My favorite marriage advice comes from Richard Baxter’s 17th century article, Directives for Avoiding Dissension in the Home. The article was helpful in my own marriage, and I’ve since used it in marriage counseling and leadership training.
One of the great things about Baxter was his simple and clear style. These are not the exasperating ideas of a hopeless academic; this is great advice from an effective pastor. But after all these years, Baxter’s language is a little intimidating. In marriage counseling, people are crying and nauseated and they tend to be frustrated by the exercise of interpreting 17th century material.
So I’ve taken Baxter’s ideas and put them in modern language. His original article is better and wiser, but here’s a decent representation of his essential concepts.
Directives for Avoiding Dissension in the Home
Husbands and wives are responsible for living quietly and peacefully together. A Christian home should be filled with the fresh air and sweetness of love. It isn’t okay to let your knee-jerk emotions set the tone of your home. Ah! She drives me crazy! or He always fails me! Instead, you have a sacred duty to overcome irritable, sour emotions with Christ-like love. “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18).
Why keep the peace?
1. Marriage conflict is like cancer, or a broken bone, or a bleeding cut. Until the sickness is gone your life will feel unsettled. Arguments are broken peace, and something broken so close to you is like sickness in your body. Think about how carefully you avoid sickness and injury. You wash your hands. You wear oven mitts. In the same way, you should carefully avoid conflict and try hard to heal wounds quickly when they occur. People too easily live with conflict.
2. Conflict in marriage “tends to cool your love.” And disunity is addictive, creating a rut of irritability and anger in your heart. When you choose not to love a person, your heart finds all kinds of things to dislike about him. Wounds separate things that are meant to be together, skin from bone, husband from wife. Marriage is meant to be free and beautiful, but if you let conflict live in your home, your home will feel like a prison.
3. Marriage conflict messes up everything else in your life. Like two animals unequally yoked, nothing gets done without struggle and bruises. And without peace, nothing at all can be done well.
4. Marriage conflict makes you unfit for worship. You can’t pray together, or talk to each other about God, or give any spiritual help to each other.
5. Marriage conflict destroys your ability to raise children. They will see your sad example. They understand more of your heart than you think. They will develop the opinion that they too can do whatever they want, Who cares what the Bible says? Mom and Dad love themselves more than each other, so why should I love anyone more than myself? They might learn “the rules,” but they won’t learn to love God or people from their heart. They will judge you unfit to discipline them because you are so obviously guilty and hypocritical, and you will be the secret shame of your extended family.
6. Marriage conflict exposes you to Satan and you will hand him opportunities to kill you. (“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” Eph. 4:26-27). A house divided cannot stand. And since we’re talking about sin, be aware that your sin nature will attempt to deceive you into into thinking that your personal spiritual danger is not very great. Your emotions will be too busy feeling sorry for yourself.
How to keep the peace
1. Have sex often. Yes, this was the #1 piece of advice from a 17th century Puritan! Baxter said, “Keep up your conjugal love in a constant heat and vigor.” The Apostle Paul agreed, “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time…” (1 Cor. 7:5). Martin Luther, who heartily loved his 16th century wife, said, “Twice a week, hundred-four a year, should give neither cause to fear.” Why is sex so important? Because, as Baxter said, “love will suppress wrath.” When you cherish a person, it’s hard to get mad about small stuff, and it’s hard to say stupid, hurtful things, and it’s hard to treat that person unkindly. When the bedroom is inactive, small disagreements show up like overnight weeds after a spring rain, and a sense of distaste sets in. After an unfortunate argument, intimacy is an important part of healing. Sex, romantic get-aways, and deliberate affection around the house will generate warmth to melt icy disagreements.
2. You’ve got to see that your selfishness, irritability, bitterness, resentment, anger and unkindness are sin. You’ve got to see that you are addicted to sin, and then you’ve got to kill it. The reason you have such trouble in your marriage is because you are a sinner. The central problem in your marriage is your tendency to blame your spouse instead of recognizing the ugliness of your own sin. To quote Dave Harvey, “When sin becomes bitter, marriage becomes sweet!” When I indulge sin, I become the world’s expert of explaining why and how my wife treats me poorly. But during these times I have zero insight into my own heart. How ironic and sad! So much insight into her, and zero capacity to face me own stuff. You must pray and work hard for a humble, meek, quiet spirit. Your marriage will stink until you take personal responsibility for your own sin. People feel entitled to dark thoughts because “I’ve been hurt.” Jesus did not take the same attitude toward the cross. He did not need to be treated well. His “food” [his satisfaction and contentment] was “to do the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 4:34).
A proud, selfish heart is bothered and provoked by every little thing that seems to criticize it. A selfish, sin-sick mind is like a baby with colic, always needing to be rocked and stroked. The tiniest pee in the diaper brings tears. The shortest delay of milk is the freaking end of the world. If you are married to someone like this, God wants you to live with him in constant patience. But no Christian should be patient with such a sickness in himself. Kill it! As John Owen warned, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” You will not make any substantive progress toward peace in your home until you see that your own sin is the greatest roadblock. When husbands and wives argue and cry in my office, I ask them (through a series of questions) to explain why their home is unhappy. They always find creative ways to point at each other. The root of the problem is that they disagree with James:
James 4:1-2 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
Baxter said, “[first] get the victory over yourselves, and the cure of your own impatience, and you will easily keep peace with one another.”
3. During a time of clear thinking, a time without any tension, agree together that when one of you becomes diseased with anger and irritability, the other will be peaceful until the disease passes. (1 Cor. 13:7-8 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.) Baxter said, “Agree together beforehand, that when one is in the diseased, angry fit, the other shall silently and gently bear, till it be past and you are come to yourselves again.” Don’t provoke the diseased person with sharp words, cold shoulders or lectures. Don’t fight back. “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matt. 5:39). If two people are angry at the same time, it’s like pouring gas on fire and you will delay the arrival of peace to your home.
(This point depends on #2. The problem in many marriages is that people don’t see the lack of love as sin or “disease.” Instead, they feel entitled to irritibility and super-sadness, and this sinful state is not a brief season, but a normal way of life.)
4. If you can’t find the way back to a peaceful, gentle mood quickly, at least shut up. If you open your mouth when you’re upset, you will say very stupid things that will blow hot oxygen on the fires of hell that are already licking your house. Be very, very slow to speak – which is a nice way to say shut your pie hole, and your peace will return more quickly. “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell” (James 3:5b-6).
Many marriages are hurt by the dangerous idea that so-called “honesty” is helpful. Of course we must always be truth-tellers. But we should never blurt out the filth in our minds. We are deeply selfish people with deeply sinful analysis of relational problems. We enjoy finding specks in other people’s eyes without noticing the logs in our own! Be quiet and kill your sin, and then let words come out. “Talking it out hotly doth blow the fire.”
A truth-teller is not a filth-speaker.
Proverbs 16:32 Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 25:28 A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.
5. The “sober party” might find a few kind and tender words to arrest the illness of the other. Sometimes the most gentle nudge will awaken us from the deepest trance. Even better, use wise humor to poke the sick grump; we usually make our problems worse by being too serious. This is dangerous territory, requiring mutual trust and high-level maturity. Ask your spouse how s/he would like to be spoken to in such times.
6. Be a person who says “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” easily. Run to peace without delay. The instant you feel that stupid awareness of, “Crud, I’m going to have to confess this…,” go and do it immediately. Nursing an offense is like cuddling a demon, I cannot exaggerate the danger of lingering disunion. Don’t hope it will pass, or try to sleep it off. Don’t be ignorant of sin’s damage or intent. And when you reconcile, do it fully. That is, look each other in the eyes, assure your spouse that you are sorry, or assure your spouse that he is forgiven. Make sure the stink is gone, totally gone, from your home.
Confess your sin to each other, and then go to God together in confession. He is the most offended party. As you pray together out loud, the gravity of what you have done will sink in. It’s harder to sin when we make a big deal out of confession. Someone once told me that he found himself to be a habitual liar. He decided that whenever he lied, no matter how small, he had to confess it to the person he lied to. The ridiculous discomfort of those conversations played a significant role in his successfully killing the sin of lying. The same basic principle applies to all sin, including anger and discontentedness in marriage. Confess your sin out loud to each other and to God. Bring it all into the light. Often only one of you will be confessing while the other spouse holds your hand in humble help. If you’ve rarely done this, you might need to do it several times a day until you hack the sin to death in your heart. By praying together, you will be mutually humble before God, and you will sin less easily. Pray for God’s power to love each other better. If you pray like this out loud together, then you will feel ashamed to reject God’s power to love each other, and you will want to avoid the occasion of confession in the future. You will also increase the trust between you (making #5 easier). Spurgeon said, “Prayer is the master-weapon. We should be greatly wise if we use it more, and did so with a more specific purpose.”
Baxter concluded his Directions, “If you will but practice these directions, your family peace may be preserved.”
I urge you to read these directions together, personalize them, and agree to follow them closely.
Remember the classic 80’s line, “Greed is good!” I’ve got a new one: “Guilt is good.”
An excerpt from Daniel Akin’s 
We’ve designated three homes throughout Auburn where Christmas Eve Candlelight Gatherings will occur between 6:30 and 7:30 PM. Please call the Minors (Ken Entz officiating), Whartons (Bill Wharton officiating) or Foxes (Jay Montgomory officiating) to get directions if you’d like to join one of these special services!
Sometimes people ask about the pagan roots of Christmas traditions. Two of the biggest concerns relate to Christmas trees and the dating of December 25. In fact, Christianity Today just ran an article that repeated the urban legend that Christians “co-opted” a popular pagan holiday.