Today’s Sunday School lesson, tracing through Philippians 1:27-2:11, reminded us that while doctrinal agreement is a necessary condition of genuine and complete unity in Christ, it is not sufficient. For example, one historical premillenial complementarian five point Calvinistic baptist can begrudge another historical premillenial complementarian five point Calvinistic baptist over taking a parking stall irrespective of how closely aligned they are theologically. The problem is that sinful people seek their own interests instead of the interests of others – despite doctrinal agreement. I want to take a few minutes and share some eclectic reflections on one area where this is true far too often – marriage.
Philippians 2:1-4
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Self-interest is quite evident in marriage. A wife will deliberately do things to spite her husband, despite Christ’s commands to her. A husband will embrace his own comforts ahead of his wife, even though Christ died for His church. And the examples are endless. It is all too easy to act from conceit and rivalry in marriage.
When a wife curses her husband in their home, slandering him and highlighting his faults, she is embracing sinful selfishness in a high degree. To be sure, she has her excuses, most of them the failings and sins of her husband. Yet it evidences the singular fact that she is seeking her own interests, not those of her husband.
When a husband neglects to comfort and attend to his wife and ensure her spiritual and emotional welfare, instead preferring the television or his friends, and in such a way actually lives up to the grotesque stereotype of the pizza-consuming football watching couch-buffoon, he embraces sloth and his own sinful selfishness.
And let’s be honest, because the alternative is terrifying: You know full well when you do this.
There is a very dangerous aspect to such selfishness which is especially emphasized in marriage. We so often view our marriages as a private matter. And certain things are private. But some go so far as to actively set out to make the church believe something different about the situation within his or her marriage. This can be done in the individual sense, where the husband or wife may try to individually appear as the innocent party in the marriage, despite his or her great wickedness behind the doors of the home; or it may be done in a corporate sense, with the attempt to make the marriage itself appear less defective than it actually is. Both are examples of self-interest, because saving face is by definition a concern with how the self is perceived. And this is suicidal because they conceal something that so desperately needs healing from the means (i.e. God working through the church) by which it could be healed.
And we all know how to save face, how to put on the image of being ‘Christian’ as we see it, don’t we! And although one may try to put on the image that things are fine, or that he or she is truly holy, be it through attempts to be publically pious, whether by doing nice things for others (except our spouses!), or by trying to make it seem as though there is a genuine interest in holiness by highlighting our love for reading good books or listening to godly sermons, the reality is that it just doesn’t fool anyone. The facade is paper-thin, and a mere breeze reveals the truth.
And this some deadly effects. Such a facade and apparent acts of piety actually leave us worse off.
How is this?
On one hand, it potentially enables the delusion and feeling that we can or do ‘make up’ for our wrongs, which is a damning mindset if it becomes habitual, because it means that the heart rests upon works of penance rather than the forgiveness in Christ Jesus through His once-for-all-time sacrifice. Such thinking denies Christ's work. A person might do something nice for another, thinking it balances out the bad thing he or she did previously. And this shows such a profound misunderstanding of grace that I find it hard to believe such a person has genuinely embraced Christ and been reborn.
But there is another practical effect in terms of the body of Christ.
Other Christians who see through the facade find it even more difficult to do the necessary work of bringing the sinful wife or husband out of sin, out of the very real danger of apostasy and judicial hardening. They know that there will be endless excuses, that there will be appeals to such displays of piety. They know that these things, while not improving even slightly the internal holiness of a person who persists in sin, will serve as food for the defensive heart. See, it is the product of a dark and wicked heart, these roadblocks to sanctifying admonishment.
And sinful hearts are most defensive.
Defensiveness for sinful behaviour – especially the attempt to hide or justify sinful behaviour because of the sins of another – is particularly deadly for the Christian. It begins with “Well he does this…”, and the like. It is to spit in the face of God’s kindness, which is meant to lead to repentance. Personal defensiveness is indicative of a massive self-interest. Hiding behind the hypocrisy of another will be of no assistance to you on the day of judgment. Even men do not buy into this excuse. How much less God? And here’s the real danger about constantly looking at the hypocrisy of your spouse: You will simply smile and nod and agree with the warnings of your pastor and fellow believers, warnings which are directed at you, without actually taking them to heart, even while you are utterly blind to the fact that you are utterly blind. And you’re blinded by your self-interest and bolstered in this blindness by the justification you find in the hypocrisy of your spouse.
And that’s just it, isn’t it. I’ve seen it far to often. Wives who compare their husbands to the husbands of other women and then justify their ill treatment and disrespect of their own spouses on account of supposed comparative failings. Or husbands who despise their wives because of their caustic behaviour (cf. Prov. 27:15-16), and thus fail to exercise the servant-leadership and loving gentleness and self-sacrifice required of them by their Lord.
What is also genuinely remarkable in all this, yet honestly unsurprising, is how it can continue for so long. Sin is the sort of thing where you do things which actually work against what you are really trying to obtain – joy. And yet sin is addictive and habitual. The sheer stupidity of it is nothing short of mind-boggling. While we are often blind to it in ourselves, when you see it in others, it looks like insanity. It raises the question, “Why, oh why, would you keep treating each other like this? Why do you continually pursue your own misery just to uphold your own selfishness? Why don’t you understand?” And worse yet, the question may be rhetorical. Indeed, such persistent hidden wickedness may indicate a dead faith and a lack of regeneration, with just enough piety to let one coast in deception straight down apostasy lane and into hell.
The person who persists in sinful habits will become more defensive, more angry, more impatient, more caustic, and increasingly volatile, eventually to a point beyond any human assistance. Hypocrisy, self-interest, and hiding behind the hypocrisy of another, such as that of a spouse, are deadly. This is truly a terrifying thing. Self-interest is a deadly serious matter.
Let us therefore repent of self-interest, and rest in Christ for forgiveness, and live as those who actually consider the interests of our spouses ahead of our own.
Luke 12:1-5
In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. 4 "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!
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