Prioritize Your Marriage Over Your Children

I do NOT love my children more than my husband.  Sound shocking?  I bet.  If I declared that on national TV I would probably get more negative criticism in one day than I have in my entire life thus far.  "But how could she?  The children should always ome first!  Doesn't she know how this will affect her children's self esteem!...yada yada yada."

Most of what the world teaches and marriages portray is that the children come first.  It is sadly obvious in this "it's all about me" world/ mentality that we allow to run rampant in our own homes.  Allowing the children to come before your marriage simply promotes the "It's all about me" mentality in children! 

I've so often witnessed the idealistic romantic love placed on having children and the thought that it will "fix" a marriage:  "This child will love me unconditionally," "The void in my marriage I'm feeling will somehow magically be filled when I have a child," and so on and so forth.  You know what I'm talking about.

Since there is often a tendency to prioritize our children to the neglect of our marriage, here are a couple of thoughts on how to avoid that danger.

There are at least three reasons that make prioritizing our children over our marriage both foolish and dangerous:

1. Our children will eventually leave home. Prepare your marriage for the empty nest:
To my knowledge, I’ve never talked to a person who divorced after twenty-five or thirty years who didn’t say something like this: “Once the kids were gone, we realized we really didn’t have much of a marriage.” Building a marriage on the foundation of the preeminence of children is like building a house on a rented removable slab. You may have days or even years when you feel completely secure, but the day is coming when the lease will be up and the foundation upon which your home stands will be taken away. A family shepherd must not allow his family to fall into this trap.

2. Our marriage forms the cornerstone of our children’s security:
Ironically, those who prioritize their children above their marriage are not only jeopardizing their marriage, they’re actually depriving their children of the very thing they desire to provide them. The greatest source of security our children have in this world is a God-honoring, Christ-centered marriage between their parents. Putting the children first is like a police officer putting away his badge and gun in order to make the public feel more at ease. A family shepherd must put his marriage before his children in order to provide them with the security they both need and desire.

3. Putting your marriage first will actually prepare your children for marriage:
Prioritizing your children above your marriage is both foolish and dangerous because it sets a precedent that contradicts one of the greatest lessons you’ll ever teach your children—how to be good husbands and wives. We must first and foremost model a commitment to marriage. Failure to do this will communicate ideas that are contrary to what we believe—starting with the narcissism it tends to create in our children—including the pitfalls that may follow them into their marriage. For example, if we prioritize our children above our marriage, we teach our children that marriage exists for children. If this is the case, how will our children react to the early months or years of their marriage when there are no children? How will they respond if, God forbid, they should struggle with infertility? If the heart of marriage is “living for the kids,” these scenarios could be difficult at best.

Jesus our Savior—and our example of what a bridegroom truly is—laid down his life for his bride (Eph. 5:25). He doesn’t neglect her for another. And it’s this relationship of our Savior to his bride that governs our understanding of our role as wives/husbands and family shepherds. We must give ourselves to and for our wives/husbands. We must view them not only as ours but as us!

As I often remind myself concerning my husband, “He’s not just mine; he’s me. He's bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh (Gen. 2:23); he’s my body (Eph. 5:28–29), and he is my head (1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23). We are one (Eph. 5:31; see also Gen. 2:24); and our union is a blessing to our children (1 Cor. 7:14).”

As family shepherds, our primary mission is to love our wives/husbands as our own selves. We must not allow anything to interfere with this mission. Neither our careers nor our children can be allowed to keep us from our task of modeling for the world the beautiful, mysterious, one-flesh union of our Savior and his bride (Eph. 5:33).

Gospel requirements and gospel productions

Good study I came across:

Family shepherds must know the difference between law and gospel. We must know the difference between committing ourselves to leadership in our families because it’s “right,” and looking to Christ as the Good Shepherd who, by his grace, will conform us to the will of his Father as we trust and obey him.

We must also know the difference between condemning our family with the law and shepherding them with the gospel. We must know the difference between what the gospel requires and what the gospel produces.

WHAT THE GOSPEL REQUIRES
All the gospel requires from us is repentance and faith.

• This is the message Jesus conveyed: “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matt. 4:17; see also Mark 1:15).
• This was Peter’s message on the day of Pentecost when, filled with the Spirit, he turned to the crowd and said, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
• And again: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19).
• This is also the message Paul proclaimed at Mars Hill: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

It’s absurd to expect obedience from men who are “dead in the trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1)—men who “are in the flesh” and who consequently “cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). This is the heart of Paul’s argument in Galatians. There he makes it clear that we are “justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal. 2:16). It is not our good works, our righteousness, our obedience that triggers the gospel’s effect in our lives; rather, the gospel calls simply for our repentance and our trust in Christ. This distinction must mark our
understanding and proclamation of the gospel.

WHAT THE GOSPEL PRODUCES
While repentance and faith are what the gospel requires, what the gospel produces is obedience to all the Lord’s commands.

• This is clear when John writes: Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 John 2:4–6)
• This is in keeping with Paul’s comment in 2 Corinthians 5:17 on the nature of true conversion: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has Family come.”
• This, of course, is to God’s glory, not ours; for it’s God who has made us “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).
• Make no mistake: “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Our obedience is produced by God, not by us. This obedience is the fruit or evidence of the work of the gospel in our lives.
• Those who love the Lord keep his commandments (John 14:15, 21).
• Moreover, Jesus associates the keeping of his commandments with abiding in his love (John 15:10), not trying to earn it.

WHY THESE DISTINCTIONS MATTER
All this may seem like splitting theological hairs, but I assure you these distinctions are crucial. Confusing what the gospel produces with what the gospel requires will lead either to a sterile works-righteousness on the one hand or to lawlessness on the other.
For example, if we work toward getting our unbelieving children to do that which only the gospel can produce in the life of a believer, and fail to point them to the undeniable truth that there’s nothing in and of themselves whereby they may obey in a manner that will satisfy God’s righteousness, then we’re essentially telling them they can please God on their own—something the Bible says is impossible (Rom. 8:8).
On the other hand, if we merely throw up our hands in surrender, never calling our children to repentance and never holding up to them the mirror of God’s unattainable standard of righteousness, then our children will think themselves safe and secure when in fact they stand condemned before a holy and righteous judge. They must know that in the Lord’s sight, “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isa. 64:6).
Thus, we must teach our children to view the law as “our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith (Gal. 3:24). Only then does the gospel have its full impact.