Preparing for Marriage as a Christian

1. The Meaning of Marriage

Marriage begins in creation. It is not first a social arrangement, a romantic ideal, a financial partnership, or a private contract. It is God’s good ordinance, given before the fall, confirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ, and expounded by the apostle Paul as a picture of Christ and His church.

Our Lord says, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). Christian preparation for marriage must therefore be sober and prayerful. Marriage is not entered with the assumption that it can later be dissolved if happiness fades. It is a solemn covenantal union, made before God, and to be kept before God.

Ephesians 5 lifts our eyes still higher: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25). Christian marriage is therefore not merely about personal fulfilment. It is a household theatre in which Christlike love, humble service, repentance, forgiveness, and faithfulness are to be displayed.

2. Conversion, Doctrine, and Church Life

The first question is not, “Are we attracted to one another?” but, “Are we both in Christ?” Scripture directs Christians to marry “only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). This does not mean marrying someone merely religious, polite, moral, or sympathetic to Christianity. It means marrying someone who gives credible evidence of repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

A couple should also discuss doctrine. Serious doctrinal disagreement may not feel urgent during courtship, but it will shape church membership, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Day, children, conscience, worship, and the daily atmosphere of the home.

A Christian couple should not prepare for marriage as isolated individuals. The Lord ordinarily shepherds His people through the local church. Therefore, it is wise to ask: under what ministry will we sit? Who will know us well enough to exhort, comfort, and correct us? Where will our children, if the Lord gives them, hear the Word preached and see the life of the church?

Richard Baxter urged husbands and wives to help one another’s souls, not merely to share a house and outward comforts. His counsel on the mutual duties of husbands and wives remains searching and practical, especially his emphasis on spiritual help, peace, delight in one another, and avoiding dissension. Read Baxter on the mutual duties of husbands and wives.

3. Sin, Repentance, and Conflict

Christian marriage preparation must go deeper than communication skills. We need to ask what we do with sin. Do we hide it, excuse it, rename it, blame it on temperament, or bring it into the light before God?

Marriage does not remove sin. It reveals it. A couple preparing for marriage should therefore pay careful attention to character. It is not enough to ask, “Do we get on well when life is easy?” We must ask, “How do we respond when crossed, disappointed, corrected, delayed, or inconvenienced?”

A couple who can speak about sin humbly before marriage is being prepared for mercy within marriage. We are not looking for a sinless spouse, because no such spouse exists. We are asking whether there is humility, teachability, repentance, faith, forgiveness, and a willingness to bring the whole life under the Word of God.

Dave Harvey’s When Sinners Say “I Do” is helpful because it brings the gospel to ordinary marital sins. Marriage preparation should therefore include honest discussion of pride, anger, fear, manipulation, selfishness, bitterness, passivity, secrecy, and self-pity.

4. Purity, Sexuality, and Past History

Sexual purity before marriage is not merely about avoiding consequences. It is worship, obedience, love for Christ, and love for the other person’s soul. The question is not only, “How far is too far?” but, “How may I love Christ, honour this brother or sister, and keep the marriage bed undefiled?”

Hebrews 13:4 says, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” True love does not awaken desire in a way that cannot yet be righteously fulfilled. It protects, waits, prays, and worships.

Christian preparation for marriage should include modest, honest, and careful conversation about sexual history, temptation, pornography, shame, abuse, fear, expectations, and conscience. This should be done with wisdom, not unnecessary detail. The aim is not to rehearse past sin, but to bring significant matters into the light where they may affect trust, health, expectations, or future intimacy.

Joel Beeke’s Friends and Lovers: Cultivating Companionship and Intimacy in Marriage may be useful for engaged or newly married couples who want a reverent, Reformed, and pastoral treatment of companionship and marital intimacy.

5. Children, Home Life, and Education

One of the most important areas to discuss before marriage is children. A couple should not wait until pregnancy, infertility, financial pressure, or schooling decisions force these questions into the open. They should speak honestly and prayerfully beforehand.

The question is not merely, “Do we want children?” but, “How do we understand children before God?” Children are not accessories to adult fulfilment. They are souls entrusted by God, to be loved, taught, disciplined, prayed for, and brought under the ordinary means of grace.

Ephesians 6:4 says, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” This places a particular responsibility upon fathers, while recognising the mother’s profound daily influence within the home.

Couples should not begin with the question, “What arrangement best protects our lifestyle?” but, “How may this household most faithfully receive, nurture, teach, and disciple any children the Lord may give?” This may require financial sacrifice. It may require a smaller home, fewer luxuries, different work patterns, and a slower pace of life. The issue is not social status, but stewardship before God.

One income, two incomes, and care at home

Provision is not only financial, though it includes financial responsibility. Children need food, shelter, clothing, safety, discipline, instruction, affection, time, example, and spiritual nurture. A Christian couple should therefore ask how work, money, and home life may be ordered so that children are not merely maintained, but shepherded.

Where possible, couples should consider whether the family could be ordered so that young children receive generous parental presence, nurture, discipline, and instruction in the home. For some households this may mean one parent stepping away from paid employment for a season, often the mother. For others, because of providence, debt, health, rent, employment instability, or other duties, this may not be possible.

The aim is not to bind consciences where Scripture does not bind them. But neither should we let financial ambition, social expectation, fear of simplicity, or the pursuit of comfort govern the raising of children.

School, home education, and discipleship

Education is never merely academic. Children are always being taught what is true, what is lovely, what is shameful, what is normal, what is authoritative, and what life is for. Parents may choose different educational paths in good conscience, but they cannot delegate away their responsibility before God.

Whether children are educated at home, in a Christian school, in an independent school, or in another setting, parents remain responsible to teach, guard, interpret, correct, and disciple. The school may assist. The church may support. But the father and mother remain answerable before the Lord for the spiritual direction of the home.

Home education can provide rich opportunities for discipleship, but it requires time, discipline, sacrifice, organisation, humility, and often financial cost. A Christian school may be helpful, but is not automatically spiritually sound. A state school may include faithful teachers and useful learning, but parents must be alert to the worldview being taught and absorbed.

In England, parents may educate their children at home, but they remain responsible for ensuring a suitable education. The rules differ across the UK, so parents should check current guidance for their nation and local authority. Read GOV.UK guidance on educating your child at home. Read the House of Commons Library briefing on home education in England.

Joel Beeke’s writing on family worship is especially relevant here. A couple preparing for marriage should ask not only, “Where will our children be educated?” but also, “Will Scripture, prayer, praise, repentance, and the fear of God be ordinary in our home?”

6. Money, Property, and Stewardship

Money is never merely practical. It reveals trust, fear, contentment, generosity, secrecy, pride, and stewardship. Before marriage, a couple should speak honestly about income, debt, giving, savings, property, spending, and obligations, not because marriage is a business arrangement, but because they are preparing to become one household before God.

Scripture calls us to contentment, honest labour, generosity, truthfulness, provision, and freedom from covetousness. A couple who cannot speak truthfully about money before marriage may find that money becomes a source of suspicion, fear, or bitterness after marriage.

Younger couples may need help thinking about rent, bills, food, transport, giving, savings, student debt, and the cost of setting up home. Older couples may need to discuss property, pensions, adult children, maintenance, inheritance, businesses, previous marriages, care responsibilities, and legal documents.

MoneyHelper gives practical guidance on managing money jointly or separately, including the possible consequences of becoming financially linked. Citizens Advice explains that the legal position of cohabiting couples differs significantly from married couples in areas such as inheritance, housing, money, and responsibility for children. Read MoneyHelper on managing money jointly or separately. Read Citizens Advice on living together and marriage.

In some circumstances, legal clarity may be an act of peace rather than suspicion. Where there are children from a previous marriage, inherited property, business responsibilities, dependent relatives, or complex estates, a couple may need legal advice before marriage. This should not be approached with a spirit of distrust, nor as planning for divorce, but as an attempt to walk honestly, protect dependants, avoid future confusion, and act justly.

In England and Wales, pre-nuptial agreements are not automatically enforceable, but courts may take them into account where they have been entered freely and fairly. Couples should seek proper legal advice where this may be relevant. Read the House of Commons Library briefing on pre-nuptial agreements.

A Lasting Power of Attorney may also be worth considering, especially for older couples or those with health concerns. Read GOV.UK guidance on Lasting Power of Attorney.

7. Parents, In-Laws, and Wider Families

Scripture does not set honouring parents against leaving and cleaving. Both must be obeyed. A married couple must honour father and mother, but they must not allow either household of origin to rule the new household.

Where this is handled badly, parents may feel rejected, or the new spouse may feel unprotected. Wisdom requires both tenderness and firmness. Parents may advise, warn, encourage, and pray, but the husband and wife must learn to make decisions together under Christ.

Family expectations often become most obvious around wedding planning, money, housing, holidays, Christmas, grandchildren, schooling, childcare, church attendance, and cultural traditions. These matters should be discussed before marriage, not only when the first conflict arises.

8. Wise Timescales

Scripture does not give a fixed length for courtship or engagement. Wisdom is needed. The aim is not delay for delay’s sake, but neither should a couple rush past serious questions because romance is strong.

Haste can be a cloak for desire, fear, loneliness, or resistance to counsel. Delay can also be sinful if it is driven by cowardice, selfishness, or unwillingness to commit. The question is not simply, “How soon can we marry?” but, “Have we sought the Lord, received counsel, spoken truthfully, and brought into the light the matters that could later wound the marriage?”

In England and Wales, couples must give legal notice at least 29 days before the ceremony, and the ceremony must take place within 12 months of giving notice. Current UK law also means that the legal minimum age for marriage in England and Wales is 18. Read GOV.UK guidance on giving notice. Read GOV.UK guidance on the legal age of marriage.

9. A Wise Path of Preparation

Because marriage is spiritual, it is also practical. Scripture does not teach us to despise ordinary matters such as money, housing, work, inheritance, children, education, or care for ageing relatives. Rather, it teaches us to bring all these things under the lordship of Christ.

Good stewardship is not worldliness. Honest planning is not unbelief. Legal clarity is not a lack of love. But all these things must remain servants of a higher aim: a faithful household, governed by the Word of God, marked by truth, contentment, justice, generosity, holiness, and peace.

1. Pray separately and together, because marriage must be received from the Lord.
2. Seek pastoral counsel early, because pride resists being known and romance can make us selective in what we see.
3. Work through structured premarital material, so that important matters are not missed or avoided.
4. Discuss doctrine and church life, because a household needs a shared spiritual direction.
5. Speak truthfully about family backgrounds, including parents’ marriages, conflict patterns, trauma, divorce, bereavement, culture, and expectations.
6. Open the financial books, because truthfulness is part of love.
7. Discuss children, because they are souls entrusted to parental nurture.
8. Set boundaries for purity, because holiness is love.
9. Plan for conflict, because sinners need habits of repentance before the storm comes.
10. Take legal or financial advice where needed, especially for older couples, property owners, business owners, blended families, or those with significant assets or debts.

10. Recommended Reformed and Pastoral Resources

The following resources are suggested for further reading, listening, discussion, or premarital preparation. They are not a substitute for wise local church oversight, but they may help couples, families, pastors, and counsellors structure careful conversations.

Confessional and Puritan foundations

Books and courses for couples

Sermon and audio resources

UK legal, financial, and practical stewardship links

These practical resources are included for stewardship and legal clarity. They do not define marriage. Scripture defines marriage. Civil guidance may help couples understand responsibilities, but the Word of God governs the conscience.