Top 3 Takeaways from “Marriage” By Paul Tripp

1 Page Summary of “Marriage” By Paul Tripp

This is an S-Tier Marriage book. Paul Tripp has a knack for putting out a ton of these books that are delightfully simple yet profound. His method is so simple, that he asks the question, “How does the Gospel impact this area of life?” That’s it, so if you are sick of reading another marriage book about the same seven passages this book takes into account the whole Scriptural witness about the good news of Jesus and applies it to marriage. Since this is an S-Tier marriage book I have many more takeaways from this book but let me give you my favorite 3.

1. You're A Sinner Marriage To A Sinner

This is the ultimate “Duh” for anyone who has been a Christian for a while because every faithful church preaches “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom.3:23). But have you stopped to think if your expectations of your spouse include the fact that they are a sinner who will mess up, who need to hear corrections more than once, and who will continually need grace? Or do we expect our spouse to put their shirt in the laundry basket every time after asking them one time? How many times does God have to ask you to pray to Him?

What should be encouraging or dare I say exciting about this realization is you get to be a uniquely gifted conduit of grace for God to your spouse. God gets to use your words and actions to show your spouse the grace and forgiveness of God. See you know your spouse better than anyone else is the word, you spend so much time with them that they can’t keep up any kind of polished public persona around you. You get to see them pick their nose, you get to see them call their sister instead of pray, you get to see them neglect their own health, and get angry and nothing. At those moments you are in the unique position of seeing them in their sin, which might hurt you, but you get to help heal them. Except for those who pick their nose, they're long gone.

2. Our Best Definition of Love does not start with “Love is patient, Love is kind”

The best definition of Love is the cross. There are other passages in Scripture that describe love like the famous love passage is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, “Love is patient, love is kind…” But there is no greater love than someone lay down his life (John 15:13). Even the love within a marriage is built just as a picture of God’s sacrificial love towards us (Ephesians 5). So in the marriage ceremony I think it would be a good idea for the preacher to drop a reality check and tell the bride and groom they are called to sacrifice themselves for the other. They are to give up their own hopes and dreams, give up their own comfort for the comfort of the other, give up their own desires for the desires of the other, give up their own lives for the lives of the other. That’s love.

3. Marriage is built to bring you to your end

The tagline of this book is “6 Gospel commitments every couple needs to make” and if you try and follow all six you will quickly realize it’s impossible under your own power. Without the power and presence of God in your life marriage the way God intended it is impossible. Just take part of the first commitment “We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness.” Forgiveness gets old when it’s never reciprocated. When you forgive your husband again and again for leaving the dirty laundry of the ground or inviting people over again without giving you a heads up it gets old when he doesn’t forgive you for any of your shortcomings. But like 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.” We can forgive over and over again because Jesus has forgiven us over and over again. Because Jesus is filling us up with forgiveness we are able to overflow forgiveness. Without Jesus in your life,

There are many other great takeaways from this book, that’s why I consider it as S-tier marriage book, but these are three of my favorite because they really do bring out the Gospel in my marriage. They remind me I can’t do this is alone because I am a sinner, saved by grace and so is my wife. So we need a lot of grace and sacrafice in our marriage not just from Jesus but from each other. None of this is possible without the power and presence of Jesus so this book brings me to my knee’s and reminds me to ask Jesus and to thank Jesus for everything I have in my life.