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When it comes to marriage, Ephesians 5:22-33 is the go-to passage. Paul lays out complete instructions for husbands and wives to live in harmony one with another. These instructions, however, follow an enormous amount of truth concerning the effects of God’s grace in our lives…your life.

Let’s start with this familiar passage: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Saved by grace through faith. This is the Christian story…your story. But what does it mean to be saved by grace through faith?

We all know that salvation is not of our own doing. It is not something we have earned. It is a gift we have received…the gift of life.

Your story began with these words: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Not something to brag or boast about. But don’t feel bad. It’s where every person’s story begins.

Spiritual death was the result of Adam’s fall. He died the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, exactly as God had said. Death came into the world through him and it affected us all.

You came into this world alive to sin, but dead to God. Your life was ordered according to the ways of the world and to the prince of the power of the air. You lived to gratify the desires of the flesh. You were by nature a child of wrath (Ephesians 2:2-3).

God’s design for marriage doesn’t fit this framework. Two spiritually dead people living to gratify the desires of the flesh will have a difficult time trying to make it work. It is no wonder the divorce rate is what it is. It is no wonder that culture is bent on changing the marriage paradigm to fit this worldly ethos.

God has a different idea. He wants to fit us into his design…to make us compatible with him. This is where grace comes into the story. We cannot overcome the power of sin and death. But God can and he did through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

God’s love for you moved him to act on your behalf. As Paul wrote, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5). To be saved by grace is to be made alive together with Jesus Christ.

In the beginning, “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). Adam was fully alive, equipped to leave, cleave and become one flesh with Eve.

All that changed when sin entered the picture. But God in his grace and mercy took sin out of the picture through the cross of Jesus Christ, and breathed life back into man…into you.

You were once dead in trespasses and sins. Now you are alive in Christ. Marriage, as God designed it, is for those who are fully alive in Him.

This is you…made new in Christ to carry out God’s design for marriage.