How to appreciate an imperfect spouse. part 3

3) Accept the Reality of Your Own Sin.

“Gary,” the email read, “What does a wife do when her husband doesn’t love her like Christ loves the church?”

The woman then shocked me by giving the rest of her story: “Before I got married, I read many Harlequin romances and I thought marriage would be like that. For a while it was, but then things cooled off. A couple years later, I found that exciting love once again by having an affair; but after a number of months, that too, cooled off.”

At this point, she threw herself into the church, but after a while even God became boring. That’s when she “fell” into yet another affair that—no surprise, here—also eventually cooled off. In the aftermath of those two affairs, in which she wounded and humiliated her husband about as deeply as a wife can, she wrote to me, consumed with how her husband wasn’t loving her like Christ loves the church.

Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but all of us have hearts that tend toward dismissing our own faults while magnifying the flaws of our spouse. Sometimes we need an extreme example to show us how dark our own hearts really are.

Jesus could not have been clearer: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Luke 6:41-42).

If you’re thinking, “But in my case, my spouse really is the worst sinner,” then know this: Jesus is talking specifically about you. This is precisely the attitude he finds so offensive.

While we tend to rank certain sins, in the glory of God’s goodness every mark of sin—whether an errant attitude, a prideful spirit, or a lust of the flesh—is vile and offensive in his sight. I’ve seen wives who have abused food turn around and disdain husbands who struggle with pornography. I’ve seen controlling and arrogant husbands disdain wives who watch too much television. Both seem completely blinded to their own shortcomings.

We’re not called to judge our spouses—ever. We are called to love them. We are not called to recount their failures in a Pharisaic game of “I’m holier than you”—we’re called to encourage them. We are not called to build a case against them regarding how far they fall short of the glory of God—we are called to honor and respect them.

We learn to appreciate our imperfect spouse by getting in touch with the reality of our own sin, humbly asking God for forgiveness, and honestly realizing that we’ll never be asked to forgive anyone as much as God has forgiven us.

Note..We’re All in This Together.

Every one of us is married to an imperfect spouse. We confront different trials, different temptations, and different struggles—but each one of us faces the same reality: living as imperfect people, in an imperfect world, with an imperfect spouse. Learning to love, appreciate, and to be thankful for that imperfect spouse is one of the most soul-transforming things you can do. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s a profitable one, and I urge you to remain committed to it today.