Mutual Debts in Marriage Part 1

Dr. Peter Masters

Scripture teaches that husbands and wives have dues or debts or obligations to each other which must be paid, and paid with love.

‘Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife to the husband’ (1 Corinthians 7.3).

The apostle Paul is responding to questions that had been asked him by the church of Corinth. We see this in his words: ‘Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.’

One of the questions evidently was, ‘Is it best not to marry?’ Perhaps another was, ‘Should there be sexual abstinence by married Christians?’ We cannot tell what the exact questions were, but Paul’s replies suggest they were along these lines.

When he says that it is good for a man not to touch a woman, we realise that he refers to marriage. He does not say it is better not to marry, or that to remain unmarried is a superior state, but only that it is good and acceptable in the sight of God. He will later show that the single state can have many advantages for the Lord’s service. It is good and wholesome and often a necessary and wonderful situation, and certainly was for someone like the apostle Paul.

As an apostle, living in difficult times, he travelled from place to place constantly. He was never anywhere for more than about three years, and then would move on. More often his stay in any place was much shorter. He constantly faced opposition and persecution. Can we imagine the state of mind of his wife, had he been married? She would have been constantly anxious, and her poor heart torn almost apart as the apostle endured all the rigours of his work. Why, when he returned home, what an alarming condition he would sometimes be in after ruthless beatings and savage treatment.

What are we saying – ‘when he returned home’? He did not have a home. The one whose words have been cherished by billions of believers throughout the Christian era did not have anywhere to call his own. He depended upon hospitality wherever he went, sometimes even living in the open. When we consider the hardships of Paul’s distinctive life, we see that being unmarried was for him a necessary act of commitment to the Lord.

If we are unmarried, the Lord will sustain us, and the Lord will mightily bless. So the apostle declares by the inspiration of God that the unmarried state is a noble one, which is blessed of the Lord.

But then Paul proceeds: ‘Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.’ Of course, the more normal condition is to be married. Don’t ever forbid marriage, the apostle says in 1 Timothy. He warns that in the last days people will arise who will forbid marriage. They are false teachers, who get their ideas from seducing spirits, and teach doctrines of devils. They speak lies in hypocrisy. Paul says these fierce things about people who discourage or forbid marriage.

While it may sound as though the apostle makes the single state superior to marriage, he quite plainly does not. Marriage is ordained of God, and is the general condition of men and women, and Paul teaches so. But he emphasises that both single and married states are blessed by God.

We note that Paul says marriage is in order to avoid fornication, but elsewhere he gives much grander reasons for it. Here he only states an obvious moral purpose, but he does so in a curiously expanded and very beautiful way.

This is a case where we need not only to read but to ‘hear’ his words: ‘Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.’ The last two phrases employ all the same words with the exception of two, and by this, Paul draws attention to a central feature of marriage. Think of it! – ‘his own wife’, ‘her own husband’, to possess. She belongs to him, and he belongs to her. Each is for the other a precious possession, one to be held closely to, one to be valued, esteemed, appreciated and loved. ‘His own…her own’ to guard. My only one.

In Genesis 2 we read how Eve was made from Adam’s side, and he uttered the words, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.’ Do we think he was speaking only biologically, and making an obvious physical observation? Or do we realise that while he uses the language of a literal biological fact, he is actually expressing his deepest feelings? This is what he thinks of Eve, and not merely a biological observation.

And while it is not literally true for us today, husbands and wives should be able to say of each other, ‘She is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.’ These words express the closeness of the possession. ‘Her concerns and her pains are mine, just as though they were really mine.’ ‘His concerns and his pains are mine, just as though they were really mine.’

Before proceeding to mutual debts in marriage, we must comment on the words, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman.’ Although this is a euphemism for marriage, at the same time it contains literally true wisdom. Be careful of modern ‘culture’. Young people particularly should be aware that the excessive degree of touching in present-day society is a new thing. It was never like this before.

Until recent days a man did not touch a woman, except to shake her hand. But the increasingly debased physical, fleshly culture of recent years has introduced considerable touching across the sexes, outside marriage. Hugging, feeling and kissing is now a normal feature of our society. No longer only the affectation of show-business people, it now extends to politicians and everyone else in the public eye. However, traditional respect for the opposite sex regards all this touching as indelicate, impolite, and even bordering on the coarse. It is both overfamiliar and extremely unwise. We believe that many people touch across the sex divide innocently, assuming they are only showing friendly behaviour, but many people do so to gain carnal excitement. We assert that Paul’s statement contains literal wisdom.

Our culture used to frown upon familiar touching across the sex divide as disrespectful, impertinent, and improper, and we should still do so today. If people behave too freely in these matters, many will (and do) soon fall into the sin of making unclean assessments.

We move now to another intentionally over-worded statement of the apostle, the great words – ‘Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.’ What precisely is due benevolence? This is the translation of the martyr William Tyndale, which, like much of the New Testament, was adopted by the King James translators.

The word ‘due’ literally refers to a debt due for payment, or a duty. What is owed is benevolence, a word missing from some ancient manuscripts, but firmly included in the Majority Text, and the Received Text of the Greek New Testament. Some modern versions of the Bible hasten to omit the word, with their tendency to ‘dumb down’ their rendering. By doing so they can make the entire passage speak about sex and sexual relationships. The world (and the tabloids) when it talks about marriage, tends to talk only about sex, but the Bible talks about more profound matters also. It is so in this seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, where the apostle does not come to sexual relationships until after he has spoken about husband and wife possessing each other, and paying a mutual debt of benevolence. The inspired Word puts these important and precious things right at the beginning, because marriage is far more than a sexual relationship, important as that may be.

Due benevolence is a debt of goodwill, or kindness in action. The New King James Version keeps the idea of benevolence, except that it weakens the word a little, substituting ‘affection’. That is not quite strong enough, because affection can be only an emotion, but benevolence is emotion actively expressed in kind deeds.

We have a debt of kind attitudes and deeds and we must pay it. Our biblical debt or duty is at least sevenfold, and if any of us are not paying it, then we sin against the Lord.

Exclusive Commitment

The first element of this sevenfold obligation is very obvious: it is exclusive commitment. Marriage is a covenant involving promises that have to be kept. We have made vows and pledges of absolute security in exclusive commitment, and there must be no betrayal under any circumstances, however small. All temptations to disrespect or dislike each other have to be expelled instantly, and bad thoughts replaced with good thoughts. To consider anyone else as a more suitable or desirable spouse would be scandalous and evil, not to be entertained in the mind for a moment. We have a binding debt and duty before God to keep faith with each other throughout life, the only reasons for the discontinuation of this debt being those named in the Scriptures.

Part of keeping faith is deep respect for each other and our union, and this means that we never talk about each other to a third party concerning personal, private matters or criticisms. We never betray or embarrass one another. Some people do this, but they are very foolish, behaving like superficial worldlings. They make complaints about their husband or their wife, about even quite intimate things, and things that should ever be kept strictly between them. They speak so lightly to third parties. This is a form of betrayal that greatly weakens the God-given bond, and is a dereliction of faithfulness.

The Duty of Care

The second obligation in our sevenfold debt is the biblical duty of care. We are to care for each other. Sometimes good people, when they have been married for a number of years, forget to care for each other, especially if they are both fairly strong and capable people. They leave the other to stand on his or her own feet, and they get on with their lives, just keeping half-an-eye on the other. This is not enough, because we have a duty of loving and thoughtful care. We have a debt to protect, encourage and comfort each other whenever necessary, helping each other in our different tasks. Often there may be far too little help flowing toward the other. There may be insufficient observation, awareness, understanding, and assistance.

This duty of care includes effort to potentiate the gifts of the other for the Lord’s service, and this we have included later in this article.

The Duty to Love

The third obligation in this sevenfold debt is the duty to love. We must do all that is needed to keep the flame of love alive. Love is not an automatic emotion that survives by itself, but one that has to be exercised and expressed. If neglected, it soon grows cold.

‘Husbands, love your wives,’ says the apostle repeatedly in Ephesians 5. Do we fail to express love and to communicate it? If so, we are not paying our debt, and we are offenders before God. In the world people may say, ‘I no longer love him,’ as if it cannot be helped, and their marriage is all over. But love is to a very great extent a choice, and unless some great sin intervenes, love should never be allowed to fall and fail.

Love begins with appreciation and never-failing courtesy. It proceeds to great fondness and acts of kindness. It then values, treasures and reflects on its object, so that the sacred bond of possession may be forged. It must never cease to be expressed in these same terms.

Husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, which is with sacrificial love; a love that never ceases to actively bless.

To keep love alive, certain sins must be particularly avoided, such as self-indulgence. If we think much about our own woes and problems, or hobbies and delights, or pursuits and objectives, we will not have much emotional energy left to love wife or husband. Similarly, self-pity drains all reserves of real feeling for another person. It may be that someone has had a hard time in life with many misfortunes, but if such a person does not firmly ration reflection, and instead falls into constant regret, love will be unable to prosper for another person.

Pride also spoils love, because it places a person centre-stage in his or her life, so that no one else matters very much. All available emotion is spent on the fortunes, accomplishments or setbacks of number one. To misspend the currency of emotion is to be incapable of real love. (Readers will appreciate we are using language poetically not scientifically.)