Completeness is a beautiful but illusive word. It is one of those words that is hard to define without using the word itself. The Biblical Greek word translated complete means “fulfilled,” “satisfied,” and “made whole.” Does this describe your marriage?
Have you ever noticed that the word complementary is related to the word complete? When the Lord ordained marriage in the Garden of Eden and graciously presented the first woman to the first man, God described her as “a help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18).
Eve was the perfect complement of Adam. She was many things that he was not and she helped him fulfill God’s purposes. She made him truly a “whole man” and he was no longer alone, having now a companion for life. He had found his complementary match, and he was now complete.
This is what God has designed every marriage to be. He wants the husband and the wife to complete one another, to make each other whole, and thereby fully satisfy His divine purposes for their life together. This complementing of one another is “completeness” in marriage.
Ultimately, Christ alone is the One Who makes a man or a woman complete. The Apostle Paul wrote that we are “complete in Him” (Colossians 2:10). It is not our spouse who completes us in the ultimate sense. This truth is why those who are ordained and prepared by God to live in the single state can be complete in Him alone.
A selfish marriage will never be a complete one.
But for most of us, one of the important ways that God does complete us is by means of a Godly spouse. A marriage can only benefit from God-given completeness when both the husband and the wife have together submitted to God’s design for marriage. A selfish marriage will never be a complete one. When we live to satisfy ourselves, we will always be disappointed.
This is why God has two carefully designed duties for the man and the woman. These two duties are divinely crafted to complement each other perfectly and to bring a wholesome completeness to the marriage:
Submission
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing” (Ephesians 5:22–24).
Love
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27).
In future articles, we will examine carefully the balance of these two complementary duties. Both require a spirit of humility. Husbands must humble themselves and lay aside their own interests and desires in order to love their wives as Christ loves the Church. Wives must humble themselves and lay aside their own independence in order to submit to their husbands’ headship as the Church is subject unto Christ. When a husband and wife walk in God’s ways, the two can enjoy true completeness in their marriage.
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