Christian Marriage #10—Conflict resolution

Father, you do take good care of your people, even in the midst of suffering and trial that's acute or is prolonged. You don't abandon us. You don't leave us. You don't forsake us. At times, we feel as though you do. We feel as though we're alone. We feel as though our days are filled with bitterness, even as Hezekiah did, but also as Hezekiah confessed. You've healed him, and you've given him life. that he might serve you and sing songs of praise to you. Father, we pray that you would give us soft, humble hearts that are attentive to your word. Many of us are young. Many of us have youthful lusts and ambitions and expectations for life. We have not suffered as those who are older than us, as those who have gone before us. And we don't have the fortitude or the faith or the perseverance and endurance that the saints of old do. And so we ask, Father, that you would make us like them.

that you give us endurance and that you give us hope, that we wouldn't recoil or shrink back from hard work, from fearful work. We pray, Father, that you would sanctify us and grow us in your truth and in the knowledge of you. We pray that you'd help us to give glory to you, bearing good fruit in every season, when life is comfortable and when life is difficult, when our children are young and when our children are out of the home. When we have plenty and when we have less than we need. Father, you know the number of hairs on our head and you care for us each. And we ask that you help us to trust you and to be about the good work of serving you because you saved us from our sins. Help us not to take our sins lightly or the wrath that they deserve. Help us to remember the great cost of our salvation through the death of your son when he bore your wrath meant for us.

for our sakes. As we study your word now, Father, we pray that you would help us to be humble and to submit ourselves to it and to not become arrogant or proud or think that we've accomplished or have no need of instruction in these things. Father, please minister to us and help us glorify yourself and equip us to do your will. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So this morning, we're going to be continuing our sermon series on Christian marriage. This week's sermon really could be preached outside the context of marriage without losing any of its weight or any of its importance because it really is a topic that's necessary for all of us as Christians, not just for husbands and wives. And so even as we come into it, I want you to be thinking this morning, this isn't just for me and my spouse or what am I supposed to do if I'm not married? This is something that we all have need of.

And so what's our topic? Our topic this morning is conflict resolution. How do we be reconciled to people that we sinned against or that have sinned against us? There are all kinds of temptations that we face when we sin or when other people sin against us. And what we really need to know is what God teaches us concerning how to handle it and how to be reconciled to one another. Our text this morning is Ephesians chapter 4, verses 25 to 27. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, as you guys know,

My wife and I have been doing a lot of premarital counseling. We're very happy to do it. The Lord's given us a lot of young couples over the last year or two to get married. And so we've had many occasions to talk about marriage and what it's like and the troubles that you can look forward to in marriage. And one of the things I often ask the couples when they come and they sit down and we have our pleasantries and how was your week and everything. And then I ask them, I say, have you guys been fighting? Did you have any fights this week? And they have, there's often this nervous kind of like look at the other person and like, are you going to tell him or am I supposed to tell him or are we going to act like that didn't happen or are you still mad at me? There's this look and all of that, everything I've just said is contained in that look and it takes just a second for that to happen. The reason I always ask at the beginning of the counseling session, have you guys been fighting?

is because I assume that there's been tension between the two of them, because after all, you've got two sinners who've spent a bunch of time together, and there's one thing we can be sure of, even though Facebook would never tell us, it's that those two sinners had some sort of conflict, some sort of hurt feeling, some sort of disappointment, something happened. And so I start the counseling session by trying to get them to acknowledge, yes, we did have some trouble, because I want them to become accustomed to the fact that they do sin against each other. There are all kinds of things that we do to rename sin. And if I ask the couple, say, did you guys have any tension this week? Did you have any arguments? They'll say, well, we did have a disagreement. Well, no, we had a misunderstanding, but we got it straightened out. And I say, oh, did you? What was it about? And they're like, oh, we have to tell you? And I say, yeah, you got to tell me.

And it's not because I want to be in their business and know all of the nitty-gritty details. It's just that I want us to become accustomed to the fact that we sin. And it's not good for us. If from the very beginning of our relationships, whether that's a husband and wife or parents and their children or you and your neighbors or your coworkers or whomever, we have to have a category in our heads that we are sinners. And that is often daily what we do. We sin against the people we're around, and they sin against us. And it really is a helpful way to think about it. And you might think, I don't think it's helpful. I think it's depressing. I'd much rather think of it as I was tired, and that's why that happened, or I was hungry, or I was distracted, or I've had a busy week at work, and there's all of these reasons why we had conflict. But if I can get a couple to say, you know what?

I'm a sinner. And while I was tired and hungry or busy or we misunderstood each other or whatever, the thing that we know was in that mix as well was sin. And it's very easy for us to think, no, no, no, that's not what happened. It wasn't sin or I didn't mean to sin. We're always minimizing the fact that we're sinners, at least in our hearts. But when you're married, it's very hard to get away from that reality. It's very hard to get to the point where you're humble enough to say, when your spouse comes to you, and they don't do it perfectly or correctly, but they say, that thing you did really made me mad. And you're willing to say, did it. I'm sorry. I see what I did. Most married couples, most engaged couples, this is not how conversations over conflict or sins go.

Normally there's a bunch of excuse making and a bunch of mudslinging back and forth. Why did that? Because you did this. And what I want us to realize from the very beginning, even before we get right into our text, I want us to own the fact that we do sin against each other and we need to learn to think in terms of sin. We need to learn to think not just in terms of men and women are different, or we need to learn to think in terms of sin instead of these are just... these are just normal problems, or I was just tired, or we just communicate differently, or I speak with this sort of tone and she doesn't appreciate it, or what have you. We need to learn to think in terms of whether we are sinning, whether our tone or our behavior or our care for one another is sinful. Even if we are tired or hungry or busy or what have you, that contributes to it. But the fruit of all of those sorts of things is often that we sin.

We need to learn not to camouflage our sin and the circumstances of our lives. Because when we do, we muddy the relational water between one another, between our spouses. And resolution becomes very difficult to figure out because you can't figure out what was wrong. At the very beginning of our text, Paul says, lay aside falsehood. And so the falsehood I'm trying to get you to lay aside of, or the truth I'm trying to get you to take hold of instead, is that you're a sinner. And you and your spouse will sin against each other daily. And if I can get you to take hold of that truth, you'll be a long ways toward being able to resolve those conflicts. So we have to lay aside falsehoods and be able to say, I'm a sinner. And it's possible, likely even, that when I talk to my wife or when she talks with me, there will be sin involved. Scripture tells us that where there are many words, sin is not absent.

to be able to resolve conflict in our marriage, the first thing we have to be able to do is to say, I'm a sinner, and I'm not here to believe lies and to try to get you to conspire with me to believe the same lies about how noble I am and how godly I am. Better for us to say, I'm a sinner, and I do sin in these ways against you. Now, there's a caveat to this. I'm telling you I want you to believe that you're a sinner, and I really, really do. But there's an abuse of this that I want to warn you against, and that's that you end up thinking that every disagreement you have with your spouse is a function of sin. That's not always true. We actually do have different personalities, different preferences, even differences of conscience. And those things can cause conflict. And so we need to be aware of what's going on. If you and your spouse have a difference of opinion, that you prefer one thing and they prefer another,

I'm not suggesting to you that those preferences are sin. That your wife having a different preference than you is somehow rebellious. Or that your husband having a different priority than you is somehow unloving. That's not what I'm saying. Can it become sinful? Can the preference or the priority become sinful? Yes. Truth be told, we're all pretty good at that. Turning our preferences into untouchable priorities in our homes. But personalities or preferences, even matters of conscience, do cause conflict and aren't necessarily sin in and of themselves. What you do with those preferences or those priorities, you have to be on guard against them becoming sin. And so you want to lay aside the falsehood, the high thoughts you have of yourself, of your opinions, of how you should be treated, of what you deserve. We want to set aside those things.

And we want to be humble and realize, I sin against my spouse and my spouse sins against me. This is the nature of life in this world. It's just, it's just, it's particularly on display in our marriage because we live with the person. When I'm talking to an engaged couple, what I'll tell them is, I said, you guys are, you're lying to each other right now. And they go, I'm not lying to each other. And I say, well, you're not doing it on purpose, but you are lying to each other. You're both on your best behavior right now. And the truth is, however irritated or frustrated or disappointed you might get of an evening, you get to say your goodbye, you want that to be sweet, and then you get to go home and do what you want. But when you get married, you have to go sleep in the same bed. And you don't have that reprieve. And all of a sudden, you learn all kinds of things about your spouse that you didn't know before. And lo and behold, those things that were a little irritating become really, really big problems.

Because you think you deserve better or different. And so we need to be very careful and pay attention to the reality of us sinning against each other. We don't need to go on a witch hunt for it. Hey, Cypress, would you stop that? Thank you. We tried to get rid of all the squeaky chairs, but apparently we missed one. So I'm not trying to send you on a witch hunt for sin. I'm not trying to get you to resolve every conflict by saying, you're sinning against me in this way. I'm simply trying to get us to admit that in the course of our daily lives and in our marriages, we do sin. And we aren't doing ourselves any good and God's not being glorified when we make a habit of excusing our behavior. Better for us to own it. Lay aside falsehood and tell each other the truth. In a lot of ways, it's hardest to have your spouse tell you that you're in sin. Have you noticed this? Your boss can tell you that you sinned. And you may not like it, but you'll hear it.

Your parents, maybe your teachers, your brothers or sisters, they can tell you you're in sin, your parents. But when your spouse tells you you're in sin, that you sinned against them, it's so intensely personal, it's very difficult to hear. It's all muddied. It's so interconnected in your relationship. You can't get away from it, from them. And so when they tell us the truth, it's very hard for us to accept it. But one of the benefits of being a Christian and having a Christian marriage is that we're free, even commanded. to tell each other the truth. Our ability to be able to speak to our spouses about their sin is a blessing. It's a kindness. We don't have to conspire in each other's lies. We can tell each other the truth because we have the ability to be reconciled. We have a way to process sin. And so I don't want us to take on the world's way of dealing with sin. I want us to be explicitly Christian in the way we deal with sin in our marriages. And the first part of it is,

Don't believe the lie that you're not a sinner. Tell each other the truth about your sin. The reality is your spouse knows your sin better than anybody else, except maybe you. They know it better because they live with you and they see it and they deal with the consequences of it on a daily basis. And so if they speak to you and say, this is a problem, you ought to listen to them. And the longer you're married, the more helpful they can be in that way. If you think your spouse is in sin, you ought to tell them. You ought to work through it and towards resolution. You ought not to churn over it. Have you ever had that happen in your marriage? Finally something comes to a head and you find out that actually they've been mad at you for three days because you said something or you did something that irritated them, your spouse. Well, they didn't say anything at the time. They didn't talk to you about it.

Two or three days later, you realize life, the log jam started a few days ago, and it's just been piling up and piling up and piling up, and now it's finally all broke free. This is not how our marriages ought to be. We ought to speak truth to one another. If we fall into sin, if we're sinning, we ought to lovingly and graciously tell the other person now instead of later. If you'll love your spouse in this way and work on your marriage in this way, your marriage will grow. If there's a problem, don't write it down. on the notepad of your heart going, I'm gonna remember when he said that thing. I remember when she did that thing. That's not gonna help your marriage grow. That's not gonna honor and glorify God. That's not gonna bring resolution. So you and I, we're sinners. We're married to a sinner. And so living together means you're gonna sin against each other. Acknowledge it. It's the truth. Don't conspire with each other to lie about what your sins are. Tell each other when you're in sin.

and work toward reconciliation. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but I want to come into the next part of our text in verse 26. I think this is one of the hardest things that the Bible says. It says, be angry and don't sin. How in the world are you supposed to be angry and not sin? We have this word for it. It's called righteous anger. But none of us are quite sure what righteous anger is if we tell the truth. It's very hard to distinguish between righteous anger and just good old-fashioned. unrighteous anger, you know, the kind that we participate in on a daily basis. And so Paul here, he tells us, be angry and don't sin. And you come away going, it's okay for me to be angry? Paul's telling me it's okay for me to be angry? And the answer is yes, so long as, provided that, you don't sin as a result of your anger. Now, I don't have any magic answer for you about that, but I do want to talk about it. Is it okay to get angry at sin? Yes.

Why? Because when we sin, we sin against God. And when we think about sin, I don't think we think nearly enough in terms of our sin being against God. I think we think almost exclusively in terms of our sin being against our spouse. And this is not what Scripture tells us. It is true that we sin against each other. I'm not saying we don't sin against each other. But when we sin against each other, we also, and more importantly, Sin against our Lord. When King David refused to go out to battle in the spring as the kings were supposed to do, when he stayed back, it led to a terrible, terrible sin in his life. What did he do? Well, he was up there and he saw Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. And he called to her and he had her come and he committed adultery. And to cover up his adultery, he killed her husband.

And then, as a result of his adultery and his murder, his son died. This is a terrible, terrible situation. Now, David doesn't realize what he's doing. When he was enthralled with Bathsheba, he just thought, there's something I want. He went and got what he wanted. And Nathan the prophet... This faithful man comes to David and speaks to him. He tells him a parable about a shepherd and a man in his flock, his sheep. And he says, you know, there was a man who had a whole bunch of sheep, but he wasn't content with his sheep, with all his sheep. He went to the man who just had one sheep, and he took that man's sheep. And David gets angry.

You know, Nathan says, what should happen to the man who has all these sheep and steals the other guy's one sheep? What should happen to him? David says, off with his head. And what's Nathan say to him? He says, David, you're the man. This is what you did to Uriah. And at this point, David realized his sin. How he'd sinned against who? Certainly he sinned against Bathsheba. Certainly he sinned against Uriah. But in Psalm 51, this is what he says about this situation. He says against you, this is his prayer, against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And he's speaking of his sin against God. Yes, he sinned against Bathsheba. She wasn't his wife at the time. Yes, he sinned against Uriah. But when he confessed his sins, he understood what the most important sin he committed was, was against the Lord. And so when we sin against each other in our marriages, We sin against the Lord. And our concern ought to be with our sins against the Lord. More so than it is about us being sinned against. And so righteous anger is concerned with sinning against the Lord. It's very difficult. I would almost say impossible for you to have righteous anger about being sinned against yourself. I just don't know that any of us have the strength to be able to sort that out in our hearts and not give ourselves to being angry.

and falling into sin when we are sinned against. But to be angry that someone sins against the Lord is a different thing, even as they sin against you. If we take personal offense, which is our native response, you know, what's your response if someone punches you or says something mean to you? What's your natural response? Punch them back. Say something mean back to them, right? An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. But Paul tells us to be angry and not to sin. to be concerned with their sin against the Lord far more than we're concerned about their sin against us. After all, how upset can we really be at someone for sinning against us if we know and believe that we sin against them just as much? This is why Jesus told us to remove the log from our own eyes before we go to correct our brother and to remove the might from his eye. We sin against each other. When you sin against your spouse, you're only doing to them what they do to you.

How offended can you be that someone sins against you when you do the very same thing to them? The only way we can really get offended about that is when we think, no, no, no, you really sin against me. I don't really sin against you as much as you sin against me. You're a bad husband or you're a bad wife. You're far worse than I am. Then we can get really angry. But if we can understand our marriages as being two sinners joined together with the task of... representing Jesus Christ and his bride, the church, an insurmountable task if we're left to ourselves. And yet this is what God tells us we're to do as a husband and as a wife. But we're doing it as two sinners. If we can just humble ourselves and go, you know what's going to be normal in our marriages is that we're going to sin against each other. And when we sin against each other, our concern should not be you sinned against me. Our concern should be you sinned against God.

And you're going to stand before him in judgment. You're not going to stand before me in judgment. You're not going to stand before your spouse in judgment. You're going to stand before the maker of heaven and earth and have your sins judged. And your spouse won't be standing there with you. And you won't be able to say, it was this woman that you gave me, like Adam did. And so you can be angry at sin, but only if you can keep it from being an anger that's rooted in you being sinned against. You should expect to be sinned against, I guess, is what I'm saying to you.

You should not be surprised by it. And you should seek your spouse's restoration to God. If they're restored to God, if they confess their sins and they're humble before the Lord, your relationship will be reconciled. If they won't, or if you don't care that they be reconciled to God and speak to them in these terms, we're dancing around the issue and we're not really dealing with the full weight of it. So is it possible to be angry and not sin? Well, it's pretty hard. But it is something we ought to learn to do. The other option is to not get angry over sin. And I'm here to tell you that's more dangerous. If you don't care about sin, and you don't care if your spouse sins against you, and you don't care that your spouse sins against the Lord, and you don't care that they sin against their children, you are doing them no good. And so it's a difficult work to be angry about sin. But we do really need to figure out how to be angry over sin without being offended ourselves.

We have to guard our hearts against taking it personally. It's so easy to take sins personally, isn't it? But taking sin personally is never going to resolve the conflict or fix the problem. So how do you guard your heart against getting angry and sinning? Well, Paul goes on immediately and tells you, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Keep short accounts. Seek resolution. In my experience as a pastor and as a husband and just simply as a Christian, when I get angry, Time doesn't make my anger go away. It may make it die down, but it doesn't go away. Time doesn't fix anger. And if you don't deal with anger pretty quickly, it turns into bitterness. That's sort of the residue. That's the residual of anger if it's not dealt with. You become bitter. So Paul says, if you want to be angry and not sin, I think one of the best ways to do that is to not let the sun go down in your anger. Deal with it now.

Deal with it soon. Work it out with your spouse. Now, am I telling you you have to stay up all night fighting like cats and dogs? Sometimes you are going to need to be exhausted the next day because you really do need to work through it. And other times you're going to need to be able to say, time out. We have a problem. It's midnight. It's 2 a.m., whatever time it is. We're both exhausted, and we're too weak to resolve this right now. Affirm your love for each other. You're still angry. You still aren't resolved, but you say, we do love each other, and we are going to work through this, and we're going to talk about it tomorrow when I get home from work or whenever, soon. Pray and go to bed. I'm not convinced that this passage, when it says, don't let the sun go down in your anger, means you have to stay up always, all night, working it out. I think that idea discounts the fact of how weak we are. How hard is it for you to be gracious and kind when you're tired?

How much easier is it for you to go into sin when you're tired? When I'm talking to young married couples, one of the things I encourage them to do is, you need to have a curfew. I know you're grown-ups. The Bible doesn't say you have to have a curfew, but I do encourage you to have a time when you say goodnight because the later the night goes on, the more likely you are to fall into sin because you're weaker. I say, if you want to spend a bunch of time together, why don't you say goodnight at 8 o'clock and get together at 6 o'clock in the morning?

You spend the same hours together and the same time, and you're like, well, that wouldn't be any fun. And I say, but you'd have less temptation. And I say it as a real suggestion, but really just trying to expose the reality that as the night wears on, temptations grow. Now, before you're married, it's often a question of purity. After you're married, it's more a question of conflict resolution. Are you equipped at 2 a.m. to work through your problems as well as you will be the next time? Next day. Probably not. And so you need to seek resolution quickly. But it doesn't always mean you need to stay up at night, all night. I'm not saying you can postpone the problem and just put it off and say, I don't want to deal with that right now, so I'm going to bed. If there's a problem, you need to face it. Ignoring or minimizing the problems, the sins, is not going to bring resolution. Stewing over it is not going to bring resolution. Sitting there and churning all night instead of sleeping is not going to fix the problem. Submit it to the Lord.

How can I? You mean when I have relational tensions or I'm frustrated, I'm supposed to be able to go to sleep? Yeah. It's an act of faith for you to trust God and to say, we're going to work this out, and we're going to work it out tomorrow, and tonight we're going to go to bed. You can do that as an act of faith and not be running afoul of this passage that says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. What Paul's really driving at here is that you don't build a habit of never dealing with conflict. always being too tired, always being too busy, always having something better to do or something more desirable to do. I mentioned earlier that if your spouse sins, you should mention it to them. And I think it goes without saying that none of us like to do that. That's not fun work. Relationally, it's a scary thing. Is she going to get angry and accuse me? Is he going to get all grumpy and silent? If you get angry, spouse sins against.

the Lord, and it makes you angry, if you can forgive them and carry on, really, I mean really forgive them, not like hold on to it, but like really be okay for having forgiven them and have peace in your heart between the two of you, then that's desirable. That's a good thing to do. If you can forgive them without mentioning the sin, you should do it. But if you can't, even though you know you should be able to, if you can't, then you really do need to talk about it. If you're angry, even if you know you shouldn't be angry, even if you know you're a sinner and you've sinned against them and you really don't have any reason to be this upset about it. But if that's where you're stuck, why does she do that? I just, ugh. If that's where you're stuck, then you really do need to talk about it. And it may seem silly to tell adults that you need to talk about such little things, but I'll tell you, many of the fights in marriages are about really stupid stuff. The things that married couples fight over, I mean, the things that sets us off,

It's such little insignificant things. It's like we're crazy. We've lost our minds how mad we get about stuff. This is who we are. This is what we are, isn't it? Better for us to admit it. And if part of admitting it means, this is actually a pretty small thing, but it did hurt, it did irritate me. I am frustrated and I'm stuck. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. Paul also tells you, tells us, Not to give the devil an opportunity. If you delay, what you're doing is giving Satan a wide open invitation into your marriage to wreak all kinds of havoc. That's what you're doing. It's not like, oh, I didn't mean to. Here we are, Paul telling us, if you will not resolve the conflict in your marriages or between brothers outside of marriage, if you will leave it lay, you're giving Satan an invitation to come in and to make an even greater mess of your marriage. And we all say, well, I don't want that. And I say, good. Then what you need to do is go to your spouse and be reconciled to them. And if the truth is told, I think we believe we're above that work. We think our spouse should know what they did wrong without us telling them what offended us. They should just know. And it's not just the women who feel that way. The men feel that way too. She should just know that that irritates me when she does that.

They should know better. We've talked about this before. I've told her. I've told them. I thought we'd work this out last time such that it would never happen again. It's hard work to have to be reconciled to people. It's really humbling. It's not the sort of thing that makes you feel all good about yourself. You think, we have to do this again. This is what happened. This little tiny thing is what's stumbling me, causing me such grief and angst and frustration and anger. If it is, You have to deal with it. The first thing I'm trying to convince you of this morning is you're a sinner, right? The second thing is you have to deal with it. This is really basic stuff. We tell this to our children, and we as adults, with grown children, need to be told you're a sinner, and you need to deal with your sins and your marriages. It's really important that they be dealt with, that you be reconciled, that there be peace. So how do you resolve conflict in a marriage? That's sort of the...

Million dollar question, isn't it? What are the magic words to fix our problems? I was wrong, says Tim. Yeah, that may well be part of it. You know, when I talk to people who are having trouble with conflict or tension in some relationship, I say, you know, I give them an example. Well, you could say this and this and the other. And then at the end, I always say to them, but you need to say what's true. And that's what I want to say to you is when you're resolving conflict in your marriage, you need to say what's true. If you were wrong, don't be an idiot and defend your stupidity because you don't want to admit you were wrong. Listen to what your spouse says and admit your failures and your faults wherever they exist instead of saying, well, you shouldn't be upset by that. That's another solution we'd like, isn't it? Well, yeah, I did that, but you shouldn't make such a big deal. I don't know why you're so mad about that. Well, I do. It's because you're doubling down on your stupidity and your sin.

And you're blaming them for it. Own your failures. You're a sinner. Just say, I'm sorry. I sinned. Looking at, you know, when Vanessa and I talk about this, she'll say, you did this thing. And I go, yep, I did that thing. And she'll go, well, this is what that meant. And I go, that's not what I meant to do. That's not what I meant. And she goes, well, that's what it meant to me. And then we have the opportunity that all of you guys have. What are we going to do? Because we haven't gotten into it yet, but we got our toes curled over the edge of a big half pipe of argument. And we're about to dive in.

And I can either say, we can either say, okay, that's what happened. This is what I meant, and I'm sorry. Looking at it from your perspective, and here's the things you saw in that action that I didn't think about at all. And when I look at it the way you looked at it, I'm like, oh, well, yes, that makes perfect sense now, but I'm an idiot. I was wrong. I didn't think about those things. This is what happens. We've been married 15 years. Some of you have been married longer than us. Many of you have been married less than us. We're still working on it. The older couples, still working on it. This is our work as husbands and wives. And you have to choose to honor God in your marriage and to say, what I'm working toward is resolution and reconciliation with my spouse. If there's a conflict, you should think, is what I'm saying, is what I'm doing, aimed at making our relationship better or worse. And you would never say, well, I'm trying to make it worse. You'd say, but I just can't believe what they did. And you get so stuck on the fact that they sinned against you. I'm sorry that you were sinned against. It is no excuse for you to go into sin yourself. Your response to sin is on you. And you will not be able to stand before God and say, but my wife this and that, but my husband this and that.

Because God didn't accept that sort of argumentation with Adam and Eve. Adam says, but it was the woman you gave to me. And he went to Eve, what's this thing you've done? It was the serpent. All three of them got cursed. You're not going to escape any responsibility by abdicating your own responsibility for your own actions. If someone sins against you, then you've been sinned against. If you sin in response to that, that's on you. You did that. And so you have to, if you want to resolve conflict, you have to be humble enough to listen and understand what the other person is saying. What in the world did they think you were doing and why? And I'll tell you, this doesn't always mean that the husband's right and it does not always mean that the wife is right. The goal of this is not to say, which one of us is in the right? The goal of us is to say, okay, listen, we've got a conflict and it's going to either become a bigger problem and bring more dishonor on the name of Jesus Christ or we're going to work it throughout and we're going to resolve this.

I sinned against you. You sinned against me. Okay. Now what are we going to do about it? We're going to listen to each other. We're going to talk about it. Well, that made me angry. Well, you said that and that was really rude. Whatever the thing is. And this is necessary whether you meant to sin against your spouse or not. Whether you did it on purpose. Sin is sin and it's a sin against God. And so it needs to be confessed. When you confess your sins, which is the next thing that needs to happen? Tim said, you need to say, I'm sorry. Admit you were wrong. And I say, more than that, you need to name your sins the way the Bible names your sins. This is really rudimentary. It's really basic. But we need to be versed in how Scripture talks about our sins. Laziness, lust, pride, greed, fear, bitterness, hatred, murder. We need to learn to see ourselves the way the Bible describes us.

And when we confess our sins, I'm sorry I said that. It's a good start. Why did you say it? What did you mean by it? What was your sin in it? Forgive me for that. Will you forgive me? Now, forgiveness is an important thing. And I think too often we pass over it as Christians, and we just presume that people will forgive us of our sins. Don't do that in your marriage. When you ask somebody for forgiveness, you're asking a big question. because they may well still be angry at you or hurt by what you did, but when you ask for forgiveness, you're asking them to agree to the end of this conflict. These are the terms of peace. I sinned against you in these ways, not making an excuse for it, not justifying it, not minimizing it, not blaming you for it. Here's what I did, and it was sin against you and against the Lord, and I'm asking you, will you forgive me for it? You ever not wanted to forgive somebody?

You ever said, well, I think I still want to be mad at you. I'm not ready to be at peace with you yet. All of a sudden, it's like, that's why it's so important that you ask for forgiveness. Because in that moment, you're saying, I want there to be peace between God and us, between you and me. Will you join with me in it? Will you forgive me? Don't presume that they will. You think too much of your spouse if you presume that they'll forgive you. You just all admitted that you've all been angry and not wanted to forgive others. So it's really important that you ask them, will you forgive me? And it's important that you answer the question when you're asked. What does Jesus say about us offering forgiveness? In the same way that we forgive others, their sins, we will be forgiven. You and I, as I said earlier, we sin against God on a daily basis. And there is a reservoir of mercy.

that God has to forgive us for all of our sins. And when someone comes to us and asks us, will you forgive me for the thing that I did? What you are being asked is, will you give me some of what God has given you? And if you think that you don't have forgiveness to give, what you really think is that you don't need your own sins forgiven. All that's being asked is that you give some of what God's given to you to your spouse. And so you give it to them. this will bring an end to the conflict. And in me saying that, I'm not saying that it will never come up again. In the same way that Martin Luther said that the Christian life is a life of repentance, forgiveness is very similar. Sometimes the sins we commit against each other are small. They're just the daily sort of sins. And sometimes the sins we commit against each other are big. And they really do cause lasting wounds in the relationship and in the marriage.

God's forgiveness and our forgiveness to our spouse does not mean that we will not have to continue to fight our temptations to be angry at them. You will. Like I said, there's no magic answer here. When you say, this is what I did, will you forgive me? And they say, yes, I will forgive you. It's not like, oh, everything's perfect now. That's not actually how it works. There may and should be a relief in the moment. But the next day or the next week, don't be surprised if you realize that you made a commitment to forgive them and you're having to work out your faith by continuing to live in forgiveness. In the same way that they're having to work out and live in repentance. You need their forgiveness. And you need their forgiveness even if they don't confess their sins to you in return. This is one of the things we talk about in premarital counseling. What if you confess your sins and your spouse doesn't?

Reciprocate. You say, I'm sorry. Here's what I did. And here's why I did it. And will you forgive me? And they say yes. And then everything's better. Except you're sitting there going, uh, was I the only one that did something wrong? What do you do then? What is that? That's a temptation for you to go right back into sin. That's what that is. Did they sin against you? Probably. Have they confessed it? Maybe not. But you need forgiveness. They need forgiveness too, but you need forgiveness. for the sins you've committed. And so much as it depends on you, you need to live at peace with your spouse. And so you confess your sins because you committed them. It's not some sort of manipulative lever that you use in your marriage to get them to admit that they failed as well. You confess your sins because you did it. You ask for mercy and forgiveness because you need it. And if they don't, you pray for them.

And it's not uncommon that in a few hours later or the next day or later that week, they'll come back to you and say, you know what, I'm sorry. So what I didn't say, but I'm going to say explicitly, but I'm going to say now is, when you get into a fight with your spouse, if you'll do what I said the first thing is, remember you're a sinner, you should have it in your mind that you need to ask forgiveness as well. One spouse asking forgiveness and the other spouse not asking forgiveness should not be the norm in a Christian marriage. If it doesn't happen right away, then you pray for them and you love them. If you're a wife, you honor and you respect your husband, even if he hasn't confessed his sins to you. Let him be won over by your chaste and respectful behavior. You husbands, if your wife doesn't confess your sins, love her and wash her with the word and pray for her and care for her. Help her.

Help her to see that it's all right for her to confess her sins, that you won't hate her as a result. Because oftentimes, I think that's why women don't confess their sins, is they think all of our relationship will just be destroyed if I admit that I did wrong. That fact is, ladies, you did wrong. And so you have to confess that and say, I need your forgiveness too. I need the Lord's forgiveness. The fact that you're a woman doesn't mean you don't need mercy any more than men. Remember that the sins that you commit are against God and not just your spouse. That's why you need to ask for forgiveness, even if they don't.

This is how you'll find resolution. Also, when you do this, you should realize, you should have the perspective to know you're going to have to do this again. How many times do I have to forgive my brother? 490, to be exact. But don't keep track. Seriously. Jesus wasn't giving you a number to keep track of. He was trying to communicate to you, how many times does God have to forgive you? How many times do you have to go back and ask for God to forgive you for the same sins that you've committed? Because it's a new day. And when has he said, enough, you can't commit that sin anymore. I haven't got any more grace or mercy for you. Jesus didn't die for that sin. This is not the case with our Lord. And if it's not the case with our Lord, then it can't be the case with us. Confessing your sins and asking for forgiveness and giving forgiveness will be a regular event in a healthy marriage.

Health in a marriage is not indicated by how little you sin against each other. Health in a marriage is indicated by how well you resolve it. And finally, resolving conflict. There do come times in our lives where the conflicts in our marriage are such that we can't resolve them ourselves and we need help. You can't seem to get over your anger. You're so stuck in your bitterness or your hatred or your fear or whatever it is toward your spouse that your marriage is in real trouble. And at that time, you need help. And so this work I've talked about up to this point is work that husbands and wives need to be doing together, but that's not to the exclusion of getting help when you need it. In any other area of your life, when you realize you need something that you can't get for yourselves, what you do is you ask for help. I can't pick this thing up. What do you do? You ask for someone to help you pick it up. Same's true in your marriage. If you have conflict that's gotten such a hold of you in your marriage and there's so much...

tension and hardship and sin in there that you can't seem to get free of it, the two of you. If you're like a truck stuck in the mud, then you need to ask for help. You can ask your small group leaders. You can ask the elders. You can ask me and your pastor. Get help. It's a foolish thing to get stuck relationally in your marriage, to be dishonoring the Lord with the way you treat each other and to say, it doesn't matter. We're not going to get help. Get help. You say, I don't have to tell people what goes on. And I say, yep. And you won't surprise any of the people you talk to when you say that you have trouble. In premarital counseling, I give rules to people about fighting. And one of them is get help if you need help. And the first rule I give them, just to give you an idea, is no throwing things or hitting each other.

And it's not a rule, and I always tell them, I say, I'm not giving this rule because of you two particularly. I'm giving you this rule because I know how sinful people are. And I'm just telling you that hitting each other and throwing things is never okay. And they're kind of like, well, we would never do that. But I give it as the first rule so that they can kind of calibrate to like, you mean marriage is that hard? And I'm like, yeah, marriage is that hard. It's really sweet too when you can have peace, but it's hard work. And when you need help, you get help. The other thing I tell them is, premarital counseling, we don't do all of this so that you don't have to ask for help later. We do all of this to build a relationship with you and to get you accustomed to and acclimated to the reality of marriage so that when you have trouble six months, a year, five years into your marriage, you go, you know what, we talked with the pastor or the elders and their wives at that time, and they said we'd have trouble like this, and they said we could talk to them. I think we need to go talk to them.

That's why we have premarital counseling. So much of what gets said in premarital counseling I think falls on deaf ears. Because I don't think the couples know yet what the reality of marriage will be like. And I'd much rather have you going into marriage being like, he told me this could get hard and get ugly. And then have you come to me a year later and go, our first year of marriage wasn't quite as hard as you said it was going to be. That's a much better situation than having you come to me six months later and go, why in the world did you marry us?

I never would have married her if I knew it was going to be like this. Wouldn't you rather come to me and tell me you told me it was going to be terrible and it wasn't quite as bad as you said? I'd much rather hear that. You'd much rather have that. So get help if you need help. In our day, this is the work of the church. Building strong, godly marriages. Resolving conflict. Forgiving each other. Confessing our sins. Acknowledging our faults. Humbling ourselves. And trusting God. Let's pray. Father, we all sin in many ways, especially in our marriages when we're so close to one another. It's easy to presume on our spouse, to think they would know what to do and what not to do and why, that they would be able to read our minds and love us and respect us. But we don't take into account the fact that they're sinners and that they, like us, do all kinds of stuff that they know they shouldn't do. They sin. We sin against them.

We pray that you'd have mercy on us and that you'd help us as husbands and as wives to build godly marriages. Help us to be about the work of being resolved to each other. To seek out peace. Help us not to be offended, Father, when our spouse sins against us. You are righteous and just and holy. And it's appropriate for you to be angry when you're sinned against. Because you don't sin against us. But when we sin against one another, Father, what are we doing except obeying our nature, doing what comes naturally to us. We ask, Father, that you deliver us from this bondage and from these sins, that you'd help us as a husband or a wife to encourage and strengthen our spouse to fight against their temptations and their sin. Help us to be gracious and kind and patient, merciful and forgiving with one another. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.