Letter to a Brother - Marriage (Page 1)

Heirs Together

Dear Friend,

So you’ve asked my thoughts on marriage...oh my...how to respond? I will do my best, by the grace of God, to share what I can based on the Word of God, how I understand that Word’s action in our lives, and how I think we ought to obediently respond to the Word in Christ. Marriage is a sacrament, it is an avenue and a state of being through which we receive the grace of God; for those of us who are married it is a core element of our identity in Jesus Christ.

While Ephesians 5:22 - 33 is often the initial “go-to” Bible passage on marriage, I am going to drop my anchor into 1 Peter 3:1 - 7 with a particular emphasis on the last few words of verse 7, speaking to husbands Peter writes, “...show her [your wife] honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”

I have spent much of my life in the real estate industry, and therefore a knowledge of real estate law has been crucial to my professional life. In the USA each parcel of property is owned by someone; that someone can be a real person, such as you or me; it can be a fictitious person, such as a corporation; it can be a local or state government; or it can be the federal government. The evidence that someone owns real estate is called a “title” – a piece of paper indicating who the current owner is and how the owner received the property (examples: a purchase, a gift, an inheritance). Titles to real estate are typically recorded in the records of local courts. If you want to know who owns a parcel of land you can look it up in the court records. When there is more than one purchaser of a parcel of land the way in which the purchasers “take title” is of vital legal importance.

In Maryland, where I began my real estate career, one of the ways that people can take title to real property is called tenancy by the entirety (I don’t know if this is still the case but it was when I practiced there). This way of taking title to property is a remnant of English common law and it has historically only been available to husbands and wives; this is because English common law recognized a husband and wife as “a unity of person”. While there are many legal elements to this concept, here is one example: If I am interested in purchasing a parcel of land, look up the title in the courthouse, and find that it is owned by John and Susan Smith, husband and wife, tenants by the entirety, I know that I cannot go to John Smith and purchase the parcel just from him, nor can I go to just Susan Smith and purchase the parcel from her – because John Smith does not own the parcel, nor does Susan Smith own the parcel – only one person owns the parcel and that one person is a husband and wife. If I want to purchase the parcel I will need the signatures of the husband and wife, not just of one or the other. John and Susan Smith, husband and wife, are a unity of person in English common law.

In the ancient world laws of inheritance were highly developed and concepts of ownership and inheritance are found throughout the Bible. When Peter writes that husbands and wives are heirs together he is expressing something akin to tenancy by the entirety; some translations use the term joint heirs in this and other Bible passages, and from this we get another term used in English law – joint tenancy. This also reflects the Biblical image of marriage in two becoming one – thus when a man becomes a husband and a woman becomes a wife a new person comes into being – there is a unity of person.

It has been said that in Christian marriage there are three people; the husband, the wife, and Jesus; but I think there is a fourth person, and that fourth person is what we find in the mystery of marriage, the unity of person – that person which came into being when the man and woman were joined together and became one flesh, one person. Husbands and wives are therefore heirs together of the grace of life and if the unity of person is disrupted then our relationship with God is disrupted – our prayers are hindered, our communion with God is polluted.

Paul writes, “So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it…” (Ephesians 5:28 – 29). When the Bible speaks of a husband and wife becoming one flesh it is not just talking about two physical bodies being joined, but rather about two people being joined, about all that transpires when two bodies are joined together in marriage. When Paul writes that “no one ever hated his own flesh” he is saying much the same thing. Self-mutilation is not healthy behavior, poisoning oneself is not healthy behavior – and yet when husbands and wives engage in tearing one another down and inflicting pain on one another they are engaging in self-mutilation and the poisoning of their marriage; they seldom see what they are doing for what it is – the destruction of the unity of person.  

In the same way husbands and wives who care for each other, who build each other up, who want the best for each other, are loving themselves as they love their spouse; they are also loving the unity of person that has come into being as a result of their marriage. Just as a healthy diet and exercise contribute to a healthy physical body, so a healthy emotional, psychological, and spiritual life contributes to a healthy marriage. The husband needs to grow in his life in Christ, the wife needs to grow in her life in Christ, and the marriage (the unity of person) needs to grow in its life in Christ.

Being “heirs together of the grace of life” is an essential understanding and way of life in a Christian marriage - it is a sacramental mystery that a husband and wife experience in Jesus Christ.