God’s Marriage to Us: What We’ve Been Given
Throughout the Bible, we see plenty of examples of covenant relationships being made between various people, but one of the most prominent covenants found in all of Scripture is the covenant that God made with Abraham in Genesis.
God promised Abraham that a special descendant would arise from his descendants who would bring God’s blessing and healing to the whole world. Abraham believed God when he promised these things to him, but Abraham was still troubled by the magnitude of such a promise.
So Abraham prays and asks God, “God, how can I know for sure that your promise will be fulfilled?”
And God says, “I’ll show you.”
Then God instructs Abraham to sacrifice a few specific animals and to make two rows with the sacrifice animals. This seems odd and confusing to us, but we need to remember that this is an ancient cultural practice. If you read the story, you will notice that Abraham knew exactly what God was instructing him to do. It wasn’t odd or confusing to him at all.
And think about this. Today, when we decide to get married, we make a set of promises to love the person that we are entering into this relationship with (also called vows). We stand up and promise things like, “I am with you, in good times and bad times, in wealth and need, in sickness and health as long as we both shall live.” And then we sign the marriage agreement.
In our culture, once you sign the agreement then there are consequences for breaking your word. Your spouse can know that you mean what you say because you signed the official agreement which proves you are willing to take on the consequences of breaking your promise.
There were no written agreements or signing contracts in Abraham’s culture. Instead, it was customary to sacrifice some animals in order to make two rows of animals with a pathway in between them. And the symbolism was simple. The parties involved in this covenant would walk between the sacrificed animals as a declaration that stated, “If I do not uphold my end of the covenant then may I be cut off and cursed as these animals have been.” So Abraham was just doing what was customary for a covenant agreement in his day and assumed that he would walk the path in order to be guaranteed the promise that God had made to him.
However, this is where the story tells us something that was not customary and that demonstrates the incredible love of God. As Abraham prepared to walk the aisle between the two rows of animals to enter into this covenant relationship with God, something incredible happened. God caused Abraham to fall asleep, and God walked the aisle alone. God didn’t make Abraham walk the path in order to gain what was promised; God walked the path alone as his guarantee of the promise.
God walked the aisle alone to enter into this covenant relationship with Abraham.
Essentially, God was saying, “I, and I alone, will take on all the consequences and the curse of this covenant if one of us doesn’t uphold our end of the covenant. You can rest assured in the fulfillment of what I’ve promised to you because my promises will rest in my faithfulness to you and not be dependent upon your faithfulness to me. I will give you what I’ve promised even if it costs me everything.”
And essentially, it would cost God everything.
The depth of God’s sacrificial commitment to our good is revealed in what he was willing to pay when we didn’t uphold our end of the agreement. On the cross, God willingly suffered the consequences of our unfaithfulness to him.
You see, God has never said, “Adjust to my needs, or I’m out of here.” What God has done through Jesus the Messiah proves that God has forever promised, “I will adjust to what you need, and I’m not going anywhere.”
And so, as God walked the aisle fully committed to us no matter what it may cost him, may we too walk the aisle fully committed to one another no matter what it may cost us. May we forget about what we are expecting to gain. May we focus on what we are willing to give. And may we do so out of a heart that’s been transformed by what we’ve been given.
