Is My Marriage Worth Saving?
- Lee Young
- Jul 11
- 7 min read
Many times, the pain found in struggling marriages—on top of the many failed attempts to make things better—can lead us to wonder if it is even worth trying anymore. This speaks to the value of marriage, but also the value of trying to make it work. In this week’s Relationship Friday devotion, I want to dig deeper into this question. There are obviously going to be extreme cases that do not apply, but for the most part, the answer is yes—your marriage is worth saving. And yes—putting forth the effort is worth it.
The Value of Marriage
In today’s culture, marriage is abandoned much more easily than just a few decades ago, and it will only become easier as time goes by. For the believer, however, this should not be the case. The problem is that even believers often do not understand the intrinsic value of marriage. We don’t understand God’s purpose behind it. We don’t understand what God hopes to accomplish through it. Because of this, we—like the world—can give up too quickly.
In Scripture, there are many Greek words that are all translated into the same English word: love. Let me go through each of these for a moment:
Philia – This is the love that friends have for one another.
Storge – This is the love of family.
Eros – This is the love of lovers.
The Bible says that everyone can love in these ways. These different types of love exist only when they are mutual. A person feels obligated to love a friend only as long as the friendship remains. However, if one or the other discards the friendship, philia is not obligated to continue loving that person. In fact, when love is turned off on one side of the relationship, all three of these types of love feel justified in withholding love from the other person.
There is no longer any compulsion to remain kind or to work for that person’s well-being. In fact, the opposite may feel more appropriate—vengeance, anger, and bitterness may seem justified. This is why everyone can love in these ways: they only require as much as they expect. When the other person doesn’t live up to their responsibility to love, it feels justified to respond in kind.
Matthew 5:46-47 (NIV)
“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
There is another kind of love. It is Agape.
Agape is the only love that is not natural to human beings. It is the love of God that says to us, “When you are at your worst, I’ll keep being kind, keep blessing, and keep working for your best interest.” This is what God does for us.
Romans 5:7-8 (NIV)
“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
This love is the highest form of love. When a person experiences agape, it is transformational. To be loved even at our worst is not something that happens often. When it does, it is overwhelming—because no one else loves us like this.
In our wedding vows, we promise to love this way, for better or worse. But when someone shows us their worst, our reaction often reveals the worst in us.
Because this love is not human, we can’t comprehend it. But unless we learn to comprehend it, we will miss the love of God. Our understanding of love will be limited to the human forms, and we will box in God’s love to fit those forms, never truly knowing the full measure of His love. And until we grasp the full measure, we cannot enjoy the full measure of His goodness and the plan He has for us.
Your Marriage Is Worth Saving
It is worth saving because this is the only relationship where all forms of love are present. Though the other three types of love are also present in our relationship with God, marriage uniquely includes agape.
So when we do not act like a friend to Christ, He remains our friend. When we don’t want to honor Him as our Father, He still provides and protects. When we don’t want to spend time with Him, He continues to pursue us. He is never offended.
To know the full measure of God’s love, we must experience all four types. We need to experience God as our friend, our family, our lover, and as the One whose love never stops, regardless of what we do.
God has designed humanity in families through marriage between a man and a woman. He has done this so that in this marriage relationship, the opportunities we have to fully know Him and His love increase simply by being in the covenant of marriage.
This is why the Bible says that marriage is good, even if your spouse is not that great.
Proverbs 18:22 (NIV)
“He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.”
It does not say they have God’s favor as long as they have a good wife or a good husband. The institution of marriage is valuable on its own because it is God’s primary pathway for understanding more deeply the love God has for us, allowing us to experience the fullness of His goodness.
Your marriage is worth saving. There are other ways. You don’t have to be married to experience agape, but marriage is the primary way in God’s design to know Him, His love, and the fullness of His goodness.
Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
It’s Also Worth It to Keep Trying—Even If Your Spouse Doesn’t
Putting forth the effort to love better will always move you nearer to agape love. The more we learn to love our spouse even when we don’t feel they deserve it, the more we understand the depth of God’s love, who never stops loving us even when we don’t deserve it.
Whatever we do today makes it easier to move in the same direction tomorrow. To give up on this relationship because it is painful will make it easier to ignore or not talk to your adult children should that relationship ever become strained.
To keep working at loving your spouse better will form your spirit to do the same in every relationship that gets hard, which is all of them, eventually.
To work on saving your marriage is to work on yourself. You can’t change your spouse. You can’t force them in any way to change how they act or think. But you can choose to become someone who loves better.
The exercise of trying to save your marriage has the potential to help you love better as a mom, a son, a neighbor, and as a Christian, being called to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.
There are going to be people who are hard to love, but God is calling you to love them. To love them is going to require a great deal of sacrifice. The best training ground for this is marriage, because before it got to a bad place, you adored this person so much that you wanted to spend your life with them. Somewhere in there, that love is still present. You can draw upon it as you learn to love better.
But not everyone God calls you to love will be someone you once adored. If we can’t keep loving someone we used to adore, how much harder will it be to love someone we never adored? Working on your marriage will make you a better you.
It’s Only Worth It If You Do Things God’s Way
If your definition of “working on it” is to continue the same negative patterns, it will only get worse. Most marriages end up in a bad place because they only show love when it's mutual. As soon as the behavior is no longer mutually loving, both stop loving.
They are no longer kind, but harsh. They are not patient, but pushy. They are not forgiving, but bring up everything in the person’s past.
In the end, this will only create more hatred.
Proverbs 9:7-8 (NIV)
“Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults; whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse. Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.”
The word mocker in this passage comes from the idea of “scoffing at.” When we prioritize getting our spouse to love us more than loving them better, it will always come across as a rebuke or correction. And if the marriage is already in a bad place, once you start telling your spouse what they are doing wrong, hatred will often manifest in the relationship.
With good intentions, we try to get them to see what they are doing that is hurting us. And they will often do the same to us. But essentially, we are rebuking and correcting them, and if they cannot accept it, the hatred will increase.
God’s way is the way of agape.
When our spouse is not acting lovingly, it will not make us feel like loving them, because the human forms of love are not obligated to keep loving when they don’t. But the way to make our marriage better is through agape.
Agape doesn’t care how you feel. It is committed to loving behavior in our facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, words, and actions. This releases the power of agape. It sends the message that they are loved even at their worst, and this has the potential to create in them a desire to love us better as we have loved them better.
It takes time, and there is no guarantee, but this is the way to make your marriage stronger.
May the Lord help every hurting spouse.
Lee
P.S. My book, The Sacred Union, teaches the deep secrets of agape—what it looks like and how to position ourselves to love as God has loved us.
Discover the Marriage God Designed You to Have.
The Sacred Union reveals the timeless power of agape love through 8 life-changing biblical principles that will transform your communication, deepen your intimacy, and restore enduring connection. Whether your marriage is thriving or struggling, this book offers God’s blueprint for lasting love, rooted in grace, sacrifice, and spiritual unity. Step into the sacred—because your marriage was meant for more. This is God's plan for a strong marriage
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