Drawing on scripture, scholarship, and his experience as a pastor and Christian counselor, Wilson lays out, in clear and inviting language, the theological and practical underpinnings of marriage oneness. He urges couples not to drift into “worldly” understandings of marital partnership, noting that the “covenant partners,” driven by love and faith in each other and God, no longer live just for their individual selves. Instead, “We die to ourselves and begin a new walk with our covenant partner.” Separate chapters on both a husband and wife’s sexual fulfillment and the “debt of love” owed to the other are frank but not explicit, taking inspiration from the Song of Songs; Wilson calls for “mutual submission” and “giving self in mutually sharing physical pleasures.”

The question of “submission” has been complex and controversial in Christian marital guides for generations. Wilson argues that a wife’s “voluntary submission” to her husband’s leadership comes out of “respect and affection for him and reverence to Christ” and that the true authority figure in marriage is Jesus. “A covenant wife’s primary role is a homemaker,” he argues, though she has other duties. Wilson notes that this is in “no way an easy path in today’s contemporary society,” citing the “world’s ridicule” of stay-at-home mothers but acknowledging that wives generating some “supplemental income” is not contrary to biblical principle. Christian readers eager to strengthen their marriages while honoring their faith will find this guide welcome.

Takeaway: A pastor’s thorough, inviting guide to oneness and fulfillment in Christian marriage.

Great for fans of: Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Michelle Peterson’s #StayMarried: A Couple’s Devotional.

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Editing: A
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