Three Reasons for Pastors to Care about Marriage

The more we, as pastors, have a biblical view of marriage, the more we will care about marriage. We minister and live in a culture that thinks it can redefine marriage with no negative consequences. We preach weekly to kids and teens who need to hear that God created marriage for human flourishing and to reflect the love of Jesus in a special way. We teach and shepherd married couples who are hurting, looking for hope, and don’t know where to turn. 

The rise of singleness in the U.S.¹ sometimes makes us hesitant to talk about marriage too much from the pulpit or to put too much emphasis on marriage classes. While singleness is good, and the church needs to recapture that biblical truth (1 Corinthians 7:6-8), pastors must discuss marriage from the pulpit and make plans to have at least occasional marriage classes, enrichment, and resource recommendations for married couples. 

Here are three reasons we as pastors must care about marriage:

1. We must care about marriage because marriage is a gospel issue

Nothing is more important in the Christian life than the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). In Ephesians 5:22-33, the longest passage in the New Testament on marriage, Paul explains how marriage uniquely points to the gospel and undergirds marriage. 

Every marriage says something about the gospel, even if the couple knows nothing about the gospel. God embedded marriage into the culture at the beginning of time (Genesis 2:18-25) as a quiet pointer to the gospel (Ephesians 5:29-32). So, the question that pastors need to face is, what do the marriages in my church say about the gospel? The enemy who wasted no time attacking marriage right after it was created (Genesis 2:25) continues to attack it today.

Yet, when marriages thrive, they adorn the gospel (Titus 2:10). When marriages fail, they detract from the winsomeness of the gospel. When we, as pastors, care about marriage, teach and preach about it, and point the people in our churches to good marriage resources, we show them how they live in their marriages matters because the gospel matters. 

2. We must care about marriage because Jesus cares about marriage

When the Pharisees asked Jesus about marriage and divorce in Matthew 19 and Mark 10, the answer Jesus gave continues to echo down to us today, answering questions about divorce and why Christians should care about even the definition of marriage. The Lord clearly states that God created Adam as male and Eve as female, but His answer in those Gospels also reminds us that God is the Creator. Changing the definition of marriage will have disastrous consequences as we try to “un-god” God and “god” ourselves with the powers of creation. Because God created it, marriage was never ours to change. 

Only in the differences of male and female (Matthew 19:4) can there be the union of marriage (Matthew 19:5-6). Remember, Jesus started answering the disciples’ questions about marriage by asking, “Have you not read?” If Jesus were answering us today as we asked him about same-sex marriage or the basic definition of marriage, there is no doubt that he would say something along the lines of, “Have you not read?” referring to either Genesis or the Gospels.

There is beauty, function, meaning, and gospel pointers in marriage between a husband and wife. Christians must now build a broader foundation in sharing our faith and discipling our kids and young believers as cultural definitions of marriage change, which means pastors have more work to do regarding what marriage is.  

It is hard to preach and teach even the basic definition of marriage in our world today because there are so many different assumptions. Yet clear, biblical teaching rooted in Scripture, which is also compassionate and full of grace, will draw many to Christ and God’s plan amid our cultural chaos. The pastor who teaches about marriage will know that he has God’s blessing on his ministry because Jesus cares about marriage.

3. We must care about marriage because we care about couples and children being safer and happier

When people follow God’s design, they thrive. Life works. Pastors care about marriage and preach and teach about it because couples and children are safer and happier when they follow a biblical view of marriage.

In Nancy Pearcey’s 2023 book The Toxic War on Masculinity, she points out that about 90 percent of evangelical Christians continue to accept the idea of complementarian roles in the home, including the headship of the husband.² These are the same ideas about gender and marriage in particular that are often thought of as archaic at their best and abusive at their worst. Citing study after study, Pearcey shows that the data indicates that Christian men who attend church at least three times a month “are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce, and they have the lowest levels of domestic abuse and violence.”³

We know God designed marriage to make us holy before he designed it to make us happy. We know that marriage is one of God’s greatest sanctification tools because of the covenant relationship that does not allow us to run from our sins or our problems without significant consequences. Yet we also know that when couples follow God’s design to love each other like Jesus, communicate in ways the Bible tells them to, see each other as equal but different, and pursue a deeper friendship with each other, they will be happier. 

We can all look back over the years of our ministries and think of couples who have been through great heartache but have fought battles and won by God’s grace. Their marriages are not perfect, but they are better than they used to be.

We, as pastors, have a lot on our plates. At the beginning of each week, you may look over your planner and let out a big sigh or a prayer that says, “God, I’m not sure where to place my priorities this week because I can’t do it all.” Make sure that as you look at each week—which turns into each month, which turns into each year—that you include purposeful marriage enrichment and teaching and shepherding in your ministry plans. God cares deeply about marriage. Shepherds who look like Jesus do, too—and know they have God’s smile upon their ministries.

©2023 Tim Counts. Used with permission.

1. In 1960, about 10 percent of American adults were single, and in 2012, that number rose to nearly half for the first time in history. Cited in William P. Farley, Marriage in Paradise: How to Have a Genesis Two Marriage in a Genesis Three World, (Pinnacle, 2018), 30. ↩︎
2. Nancy R. Pearcey, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (Grand Rapids, Baker Books), 35. ↩︎
3. The Toxic War on Masculinity, 36. ↩︎