How Do I Have a Godly Marriage? (Real Christian Marriage Advice)

If you're looking for Christian marriage advice, you've probably already noticed something: most of what our culture teaches about marriage doesn't work. The divorce statistics prove it, and even a lot of the marriages that stay together describe themselves as miserable. So before we talk about how to build a successful marriage, we have to be honest that the world's playbook is broken. And if your marriage is already in crisis, start here instead: how to save your marriage before it ends in divorce.

I've spoken about marriage, written about it, and counseled people through it for decades — and I'll tell you plainly, I feel unqualified every time. Lisa would say the same. We've been married a long time, and we still need what I'm about to share. So don't read this thinking we have a storybook romance with no arguments and no hard seasons. That's not real, and it's not the point.

Here's the real question: how do you actually build a godly, successful marriage — not in theory, but on an ordinary Tuesday night when you're tired and annoyed with each other? The answer comes down to one word. Vision. It's about learning to use your eyes.

What Does Christianity Say About Marriage?

Before the how-to, you need the foundation, because it changes everything about the advice that follows.

If you asked people to define marriage, most would say it's about romance, or procreation, or the capstone of your life. All partially true. But here's what marriage actually is: a mirror of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the only human relationship that reflects God's relationship with His people. (If you want the full picture of why God designed marriage this way, I wrote about it in the purpose of marriage.)

The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And a marriage that works has those same three movements — a death to self, a burial of your selfishness, and a resurrection into something new by the power of Christ. That's why Christian marriage advice that skips Jesus never quite works. It's treating the symptoms and missing the source. When people look at your marriage, they should be able to see Jesus in it. That's the goal. Now here's how you actually get there.

Marriage Is More About Holiness Than Happiness

People ask me all the time: Ed, are you and Lisa happily married?

No. We're not happily married. We have moments of happiness. But we are not happily married. We are holistically married, and I mean that in the best sense of the word.

That distinction matters more than almost anything else I could tell you, because if happiness is the scoreboard, you will walk away from a good marriage during a hard season. Here's how I'd put it, and I wrote this down because I want to be precise about it.

Marriage is more about commitment than comfort. It's more about sacredness than satisfaction. It's more about faith than feelings. It's more about devotion than delight. It's more about God than gratification. It's more about worship than wants. It's more about your spouse than yourself. It's more about submission than selfishness. It's more about the gospel than gladness.

It's more about holiness than happiness.

Now hear me: you will get the other things too. You'll be comfortable. You'll be satisfied. You'll have feelings and delight and gladness, and God is not stingy with any of it. But those are the byproducts, not the point. Aim at happiness and you'll miss both. Aim at holiness and happiness tends to show up anyway.

Put Jesus at the Center: Look Upward

The first thing every successful marriage does is look upward, to Jesus.

I have a painting of Jesus in my house that I did years ago, and the way my chair sits, I'm always looking up into His eyes in that painting. That's a picture of where marriage actually happens — looking up. Because without Jesus, why even get married? Lisa and I would not be married today without Him. I don't say that as a nice religious line; it's the literal truth of our history. In forty years we've gone through five of the eight recognized markers of divorce, and we didn't even know it at the time. How did we get through them? One word. Jesus.

Here's something fascinating about your eyes. The retina receives the world upside down — it's your brain that flips it right side up. Think about that spiritually. In the flesh, we see marriage upside down, and our culture certainly does: if you're feeling it, it must be real; if they stop satisfying you, you're out; marriage is about my happiness. Looking upward to Christ is what flips the image right side up. It's the only way to see your marriage as it actually is.

The Psalmist understood this. Psalm 5:3 says, "In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice. In the morning I will lay my prayers before You and will look up." Look up.

Practically, this means Jesus is not a resource you call on when things get bad. He's the center. Pray together. Get in God's Word together. Get planted in a church together. That's not religious busywork — that's how the image stays right side up. And it's where the power comes from. When you're in the middle of an argument and you look to the cross and remember how readily you've been forgiven, it should rush you to forgive your spouse.

Look Inward

The second thing a godly marriage does is look inward. And this is the one nobody wants to do, because looking inward means examining yourself rather than cataloging your spouse's failures.

2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Look closely at yourselves. Test yourselves to see if you are living in the faith." That's an eye exam for the soul, and most of us would rather skip it.

Jesus said it plainly in Matthew 7: 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? First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Read that again in the context of your marriage. Most of us are experts on our spouse's speck and completely blind to our own plank. Looking inward asks a harder question: what am I bringing into this? Where am I the problem? What do I need to confess, change, own?

And here's why we avoid it. In marriage, when you look into your spouse's eyes, what's reflected back is who you actually are. That messes a lot of us up. No wonder we don't want to work on it. We'll spend money on club sports and golf lessons and hunting trips, and then skip the work on the most important human relationship on planet Earth.

Here's the promise in it, though. When you deal with your own plank, you can finally see clearly. Not to attack — to help. The plank-removal isn't the end of the process; it's what makes real, gentle, useful honesty possible between two people.

Look Outward

Third, look outward — and the first place to look is at your spouse.

Philippians 2:3-4 says, "Value others more than yourselves. None of you should look out just for your own good. Each of you should also look out for the good of others." That is the whole ballgame in one verse, and it is the hardest sentence in the Bible to actually live inside your own house.

Then look outward beyond the two of you, because a godly marriage is not a closed loop. Here's a principle I've watched hold true for decades: the healthiest marriages serve together. When a couple gets involved in something bigger than themselves — serving in the church, giving, helping other couples, opening their home — something happens to their marriage. The self-focus that kills relationships gets crowded out.

Your marriage was never meant to just consume. It was meant to give. Look outward, and you'll find that a lot of the inward problems start to shrink.

The Keys to a Successful Marriage, on an Ordinary Day

So here's the honest summary of the best Christian marriage advice I know. It's not a trick or a technique. It's a discipline of vision.

Look upward — put Jesus at the center, not at the edges. Look inward — deal with your own plank before you touch your spouse's speck. Look outward — value your spouse above yourself, and serve together instead of making your marriage all about your marriage.

Do that on ordinary Tuesdays, over years, and you get something the culture cannot manufacture: a marriage that actually reflects the gospel.

Marriage is not the easiest thing. It can become the greatest thing, if you're willing to work.

And if you've never made Jesus the center of your own life, that's where all of this begins. Not with a technique for your marriage, but with a decision about your soul. You can admit you're a sinner, turn from that sin, and ask Him to come in and take His rightful place at the center. That's the foundation. Everything else is built on it.